Originally
published April 30, 2012
Am I the only one
who approaches a new book with mixed feelings?
What if it disappoints? What if I
don’t care about the characters? What if
there are no good maps? Sometimes I will
let a book “ripen” in the stack by my bed, whiling away evenings reading the
newspaper or a magazine, until I guiltily pick the book up, review the jacket,
read “About the author”, take a deep breath and plunge in.
Two nights ago, I
did that with The Lost City of Z by David Grann. DBH and I are great readers of
adventure/explorer non-fiction. Z is “a
tale of deadly obsession in the Amazon”.
And, after two evenings, I’m hooked.
Even the maps are good. The
explorers are suitable megalomaniacs and the Amazon jungle is deathly and
uninviting.
At the same time,
I’m listening to The Tiger, A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John
Vaillant. This is about the Amur tiger
in the easternmost province of Russia, nestled just above China on the Sea of
Hotsk. No maps in CD book unfortunately,
so I had to pull out the atlas. Though
the stars are the tigers, Vaillant craftily weaves stories around the
incredible Russians, some from the West, most indigenous people, and how they
survive in this completely hostile environment. Vaillant’s photo on the website
reveals an extraordinary amount of chest hair for a blue-eyed blonde. Hmmmmmm.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvIVQFw_444
Beginning a book
that I listen to either from my MP3 player or in the car, does not share the
risk of the unopened book. Recorded
books are to keep my mind occupied while my hands are doing other work: driving a car, sewing, gardening,
cleaning. They make the time fly. I still fondly remember listening to Ayn
Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (all 63 hours or it) while gardening in the intense
Indiana heat and humidity at our home in Beverly Shores. Yes, I did fast forward through the endless
repetition of John Galt’s philosophy.
In the car, I’m
listening to T.C. Boyle’s When the Killing’s Done. Not my favorite T.C. book, but he usually
takes you to a new place and perhaps a new point of view. This one is about the battle on the
California Channel Islands between the US Park Service, who want to return the
islands to their original condition by eliminating all the non-native species
introduced over the past 500 years by humans, and the PETA-type who are against
killing any living thing, non-native or not.
As with most T.C. books, there are no real winners, a just lot of losers
trying to do what they think is right.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
by Harriet Beecher Stowe resides on my Kindle.
He’s been there for about a year, as I only use the Kindle when I fly
and I try to only download books in the public domain, which are free. Last year was the 100th anniversary of the
publication of UTC, so it received a bit of press and even a book written about
the book. I’d never read it. The book is largely written in slave dialogue
which makes it a bit of a struggle. The
Color Purple, by Alice Walker, used that same technique and was offputting to
many readers.
Hilary Mantel
just wrote a small article in the Review section of the Saturday WSJ about the
language challenge of writing books set in the 16th century. Her books (Wolf Hall, winner of the Booker
Prize) cover the royalty, the serfs, the servants, Brits and foreigners. In the 16th century, written English was
emerging. Educated men and women wrote
and spoke Latin. Her challenge is to
create a language understandable to the modern reader that still feels somewhat
evocative of the age depicted. Evan
Connell does an excellent job of crafting 13th century “speak” in his book,
Deus Lo Volt, the memoire of a Crusader.
It’s just strange enough that the reader has to “work” at rhythm and
pace of the words, but not so challenging that you are put off by the effort.
So many books…so
little time.
©annboland.com 2013