MY DETACHMENT

I am the author of Ivory Fields, a novel. I wrote it soon after I came home from Vietnam. Not many have read the book. After thirty-three publishers turned it down, I lit a fire in a trash barrel behind a rented house in Iowa and burned up all my copies of the manuscript. Years and years went by, and the book became part of my distant memories of being a soldier, memories that would creep up on me when I was washing dishes or turning a key in a lock, memories that I wished away. Then one morning another copy of the novel arrived in the mail from an old friend who was cleaning out his files, and I realized I was glad to have it back. From time to time I look at it and I think.
My Detachment
Tracy Kidder

We listened to this while driving to the beach, and both CA and I were mesmerized. This is a perspective on Vietnam that you don't usually find. Kidder was an honorable soldier, even though he dealt with uncertain feelings about being a soldier and the war itself. He is self-deprecating and modest, to a fault. A wonderful read. We are recommending it to our son and son-in-law and other friends, as well.

FATAL LAST WORDS

Up with the bloody lark? she murmured. I don't hear the little bastard among that lot. He's still sat on the nest, sensible bird that he is.

She was on the move so early that the dawn chorus was still singing at full volume; robins, blackbirds, wrens, pigeons and even the occasional seagull, all doing their best to wake the elegant old grey city from its slumbers.

And, a very interestingly worded dinner invitations on pg. 5.

Hi Randy it began. Bob and I are finally holding that informal dinner party for four that I asked you about. You said you might manage an evening off next Thursday; 7:30 for 8, ambulances at midnight. We hope that you and Denzel will be able to join us. Nothing fancy on the table, nobody posh around it, just the four of us. Cheers, Aileen.
Quintin Jardine

TRUE COLORS

What is passion? It is surely the becoming of a person... In passion, the body and the spirit seek expression... The more extreme and the more expressed that passion is, the more unbearable does life seem without it. It reminds us that if passion dies or is denied, we are partly dead and that soon, come what may, we will be wholly so.
John Boorman, film director
quoted on the opening page of
True Colors
by Kristin Hannah

I've just started reading this book, but this opening page knocked me out.

THE MELTING SEASON

I was on the edge of something dire. All it took was a little push. That was when I realized what needed to happen. I can take it all and no one can stop me. And there was nothing left to do afterward but get the hell out of town.
Jami Attenburg
The Melting Season

THE FEAST OF LOVE

Every relationship has at least one really good day. What I mean is, no matter how sour things go, there's always that day. That day is always in your possession. That's the day you remember. You get old and you think: well, at least I had that day. It happened once. You think all the vairables might just line up again. But they don't. Not always. I once talked to a woman who said, "Yeah, that's the day we had an angel around."
(Chapter Two first paragraph)
The Feast of Love
Charles Baxter