今天去東吳參加研討會，看到書林書局擺攤，趁機買了四本書。付了款順便問 Scholastic 那套書，專員 Jerry 特別推薦 Angela's Ashes.

「那本書看了很難過。」我說。

「對呀！愛爾蘭。」

「而且才第三級。」

「可是這是作者自己朗讀的。」

「那我就要買了。」

「老師不用考慮一下嗎？」Kelly 專員問。

「少吃三顆蘋果就是了。」

「可是比較小的蘋果一百塊可以買三顆。」

(Kelly, 妳是捨不得賣給我嗎？)

和十個參加研討會的學生說再見，還帶著五本書回家，超開心！

回家趕緊放來聽：

Angela's Ashes

Prolouge

  And unhappy childhood is bad enough.  An unhappy Irish childood is worse.  But an unhappy Irish Catholic childhood is the worst of all.

  My unhappy Irish Catholic childhood started in New York, on Thanksgiving Day during the Great Depression.  My mother, Angela Sheehan, had just arrived from Ireland.  She met Malachy McCourt at a Thanksgiving party.  Malachy liked Angela, and she liked him.  She thought he looked sad.  He did, becasue he'd just spent three months in prison.  He and his friend John had stolen a lorry.  They thought it was full of boxes of tinned meat.  Neither of them could drive and the lorry was going from side to side on the road.  So the police stopped them and searched the lorry.  There was no tinned meat.

  "Why have you stolen a lorry that's full of empty boxes?" The police asked them.

  Angela felt sorry for Malachy and Malachy was feeling lonely after hsi time in prison... Well, my life started at that Thanksgiving party.

  Angela had cousins in New York.  Their names were Delia and Philomena.  They were good Irish Catholics from Limerick and they knew what was right and what was wrong.  And it was wrong to be expecting a child when you weren't married.

  With their husbands behind them, they went to a drinking club on Atlantic Avenue.  The man in the club didn't want to let them in.

  "Do you want to keep the nose on your face?" asked Philomena.

  "We're here on God's business," said Delia.

  "All right, all right," he said.  "You Irish are trouble."

  Malachy was sitting at the bar.  When he saw them, he went white.  He gave them a weak smile and offered them a drink.

  "You people from the North of Ireland are different for us in the South," Delia said.  "You have a strange look.  And you are a disgrace to the Irish people for what you did to our cousin."

  "Oh, I am," said Malachy, "I am."

  "Nobody asked your opinion," said Philomena.

  "You are goign to marry that girl," said Delia.

  "I wasn't planning to get married, you know.  There's no work and how could I...?"

  He saw the look on their faces.  They were ready to eat him alive....

這是一本好聽的書~~~