Hospital List

Still unearthing stuff from that bottom drawer, and found a page from the notebook I used -- writing upside-down in pencil -- the year I lay flat on a board in the hospital.  So my memory is right – I did read a book a day.  These must have been brought to me by the Grey Lady, the Red Cross volunteer who came around with the library cart. 

Looks like a perfect selection for a 14-year-old.  The triumphant boast about the first one, that I could read it in French, isn’t really all that impressive – I’d already read the book, as “Nobody’s Boy”, in English.  The Daddy Long Legs I own today, picked up a second-hand copy years later.  Lord knows how Josephus got in there but I do like my patronizing judgment that Leon Feuchtwanger was a good writer.   Don’t remember the Mary Roberts Rinehart --  she was a best-seller in those days.  No recollection of the Africa thing, but the last two -- the Robert Nathan and the Margery Sharp -- are still exactly the novels I’d take to a housebound friend.

Later in college I wanted to repay the debt, volunteered as a hospital Grey Lady, went through training, bought the grey seersucker dress, and then discovered I couldn’t complete a shift pushing the library cart – done in by the same back that had me immobilized in the first place.  Early end to my Red Cross career. 

 Great book list anyhow.