Wing, I'm really getting into this one now. I hope he doesn't pull the kind of lousy, cheating cop-out ending he did at the end of the Dark Tower series. I threw the last book clean across the room! Koontz's Odd Thomas books rank as one of my very favorite series in a long, long time. Oddie is so endearing! I never want the series to end. Saintp, he might have been thinking philo instead of rhodo, but he is not describing vines of any kind. Big shrubs. Twisted trunks. Thickets. Just like mountain grown rhodies from North Carolina. I hope he doesn't mention them any more, because even though it doesn't spoil the tale, it DOES distract me. I once read a book about Florida that had "green serpents, as thick as your wrist" dripping from tree limbs everywhere the people went. Huh?? (And this was many years ago, before exotics started taking over down south). I simply could not finish the book. It was preposterous. Wing, I live about 6 miles from my library, so not too bad, but lately, I've been reading so many series that I wanted to OWN. I've spent a fortune at Books A Million. And anyone who thinks that gardens are magical should definitely read Garden Spells. The most beautiful and poetic little story I've read in years. RUN, don't walk, to buy this book. It's so lovely, I gave it to everyone on my shopping list this Christmas. Now back to my original question, I'm not seeing any responses that make me think there are veritable jungles of rhododendrons growing on Florida Keys unbeknownst to me. Therefore, I do believe King made a mistake of some sort. Perhaps he mistook another large thickety shrub for rhodies because they grow where he comes from, and he thought he recognized them. But I'm fairly confident now that my surprise in reading those descriptions was justified. Thanks, all! Marcia

TR, is there any chance you remember the title of the children's book? I love having those books around . . .not only do the kids benefit from them, but so do I! Sometimes it's the short stories that have the most impact on me. flyleft, I agree so much with the Pollyanna attitude. My husband has complained that I complain too much-- I thought a lot about it, and what I found was that my complaints are almost always rooted in worry and fear. This is a dramatic shift for me . . .I thought that not complaining meant just stuffing your emotions away and putting on a smile no matter what. Now I see that isn't the case at all . . .it isn't just looking on the bright side and ignoring the bad, it's about seeing things clearly-- identifying exactly what the core of the problem is, figuring out if there is a way to be proactive (sometimes it's just a matter of acceptance and not change), AND putting it into perspective. FL, if your DD reads it, let us know what she says. I have to re-read the Four Agreements to make sure it's OK, but I think I am going to encourage my DD to read it . . .I've been referencing it lately with her.

Been working my way through a pile of books that I just have to get back to their rightful owner, plus one of them would make good fodder for my monthly book review column that I do for a local rag. The Perfect Storm is a YA epistolary novel based on the real-life Galveston hurricane that happened in September 1900. This was actually a really good read, and in fact, the descriptions of the "I was there" POV of the lashing of the rain and the winds and the utter destruction that was the result was really powerful, as when I put down the book to let the cat out, I opened the door fully expecting it to be rainy and windy, instead of 100 degrees that it was. (Sigh. This might also have been linked with the fact that we haven't had any measurable rain in the area since last October. Wishful thinking.) The other book was called Breathing, In Dust by Tim Z. Hernandez, which is really a series of short stories (more vignettes, really) of life in a poor urban Hispanic neighborhood of LA. Each story/vignette can stand on its own, but when read as a group, you can see threads of various stories and characters throughout the book. Although I didn't enter the book with very high expectations, it was still a good book and it's likely that the author made it pretty autobiographical. Like I said, I enjoyed it but it did seem rather as though it was a thesis or dissertation from a graduate writing program. So, as a complete change of pace (and being heavy with guilt from having too many books on the real-life TBR pile), I pulled out a Ruth Rendell book of short stories which I have had in my possession for absolutely ages. Titled Piranha to Scurfy, it is a really good collection of short stories that cover a wide range of topics. Not a murder in them (so far), but more of the unexpected twisty tales of Saki or perhaps The Twilight Zone... Thoroughly enjoying this one. And in the spirit of cleaning up the TBR pile, I pulled out the NF Stuff:Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy O. Frost and gail Steketee. Starting off with famous Collyer brothers in NYC, the book has started really well, and I am looking forward to reading it with gratitude that I am not a hoarder (nor is any of my family). I think it would be tough to handle. So - that's my weekend ahead of me. Reading, reading, reading. (I hope. I do have the MIL in town, so there may not quite as much time reading as I hope...)

I've been having trouble getting into "my next book." I checked four books out of the library the other day and rejected them one-by-one after reading just a few pages of each. Last night I scanned my own bookshelves and selected A Patchwork Planet thinking, "Maybe Anne Tyler can get me out of my funk." As I started reading, the book seemed vaguely familiar and yet I had no idea what was coming next. This morning, I checked my book journal to see if I'd read it before. I had to laugh at what I had written: I was disappointed in this book. While entertaining, it's pretty forgettable. Forgettable indeed!