I will pay more careful attention the next time I'm on a train!

I don't know which is more exhilarating for me....to guess the "who done it" before the ending of a book or NOT to guess correctly!!!!  I thought I had it right.  I really and truly thought I knew SHE "did it," but wonderfully, surprisingly, I was VERY wrong!!!  Ahaha!!!  Way to go, Paula Hawkins!  Over the past several months, THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN has continually shown up in my Nook "to read" folder and in my Amazon Kindle "to read" folder as well.  It seemed that I just could not ignore or get away from this book.  Curiosity won.  And I'm glad it did.  This is a wonderful book about first impressions as well as about LIFE and how quickly life can--and quite often does--get out of control for ANYONE and EVERYONE.  I see as I look at websites for TRAIN that GONE GIRL is quite often compared to it.  I get that.  If you have read GONE GIRL, I can assure you that THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN by Paula Hawkins is even more worth reading.  I love the twists and turns and reveals that happen slowly, subtlety, and always at just the right moment to keep me reading and wanting to know more about each of the various characters in the story.  This amazing story that Paula Hawkins has written takes a hard, very honest look at the difficulty each of us faces on a day-to-day basis and how we cope with those difficulties--with fore-thought and without.

I can't say enough good things about THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN by Paula Hawkins.  I certainly will be looking into other books by her!!!  It is an adult novel, though, so just keep that in mind, parents, if your teens are reading it.  I would be sure to read it with them or at least stay connected with them as they read it....I'm just sayin'.

My most favorite book--ever

I LOVE Olive Ann Burns' COLD SASSY TREE.  I read it for the first time back in the late eighties/early nineties and loved it even then.  My first reading was because my brother brought the book home during a weekend home from his first semester at college so I could read it for him for his freshman composition class.  I was happy to do it.  This is THE best book!!!

How does anyone not love this book?  It has someone being run over by a train--and living.  Romance.  An older man getting married to a much younger woman just 3 weeks after the death of his first wife.  Suicide.  (Not that suicide makes a story great.  It's just the way it's dealt with.)  A "funeral party."  Dyin' stories, because Grandma was the best in the county at telling 'em.  It's set in the south with southern slang.  It's set in 1906--when cars were first being introduced to the mass public.  It's told from the perspective of a 15-year old boy.

And it was written by an amazing woman who should have lived long enough to write more!  She started a sequel to COLD SASSY, but she died before she finished it.  Ovarian cancer, I think it was.  I find Burns' writing process to be just as fascinating as the book itself--she would get an idea and write it on whatever piece of paper she could get her hands on--napkins, receipts, corners of notes, etc.--then she would sit on her bed with all of her scraps of paper around her and work on putting them together to create a cohesive whole.

I, for one, believe that she was quite successful in her attempt.  I LOVE COLD SASSY TREE......Everyone should read it, truly.