resilience

"Resilience" by Elizabeth Edwards left me in a melancholy mood all night. She enjoyed a life full of family and love and fulfilling work and then suffered the death of her son, cancer, and her husband's infidelity. She writes in great detail about the loss of her son, the grief process and pain she always carries. She has dealt with it in the many years of aftermath, but she doesn't say much about dealing with her husband's affair. Clearly they are still going through that challenge.

Anyway, I felt very close to her as she spoke honestly about these trials. I think this book would be incredibly valuable to anyone looking for a map - she tells the Bible verses, poems, stories and activities that kept her moving. I had questioned her decision to make her story public - how did her little ones feel seeing mom bash dad on the TV? - during the big publicity blitz. But now I see that she was providing a service in her book - keeping her son's memory alive, showing others how to cope with unspeakable grief. It was a tremendously touching book.

"Perfect Family" by Pam Lewis was a literary suspense novel. I thought it was too heavy on the literary - lots of dull dialogue that went nowhere. WIth suspense novels, you want the mystery to proceed apace! That's all you care about, not character development so much.

"Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Color" by Joyce Sidman is a really neat poem about the seasons with gorgeous, gorgeous art by Pamela Zagarenski. It's a children's book - my child is much too long to enjoy it but I certainly did.

"Bibliotherapy" was very disappointing - blah. I liked the idea of pairing books to moods - I totally think of certain books as cozy winter reads or books to enjoy when you're dreaming about a weekend in Paris. This book was basically a summary of self-help books of the '90s. Not interesting at all. Those books die for a reason.