The Gift

While querying agents for my next novel, The River Keeper I was entered into a drawing to receive a free book. All I had to do was sign up to receive the Laura Dail Literary Agencies newsletter. No problem I could do that, especially if there was a free book involved.

 

You see I love books. Bet you never could have guessed that could you? Ever since third grade and The Box Car Children I have been hooked. I love mysteries, suspense, love stories? but only if they end good, I?m also drawn to young adult novels and I simply love to read children?s books for all ages. I don?t care what the genre is as long as the characters are strong and there is a good story line. But most especially I love the words that are imprinted between the cover of the Holy Bible, these words hold the mysteries of old, and our road map to the future.

 

I purchased the coolest book at a second hand store a few years back titled, The Forbes Book of Business Quotations. I paid five dollars and it is worth every cent. Here is one of the quotes from inside by Louisa May Alcott, ?Far away in the sunshine are my highest inspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see the beauty, believe in them and try to follow where they lead.? How awesome is that?

 

What would happen if we stopped dreaming, if we never set goals? Would we just give up and lie in bed all day? Unfortunately, I?m afraid that is exactly what some people have chosen to do. Like Louisa May Alcott said, I may not reach all my highest inspirations but I?m sure going to try. As I?m coasting down the backside of fifty I hope and pray that life will keep stoking the fire that ignites my yearning to create.

 

What a wonderful gift a book is to a lover of words. When I got home last Friday from running errands there the package was, lying in one of my Grandma Verlie?s old rocking chairs on my carport. The padded envelope not only held one book but three. They are beautiful publications with intriguing covers and I can?t wait to read every word of all three.

 

I am especially drawn to one of them, it is titled, The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen. If you?re not familiar with Jane Austen?s writing let me share a quote by her out of my Forbes Book of Quotations, ?It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.? That sort of sums up what kind of lady she was, doesn?t it? She?s my kind of gal, strong and confident of her worth as a woman.

 

My own sister broke my heart the other day. She stopped by my house and as she was leaving she picked up a book I was reading. She said, and I quote, ? I haven?t read a book in years, reading bores me to death.? Can this person really be my sister?? Surely we were switched at birth. But come to think of it neither one of my brothers are readers either, so therefore I am the black sheep, outcast, oddity of the family. Imagine that?

 

Jane Austen knew all along that the world is made up of all kinds of people with millions of different wants and needs. I?ll leave you with one more of her quotes, ?One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.? Touch? Jane. Some love to read while others are bored to tears by words, I myself am so thankful that I am transfixed into another world when I open the cover of a book. I might be beamed up to a far away planet; sail the high seas to a foreign country, or I might be blinked into my own back yard. No matter where the words take me I am in awe of the trip.

 

There is no better gift than the gift of words, whether written into novels, sonnets, essays, short stories or spoken with the simplicity of these three short words, ?I love you.? How powerful is that?rsz_forbes

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