The best book I’ve ever read

The lovely Jade at Scatterbooker has nominated me for the Real Neat Blog award. Thanks so much Jade!

I’m not sure how I feel about these sorts of awards yet, but I do appreciate the thoughtful nominations from other bloggers.

As I don’t want to appear to be ungrateful I usually go about answering them in my own way without following the set of rules listed by the nominator. (I know – I’m a rule breaking anarchist!)

In this case I’m only going to answer one of the seven questions that Jade posed. It just so happens that I wanted to write this post and this gives me an excuse to do so!

1. What is the best book you’ve ever read?

My favourite book at the moment is by a very special author – my father.  Dad kept a diary of his life in the Navy and over the past few years he’s transcribed his notes and stories into a computer document. My mother gave the notes to my sister and her husband and they produced it into a ‘real’ book.  It is a very (very)  limited print run.

A copy was made for each of us three children and one for mum and dad.  My father doesn’t want too much information given out about his book so I am respecting his wishes.  I can tell you that the title is Naval Gazing and the front cover has the most gorgeous photo of my father as a young sailor. My sister and her husband have done a great job of putting it all together.

I have just finished reading it and I can tell you that it is a fantastic read. I absolutely loved it! It is full of information and stories about his years at sea, his trips away, his trips home and throughout it are snippets of family bits, like the births of his 3 children.

He was only home from sea for my brother’s birth; a fact that I’m not sure I knew about before, which is weird considering that my brother just turned 50 last year! I learnt a lot about my father’s life in the navy and my parent’s early married life – with many stories that I didn’t know about or have vague and fuzzy memories of.

I found that I couldn’t put it down and would read well into the night, something I haven’t done for many years.  I’m an avid reader and get totally lost in a book but know when I have to go to sleep, this book kept me reading on.

What’s really nice is that having read the book I can discuss the stories with my father and I have a much better understanding of his life in the navy. His diaries and his memory have served him well as the stories come alive and follow a sequence throughout his years of service.  We are a very lucky family to have this gift given to us.

We are now encouraging my mother to write her account of those same years. Now that would be an interesting read!

So thanks again to Jade for the nomination and for allowing me to put my own spin on the award.

Deb 🙂

UPDATE:  My father sadly passed away on 25 January 2018 and this book featured heavily in his funeral ceremony. We used his own words as much as possible. RIP Dad xx

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