Long live Erma !

2 years ago, at my favourite book store in b'lore (Blossoms, for the uninitiated), i came across this book by Erma Bombeck. I was told in a very animated way by the book store guy that it was really good [btw, whom i miss a lot, he doesn't sit there now a days :-( ] I picked it up, it was called "At Wit's end". It started what became a chain of Erma Bombeck's in my book shelf :-)
What I particularly like about her is her witty and sarcastic genre of writing and not to mention that most of it is actually excerpts from her own life. She always writes in first person and its endearing to read what you can actually empathize with. Well, considering that she is generations older than me, I found a few things that did not hold true now but you can always correlate them with present times and challenges women face today. Oh, did i forget to mention that she writes mostly women stuff :-)))
Well, the funny thing was that I actually never read the "About the author" section that usually books have. And I mean never once in about 7 books did I bother to read about her. So, for some reason, I thought she was somebody who still writes, you know a contemprory of sorts. After I exhausted all the books that Blossoms could provide, I gave up thinking that lady just stopped writing anymore after 80's.
Fast forward to May this year and I was at Barnes and Noble at Seattle and I find this one copy of a book I didn't possess. I was happy beyond belief and I take this book to the check out counter where the lady behind the counter is almost as old as my granny. She smiles at me and says- " Erma Bombeck ? I didn't know the present generation liked her writing". I am like - "What are you talking about, I love her. I am just sad that she doesn't write anymore". She has this bewildered expression on her face and says - "O gosh, my dear, Didn't you know she is dead?"
You should have seen my face, my jaws dropped and silence prevailed. I guess we just didn't know what to say to each other after that so I quietly left after collecting my book.
Somewhere I felt really bad that despite enjoying so much of her work, I knew zilch about her. Considering that all her books were mostly about her family, I could almost visualize her hubby and children as well but did i bother to know anything at all about her? No !
So, next day I spent a substantial part of my day googling about Erma Bombeck, glad to say found a lot of articles and odes to her articles :-)

Anyways, for the folks who have never read Erma's works and who may decide never to, here is a set of quotes by her that I found on the net, its from her various books and articles.

So, here's to Erma, a writer who will be truly missed ...

http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Spa/9599/quotes.html