Title: Sharing Good Times
Author: Jimmy Carter
Date: 2004
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 0-7432-7033-9
Length: 166 pages of text plus index
Quote: “I hope that these personal experiences will prove to be a practical and inspirational guide to anyone desiring to stretch mind and heart, to combine work and pleasure, and to reach out to others.”
What would you do if you’d already been President of the United States, and you were only about halfway through the normal active life expectancy? Most of us don’t really need to answer this question, but anyone who does might appreciate Jimmy Carter’s short book of answers.
Another audience for this book would be people who are interested in the Carters of Georgia and their friends, many of whom are famous. Lots of harmless “celebrity gossip” about the former First Family and people with whom they’ve shared good times, from Hank Aaron to Sam Walton. (Carter asserts that people who share his interest in woodworking will recognize the names of Sam Maloof, Tage Frid, and Ed Moulthrop. Googlers are welcome.) You’d expect that anything Jimmy Carter would publicly say about famous people he knows would amount to promotion of their work, and you’d be right.
Mercifully, in my opinion, this book contains only one short original poem. Even if you didn’t like Carter as President, you have to love his support for his favorite charity (Habitat for Humanity)...let’s just say that what he writes is, in my opinion, prosy enough when it’s written as prose; prosy enough to become downright irritating when it tries to be poetry. What occupies the bottom of page 60 and the top of page 61 may seem to you like evidence for an opposite opinion. If so, you’ll probably enjoy Always a Reckoning and Other Poems.
Some of the good times Carter recounts are definitely for the old and rich, but others might, theoretically, inspire any family looking for new vacation ideas. I don’t know many families that have this problem. If you do, they need this book.
For most of us, Sharing Good Times is “light reading” in more ways than one: a book to be read on one train trip, or over a week or two in the bathroom. If you’re looking for a book in that category, Sharing Good Times is cheerful without trying to be funny, warmhearted without being excessively personal or sentimental, and generally a good light read.
As you undoubtedly knew, Carter no longer expects to be sharing many more good times with his fans. Get this book as a Fair Trade Book while you can. It's available from this web site for $5 per book, $5 per package, and $1 per online payment, for a total of $10 or $11; three more books of this size would fit into the package, and if you chose three of the former President's other books (that are of this size), the total cost would be $25 (or $26), of which we'd send $1 per book by him to Carter or his charity.
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