Old Reading, New Thinking

I'e finished the Mything series by Robert Asprin and have begun rereading the John Grisham books. I read The Chamber in about two weeks, not quite, and today I started on The Testament. I have brought up several from the "library" but I know I have more to find. The Rainmaker has to be there somewhere as well as The Street Lawyer and The Pelican Brief. As good as the movies for The Pelican Brief and The Client were, the books are just that much better.

The Chamber inspired some thinking because it is indeed a grisly subject - an old man on death row who grew up with a family in the Ku Klux Klan (I did some reading on them years ago but have always found them to be dispicable and so have forgotten the history of the group's name. I should look it up on Wikipedia, but I have trouble just admitting that such a group exists. Sadly, I imagine they still do exist, but on the fringes of society. 1950 Mississippi this is not.

But The Testament is much lighter, more amusing read and while you can still consider it to be about a hate crime, it is not the kind of hate crimes that were openly committed by the character on Parchman's death row inmate in The Chamber. Instead, this book is about the Phelan family, all bloodsucking relatives of a multibillionaire named Troy Phelan who executed his final will, a handwritten holographic codicile, right before he takes a flying leap off of his highrise office building.

The hate part of it is that he leaves nothing to his three ex-wives (they were adequately provided for in the divorces), just enough money to the kids, six living, to pay off their incurred debts as of that day and stipulates that his new holographic will cannot be read until 15 January 1997 (he jumped on 9 December 1996). The whole lot have gone through the money. The wives who'd each gotten millions at the time of each divorce, are running out if not completely; the children all received 5 million on their 21st birthdays, except the youngest, Ramble, who is only 15 or 16. And they are all out there wracking up new debt faster than anyone can imagine.

I couldn't help thinking about it. I have my foibles with money, but I'm not anything close to that stupid. Granted, had I received five million dollars when I turned 21, it would likely be gone now. But if I somehow managed to fall into five million dollars now, I would get a new car play with about five or ten thousand by way of travel to Hawaii and Australia and sock the rest away. I certainly would not quite my job. And I would not change my lifestyle - five million is not what it once was... but it would make my after-working life quite comfortable.

I make a good salary. I don't make a high salary, but Im completely happy with it and feel that the value of my living is not just in the paycheck but also in my work, my coworkers and my value to the company. That is more than most people can say about their jobs. I don't make below my market value, maybe I'm at the lower end, but until I came into this job I was a generalist. I hadn't even considered being a manager. All in all, I'm very happy with how things are now.

I make the perfect salary in that I earn enough to pay all my bills, keep a small amount in savings which, if I did not enjoy spending my money as freely as I do, would be a lot. So I have the best of all worlds... not all of this entirely due to my salary - I still spend freely, but not as stupidly and not as impulsively as I once did. So reading a novel where a group ranging from 80 years old to 16 trying to divvy up $11,000,000,000 (unfathomable, isn't it?) is not only amusing but extremely thought-provoking.

I wouldn't mind falling into money of some kind but not enough to do something illegal, cheat on my taxes, marry the wrong person... or the zillions of other ways that people get into trying to find the fast buck. I want what I have now - a fun, interesting, satisfying position with a place I want to work for; a comfortable life; an income enough to pay what needs to be paid and buy things I like. Sure, I'd like to be able to purchase a car more comfortably, but I'm more inspired to buy many small things instead of one or two large things. Both my husband and I have noticed that.

I love this book. Within the first forty pages following the old man's suicide, the adult kids, from Troy Phelan Jr to Geena, have all gone out purchasing crazy things like Porsche 911s and looking at houses in the $5,000,000 range. We have a house that around now might be worth $500,000 and I love it. What the hell would we do with two of us and a small-sized cat do with a house ten times the cost!?

It just gets better. The kind of damage these people - and their bloodthirsty lawyers, who also smell the money - can do in just over a month is staggering. And fun to read! Even I am not so blind as to spend money I have not yet received and to boot, don't know the amount. And the "kids" here mostly knew that they were not in other wills.

Yikes!