March 1, Saturday evening -- Reading Stephen King

Reading Duma Key, by Stephen King. It was part of her online book club, LiteraryGuild.com. From the club she's read books by Dean Koontz, Stephen White, Robin Cook, and Patricia Cornwell, among others.

Duma Key, she said, is about ghosts, magic, artists, and a man who's had an amputation and suffers from phantom limb syndrome.

She's lost both of her legs within the past few years due to diabetes and identifies with the character who has phantom limb syndrome, though it's not the real draw of the book--she just likes Stephen King.

Reading has always been what she's done for herself. Sometimes it was the only entertainment she could afford--the library doesn't cost anything. She raised six children, who are now between the ages of 21 and 33, in Hunters Point in San Francisco. None of her kids are big readers--her boys have only read when they've been doing time in jail (she tried sending them books while they were there but, she said, they were the first things to disappear from the mail so they read what was available on the inside instead). On the outside, they're too busy doing other things. Her one daughter has never read much either....

BUT, she does have a young reader in training. Just one. Her granddaughter, her daughter's daughter, who is now a year old lives next door to her and LOVES being read to. When they read books about animals (which she likes best) she shouts out the animal names. "doggie!" kittie! "bird!" "fish!" With just one child, she said, she hopes to assert more influence. Raising six kids, by herself, was not easy.

Her favorite book--Swan Song, by Robert McCammon or The Stand, by Stephen King.

When she was a kid she liked Nancy Drew.