Last Call!
Wanted: Your Opinion
What was the Best Book You Read in 2004?
For details, see my Saturday, December 11 entry. (Go to the archive for December 2004 on the right.)

Note: I have changed my best book to Oracle Night by Paul Auster. (See my February 4, 2004 entry).

Every year, as soon as it gets dark on December 31st, I feel I must lay to rest the unresolved questions in my life. I believe that if I have the solitude and the darkness to surround me, for however many hours it takes, I can develop a plan that will either set my life right or that will furnish me with the resolve to remain steadfast on whatever course I'm on.

But I'm never alone on December 31st. I'm usually surrounded by Ken and my friends and I suppose I wouldn't want it any other way. But in the week ahead, maybe I can gather the darkness on other days and try to visit the quiet place inside myself where I can reflect.

The Children's War by Monique Charlesworth is hard to put down. I find myself identifying so strongly with Ilse, who ages from 12-15 in the novel, that I feel every bump in the road she experiences. On the eve of World War II, her life is almost perfect while she is living with her uncle in Morocco. There she is cherished, well fed, happy, free to be her true self, though somewhat anxious about the fate of her self-absorbed parents in Germany. When the war begins, her uncle's wife decides she must return to Europe. No! No! My heart breaks in two for everything that she loses. But I read on. Bravely, I might add.