I’ve loaded my Kindle with new-to-me books. I need reading material for the long flights to and from New Zealand that lie ahead…
I’m halfway through one of them already. (Stop that, Kris!!!)
When I had lunch with Judi Cooper at Olive Garden the other day, she told me about her favorite four or five most recently read books. So, I bought them (plus a three-book series about a missing Indigenous woman whose brother is looking for her by listening to crows; intriguing as heck, with great reviews.)
The books are …
To Speak for the Trees, My Life Journey from Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest by Dana Beresford-Kroeger, winner of the 2019 Sigurd F. Olsen Nature Writing Award (I’m 71% of the way through this one already, and I concur it’s terrific!)
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (also Oprah recommended)
Horse by Geraldine Brooks
A Woman of No Importance (just bought the summary of this book for now)
Operation Mincemeat: The Untold WWII Story of How One Corpse Led to the Nazis Defeat by R.C. Bread
The Vanished Series by B.B. Griffith (this is the series about the missing Indigenous woman)
Oh! And there’s one more I’ve bought that I haven’t read yet:
Courageous Dreaming: How Shamans Dream the World into Being by Alberto Villoldo
Every other book in my Kindle (resident and in the cloud) I’ve already read (hundreds of them). It is no exaggeration to say I’ve lived thousands of lives from the pages of riveting books. Usually if I’m not writing or hanging with my critters or friends, I’m reading.
THANK YOU, SCHOLASTIC, FOR MAKING ME AN EAGER LIFE-LONG READER
AND KNOWLEDGE-SEEKER!!!
Although we weren’t a rich family by any stretch of the imagination, Mom always gave me money whenever the Scholastic book catalog came out so I could buy books I wanted to read. Each one cost 25 to 30 cents when I was a kid (late 1950’s), and I think Mom gave me $2.50 or $3 to spend each time. I always came home loaded down with a treasure trove of new books when the books were “finally!!!” delivered to our classroom after what felt like years of waiting — and even then, we had to wait until day’s end to receive them because the teacher knew she’d lose us to our new books if she gave them out any sooner!
Agony on the half shell! Gimme, darn it! That’s just mean to make us wait!!!
Mom was a reader and encouraged the same in her kids from an early age. She read us the Wizard of Oz book series and other one offs before we could read by ourselves. So, early on, authors — in addition to Roy Rogers at that age — were my superheroes. I distinctly remember one time when Mom was doing a crossword puzzle (I was a teenager by this time) and claimed to have forgotten the name of the author who wrote The Wizard of Oz.
I yelled out, “Sheesh! L. Frank Baum, Mom!”
“That’s it!” she confirmed.
Yeah, I was a goner over books. Maybe that’s another reason I became a writer!
Although I haven’t traveled extensively in the physical world, in the mental/emotional/vicarious experience realm, I have traveled all over the world, into outer space, and leagues beneath the sea. I have lived thousands of lives (human and animal) MOSTLY because of books. Books are nearly always better than the movies that are made to recreate them.
Lassie, The Black Stallion, Big Red, Bambi, Where the Red Fern Grows, a Wrinkle in Time, Mark Twain’s books, sci fi, Moby Dick, Gulliver’s Travels, Uncle Toms’s Cabin, Black Like Me, Conudrum, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Only a Gringo Would Die for an Anteater, Beaversprite, Ring of Bright Water,Promises to Keep, Becoming, The Enemy Within … oh my gosh: I could go on and on, but you get my drift!!
I simply cannot imagine life without books!
Which is why book banning/burning has always been blasphemy to me.
Books (written by real people) are sacred. (No further comment on AI books, beyond this veiled reference.) Whether they’re fiction or non-fiction, someone had a tale to tell or a true story to convey.They creatively brought to life something that didn’t exist before. They created miracles. They trasformed a blank page or space into entirely something else.
Something brave, profane, silly, serious, heartrending, heroic. Whatever it was, it was something that had never been expressed in the same way before, so we readers could view it from a fresh perspective. So we could grow.
I thank whatever gods there be for the wonderful willingness of wordsmiths to express the inexpressible in ways that bring readers closer to their own –or another being’s — essence. That’s a gift that keeps on giving as long as there are readers who want to keep learning and growing.
