Texas - Mississippi - Montana, Rick Bass

I heard about Rick Bass while reading a review of his book in the paper a few weeks ago. I got an older book from the library, Winter (notes from Montana). I finished it this morning. I thought that a book about winter would be perfect in my 100 degree plus summer.

While reading his memoir/essay style book, I was drawn to his Houston roots, Mississippi time (and girlfriend), and his love of nature and wildness. It was amazing. His writing was simple and the lessons he learned where just "there" without all the extras. I get so tired of writers who shove it down my throat. I usually get it!! Bass believes that about his reader - we understand. We are kin.

Rick and Elizabeth move to a town without electricity. Winter for months and months of plain wildness, and the LOVE it. Cutting wood and keeping warm transcend all other needs.

Here is more about Rick:
http://www.bookbrowse.com/biographies/index.cfm?author_number=1389

I thought his lessons of winter could apply to my August heat and summer. He tries so hard not to wish the cold away - just live in the moment!

Some favorites:

"It's still winter. I need to stay loyal to it. But I dream of grass. I want to eat grass, want to walk in it barefoot, roll on my back, shirtless, in it. I want to rip it up and roll it into loose wads and throw it, have grass fights with Elizabeth, the way five months ago, we had our first snowball fight."

These musings on his father rang true to me:
"... all men, it seems - one day become themselves, but also their fathers. Just like with legends, men build the base of them selves with parts of their fathers, with the basic truths - and then go from there, of necessity, to alter other things, grow in new places, and become fathers themselves ... " (page 146, the whole quote is so beautiful!).

Hmmmm. Every summer I must read about winter.

Vivian Gornick

Tony Hoagland recommended Vivian Gornick's book of essays, Approaching Eye Level to me in April. When I started it, I was a little disappointed. I realized that her observations were that of a person so different from me that it was difficult to relate to them / her. She is a New Yorker, a writer, in her 50's or so, a child of the 60's, radical free thinker, person of solitude, urban . . .

It took me time. Her words were beautifully written, and I appreciated that. Towards the end of the book, it began to ring for me. The essays: at the university, murders of the soul, on living alone, and on letter writing were fantastic! I connected with her and the stories and they started to belong to me as well.

A few favorites: "I have loved these people - how I have loved them! - and all for the same reason. I am hungry for the sentence structure in their heads. It's the conversation between us that makes me love them. Responding to the shape of their sentences, my own grow full and free: thought becomes expressive, emotioins clarify, and I am happy, happier than at any other time. Nothing makes me feel more alive, and in the world, than the sound of my own mind working in the presence of one that's reponsive."

" ... conversation is not a daily requirement; expressive language has passed out of common usage; people speak to transmit information, not to connect."

" ... daily depression eats energy. Without energy inner life evaporates; without inner life there is no animation; without animation there is no work. A life in thrall to daily depression is doomed to mediocrity.

In the same moment I saw that this was loneliness, the thing itself. Loneliness was the evaporation of inner life. Loneliness was me cut off from myself. Loneliness was the thing nothing out there could cure."

"This morning my phone rant at nine o'clock. It was my friend (insert name here) ... She launched into a familiar tale of discontent ... The subject is territory we have traversed many times over many years, yet it remains absorbing to both of us, useful in fact. My friendship with ... is an intimacy of more than two decades characterized by a running commentary on the dailiness of our lives and conducted almost entirely on the telephone. When we talk we each cradle the receiver, stare unseeing into the emptiness of the rooms we occupy, and concentrate on the exchange. Inevitably, these conversations are laced through with our mutual intensities ... and within minutes it is often clear that once again we are pursuing our ongoing interest - the nature of well - being - as thought the long distance call is a seminar in which we are both permanently enrolled." (I added the open ended friends, as I have several that fit this description.)

I can't wait to read her other book, The End of the Story of Love.

Okay, I have a crush on Tom Barron

Today I finished The Ancient One by T.A. Barron. I met Tom several years ago at the University of Mississippi Conference of the Book. He was so charismatic, and I was thrilled to meet and talk with him. Susan got me a shirt that said, "I read The Ancient One" so I bought the book. It has taken me this long to read it.

Tom's inscription to me inside the book read, "For Paula, May you reach as high, and sink roots as deep, as a great redwood tree . . . Yours, Tom." On the other books he signed for me that day, he signed them to the children, but this one - he signed for me.

The Ancient One is a YA fantasy book which is why I waited so long to read it. When, I closed the last page, I knew why Tom dedicated Kate's story to me. I, too, am a lover of trees. I also can hear sap rising and trees breathing (and granite pulsing) if I listen long and hard enough in the wilderness. It is this ear that keeps my heart beating while doing carpool and running around like a crazy mother. It is this connection that makes me who I am.

Tom wrote this book in 1992 when environmental topics were just floating to the surface. The words hold even truer today. It was a great reminder of our connection and our devotion to the things that "I" believe in.

I finally did read The Ancient One (and I have the shirt to prove it), but I have been living its precepts my entire adult life!!

The People of the Book

I bought The People of the Book after Karen Amason recommended it to me. She always has great book ideas. I had a difficult time getting into Geraldine Brooks' newest novel. I loved her other two books - but this one had a slow beginning.

As usual, I stuck with the 100 page rule, and I was not wrong. I LOVED the book. The heroine of the novel is a book archaeologist - way cool job. She is given a book to chronicle. In her studies of the book, she begins to imagine the deep history. The novel is based on the truth that a rare Jewish manuscript was saved twice by Muslims in the past 4 centuries - and once by a Catholic priest during the Inquistions. Taking this truth, Brooks wove a story behind each "mark" on the book. The novel opens in current day and unwinds to the origin of the book.

Brooks commands the language and her word choice is exquisite. Words lift from the page and become the description. When that happens, I, as a reader, feel joy! The fault in the book lies in the cheesy twisted ending which I hated. Hannah's story running throughout the book is the weakest piece, but I was still satisfied with the book as a whole.

In our bookclub, we discussed the idea of books having their own story beyond that of the words. I was able to express my desire that one day the books that I own would tell some of the story of my life. My story interwoven in the stories.