I Want to Read This Gem SLOWLY

Gail Caldwell's Let's Take the Long Way Home is a gentle, strong, rivers-run-deep sort of lovely torture. I call it torture because the book is less than 200 pages long, and I'm cherishing every word, every image, every snippet of conversation, but it's passing me by much too quickly.

I must own this book! I think I'm gushing over the top with it because the book describes life-altering events set in familiar, beautiful Boston landscapes, but also because I'm an unreformed dog lover, as are Gail and Caroline, and because I'm a bit of a lover of solitude and what I call "hermitude," as Gail describes herself to be. Excuse the tortured writing in this paragraph.

Gail Caldwell is a gifted writer, no question about it.


This weekend I also downloaded onto my Kindle The Kennedy Detail:JFK's Secret Service Agents Break Their Silence by Gerald Blaine. Paid too much for it but couldn't resist my attraction to all things Kennedy. The addiction can be explained. I was at such an impressionable age when he was assassinated, I'm half Boston Irish, my parents and grandparents thought he was divine, literally. The charisma never wore off. Yeah, I know ALL the sordid details, and that's part of the magnetism, too. I'm enjoying it, revelling in the stories. The hard parts come later in the book.