I never did make it back to post yesterday as I was attempting to complete my profile. Trying to come up with a realistic list of my all-time favorite movies and books was not, for me, subject matter for lovable stuff. I think my search for perfection once again made the whole thing difficult. However, it did help me to realize another of my most lovable things: Jan Karon and her books known as "The Mitford Series."
So much reading material today is heavy, depressing, or bordering on pornographic. Not so for Jan Karon's books. From the first in the series (At Home in Mitford) to the ninth and last (Light from Heaven) I delighted in the life and times of Father Timothy Kavanaugh, pastor of the Episcopal church in Mitford, North Carolina. Mitford is a fictitious town but, having spent some time in the general area, I could nearly swear that she fashioned it from Burnsville, which is about 35 miles NE of Asheville.
Through Father Tim, one gets to know his congregants in such an easy, light-hearted manner. Each one is unique and simply, the real thing. As the series opens he is a life-long bachelor. He eventually meets the woman who will become his wife after she moves in next door. Since they are both well beyond child-bearing years, there are no babies in the picture. But a child comes into their lives in the most interesting, but fully believable way.
I think about 5 of the 9 books were written at the time I started reading the first. I actually fell upon Ms Karon as an author when I was in a second-hand book shop while vacationing in Burnsville and the shop's owner suggested her series to me. I read them in order and by the third, I was purposely reading them as slowly as possible as I just wanted to relish each character and incident to the fullest extent possible.
When I had to return to Florida from North Carolina, reading the books helped me keep a piece of those beautiful mountains and the truly down to earth, real people who live there at the forefront of my being. I had the opportunity to spend varying lengths of time in Burnsville every summer from about 1994 when my husband and I first discovered it, until about 2003 when we were last there. Sometimes I spent entire summers there. On other occasions, perhaps only 3 or 4 weeks. It is without doubt, one of the loveliest, most unpretentious places to live or vacation. And Jan Karon captures the essence of it's countryside and it's people in the most delightful way.
I was terribly saddened when the last book in the series was published and I feared I would no longer have a way to continue my relationship with those wonderful characters. Then I learned that Karon would not abandon her readers. Before long, she began a another series. I own all of the Mitford books and now have the first in her next, the "Father Tim Series" entitled Home To Holly Springs. I can't wait to have some time to read it. I can sound off about Jan Karon forever!
So much reading material today is heavy, depressing, or bordering on pornographic. Not so for Jan Karon's books. From the first in the series (At Home in Mitford) to the ninth and last (Light from Heaven) I delighted in the life and times of Father Timothy Kavanaugh, pastor of the Episcopal church in Mitford, North Carolina. Mitford is a fictitious town but, having spent some time in the general area, I could nearly swear that she fashioned it from Burnsville, which is about 35 miles NE of Asheville.
Through Father Tim, one gets to know his congregants in such an easy, light-hearted manner. Each one is unique and simply, the real thing. As the series opens he is a life-long bachelor. He eventually meets the woman who will become his wife after she moves in next door. Since they are both well beyond child-bearing years, there are no babies in the picture. But a child comes into their lives in the most interesting, but fully believable way.
I think about 5 of the 9 books were written at the time I started reading the first. I actually fell upon Ms Karon as an author when I was in a second-hand book shop while vacationing in Burnsville and the shop's owner suggested her series to me. I read them in order and by the third, I was purposely reading them as slowly as possible as I just wanted to relish each character and incident to the fullest extent possible.
When I had to return to Florida from North Carolina, reading the books helped me keep a piece of those beautiful mountains and the truly down to earth, real people who live there at the forefront of my being. I had the opportunity to spend varying lengths of time in Burnsville every summer from about 1994 when my husband and I first discovered it, until about 2003 when we were last there. Sometimes I spent entire summers there. On other occasions, perhaps only 3 or 4 weeks. It is without doubt, one of the loveliest, most unpretentious places to live or vacation. And Jan Karon captures the essence of it's countryside and it's people in the most delightful way.
I was terribly saddened when the last book in the series was published and I feared I would no longer have a way to continue my relationship with those wonderful characters. Then I learned that Karon would not abandon her readers. Before long, she began a another series. I own all of the Mitford books and now have the first in her next, the "Father Tim Series" entitled Home To Holly Springs. I can't wait to have some time to read it. I can sound off about Jan Karon forever!
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