So I really thought is was spring - really, I was pretty darn sure - so I got out all my gardening books, started making plans for the garden, and then.... snow. And more snow. And snow mixed with rain.
These gray skies and lingering signs of winter are enough to make me want to hide under the bedcovers! Or leave the country.
So now, instead of dreaming of gardening, I'm dreaming of travel. On my bedside table is "Paris to the moon" by Adam Gopnik. It's a memoir of living in Paris with his wife and the practical trials and tribulations of having a kid set against the romantic backdrop of the City of Lights. So far I'm enjoying it - Gopnik is a very thoughtful reader, and has a fine appreciation for "la vie francaise."
So what are you reading right now? Or are you banging on your windows crying "let me out of this winter!" ? I, for one, would really like to go out and play, but for now, I'm indoors, book in hand.
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Comments: 12
I just finished Kathy Reichs' Death Du Jour, which included lots of cold and snow. Love the TV show, but just didn't get into the book enough to want to read everything in the series. Right now on my bedside table is the ninth book of the Edge Chronicles series, which is a great fantasy series for the junior high age set. I also have Provocative Faith and Avoiding the Price-Driven Sale. Not quite so exciting as sky pirates. :-)
This morning I finished reading A SENSE OF WHERE YOU ARE, a January 23, 1965, New Yorker magazine article John McPhee wrote about Princeton basketball player Bill Bradley. Reading John McPhee writing about Bill Bradley and basketball is ethereally informative and instructive.
Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.
from HEART THROBS, Published by arrangement with Chapple Publishing Company, Limited Copyright, 1905, by Chapple Publishing Company, Ltd., Boston, Mass.
Most Minnesota readers are familiar with O'Brien who also wrote Going After Cacciato and The Things They Carried which is now required reading in many colleges. Eng is a new voice in this country who won The Booker Prize for The Gift of Rain in 2007.
Three Cups of Tea should be required reading for anyone who is dealing with Pakistan. The writing isn't overly stellar - but the story is.
Oh! The answer to weak reader's question is Robert Penn Warren.
Last week I reread Tim O'Brien's short story, "The Ghost Soldiers," in the book A SHORT WAIT BETWEEN TRAINS, edited by Robert Benard. The Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data summary reads: "Twenty-two stories of war, from the Civil War to the Vietnam War. Includes authors such as Eudora Welty, Stephen Crane, James Jones, Ralph Ellison, and Bernard Malamud."
GANDHI ON NON-VIOLENCE, Selected Texts from Mohandas K. Gandhi's NON-VIOLENCE IN PEACE AND WAR, Edited, with an Introduction, by Thomas Merton.
weak reader, perhaps you should send your reading list to the White House.
The long road home is never
any way you've known
but the one you always find, its
morning stations deserted, its
hopeless fruit stands shuttered down.
Or it is the night's presence, always
over the unending plains past
the bare towns waiting like
forgotten brides, lights like their
candle-prayers, still burning.
It is the salesgirl's frightened stare
that sees you in from dark
and out again at almost closing,
and her there alone.
You do not find it in the winding
paths, the forest trail
that always drew you on, memory
waking on a long curve
in the falling mist of dawn
until it opens from horizons
to the hills, lifts to the weather
that you know: gold-red light
on the mountain's thighs, and finally,
finally, the come-around sun.
Kenneth MacLean
[THE LONG WAY HOME posted here with the poet's permission]
Diana - good catch on the Robert Penn Warren quote. I love seeing a thread filled with pithy remarks and wise comments. And I've still got three cups of tea on my list!
I'm now in the midst of a Michael Pollan reading frenzy, and loving it. Such clear, intelligent writing, and profound reasoning. Delicious!