Three Very Different Books

Three books that I read in March are about as different from each other as you could find!

1) The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark was written in 1940 and I have heard of it over

the years, but never really thought about reading it until it was presented at one of my book groups.  It has been described as a "psychological western" and I could see why it would be labeled as that.  I wish that the book had been chosen by my group to read, but it wasn't.  It's one of those books that you really want to discuss with others in order to pull out all that you may have missed or not thought about. So I may have missed the point of the book.  It was very slow in the first half or so, mainly building up characterization.  It ended up being the story of three innocent men being hanged in 1885. And so the book ends with (vaguely) how the hanging affected the men who were involved in hanging the men.  I think.

2) Big Girl-How I gave up dieting and got a life by Kelsey Miller is an

interesting, kind of fun, quick book to read.  As the title states, after years of dieting, Ms. Miller gave up dieting and focused on eating intuitively.  Ms. Miller's story is easy to read and identifiable.  She

did a good job writing about how her life has gone and the struggles that she has encountered over the years.

3) the life-changing magic of tidying up by Marie Kondo is a quite small book that I have seen on

the shelves everywhere for ages.  One of my daughters read it and described it to me and I thought it sounded interesting.  It is a very small book, with very big ideas!  It is about decluttering your life and using the mantra "Does it Spark Joy?" to determine what stays. The author takes the reader through her life-long history of tidying up and then takes the reader on the journey.  It is a well-thought out process that she advocates and, although it may seem rather overwhelming, it is actually quite easy. As the author recommends, I followed the process in my bedroom with my clothes and am very pleased with the results!  The next step in the process is tackling books.....my daughter predicted that this would be a hard one for me! I'm still working up to that one....