Love the late afternoon sun shining through the plants on the porch. I managed to make my way out of my chair to take this picture yesterday afternoon. I’m having a hard time, my friends. Riley can barely walk, which means I have to lift him all the time – all 60 pounds of him. Even though my back went out yesterday, I still have to tend to Riley because Don is away. I’m in pain, Riley’s in pain; it’s not a pretty picture here at MHC. Scout, as evidenced by the brief video I posted yesterday and which is now deleted because my blog disappeared for an hour this morning and I’m deleting anything questionable!!!, is back to her feisty, funny self.

Whatever your own particular method of meditation or prayer, will you send some thoughts our way? I so want Riley to improve a bit, as he has drastically worsened ever since Monday, when I had to be away for several hours. I need healing so that I can take care of him. I’d so appreciate a shot of your positive energy sent across the miles to our little cottage.

And now, on to another topic. Remember this book that I found on Monday in that marvelous used book shop? I’ve always loved mysteries and in my early teenage years, Mary Stewart’s romantic suspense novels were my favorites. I read and re-read each one of them. Her heroines were British ladies who were intelligent and sexy in that understated, cool British way and they smoked because that was the accepted thing to do in those days before pesky government warnings. Stewart was a wonderful writer; snappy dialogue, beautiful and detailed descriptions of the setting, and a great plot. She’s still alive, by the way. She’ll turn 96 this year. This Rough Magic takes place on Corfu and Stewart’s vivid descriptions of the island make me want to hop on a plane and go there. Now.

On the inside of the cover: Book Club Edition. I believe my original copy was a book club edition. Do you remember book clubs? Are they still out there? I bought a lot of my books through book clubs because they were extremely affordable and I could keep up with all the newly published books out there in those days before I was able to drive to a bookstore on my own. If I had any babysitting money in my hands, it went to books and records. Certainly, this was well before the Internet made book buying fairly easy, before mega bookstores pushed out independent booksellers and well before e-readers came along. The landscape has changed dramatically. I am still a fan of the actual book; the kind you can hold in your hand, with pages you can turn and paper you can feel.

I know there were a lot of book clubs out there. Many of them were specialty book clubs – science fiction, mystery, cooking. I belonged to The Literary Guild and The Book of the Month Club. It was a big deal for a book to be chosen as the Book of the Month. Then there were Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. They were very popular, though the purist in me doesn’t like the idea of ‘condensing’ a book. If I were the author, I surely wouldn’t like it. There was a book club for every literary taste.

Here’s my question: Did you belong to a book club? Are there any more book clubs in existence? Or have they gone the way of the dinosaur?

Happy Thursday.