That Was Then, This Is Now, And Then There’s Tomorrow

Goodreads Giveaway – another 5 copies... Book Review: White Wolf Moon by Mike ...

That Was Then, This Is Now, And Then There’s Tomorrow

I have been reading a lot of commercial genre fiction lately. I’m not knocking it. It serves a purpose, to entertain, but sometimes you just need something deeper. A more cerebral read, not heavy, but profound.

It is a challenge to find a book like that. Contemporary fiction often does not appeal to me…it’s too much of real life problems and miseries of everyday living. The classics are always good, but when you have read so many of them, you need something fresh. Contemporary literary fiction with excellent prose is hard to find these days.

I’ve mentioned before on this blog that I spent some time in my youth on a pot farm in the middle of the North Georgia Mountains. Those were my hippie days. Being emancipated at the age of fifteen after living in foster care and an orphanage for most of my childhood the communal lifestyle was appealing to me. I hung out with a little older crowd.

I had friends I’ll probably never see again, except maybe on Facebook: Jimmy and Mike Bullington, David Hanson, Leigh Ann Jennings, Anne and Stephen Liner, Chris Mobbs, Sheila Reddin (the Sherriff’s daughter) Kevin (deceased), Bryan, and David Hutto. (Was briefly married to one of those.) The names are not so important, but our lives were enmeshed during a most enlightening era.

You seriously have to lose the notion of sex, drugs, and rock and roll being the dominating factors if you want to truly understand that time period and how it influenced so much of what this generation was…, no, is. Not that those elements were not, at least loosely, associated with that experience of coming of age, but they weren’t the be-all, end-all of it. Most of us lived on the fringes. It was a magical time in more ways than one.

What was most significant was the coming of age in a time period that allowed all of us the freedom to develop relationships and make mistakes that promoted a growth of ideals without having to be directly taught what those ideals should or should not be. It was a wild time, yet a humanity managed to emerge that ushered in a gentler devotion to nature, peace, love and accepting the differences that exist in all of us, that make us wonderfully unique, and yet one.

There is a blogger who published a book a couple of years ago. His name is Mike Grant. He’s a quiet, laid back, older fellow who posts on occasion, but not often. When he has something to say, it is usually quite insightful, so I ventured to read his book. I was a little wary when I read the book description, (which I now feel does not do the book justice, I’ll say), and saw no reviews on Amazon and only a couple on Goodreads. I found a couple online and they were all positive. Then I read the Look Inside. I was hooked on reading the introduction. This is a book everyone from age 20 to 80 should read.

Tomorrow I will post my review of his exceptionally well-written book, “White Wolf Moon”.

Mike’s an old hippie, like me, and he told my story in 2012, before we ever had chance to meet online. I won’t tell you which character I was, but it’s all there. I went on to become a yuppie, and eventually evolved into a city dweller, but some things you just never forget. More than my story, in his wisdom, he tells the story of generations yet to come.

Have you ever found a book you could relate to so well you could swear someone spied on you?

Maybe they reached inside and tapped your soul?