Fiction as Self-Help – The Whispered Word

I wasn’t going to write about this book. I started it months ago, put it aside, picked it up again, put it back on the shelf, and back-and-forth again.

About two months ago, I was hungry for fiction, so I picked it up again. I reasoned that I LOVED the first book in the series (and wrote about it HERE), so of COURSE I ***should*** love the second by Ellery Adams.

Er. Not so much.

A funny thing happened. Well, not haha-funny. You’ll see (read).

For my new position at work, I needed permissions to use the programs necessary to… uh… work. This became a problem when somehow, my permissions were in the queue, and the person who needed to approve them was on vacation.

It went round and round and ended up clogging the system so badly that I was unable to perform my job. For an entire day. I was asked to wait and would be paid for my time.

I cleaned up and re-wrote my training notes, organized my binder, dusted my desk…

And then, had 6 1/2 hours left. LOL

A month ago, I’d put this book in my purse to try again, if ever I found myself stuck in the car or in a long line with nothing to do.

Well.

I picked it up and being the captive audience I was, started reading and didn’t stop.

Finally, after an hour of straight reading, I was getting into it.

There was nothing of note to share for the first half of the book.

But!

Out of the blue, some interesting tidbits jumped out at me.

Don’t hate me… I did a bad thing, I know, by turning the corner and highlighting them. Guess I’m gonna keep the book after all. Ha!

Let’s start with the quotes:

I love this E.B. White quote. How many of us can relate?

And then, there’s this truth bomb by GK Chesterson. Youch! Am I (or is he) right?

I love reading fiction for the stories, of course, but it’s even better when I stumble across words of wisdom I can share.

Is this book fabulous, after all? No. But I didn’t hate it.

Will I pick up the other books in the series? I originally thought no, but ya know, maybe?

I didn’t love it. It was difficult to get into and I’m not sure why… or maybe, I do. There’s something about the writing that… oh, I don’t know… bothers me. Also, there is a cloying romance threaded in the background. Not nasty or overdone… just… ugh. I am not a romance fan, except in real life, of course, and even then, not so much. Rose petals to a warm sudsy bath? No thank you. I’ll take fajitas. But I digress.

In this story, there is an antique/ estate store that talks about one of my fave subjects, wabi–sabi (侘寂). In the course of that conversation, I learned about Kintsugi (金継ぎ, “golden joinery”), also known as, kintsukuroi (金繕い, “golden repair”).

Wow! Totally neato because I’d never heard it before.

I understood that wabi-sabi was about accepting and appreciating imperfection. Often, the description of the phrase includes a photo of a bowl or other items, once broken, put back together with gold, creating a brand new masterpiece. It happens so often that I’d assumed the repair was part of wabi-sabi. In fact, it’s something entirely different.

Yay, new learnin’s!!!

So, in the end, the book was okay and worthy of a mention here.

As a side-note, there is so much to love in these books, from a bibliotherapist who owns a bookstore in a “magic” town just off the Appalachian Trail to a mystery or crime (so far, murders) to be solved. The elements for a Sheryl-approved fiction are here! I feel sad that I can’t say I loved this one!

If you read this series, please let me know your thoughts.