Love A Good Read?

Do you love a good read???  How about a good "listen?"

I'm not one for sitting still much, preferring to keep my hands busy, and if my hands aren't busy, my mind gets busy, plotting and planning (especially with the move coming up in 5 days time - gulp!)  I just can't get my mind to rest for 2 minutes. 

So when Pat, a friendly Texas lady I work with stopped me last week and shoved this (above) into my hands saying  "you gotta listen t' this, it is so gooooood." I took it and said "o.k thanks," (thinking great, when have I got time to listen to 15 c.d's???)  Why did I say yes?  I just know she's going to be asking what I think to it every time I see her!

I don't have a cd player... I use an ipod, and I only use that when I'm running (which isn't very often these days - sighhhh,,, but that's another story.)

Anyway, it sat on my desk for several days, in fact I kept looking at it, feeling bad that I wasn't listening too it, and feeling a little annoyed like it was just one more thing I had to deal with - isn't it funny the way the mind goes off on weird little tangents???  Pat, simply wanted to share something good, and all I felt was stress about "one more thing to deal with."

Well, we had to take a journey down to Portland this last weekend, and I remembered the book on C.D, and took it with me to play in the car on the way down.  Whilst CG was driving  Petunia (the RV,)  I drove our car... 

Oh my... did I ever get a surprise?   From the moment I put that first disc in the player I was completely and utterly pulled in.

Jackson,  Mississippi, 1962..., the story is told by 3 women..., 2 black maids and a young 23 year old white women just returned to her parents cotton plantation, after graduating from college. She has aspirations of becoming a journalist, and takes the only "writers" job she can find at the local newspaper - writing a weekly column called "Miss Myrna." - which discusses "household sanitation tips," the irony of which is that like most white women she knows, she has never had to clean anything in her life, and so "Ms. Skeeter" approaches Abiline her friends black maid to get her advice on cleaning.  

Skeeter's life shifts dramatically, as she begins to see Abiline in a different light from being "just the maid," and begins to understand what the life of a black maid is like in Mississippi... the raising of other peoples babies and about the unspoken bonds between the children and the maids that love them as their own.

This unabridged version is long, but oh my...it is so good, so compelling, the actresses reading the parts are unbelievably good.  They bring life to these characters to the point where I found myself worrying about them, fretting about what was going to happen next..., I have NEVER felt so wrapped up in a story, I have NEVER cared so much about fictional characters...  I have NEVER been so transported to another time and place by any book...

If you love a good story, then you will L-O-V-E this book on CD...