WW HIPPIES 7

"She could drag me over the rainbow>"--Neil Young

I should focus on the good things in my life, and not on the things that I am pissed off about. I know this; I know to make a gratuity list; I know to meditate, and to do Yoga, but, sometimes, the bad thoughts still invade my brain, and I have trouble getting rid of them. I guess that I am only human, and not Superman.

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When I got on the bus, this evening, the bus driver was laughing, and said, "What is General Tso's Chicken," and I said that it was dark chicken meat, fried, and served with sweet, and sour, sauce. He laughed, again, and said, "But how do you know that that is what meat is in it?" When you step onto a bus, you enter another world. This was a fun ride home.

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A book has pulled me away from Netflix. A book has pulled me away from my writing. I am skipping meals, and missing sleep to read this book: "Up From the Blue," by Susan Henderson. You should read it; it is a fantastic novel.

"Up From the Blue," is one of the best books that I have ever read. It is the kind of book that makes you want to stay with it to the end, ignoring all of life's responsibilities to find out what is going to happen next. You are driven to the conclusion of this book with each page you read. You can't turn each page fast enough to get to the next page, and then when the book ends, you want it to continue. .

"Up From the Blue," is, primarily, the story of Tillie, an eight year old girl, who tells us about her life in a very memoir-like way. For most of the book, it is hard to believe that, "Up From the Blue," is a novel because it is so real that you feel like you are reading someone's memoir. I have to wonder how much of author Susan Henderson is in Tillie. Who was it that said that, "Novels were thin veiled masks of an author's self?"

Tillie's mom can't cope; she is probably bi-polar. Tillie's dad is a top ranked military man, who thinks that he is in charge of everything. Tillie shows us what it is like to grow up under parents so pathetically opposite, and she takes us to the birth of her first child concurrently.

Tillie is such a brat, but as a reader, you love her; you root for her, in what she finds to be trying circumstances. The kids at school pick on her. Her one, and only, brother shuns her like the plague.

I want to tell you more about this book, more about the story of Tillie, but I won't. I want you to read this book, and enjoy it, as I did: get ready to do nothing but read this book. It's the end of the world as you know it, until you get it done.

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