At least two years ago we had a Hungry Caterpillar calendar. Full of inspiration I photographed every month's picture come year's end with full and firm intention of blogging monthly on my reading accomplishments. Sigh. Here I am just about managing to mark last month's end, and what spectacular accomplishments do I present?
"A Woman in Arms" by Russell Braddon: The story of Nancy Wake. This is a book written for older children. Just about my level of intellectual endeavour these days! I have actually been much struck by my need to reawaken the little grey cells. Last week I decided to inspire myself to spiritual creativity on the domestic front, and virtuously took The Hidden Art of Homemaking to bed. I managed two paragraphs before conceding that I have a concentration span worse than either of my suns. On a bad day. This discovery has not at all been much dissipated by my being on a twilight course for work this month. There is the prospect of an essay ahead. An essay! I haven't written one of those in...
I digress. Low concentration. Nancy Wake. This is a story that needs read in adult format. Far too much Enid Blyton cavorting in woods, admittedly with machine guns instead of ginger beer. She seems to have preferred copious amounts of champagne. I was conscious the whole time of a darker, grittier tale beneath. A woman in her twenties, leading thousands of French Resistance guerillas in the months following D-Day? Much more to be unearthed, if I only had the grey cells.
I found the story in our school library. Somehow I have had the glorious fortune to have been assigned to helping there two periods a week. One hour and twenty minutes of tidying the shelves in what is a quite superlative collection. So I'm afraid there may be more young adult books ahead!
4 comments:
Yay! (for more YA books or my favorite, juvenile fiction) You're tired! That's why you can't read in bed. Poor girl.
Hmmm, not sure how I feel about Blytonesque book with champagne. So you also have the same book troubles as me!!x
Love those YA books! Well...some of them! I loved The Hidden Art of Homemaking the first time I read it. The second time I couldn't get into it. Don't know why.
Yes, it's hard to read when you're tired. I often fall asleep in my chair and wake with a crick in my neck, lol.
Just went and read about Nancy Wake on widipedia, and she is so interesting! What a fireball she was! Lived until 2011. Amazing. Take good care of those brain cells, Mags. REST. That's what's needed.
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