You had me at the beginning. I could smell those old Perry Masons, Agatha Christies, Readers Digests, that lined the pine shelves of my grandparents’ summer place in Vermont. Yes, there were classics too but they were not as plentiful as escape books. My grandmother studied opera and was going to go to Italy to study further but she met and married my grandfather. She spoke about it wistfully but she also had a playful sense of humor and would have loved Gerard Hoffnung.
Readers Digests—yes yes yes! I remember flipping to find the “Laughter, the Best Medicine” sections. And we could read the same issue once a year, for decades. I haven’t thought of that for so long!
You had me at the beginning. I could smell those old Perry Masons, Agatha Christies, Readers Digests, that lined the pine shelves of my grandparents’ summer place in Vermont. Yes, there were classics too but they were not as plentiful as escape books. My grandmother studied opera and was going to go to Italy to study further but she met and married my grandfather. She spoke about it wistfully but she also had a playful sense of humor and would have loved Gerard Hoffnung.
Readers Digests—yes yes yes! I remember flipping to find the “Laughter, the Best Medicine” sections. And we could read the same issue once a year, for decades. I haven’t thought of that for so long!