Tag Archives: books

Tell Me What You’re Reading

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These precious last few days of summer (school starts back in less than 3 weeks) are the perfect time to settle in with that last book you wanted to read. Me, I spend my whole summer looking for something perfect.  My favorite thing in the world is to read books set in the season I’m currently living.

In the fall and winter, I like to read about cozy fireplaces, and blizzards and storms and the crunch of the leaves or the quiet of the snowfall. In the summer, I want to read about warm breezes and the sound of crickets, the scent of meadows, and long horizons of farmland.

I have no problem shifting from brilliant classic to current thriller.  It’s like a light dessert after a heavy meal. Or getting to eat a treat after my vegetables.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous blog, I also like to cover my books. You can see a bit of that here.

So here’s a list of some of the books I read this past summer.  I haven’t found a bad one in the bunch:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Maybe you read this in school. I certainly did not, and I cannot imagine anyone teaching it now.  Just way too controversial, though it is brilliant in its capture of a time and place.  I sank right into it and laughed out loud at some points. Some may have difficulty wading into the mind of a young boy, but…I truly did not. I entered and never left until I was done. Mark Twain is a genius. At many other times I was sickened and appalled by the norms and lifestyles of the times. It is mind-blowing as an adventure story, and Hemingway famously said “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called ‘Huckleberry Finn.'”  I agree. From this book comes Indiana Jones and every other Hero’s Journey that followed. If you’ve never read it, jump aboard the raft and travel the Mississippi with Huck. You won’t regret it. And you learn a bit about true friendship.

 

 

 

Gideon’s Sword  and Gideon’s Corpse by Preston and Child

This is a series I started with the most recent book, “The Pharoah Key.”  I bought it in hardback, and I got about 10 pages in when I decided to put it down and go back and start with the first book in the series and read them all through in order. Wow. Is all I can say. Start with Gideon’s Sword, and buckle your seat belt.  This is like watching an action flic.  I cannot say this is great literature, but man, it’s fun to read.  Some of it is a bit on the gory side, but they are thrillers. You can never imagine how our hero is going to get out of his next scrape. This author partnership will never win any awards for their character development of women, but still…fast-paced page turners. Reading this duo is like riding a roller coaster. Hang on.

Howard’s End by E.M. Forster

Now for something completely different. I found this book by wandering through the Classics section of Barnes and Noble.  I’ve been trying to read as many of them as possible, and I now have gotten through all the low-hanging fruit and am venturing into some of the (in my opinion) lesser known classics. It was this or “Moby Dick” and frankly, after reading “Mutiny on the Bounty” in high school, I’m not sure I ever got back my sea legs. At any rate, this is a novel about hyper-intellectuality vs. blind pragmatism and industry. Beyond that, you’ll have to read it, as it also has a sub-layer of willful obtuseness and the last thing I ever expected…brilliant feminism.

I hope you are enjoying these warm days. September will be here in no time. If you have a minute, share what you’ve been reading. I’m always ready for another adventure.

If I Were Tolstoy’s Editor

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“We are forced to fall back upon fatalism to explain irrational events (that is those of which we cannot comprehend the reason). The more we try to explain those events in history rationally, the more irrational and incomprehensible they seem to us. Every man lives for himself, making use of his free-will for attainment of his own objects, and feels in his whole being that he can do or not do any action. But as soon as he does anything, that act, committed at a certain moment in time, becomes irrevocable and is the property of history, in which it has a significance, predestined and not subject to free choice.

There are two aspects to the life of every man:  the personal life, which is free in proportion as its interests are abstract, and the elemental life of the swarm, in which a man must inevitably follow the laws laid down for him.”  –Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

I did it.

I finished reading War and Peace.  And I loved it.  (You can read about my failed start.)

In fact, after reading it, I was tempted to go back and start re-reading from the beginning, in order to capture more of the nuance, the brilliance of Tolstoy’s staging, foreshadowing and character development.

The book is 1386 pages long. And I would not cut a single word…except possibly one tiny little change.

If I were Tolstoy’s editor, I would have asked him to leave out Part Two of the Epilogue.  I can imagine the conversation between the artist and the editor:

Tolstoy: But I wasn’t finished!  All of this NEEDED to be said!  It’s the entire reason I wrote the book!

Editor:  My friend, the story was over.  Leave the rest to the reader. The novel is magnificent.  In their thoughts they will ponder your piece of work for years to come.  They will write books themselves about your epic.  Let it end.

Tosltoy:  I will not.  I insist on the last part.

Editor:  What if we include it at the end as Part Two of the Epilogue…a kind of Author’s Notes?

Tolstoy:  Hmmph.  Whoever heard of Part Two of an Epilogue?

I can imagine this conversation going on for many months.  I recently read somewhere that it took Tolstoy over a year to write the opening scene.  (It introduces many of the characters.)

I find it hard to believe that anyone living today could weave such a tapestry of thought. The best-selling novels currently in production, while gripping and suspenseful, take me about 2-3 days to process.  War and Peace took me 3 months.  I savored it.

On the cover of the book, Virginia Woolf writes, “There remains the greatest of all novelists–for what else can we call the author of War and Peace?”

I am afraid very few readers take the time to read novels like this any more.  Do kids still read this in high school? When I tell my own friends or acquaintances that I have just finished War and Peace, in the hopes of meeting someone else who may have read it, I am met with raised eyebrows and shaking heads.  They back away slowly.  The general consensus is that I either have nothing else to do with my life or that I am just plain weird. Now it’s possible that I am weird, but I assure you, I have many other things to do in my life including working, raising a teen, caring for an aging parent.

As Churchill once said, “Ill fares the race which fails to salute the arts with the rev­er­ence and delight which are their due.”

Celebrating art is life for me. I do it in between trips to the middle school (and sometimes read in the middle school parking lot). I create in the evening, and at work.  I think of things to make while lying in bed, in the shower, preparing a meal.

What is life if not to celebrate art and the work of fellow artists and artisans?

By the way, I finally finished the red scarf I started well over a year ago.  It’s not a masterpiece.  But it was made with patience and persistence.  And I eventually gifted it to my sister, who accomplished a huge goal.

Bravo. Prodolzhat…