The wonderful blog , Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, had a recent post with excerpts from the book Everything I Need to Know I Learned From a Children’s Book. Children’s books are like that, aren’t they – kind teachers with colorful pictures. At the end of the post the blog author, jules, asks, “What children’s book changed the way you saw the world?” Now that’s a fun thought.

The one  book I remember reading many times was The Story About Ping. I loved this book. My sister retains the prized original copy of it, complete with a coffee ring from my mom using it as a coaster one time.

What fascinated me about this tale was its setting – China. And on the Yangtze river. So many miles away in a totally different world. At the time, I knew zero Asian kids. None. How that is, I don’t know. You’d think I would have known at least one. But nope. Anything Asian was very exotic. I wanted to go to China. I wanted a duck named Ping.

The story itself is basically about the travails of trying to escape punishment. It’s a bit about the tangled webs we weave when we try to avoid the harsh truth of reality. As a result, Ping leaves the boat and his mom, has a bit of adventure, gets captured and, with the help of the boy who found him, escapes. As a kid, I thought Ping must have been happy to finally get whacked on the butt because it meant being back with his mom and family. And oh what a story he had to tell.

The last time I finished a book during our company’s annual convention was in 2007 when I polished off Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird in a day and a half. In spite of the controversy concerning the author and authenticity of that book, I highly recommend it for the very fanciful horror of the story. It’s hard to describe it in any other way. To this day there is a swirl of controversy surrounding the story. Simply view it as a work of fiction and you’ll be fine. Even as a work of fiction, it’s an amazing read.

Over the subsequent years, hi-ever, free wi-fi has interrupted any casual reading. I need to shore up my reading resolve in such circumstances and not fall prey to the easy fix of the internet. This year that resolve was forced upon me since the room I was residing over did not include a reachable wi-fi signal.

Not to worry, I carried along a reading companion I was sure would captivate my attention. And captivate it did, finished in a day with a lovely glass of wine to spare. It is, as they say, an easy read. Quite delightful. In spite of the page turning party that engulfed me, I can’t give this book and over the top glowing review.

Since I don’t consider myself a particularly good reviewer of anything, I’ll just break it all down in the pros and cons:

The Pros
I found myself chuckling out loud many times
Much of the prose was clever and beguiling
In this case, an epistolary approach to the story was quite effective
It makes me want to travel to Guernsey and meet the people in spite of their fictional status
I was completely enthralled by the story of the Elizabeth McKenna and wish there was a companion novel entirely about her
Reading didn’t stop until I reached the last page
I want a taste of a potato peel pie

The Cons
The characters were not particularly authentic – they were certainly charming, but unfortunately they fell into one of three categories – good, bad or intolerantly annoying.  For instance, one of the characters was an overt, opinionated, uncaring Christian. I am an atheist, and while I find the hypocrisy of some Christians to be annoying at best and evil at worst, I find the one dimensional view of ‘the intolerant Christian’ to be short sighted and bigoted. Add to that the good Nazi, the stoic stalwart, the precocious child and the American cad and you have a formula for predictability.

The bottom line
In spite of the cons, I completely enjoyed this book and wish my copy was not owned by the library. The abundance of bon mots and insights make this a highlighter party of a read.  The underlying story of the heroine gives the book some much needed depth.

Waste of time scale
1= I totally wasted my time. When I’m near death I’ll wish I had that time back to eat ice cream, get drunk and screw
5 = I won’t really curse myself for taking time out of my life for this, but I’m not exactly jumping for joy over the time expenditure
10= This has enriched my life, I am a better person and it was totally worth my time.

WOT Scale = 7

As we lounge in our hotel, balcony door open overlooking Tampa Bay, a gentle breeze drifts into the room. Our journey today took us from a slightly frigid Houston to a gloriously sunny and mild Florida. I was not sure what chance or inclination I would have to post anything until our return home, but how can I not – you know – rub it in? In a half hour we will saunter over to the convention center where we will be ensconced for the next three days. Have thee no mercy LBJ? What treachery to be stuck in a dreary convention center room with no windows while there is sauntering to be had – along the water no less! Misery thy name is ‘annual conference and exhibition.’

I shall bask in the weathery goodness now and dream of full wine glasses and sumptuous hors dervies of small shrimpies and tasty bacon avec buttery cracker ma-dealieos whilst I whittle the time away directing people to their correct convention room and break the news as gently as I can that, no, there are no pens left to hand out.

At my disposal will be a book that comes highly recommended – The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Considering the glowing reviews that accompanied said recommendation, I am confident the characters in the story will keep me good company.

Perhaps there will be more posts because I fully intend to purchase a bottle of wine, sit on the balcony after convention work is done and contemplate the order of the universe – and room service. One can not let a balcony and mild weather pass by without proper notice.