There was a recent challenge on BlueSky.
Over twenty days we had to post covers of books which stayed with us, or influenced us, without saying why. I completed the challenge then thought, why not blog about the reasons why.
So, I’ve picked three from that list.
1. Tilda Is Visable by Jane Tara
This novel explores how women feel unseen as they age using an Urban Fantasy plot. I read this leading up to my sixtieth birthday. A couple of years before I discovered my own fountain of youth, better known as a hernia operation.
For most of my life I couldn’t control my weight. It would yo-yo, totally ignoring my careful diet and constant exercise. After the operation my body discovered metabolism. With less exercise I found I could now open jars while a friend noticed the grey hairs on my legs had turned back to their original colour.
Reading this book allowed me to accept my age again. I now have knee fissure and a torn tendon in my elbow forcing me to slow down, but it’s okay. I’m in a sixties frame of mind with the knowledge that my body is functioning normally — no longer wishing I’d known about this hernia decades ago while imagining what I’d look like now after all those years of exercise.
I’m content.
2. Generation X by Douglas Copeland
When I moved to Sydney from coastal Queensland, I was surprised how expensive everything was. My rent was more that half my pay, yet my family couldn’t understand why I wasn’t saving to buy real estate. I wanted to, but until I had a pay rise, it was out of the question.
Generation X was the first inkling I wasn’t alone. And while the generation after me had it tougher, I accepted that the Boomer reality of owning a huge house and a beach home would be out of reach for me if I didn’t leave Sydney. But I was working in television. Who leaves a job like that?
I now own a two-bedroom apartment with my husband, but it took a whole year of double time Sunday shifts and regular Monday overtime working on a weekly program to fast track the deposit. My dad once thought we would sell our place and buy something bigger. I reminded him I was Generation X. A new mortgage was not an option.
3. Infidelity and Other Affairs by Kate Legge
This non-fiction work is by an author who had to deal with her husband’s infidelity. Fortunately, that hasn’t been a theme in my thirty-four year relationship with my now husband. But there were truths in this book which hit home.
I read this long before I turned sixty, but as my husband is two and a half years older than me, I’ve always understood how I’d view the world in a few short years just by seeing how his point of view kept changing. The author of this book is a Boomer, so she already had realisations I hadn’t considered.
One which hit home was a quote she used – “It is not our partner we are turning away from, but the person we have become.”
A younger friend from the ‘friends with benefits’ generation likes to test me and my husband, pushing our boundaries from time to time. And although it’s nice to be thought of as DILFs, we’re two people who have always lived our best lives, so we have no need to yearn for our past. We made the most of each age and don’t need to relive them. Especially in some kind of old-life crisis sex romp.
Of course there are other books which I loved, but they didn’t change me. One Hundred and One Dalmatians was my first page turner way back before my teens. War Of The Worlds fascinated me, especially when considering the accuracy of the technical advances H.G. Wells predicted. More recently I fell in love with Fahrenheit 451 which I read while writing my first dystopian novel.
But there’s nothing better than a book which makes you pause and think. And even if years later you forget the plot, you remember their effect.
kevin klehr 