I can’t stop reading. Printed material to me is like lifeblood. It makes no difference whether it’s a hardbound book, the Kindle, National Geographic, Time Magazine, or newspapers—we get six of them a day—my brain requires a daily dose of written words.
Here’s three books I recommend for winter reading, all by the same author, Anthony Doerr. Doerr won the Pulitzer Prize in 2015 for “All the Light We Cannot See,” and Ginnie kept raving about it, so I gave it a shot. It’s OK. Here’s a sample: “What do we call visible light? We call it color. But the electromagnetic spectrum runs to zero in one direction and infinity in the other, so really, children, mathematically, all of light is invisible.”
“All the Light we Cannot See” just whetted my appetite for more of Doerr. Through the cyberspace world of digital readers, one can dial up most any book without leaving the comfort of the couch. For a change of pace, I thought I’d try some of Doerr’s short stories. I gave “Memory Wall” a shot. In it, I discovered a gem of a short story called, “The River Nemunas.” “...practice breathing in light and breathing out a color—light, green, light, yellow—like the counselor told me to do when the panic comes.” The theme of light permeates all of Doerr’s writing, as does sight, sound, smell and taste—all the senses, really, also color. “The River Nemunas” took me all the way there. It’s about a young girl in America, whose parents have died. Having no other relatives, she is shipped off to live with her grandfather in Lithuania. Searching for clues to her mother’s identity, she runs across a photo of her mother fishing for sturgeon in the river, Nemunas. “Looking at the photos starts a feeling in my gut like maybe I want to dig a shallow hole in the yard and lie down in it.” She asks her grandfather to take her fishing. Her grandfather tells her that the river Nemunas is polluted and has no fish. She goes fishing anyway and finds.... Well, you’ll have to read it.
I then pulled up another of Doerr’s books, “About Grace: A Novel.” To my delight, “About Grace” is like “The River Nemunas” in quality, theme and prose, only in novel length. “The properties of liquid water are this: it holds its temperature longer than air; it is adhering and elastic; it is perpetually in motion. These are the tenets of hydrology; these are the things one should know if one is to know oneself.”
Even though Doerr was awarded the Pulitzer for “All the Light We Cannot See”, the award, I feel, was for his body of work. There are two more of his titles I can’t wait to wrap my brain around.
But alas, Ginnie, my enabler, keeps ordering these high quality, well written, hardbound books and leaves them lying around. They are like a magnet to my word-starved brain. Having listened to Iowa’s own Bill Bryson’s, “One Summer: America 1927” audio book during her commute to work, she ordered the hardbound book for her father. 1927 was the year her father was born. There was a lot going on that year: Lindbergh, Ruth, Prohibition, to name a few. Before she could ship “One Summer” off to her father, I grabbed it up. It’s incredibly well written, entertaining, and very informative.
She also ordered “Olive Kitteridge” by Elizabeth Strout, and “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” by David Lagercrantz, which continues the Stieg Larsson series, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.”
I recline and read the winter away. Through the window of the farm house, the mile-long, 100-car trains roll silently by, like buffalo crossing the prairie. Buddy is curled on my lap, a cup of strong coffee to my lips. I feel the words of the book moving through my fingertips, up my arms, via veins and capillaries, to my brain. Money can’t buy this moment.
Contact Curt Swarm at 319-217-0526 or email him at curtswarm@yahoo.com