Plain and Simple : A Journey to the Amish

Rating:
Summary: A book to be read over and over for relaxation.
Review: This book was given to me as a birthday gift by a friend with whom I was in business. Unkowingly, this friend, also named "Sue", gave me the key to relaxation. When things get hectic and chaotic in my life, I read Plain and Simple. From the time I start reading, there is a peace that comes over me and I feel so calm afterwards. The writing seems to put me where Sue was when she was visiting the Amish...the same quiet peace I feel when gazing over miles of farmland dotted with homes with barns and silos - - and no electrical poles! Unfortunately, I am not surrounded by that environment, so reading Plain and Simple brings me there! Having loaned my copy to an elderly friend who was rehabilitating after heart surgery, I waited for her response. She didn't think she could read it since she was having trouble "concentrating on more than a paragraph of anything printed". I left it with her anyway, and at my next visit, she not only thanked me profusely, but told me she was adding it to her book "gift list"! So, I knew then it was not only me who benefited from the peace of the book. My thanks to the author!

Rating:
Summary: Simply a good story...
Review: This is a little story about a woman who goes on a journey of self discovery. If you are hesitant to believe there is such a thing as "self discovery" and describe such actions as "selfish" instead, then this book is not for you. I enjoyed reading Sue Bender's story about her insights while living with an Amish family. What began as an interest in the Amish quilts became an obsession for her. She eventually finds an Amish family in Iowa who is willing to let her stay with them for a summer as a companion for the families aging grandmother. From the very beginning what Sue notices is not so much the obvious differences in clothing, lifetstyle and religion but the way this Amish community had deeper way of just being. Timelessness or being in the moment was something they displayed with each and every activity. "It was as if they had uncovered a way to be in time, to be part of time, to have a harmonious relation with time." The author comes to re-evaluate the life she has been living and asks many of the same questions we ask ourselves. There are no easy answers in this book, just observations to be read and pondered upon, to enrich and stimulate. What would be our answer to the ultimate question Ms. Bender asks of herself,"Am I a successful human being and not only a success?"