My job as a book-finder

For those of you who read the entry about a note from my husband, you may have noticed one of my special talents was "book finder".  Perhaps you thought he loses his books around the house, and I'm the one who goes finding them for him, but that's not it at all.

Cliff reads his books on my oldest iPad.  You might already know that we read our books from the library, simply because they have any popular book we might want, and they're free.  And with these digital readers such as the iPad, we can choose our books from our easy chairs at home.

However, Cliff has troubles looking for new books online.  He can't type, and there are things I can do to find a book for him that he doesn't want to do because they would take up too much time for a non-typist who isn't all that comfortable on the Internet.

He is very partial to biographies, and has read books about Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, and many others of the founders of our country.  He's read so many of those, I've had to branch out.  Sometimes a book doesn't don't work out for him, so I usually try to find at least two, which gives him something else if the first one isn't interesting.  Popular books at the library often have several people waiting in line for them, and I don't do holds for my husband because he often takes two or three weeks to finish a book, especially in summer when he's doing things outside.  So the hold is liable to come when he's in the middle of reading something else, and he wouldn't have time to read it.  

First, I grab my computer and do a search for biographies.  Yesterday I googled "best biographies", which gave me many lists:  30 best bios, 50 best bios, etc.  I went with a list of thirty this time.  A couple of books Cliff has already read were on the list.  Before I actually decide on anything, I surf my way to Amazon and see what kind of ratings each book has; sure enough, these must have been some of the best, because they all had four-to-five star ratings.  Finally I chose Edison, by Edmund Morris; Genghis Khan, by Jack Weatherford, and Robin (Williams), by Dave Itzkoff.  He's reading Edison at present and apparently is enjoying it.

I decided to get the Robin Williams book for myself while I was at it, but am rather disappointed with it so far.

Anyway, maybe you can tell that this is quite a job, finding a book for someone when he has no suggestions on what he wants.  Seems like I'm pretty successful in my searches, though; I guess that's why he put "book finder" on his list of special things about me.  By the way, if anyone has suggestions for biographies for Cliff, feel free to recommend them.

We're having beef tips and noodles today.  The meat is in the crockpot, smelling delicious already.  I decided to see how beef tips would work with homemade noodles today, so those are drying on the counter.  I've always used store-bought dry noodles before, but how could it go wrong with home-made ones?  It will seem strange, though, boiling homemade noodles in salted water instead of chicken broth.

I guess that's all I have today.

Peace.