TheBookJeanie

Spring . . .New Beginnings with THEBOOKJEANIE This photo by Zeb Andrews, taken in the spring tulip fields of Holland brings back memories of driving across the border from Germany and suddenly finding ourselves surrounded by vast swathes of color, in every hue you could imagine. As we were stopped by the side of the road to admire the tulips in full bloom, we heard a loud clunk and turned to see a young woman lying stunned on the ground behind our white Volvo station wagon. Beside her lay her still-intact bicycle and as we helped her to her feet she seemed stunned and unable to explain what happened. Coincidentally, an ambulance driver had seen the accident on the main road and had pulled off to assist. It appeared that the young Dutch bicyclist was so amazed herself at the beauty of this spring morning amidst the thousands of brillantly colored tulips that she was not watching where she was going and ran full speed into our car.  "That was very dumb!"

Rise above the mist and explore the world of reading with THEBOOKJEANIE I must admit that I did not have a book in hand while floating over the temples and pagodas of Bagan as pictured here. The ride was too exciting and the sights too incredible - the reality of the present moment was enough. But that experience and the other wonders of Myanmar inspired some great reading that I will share with you. . . I carried this early Bantam edition of Graham Greene's Quiet American with me to Myanmar quite accidently, picking it up off the free cart at the local library just before leaving. It's size and weight were ideal and I knew that I could leave it behind on my travels. But I carried it back with me,  it's now in three pieces secured by a rubber band, because the story had so much more meaning for me than it did forty years ago when I first read it. After living in Southeast Asia for many years and visiting Vietnam briefly, Greene's depiction o