THE WORLD I FELL OUT OF - BOOK BY MELANIE REID

Anne lent me a book stating "Here...read this.  You'd like it."  She was  absolutely right!  And I highly recommend it.

I have concluded in my old age that if I am going to read a book it has to be well written. (This one is.)  I don't really mind the subject. For starters it needs to engage me. (This one did.) Furthermore, because I do a lot of typing of material which is to be sent to the printer (for whatever reason) my eye is hyper-sensitive when reading text; and because I work with images for the same reason, my attennae are always rather twitchy. It really bugs me when I find basic publishing errors. (This one had some.*)

About 9 years ago this lady who lives in this part of the world fell from her horse and broke her neck.  This is her story of being taken from a healthy active 52 year old to a disabled person confined to a wheelchair. She is a journalist and used her writing as a way to deal with her misfortune.

The blurb states:

"Paralysed from the top of her chest down, she was to spend almost a full year in hospital, determinedly working towards gaining as much movement in her limbs as possible, and learning to navigate her way through a world that had previously been invisible to her.

As a journalist Melanie had always turned to words and now, on a spinal ward peopled by an extraordinary array of individuals who were similarly at sea, she decided that writing would be her life-line. The World I Fell Out Of is an account of that year, and of those that followed. It is the untold ‘back story’ behind Melanie’s award-winning ‘Spinal Column’ in The Times Magazine and a testament to ‘the art of getting on with it’.

Unflinchingly honest and beautifully observed, this is a wise and inspiring memoir about risk and dilemma, heroism and love . Above all, The World I Fell Out Of is a reminder that at any moment the life we know can be turned upside down – and a plea to start appreciating what we have while we have it."

[BBC image]

She is a tall lady, always on the go, so I warmed to her subject.  Yes, there but for the grace of God go any of us.

Something I had not come across before: the quotation from Florence Nightengale:

I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought to be distilled into actions which bring results.

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* My Twitchy Attennae:

This book was published by 4th Estate, part of 'HarperCollinsPublishers'.  Like the author I am very fussy about spelling and grammar. So what do I find:

[1]  Her quote from Virginia Woolf has a typo.  We all know how 'spell-checker' can give problems; not picked up was the missing 't' in 'thoughts'....

The eyes of others our prison;

their thoughs our cages.      

[2] About half of the black and white photos included are low reproduction, i.e. poor to abysmal quality for a book.