Not the Best...But....

I picked up at book at our Eastcastle Place library - easy to do as I walk past this room at least ten times each day. It's sort of like a big "Book Box" that pop up on town streets and are filled and emptied as people share books. This library has many books I've already read, but others from authors I like, or that just look interesting.

So a few days ago I grabbed the paperback Remember Mia by Alexandra Burt. It was a mystery involving a kidnapped or murdered seven month baby....you don't know the truth until near the end of the book. And it wasn't the best book I've ever read even though it did keep me turning the pages.

A few sentences seemed to strike a cord. On one page the main character is talking to a psychiatrist and he asks her to consider the concept of happiness before their next visit. He states, "Happiness is therefore not a permanent state of being, but more a moment in time." I re-read that sentence thinking that I've had so many happy moments.....but a vast majority of just "regular" moments. Maybe the happy ones wouldn't stand out if they didn't seem different and more intense than the normal day-to-day.

And later in the novel I was struck how the author painted the picture of a small upstate New York town. "The roads, lacking white center lines, followed along the hilly terrain, flanked by small wooden houses, roads worn, not so much by traffic, but by time. Concrete cracks wove their way along the roads like snake trails. Some of the cracks were filled in with black tar, some left to deepen and lengthen. The narrow sidewalks, distorted by tree roots, were broken up by T-shaped power-poles with power lines draped from one pole to the next. The poles were ghostly onlookers of a parade canceled decades ago. The houses were covered by drooping roofs and surrounded by chain-link fences keeping old, arthritic dogs at bay.....The entire neighborhood was dangling lightly off the edge of being deemed ramshackle."

I could see this small town and easily feel the mood created by the author's words. 

I love when a book, even not the best book, takes me somewhere I haven't been.