I did it.... I finished my tomb!

I started this book June 28, 2008 and finished it tonight. WHEW!! What do you think of that?

I blogged about this book back in early June before I started to read it for the second time. I told you all then, that I had read it years ago, 20 or so years, that is, and so I wanted to read it again. I enjoyed it so much the first time but realized that I am a different person now in my 60's than I was in my 40's.

What a difference a few years make, my friends. This time I absorbed every nuance of growth in the main characters as revealed by our author, Helen Hooven Santmyer. The book begins in the mid 1800's right after the Civil War. It takes us through those horse and buggy days when people died for lack of antibiotics and a knowledge of keeping things sterile while delivering a baby.

I was aware of how busy those ladies were. They didn't have a TV to watch, but when they sat down in the evening after dinner, they had their basket of mending on their laps. If they had their knitting it was to make socks for their family rather than the way that I do it and make decorative throws etc. for my home as a craft project. What different times those were.

I read about gas lights coming onto the scene and then electricity. Soon people were driving those contraptions called automobiles that spooked the horses of those who drove by.

Yes, those were simpler times in a way, but also very rigid and market by customs that dictated what everyone should do. It was wonderful to visit that time in history through this novel, but I'm glad I live in the 2000's.

It took Ms. Santmyer 50 years to write that book. She wrote a few others as well which I have also read. Ladies of the Club is by far her best work. By the time it was published she was a very old lady.

I highly recommend that you consider this book for your "after the holidays" or your summer reading. It's an amazing journey you won't be sorry that you took.