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Thank you everyone who supported the Library Committee during our July 4th book sale! We truly enjoyed talking to all you book lovers out there. We will have our thrid and final 2017 book sale on Nov. 4; this coincides with the Fall Craft Show, 9 am to 1 pm. We have some openings in our library volunteer slots — we reshelve the books that Sun Lakes residents have read and returned. If you have an interest, please contact our Volunteer Coordinator, Janet Contreras, at 797-0556. As a chronicler of American expansion, few writers would beat Mark Twain. Hemingway wrote, "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." Samuel Clemens, 1835-1910, grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, and had a boisterous childhood. Sadly his father died when he was 11. He finished fifth grade then started an apprenticeship with a news printer and worked as a typesetter. Sam had no difficulty in finding trouble. He would sneak out at night for adventure with his friends. An older boy in the group was Tom Blankenship. Later in his life Sam wrote a story whose main character was based on his friend Tom. The name of the story is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He started writing and submitted articles to the paper. Hannibal was the third largest city in Missouri in Sam's youth; St. Petersburg is this city in "Tom Sawyer" and "Huck Finn." Living on the river he described that, "there was but one permanent ambition among his boyhood comrades: to be a steamboatman. Pilot was the grandest position of all." The Pilot's prestige exceeded even the Captain's. The Pilot had to know all the vagaries of the wild Mississippi, its flow and ebb, its wanderings — even at night. After more than two years of study with Pilot Horace Bixby, Sam received his pilot's license. But more than steamboat work, piloting also gave him his pen name from "mark twain," the leadsman's cry for a measured river depth of two fathoms (12 feet), safe water for a steamboat. Later, his brother Orion went to Nevada and Sam followed. He failed as a miner, but after a bit he got a job as a reporter for the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City. A letter to the paper, written by "Mark Twain" and published February 3, 1863, was a humorous travel account titled, Letter from Carson – re: Joe Goodman, party at Gov. Johnson's. He travelled around the American west for three years writing of his experiences. He moved to San Francisco in 1864. His first real success came when the NY weekly The Saturday Press published The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County in November, 1865, bringing him national attention. Later in life and after marriage, the Twain family moved to Hartford, CT. During 17 years in Hartford, Twain wrote many of his classic novels. Mark Twain is also well known for his quotations: "Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience; this is the ideal life;" "The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer someone else up;" "Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company." Enjoy your summer! A frothy romance or a bracing thriller should be part of it! Library Committee 22 | SUN LAKES LIFESTYLES | AUGUST 2017 | Age is a matter of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter. ~ Mark Twain

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