Random 5 Friday

I

I have many books.

They are good friends to me.

II

 In the photos you can see still not all ...

and I'll write later more about my love of books.

III

 I love to read detective stories about the journalist Jim Quilleran and his Siamese cats Koko and JumJum. By Lilian Jackson Braun. 
I have all the volumes.

IV

Also the books by Rita Mae Brown and her cat Sneaky Pie Brown I love very much.

And their fox-crime stories. From this we learn a lot about fox hunting in Virginia and rural life in the United States.

It is described very beautiful and poetic, yet the reality is probably different, i think.

V

But what strikes me again and again in many books that describe everyday life in the United States: there is apparently a very different, more private structure than in Germany. And there is more solidarity and support each other.

Here with us, people live for very alone, I often feel. And who needs help should contact the offices and state agencies, please, not the neighbors -

I particularly fell in the in the book by Vicky Myron about the library cat Dewey. 

There are many people suddenly lose their job and because there is a computer in the library, the librarians help them to find new jobs.

Such kind of self-help, we do not know in Germany, no one would do such a thing. 

Here you can only go to the office and ask a lot of applications. 

In the U.S. there is no such state agencies, perhaps?

It seems to me a completely different life.

With all you should go to the offices here.

You can do this, of course, and it is often complicated and lengthy to provide many applications.

Not only because of jobs, I also think of help for people with disabilities, for care to the elderlys and other difficult things.

This may take up to one year or longer (during this time an old man might have died and no longer needs the help) before you get help and often do not get it, or something you do not really need ...

With the applications you go into the pending state and is subject to the total control. That's a shit feeling! But otherwise it does not go with us. Or you get no help.
Even at a charity organization  twice a month to get some food for free, you must first submit an application to an office. Even that is controlled by the state ...

My feeling is just by reading, in the U.S. are much different and you help each other more.

Maybe this is a false impression, and in real life it is different?

I know that not everything is as in books...

These are often my thoughts while reading American books.