Found my book!

Something wonderful happened to me yesterday. I found a book, quite by coincidence, that I had read as a child and I truly loved it. One of those books that I would think of over the years again and again.

It was one of the only Western author books recommended to me by my grandmother. Strangely she never recommended the classics such as Austen or Bronte although she had read them all. For years, I had a hardtime finding this book through a very dumb mistake of my own.

My grandmother is now over 80. We don't know her exact age since they didn't keep birth records in Iran in those days. She is the one who gave me the gift of reading and always filled my head with wonderful stories from all over the world that would literally last for nights and nights as she would put us to sleep with her stories. None of her children inherited the gift of reading so I feel doubly blessed that it something that came from her to me.

A few years ago she lost her eyesight due to diabetes and used to cry that she can no longer read. She didn't care that she could no longer see us but reading was a whole different story for her. (No books on tape in Farsii either.)

And now she is begining to lose her memory. For example, she keeps forgetting that I'm my mom's daughter but she knows I'm her granddaughter.

And then I found this book. Her book...It's called the "White Mountains" by John Christopher. I can't tell you what it meant to me to find it or rather it found me. If that makes sense. To have something of my grandmothers that meant so much to me.

The book is about outerspace Tripods that take over the earth and take control of young people's brains making them docile and compliant. And they put these rings around the people's heads and once you have the ring on your head you lose control of your brain and the Tripods totally take over. If you remove them you go mad and mad people do appear in the book. It was so painful to read about one of the protagonist's friends succumbing to the Tripods -- and SO scary! How he changed from a rebel to a slave.
 
The main character a 12 year (?) old boy was able to escape the Tripods and was living with friends and constantly escaping the Tripods and running to the white mountains to join a group who aimed to bring down the Tripods. And the tripods continued to look for them the whole time. Couple of other things I remembered is that one of his friends had to "reinvent" glasses so one of them could see. They find canned foods. And the main character made so many bad mistakes! In the second book something terrible happens to the beautiful girl that he has fallen in love with back in the first book. It was just an AWESOME book! And very frightening in a good way.

But here it is and I found it. It feels like a blessed day! I've put in an order at Barnes & Noble for the book. It'll be my son's xmas gift from his great grandmother.