Bargain Book Discovery- Goodbye and Amen

We're all avid readers- every human in our house.

All of us are most comfortable with our noses in a good book, and even though the subject matter varies wildly between people and depending on the day, the important role books play in our family is evident to anyone entering our house.

Books are everywhere, every horizontal surface becomes, by default, a bookshelf, no matter the room or supposed intended use thereof.

In my old age, and at the encouragement of the rest of my family, I've taken to spending serious time putting thought to paper with mixed results, but it's all a learning and growing process- accomplishments even an old fart like me can achieve.

The best of my efforts having to do with living life on a small farm are published on www.homestead.org thanks to website owner (and my toughest critic...after myself) Neil Shelton, and I've had other things printed up into book form thanks to the magic of www.blurb.com.

Someday, if I'm very lucky, my book(s) will be published by a "real" publisher, but I have no illusions about best sellers or Oprah's Book Club. If and when I become a real, live, published author, my books will go straight to the Bargain Shelves of the big bookstores.

And that's OK with me- I purchase ALL my books from the $5 and under shelves and have yet to get a real stinker. I've been unlucky enough to READ real stinkers that are best sellers and refuse to do it again.

So I'm going to share some of my favorite books and hope to raise the sales for the authors by just a few copies.

Goodbye and Amen by Beth Gutcheon
www.bethgutcheon.com

A really neat little book presented absolutely wonderfully, the story surrounds the untimely death of a couple and the subsequent sorting through of things physical and emotional by their grown children and various grandchildren and friends.

The really neat part is that there's no narrative as such- the entire book is done as though all the characters are being interviewed about the events and it showcases how different people in the same family, in the same room, going through the same motions, see and feel things totally (sometimes heartbreakingly, sometimes hilariously) differently.

This is a great study of the interplay between grown siblings and how family hierarchy doesn't change no matter how old you are, how successful you are, or how many miles you put between you and your past.

A very depressing or comforting or happy or fatalistic thought, depending on where you personally fall in the food chain.

Oh. And just so ya'll know.

I don't read stuff that's full of violence, or graphic sex, or anything horrible.

Real life has that mess aplenty and I don't put myself in front of it for entertainment.

Alternatively, giving credit for everything good to God and blaming everything else on human frailty and/or Satan doesn't appeal to me either.

I enjoy a good story about ordinary people living through normal stuff with as much grace as most of us can drum up and coming out the other side mostly unscathed.

Wow. I'm boring.