My Reading Life by Pat Conroy ****

"I won this book from the monthly draw on Book Browse, and somewhere on a card, I have Conroy's autograph. That was four or five years ago. When I picked up the book last weekend, I thought I might read a chapter a week or something, and might perhaps find a chapter about bookstores, which is our Book Club theme for April,2017.  I have read two books by Conroy- Beach Music and South of Broad, and thoroughly enjoyed them, especially Beach Music. He is a writer who gets right into the bones of a subject and makes it come alive with beautifully descriptive language. I find that while I may not remember the plots of his novels, I do remember the emotions I felt while reading them, so they obviously made an impact on me.

This memoir is no exception. While the book definitely concerns his reading and writing life, he ends up telling you his life story, not in chronological order, but as these vignettes about books reveal his story to us.

Chapter One is about his mother, how they shared books and inspired one another's reading." To my mother, a library was a palace of desire masquerading in a wilderness of books."

Chapter Two discusses Gone With The Wind, how it is the quintessential novelof the south" There have  been hundreds of novels about the Civil War, but GWTW stands like an obelisk in the dead century of American letters casting its uneasy shadow over all of us"

Chapter Three, entitled The Teacher, tells the story of Gene Norris, Conroy's English teacher, who was a seminal force in his life, and- finally, because Conroy's father was an extremely difficult person, Conroy had met a great man. They remained friends until Norris died of leukaemia. This was a beautiful chapter, a real tribute to a wonderful teacher, guide, mentor, and friend.

Chapter Four tells about the year Conroy spent teaching 18 black children on a remote backwater island in South Carolina, a one- room schoolhouse, grades five to eight. " I was in way over my head and lacked all qualifications to teach those kids. even so, I pulled up a chair and told them not to worry,.'I can teach you everything you need to know', I said. 'We're going to have a blast'.

Chapter Five, The Librarian, relates his discovery of the library in the high school he had just entered- the library became his refuge, and there he met Eileen Hunter, the librarian. " My genuine fondness for Eileen trumps my irritation at the thorny relationship she brought to the librarian's craft. I can forgive almost any crime if a great story is left in its wake"

Chapter Six, The Old New York Book Shop, tells the story of a wonderfully strange bookshop in Atlanta, which Conroy says utterly changed his life. 

Chapter Seven is about a book rep who led Conroy through the process of having his novels distributed. 

There are chapters about writers' conferences, his time in Paris as a young writer, and so on. This has been a wonderful reading journey for me, too!

Lily And The Octopus by Stephen Rowley ***

Well, I did finish this, so that says something about the book, I guess, but it was one of my quiet reads. I actually finished it while waiting on the telephone for Shaw Direct to help me with my receiver- had to wait an hour, only to find I hadn't turned the receiver on ......duh. 

Lily is a dachshund who has a tumour on her head, which the author, who I believe is the narrator in this story, calls an octopus, and the book is the story of how the narrator, who loves his dog unconditionally, thinks he can send the octopus away.

It would have made an excellent short story, but became a bit too strung out.