Tending Roses
Jul. 6th, 2006 10:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancerjodiI just finished Tending Roses by Lisa Wingate. Its a sappy, sentimental book about a woman's time with her grandmother on the old family farm, and how she deals with family, professional and personal issues.
I really enjoyed this book but in fairness, I am a huge sap so I'm kind of into these sorts of things anyway (which is why a co-worker decided to lend it to me). The writing isn't as good as most of the Amazon reviews describe it to be, but I wouldn't say its was wretched as the negative reviews in there either. I found myself able to just enjoy the story as if I was sitting with someone recounting a personal tale. Its very much a book about how we should all stop to smell the roses and about how we can get caught up in things in our lives and forget about what's most important: our loved ones.
Some quotes I liked:
The protagonist about her parents and upbringing: "I wondered if they considered their lives successful. Certainly, we had all of the trappings - expensive cars and homes, good schools, nice clothes. But is life a success when it doesn't include time for after-school talks, and curling up to read books on winter nights, and weaving daisy chains in the summer? Is it a success when you have all the big things but none of the small ones? Is it as it should be when everyone grows up and moves to opposite coasts and doesn't care if they ever see each other? I thought of Grandma's story about the roses - something grand that seemed important at the time, when in reality all the important things were passing by unnoticed. I could hear the last words in my mind: 'the best times of my life, the times that passed by me the most quickly, were the times when the roses grew wild.'" (61-2)
At Grandmother's 90th birthday: "I don't know about a long life, but I can tell you the secret to a happy one, and it isn't what you young people think . . . The secret to a happy life is not in getting what you want. It is in learning to want what you get. Don't waste your time crying over what you're not given. When you have tears in your eyes, you can't see all the beautiful things around you." (264)
I really enjoyed this book but in fairness, I am a huge sap so I'm kind of into these sorts of things anyway (which is why a co-worker decided to lend it to me). The writing isn't as good as most of the Amazon reviews describe it to be, but I wouldn't say its was wretched as the negative reviews in there either. I found myself able to just enjoy the story as if I was sitting with someone recounting a personal tale. Its very much a book about how we should all stop to smell the roses and about how we can get caught up in things in our lives and forget about what's most important: our loved ones.
Some quotes I liked:
The protagonist about her parents and upbringing: "I wondered if they considered their lives successful. Certainly, we had all of the trappings - expensive cars and homes, good schools, nice clothes. But is life a success when it doesn't include time for after-school talks, and curling up to read books on winter nights, and weaving daisy chains in the summer? Is it a success when you have all the big things but none of the small ones? Is it as it should be when everyone grows up and moves to opposite coasts and doesn't care if they ever see each other? I thought of Grandma's story about the roses - something grand that seemed important at the time, when in reality all the important things were passing by unnoticed. I could hear the last words in my mind: 'the best times of my life, the times that passed by me the most quickly, were the times when the roses grew wild.'" (61-2)
At Grandmother's 90th birthday: "I don't know about a long life, but I can tell you the secret to a happy one, and it isn't what you young people think . . . The secret to a happy life is not in getting what you want. It is in learning to want what you get. Don't waste your time crying over what you're not given. When you have tears in your eyes, you can't see all the beautiful things around you." (264)
