<\/p>\n
After my September column about Linda Lightfoot, a retired Louisiana journalist who\u2019s kept a record of her reading life since 2005, I heard from Tricia Day, who thought I should know about the reading journal kept by her late mother, Kitty Day, from 1937 until her death at 89 in 2007.<\/p>\n
Kitty\u2019s legacy lives on through Kitty\u2019s Books, a book club with half a dozen members who read and discuss titles from Kitty\u2019s reading journal.<\/p>\n
The club meets regularly in Baton Rouge, home base for much of the Day family. Tricia Day and her sister Susan Crowther are members, and they like to keep the group small to encourage good conversation. Another sister, Jane Edwards, might start her own version of the club where she lives in Montgomery, Alabama.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
I recently met Tricia, a retired dyslexia specialist, and Susan, a retired educator, at Tricia\u2019s home to talk about their mother\u2019s journal. Jane, a retired nurse, happened to be in town, so she joined us, too. Gathered around a coffee table with Kitty\u2019s reading journal in the center, they recalled a mother of 11 who counted books as a ruling passion.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe didn\u2019t cook,\u201d Susan told me. \u201cShe didn\u2019t garden. She didn\u2019t have a sewing machine. But she read all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kitty\u2019s other passion was record-keeping. As Susan pointed out, her mother became the secretary of every club she joined.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe kept a scrapbook of every trip she took,\u201d Tricia added.<\/p>\n
For Kitty, reading was a part of, not apart from, an active life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cShe could strike up a conversation with anybody,\u201d Jane mentioned. \u201cShe loved to travel. She was athletic. She was a wonderful diver. She was the most eclectic reader I have known.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe read everything,\u201d Susan explained.<\/p>\n
Tricia told me that another sister, Beth Gerhart, had recently reminded her how Kitty\u2019s reading journal got started. While living in Chicago as a young woman, Kitty took a college class in which a professor assigned his students to begin a journal of every book they read. That was in 1937. Kitty, who eventually returned to Louisiana, worked as a teacher before her marriage to John Wilton Day, an engineer.<\/p>\n
She kept up her reading journal for the rest of her life.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of the entries include a brief synopsis of the book,\u201d Tricia noted. \u201cShe often reread books, and her favorite by far was \u2018Jane Eyre.\u2019 She read fiction and nonfiction, lots of biographies, and, of course, many classics\u00a0\u2026 it\u2019s a like a short history of literature for anyone who reads it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The journal, which chronicles thousands of books, includes everything from Zane Grey Westerns to John Grisham thrillers to Eudora Welty\u2019s \u201cThe Optimist\u2019s Daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Recently, Kitty\u2019s Books tackled \u201c\u2018Goodbye, Mr. Chips\u201d by James Hilton, \u201cread by my mom in 1940,\u201d Tricia said.<\/p>\n
What would Kitty think of the Kitty\u2019s Books?<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019d be a member, for sure,\u201d Tricia told me.<\/p>\n