Open Serendipity

Having finished reading Missy Fundi: Kenya Girl, by Mary Anderson Honer, a lovely memoir that my mom edited for a childhood friend, I found myself in Maine with nothing to read.  A friend on facebook had tagged me with a “15 books that will always stay with you” note, and I’d done the same and tagged some others, so I picked several likely books off various friends’ 15 books lists and called the local mall bookstore to see what they might have.

The only one they had was The Periodic Table, by Primo Levi.  A slender volume, written by a chemist, each chapter named after an element, and autobiographical, but not an autobiography nor even a chronological sort of memoir.  A book by a survivor of the holocaust that is, for the most part, not about the holocaust.  He writes things like, “I wrote about that elsewhere.” because in fact he wrote two books about those years, which I may have to read now that I’ve been hooked on his writing.  No pun intended, but it is elemental.  At the same time, I seriously look forward to reading it a second time with a dictionary in hand!  I have a good vocabulary, but there was an unfamiliar word for me on average every 3-4 pages, I do believe.  So it seemed anyway.

I think my favorite chapter was not about the author at all, but a charming story he obviously recorded for a friend.  It is the chapter called Titanium.  It is short enough to read in the bookstore, if you are browsing, and should hook you enough to make you buy the book!

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Books by marla