Food for the Brain

I've been concentrating lately on posts about food, and it occured to me that we sound like we just eat all the time. Not true. We have lots of other interests too, that's just our most photographable fun thing, this time of year.

This week we got a box full of food for the brain! I have a very kind friend who lives in a Chicago area neighborhood, very urban and busy place, who is a voracious reader. She chooses great books and, although she works way too many hours, still finds time to read 3 or 4 books at a time. A far more dedicated exerciser than I am, she has a book rack on her exercise bike and reads while she gets healthy.

A couple of times a year, she boxes up the ones she's done with and mails them to me. What a joy! We're constant readers here too, and the weekly library trip for books and DVD's is a requirement, but having this box full of almost new books arrive just for us to keep is so exciting! I always open it with a feeling like Christmas morning, because I never know what's inside, and where her roving mind is going to take us now.

I should have taken a picture of the box, showing how carefully she packs this box of goodies to send, but was way too excited to stop at that point. So here's a picture of the latest delivery, ready for us to explore over the weeks ahead. I've already read "Water For Elephants", gobbled it up from one evening to the next morning without stopping other than a few hours to sleep. (Hooray for retirement that lets me just drop everything and do that.) That book was great, and now we've found a whole new author to look up and see what other terrific books Sara Gruen has written.

Thanks Janet, for this terrific gift you've given us. We owe you some blueberries in return. We'll try to make a trip in to deliver them.....if they ever get ripe in this crazy weather.