Book: This Is the Story of A Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett

What it actually is, is a collection of essays, most, if not all, previously published. But still a good book because Ann Patchett really can write well about anything she chooses. So the subjects are diverse:  how to get into the LAPD Academy; how to befriend to an aging nun; why short stories stand on their own merit and deserve serious consideration; how and why Clemson University gets embroiled in a "burning book" controversy; how a successful author decides to co-own an independent bookstore (Parnassus in Nashville, TN); how to figure out it's time to get married; how to escape for a week; how to love a grandmother…..and how to love a dog.

All of them were worthy of reading, but considering my plans for the next year, I especially liked My Road to Hell Was Paved, about her week-long Winnebago trip in Wymoing and Montana.

"And so we go outside, climb the ladder to the top of the Winnebago, and stretch-out flat on the metal roof to look at the stars. So many stars fall on this night it's impossible to think we won't eventually run out of stars. After the deaths of a million stars we are sleepy, and we climb back down to bed."

They meet a woman "in her mid-sixties who has been traveling in her thirty-seven-foot Winnebago for eight years. Her husband died last January, and she's driven alone ever since…Life is short, she tells me. She plans to go from a motor home to a nursing home."

Obviously Ann has the curiosity, wisdom and gifts to write books like State of Wonder or Bel Canto. This book is not exactly like those but is more a revelation of who she is, how she lives, where she lives, along some of the seminal events and people in her life.

She has no children but she has a dog, Sparky, about whom she writes nothing as he quite new. She does, however, write a lot about Rose, her totally, absolutely beloved dog for sixteen years, a dog who slept with her and her husband….make of that what you will. I'll kind of file that behind all her other passions.

A lively, smart, attractive, rich, happily married woman….she comes close to having it all, right? Perhaps….