I love to read – especially when I’m on vacation. The problem I encounter on vacation is that my husband, John, isn’t much of a reader. If he does read it’s usually either some outdoorsy magazine or an optometric magazine (being as he’s an optometrist I suppose this is understandable.) But carrying a boat load of magazines on vacation isn’t practical. Plus, I feel bad for the poor people who end up sitting next to John on a plane while he’s looking at pictures of diseased eyeballs. It’s just gross.
Anyway, back to the problem.What ends up happening when we’re on vacation is that I’m peacefully sitting on the beach reading my magazine and John is just sitting with nothing to do but look at me (and the water) until he can stay quiet no longer and then he starts talking.To his credit, he can stay quiet for a fairly long time.I knew I had to find a way to change this if I was ever going to get the type of vacation I really wanted – one on which I could do a lot of relaxing and reading.So, on our vacation earlier this month I came armed with a plan – ONE Kindle – ONE iPad – both fully loaded with books.
It took a day or two of cajoling before I finally came upon the method of getting John to invest his time in a book.I handed him the iPad, showed him how to turn pages (he’s not much into technology) and said “Here, just read the preface.If you don’t want to read it after you’ve read the preface, I will stop bugging you about it.”Five minutes later he sighed and said, “Well, now I have to read the whole book.”“YES!SUCCESS!” I screamed giddy with excitement.He responded with “Well, that was hardly fair.It was like handing sugar to a baby.”
All totaled, I read three books on vacation (after finishing one I’d already started) and John read two.The second one took just much cajoling as the first one by the way, but now at least I know the successful method of attack.
I’m sure you’re wondering what books I convinced John to read that were so good, so I’ll give you a brief synopsis of each one (and save my reviews of the other two for a different blog post.)
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand -This book is a page turner.It might take you a few chapters to get absorbed but once you do you’ll have a hard time putting it down.It’s the story of Louis Zamperini, once a defiant boy, who eventually used the talent he’d acquired running from trouble into being a high school track star, and later a major contender in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.But the story doesn’t end there.Though it was expected that Zamperini would again participate in the 1940 Olympics his career was interrupted by the start of World War II.During the war Louis served as an airman which eventually led to a crashed plane, floating on a raft in the ocean for weeks before being captured and taken to a Japanese prison camp.I’ve got to warn you, there are some very gruesome descriptions of his life in this book.But, in the end, you’ll see that Louis had an undeniable resilience and God had an amazing plan.If you aren’t sure if you should read this book – just read the preface and decide for yourself.
Thunder Dog: The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero by Susy Flory and Michael Hingson – This book was offered as a free download for Kindle a while back and it looked mildly interesting to me, so I decided why not? It’s free! Now I feel as though I should send a donation to someone; it was that good.The title of the book (lengthy as it is) sort of sums up the story but in reality there was so much more to it than how Michael and his guide dog, Roselle, escaped from the 78th floor of the World Trade Center North Tower on 9/11.This book gives the reader amazing insight into the world of a blind person. As Michael says it’s not so much a story of how he escaped the World Trade Center on that fateful day as what got him there in the first place.
Check these books out. John will attest to the fact that they are worth reading.