And so it begins

First afternoon of summer break and I have decided to start in on one of my goals - a book a week.  Today, however, I decided that since it was the middle of the week, it would be a perfect week to finish a book that I started several months ago: Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies.  Here is an excerpt I read today, on family photos:

There are pictures of the people in my family where we look like the most awkward and desperate folk you ever saw, poster children for the human condition.  But I like that, when who we are shows.  Everything is usually so masked or perfumed or disguised in the world, and it's so touching when you get to see something real and human. I think that's why most of us stay close to our families, no matter how neurotic the members, how deeply annoying or dull - because when people have seen you at your worst, you don't have to put on the mask as much.  And that gives us license to try on that radical hat of liberation, the hat of self-acceptance; we're allowed to escape from underneath one of the fatwas.

Amen. I love her.  So wise (and SO hilarious).  Interestingly enough I think someone told me recently that I have a writing style like Anne Lamott.  It was one of the biggest compliments I've ever received.  But the more I think about it, I think I may have dreamed it.  Either way, I think that's important to pay attention to: the fact that being compared to Anne Lamott is (or would be, if it were real) one of the biggest compliments I could ever receive.