A few years ago, I implemented a fifty page policy. If a book hadn’t grabbed me by fifty pages, I set it down. If I wasn’t thinking about it two days later, I gave up on it. Recently I’ve become even less lenient and only give books about twenty to thirty pages.

A while ago, I picked up Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, a memoir by Rhoda Janzen. If my memory serves me, she was a guest at The Debutante Ball, and that’s how I came across the book. Anyway, I read a bit of it and I’ll admit it, I wasn’t interested. I returned it to the library unread. Then the book began to get a lot of attention. It hit the New York Times Bestseller’s list. I was not swayed. Until I discovered that Rhoda Janzen and I share the same agent. That got me thinking twice. I adore my agent and I think he’s got great taste. We share a sense of humour too. It seemed like I might have to give the book another try. So I put it on hold at the library (by now there was a long list of people waiting) and when it came in on Saturday, I picked it up, a bit worried. What if I still didn’t like it? Short story long, I loved it. I read it in a couple of days and found it warm, funny and thoughtful. Unless you’ve got a great vocabulary, you might want a dictionary on hand while you read it, because it leans toward scholarly, but I liked that too. It was fun figuring out from context new words.

I think what struck me most about this book was the sheer affection the author has for the Mennonites in spite of having made the choice not to live that lifestyle as an adult. If you like memoirs, and haven’t read this one, I recommend it.

And since I seem to be on a memoir kick, I also recently read and loved Mostly True – a memoir of family, food, and baseball.