Fickle?

Or "love the one you're with?"
Sorry, this is not about my sex life. I fall in love with the book de jour.
If I like a book, I don't put it down. I devour it with the passion of a 19 yr old living away from home for the first time in the tropical climates with the scent of gardenia on the air....Wait! that's another story.

If I don't like a book...well, if I put it down, it is apt to get lost in the clutter of magazines, notebooks, what-have-you scattered around the floor in my study or in piles on the end tables and coffee table in the other living areas.
Case-in-point, I had decided to return to a rejected lover for the SCN Memoir Challenge, the memoir entitled "Measure of my days" by Florida Scott-Maxwell. I started it, and as I recall, I liked its pithy reflections on aging. However, it smacked of what I think of as my old notion that memoirs= biographies of famous people. Admittedly, I had never heard of Florida before starting this book, but I held it against her anyway.
My notion of memoir today are tales of women, in particular, who share reflections on ordinary and extraordinary journeys with language I understand.

I really did intend to read it on my vacation to the mountains.
After all, it is a thin, short paperback.
It is not at all like the beautiful large, hardcover Kingsolver book, I am lugging about in my secret affair.
Oh, that volume is glorious! Its pages are soft and raggedy,cut with jagged edges like old-fashioned, hand-bound books.
Sigh. It is a sensual experience to lift up the corner of each page and run my index finger underneath the cream-colored, gently-textured sheet. I imagine the fibers being pressed together to create this tome, this pleasurable object of my affections.

I am reasonably certain the small paperback is still sitting on the end table next to my reading chair at the cabin. At least I am not willing to excavate the piles of things that it could be hiding under at my house.
So, I have decided to replace The measure of my days with this new love, Animal,vegetable, Miracle on my reading list for the Memoir Challenge.
I guess it is memoir. Non- fiction for certain. It is a lovely blend of humor, vulnerability (no preaching here)as she describes her human foibles at severing her ties with the military, industrial, agri complex side of life we all share.
We all eat, so that common thread should resonate with many.
I think this book can do so much more than all of the political/economic summits and Global Warming initiatives.
It embodies the notion of "Think Globally. Act Locally."
Not easy to do. But each of us can think about her message today.
Unlike Scarlett O'Hara...
We can, each of us, act on this tomorrow.
The message is not trite. If you want to reduce the US dependence on oil, then think about where your food comes from and look for locally produced food.
Driving a Prius is just not enough!