Thoughts about another Maritimer

I'm trying to get my house rearranged and ready for my parents' visit (they are on their way now!), but I wanted to finish a book for my (possible) book club that is meeting tomorrow night — even though I won't be there because my parents will be arriving. These are the comments that I sent as my contribution to the discussion:

Just finished the Anne Murray autobiography, All of Me, and I thought I'd send you a comment or two to take with you to the book club meeting. I actually enjoyed the book more than I expected to, probably because I'm a Maritimer and I enjoyed all the connections I could make with the story. For example, Athena Regional High School, where Anne taught in Summerside, later became Athena Consolidated School, which I attended from grade 5 to grade 8. It was interesting to be able to picture the place she was talking about. Similarly, her tales of UNB in Fredericton were very familiar to me. I found the early years stuff really interesting since it reminded me of things my parents often talked about during my childhood. I heard countless stories of the Springhill mine disasters growing up, and I enjoyed reading her first hand account. Later on, I found it was a little heavy on the name dropping, but I guess that is to be expected in the bio of an entertainer. I didn't think a lot of the stories she included needed to be there, but I guess she was trying to fill out the skeleton of her story with various items that we wouldn't necessarily have expected. Overall, I am glad I read it, if only to recommend it to my mom, who is from the same era and grew up just an hour or so from Springhill in Moncton, NB. In general, I'm not a big fan of bios for book club discussion, but perhaps that is a generalization I shouldn't make. In particular, I think this biography really doesn't lend itself well to book club discussion, because it really is a very simple "This is my life" story. There's really not a whole of depth to explore as a group.

That's my writing for today. Back to work! There's much to do!