Pajama Pundits

My daughters have a talent for giving. They usually save the best for Mother's Day, but an awesome gift might arrive on my birthday too. Or Christmas. Or on a random Tuesday. One thing all their gifts have in common is they are not temporary, but are enjoyable in some way for years.

I got the announcement of my 2003 birthday present via a creatively hilarious emailed PowerPoint presentation based on TV game shows and commercials. (Proof that good can come from endless hours of watching TV!) It was sent so I'd get it at work, where my boss and co-workers already knew what was coming. Cheesecake petits fours and a Maxine birthday party kit arrived at the office shortly after the email. Getting notified of the gift was just as exciting as the gift itself - a trip to Scotland.

For the warmest memories, the evening at Superior's Steakhouse for my sister and I, was a celebration of both motherhood and sisterhood. Along with spirited conversation, the warmth of their companionship, and the honor, there were cocktails, a different wine with each course, and cognac after dessert.

That they spend time in their busy lives thinking of me is honor enough, that they spend their hard-earned money on me is icing. The first expensive gift I got from one of them was when the oldest spent her summer earnings to buy a table & chairs I had admired.

Perhaps the ultimate combination of thought, time, effort, and cost was the scrapbook they made, a history of our immediate family in photos and words. The best part of that gift was that they both made the trip home to give it to me.

These wonderful memories along with the collection of handmade cards and gifts from their younger years and the lovely containers that once held beautiful plants - I have a black thumb, but they are optimists - are in so many ways undeserved. They are proof that there is something greater than nature or nurture.

This year, for Mother's Day, I got Amazon gift certificates. Somewhere out there, there's someone saying there's no effort or thought put into THAT! But that would be so wrong. The thoughtfulness is in their knowing that my reading tastes do not always match theirs, that my interests can range from the silly to serious in 60 seconds or less and that I'll have fun browsing, knowing I can buy.

While the gift is slowing down posting momentarily, reviews of the books will be fodder for future posts. So far, I've got:

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything - I'd read so much about this one on other blogs, I had to have it. For me, the valuable point is the lesson in how to ask the question.

Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America

How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It

Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America

Scotch-Irish: A Social History

Black Rednecks And White Liberals

The five books above stem from a natural interest in Scotland, and these two posts from Sissy Willis, and the accompanying comments. I haven't read Albion's Seed yet, but of the others, Leyburn's Social History is the best. Sowell's Black Redneck theme could use a little Leyburn, and a little less Grady McWhiney, whose book I thought went on for hundreds of pages after he'd expressed all his thoughts. I have to wonder if I would have liked Sowell's book better if I hadn't read Freakonomics first.

Last Man Out: Glenn McDole, USMC, Survivor of the Palawan Massacre in World War II

Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II's Greatest Rescue Mission

The last two books are interesting because one of my uncles was one of the eleven survivors of the Palawan Massacre, and he never told us much about his experience as a POW or very many details of the escape. I never heard him mention the massacre.

This brings me to the point of this post. [You had a point? -ed.] I've got about $40 left and I'm looking for suggestions on what to spend the rest of my Amazon bounty.