As we move into fall, weather is getting cooler and days shorter. A great time to read! Here are five that make my list for a good seasonal read:
Cooking like a master chef by Graham Ellliot. Although I do most of my reading on a Kindle, get this one in hardcopy: the photographs are marvelous. Elliot delights in tweaking American recipes.
For example, his version of the banana split features caramelized bananas foster, hazelnut crunch instead of peanuts, and coffee-chocolate sauce. Yum!
Plainsong by Kent Haruf. Kent is a master wordsmith, creating in the small town of Holt, Colorado, a place so real you can taste the snowflakes on your tongue.
He tells the story of two young boys trying to make their way in a farming community with small adventures and challenges that lead to lives fully lived.
To be savored, like fine wine.
Fast Falls the Night by Julia Keller. This is the sixth in a series of mysteries about Bell Elkins, who Michael Connelly has called “one of the most fully realized characters in fiction today.”
In this mystery, Bell deals with a harrowing 24-hour opioid crisis in the small West Virginia town where she lives.
Not to be missed!
The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens. In this intriguing who-done-it, Allen gives us a harried English major with a term paper due, meets a killer recently released from prison.
Well crafted, humorous in places and suspenseful throughout, this mystery was an Edgar finalist, an Anthony Award finalist, and won the Left Coast Crime Rosebud award for Best Debut Novel.
You won’t be disappointed.
A Wilder Rose by Susan Wittig Albert –Because I grew up in South Dakota, the novels by Laura Ingalls Wilder were required reading!
Little did I know that the books were actually co-authored by Laura’s daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, who was a world-traveler and published author in her own right.
Although a fictionalized biography, this novel is based on the diaries and letters of both women and deals with the American depression and the conflicted relationship of two strong-willed women.
What are you reading right now? What is your absolute favorite book?
The familiar phrase comes from an ode written by Thomas Gray, a poet who lived in the 1700s, The full quote is, “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.”
The impetus for the poem was some joyful children playing near Eton College, with no thought of what future catastrophes their lives might hold. The poet lists a few: disdainful anger, pallid fear, grim-visaged, comfortless despair. He describes an icy soul that watches a slow-consuming old age approach.
The poem was written when Gray was 26, perhaps a bit young for a midlife crisis, but consider that he died at 55. Later Romantic poets had even a worse fate, with Keats dying at 25 and Shelley at 30.
I’ve been blessed with good health, but these words of 300 years ago were prescient of events this past week.
On the advice of my wellness coach, I acquired a Fitbit and a blood-pressure cuff. (Also a thermometer that takes my temperature by touching my forehead, but that’s the topic for another day.)
Using these new wonders of technology, with additional inputs into my computer, I can tell exactly what my blood pressure is upon rising (comatose) and what percentage of fiber I have ingested for the day (not enough).
I now know if I’ve had a restful sleep or whether I’ve been sitting too long in front of the computer. It cheers me on if I’ve accomplished my step goal or allows me to “taunt” a friend if she has not achieved hers.
There are other intrusions on the horizon: Smart refrigerators that alert you if the milk is going bad. A beep on your phone to tell you the traffic is heavy this morning and you need to leave five minutes early for work.
About ten years ago, the futurist Ray Kurzweil wrote a book entitled, The Singularity is Near, in which he predicted a merger between genetics, nanotechnology and robotics to create a new humanoid species entirely unlike anything we ever known.
We are indeed close. I find it exceedingly uncomfortable to be jerked into the future like a puppy raised by the nape of the neck and unceremoniously dumped in the back yard. I’ve had that feeling several times this past week.
Maybe Thomas Gray had it right all along. Perhaps ignorance is bliss, and we don’t want, or need, to know what’s coming.
How do you feel about the merger of technology and humankind? I’d love to hear from you!
Sometimes ideas arrive in your life at exactly the time you need them.
Several nights ago I was reading Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich by Duane Elgin. He describes how the commercial medium of television has profoundly shaped our culture.
Television stations make their profits by selling advertising, and advertising is bought by corporations to sell their products. And where does that leave us?
Elgin says that it creates an impossible double bind for viewers:
“People use the consumption levels and patterns portrayed in TV advertising to evaluate their levels of personal well-being, while those same consumption patterns are simultaneously devastating the environment and resource base on which our future depends.”
Strong words. But they led to me ponder my own relationship with television.
When I was growing up, we had an old Zenith radio prominent in the living room. My sister, brother, and I would gather around it in the evening while my mother cooked dinner and afterwards we’d return until bedtime. I learned to tell time by when Sergeant Preston and his dog Yukon King arrived at our house.
TV didn’t appear in my life until 5th grade. I have a clear memory of the kids (and grownups!) gathering at a neighbor’s house to catch the first snowy black and white picture. I remember wondering what all the excitement was about—it didn’t seem like such a big deal.
My child, of course, grew up in a very different world. She learned to read by watching Sesame Street and had favorite friends in Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.
TV gradually grew to be a constant background in my own life as well. That started to change about 15 years ago. Maybe the content of programs shifted or maybe I did. But suddenly the commercials seemed louder, or perhaps there were more of them. Elgin in his book estimates that people now may see an average of 35,000 commercials in a year. That’s a lot!
I found, too, that as more and more channels became available the content seemed to be degrading. Was it the garbage in, garbage out mentality that dictated what writers were creating?
Plots became simpler and sensationalism blossomed into an explosion of violence and sexual content. The definition of G-rated had come a long way from that first view of Elvis Presley’s hip gyrations on the Ed Sullivan hour!
And so, when I moved to a smaller home several years ago, I took the opportunity to take a break from television. I did miss it at first. There were blank spots in my living, especially at night when I got home tired from work, wanting to zone.
At first, I kept up with my favorites—Downton Abbey and House—via computer streaming. I compiled a list of 100+ must see videos on NetFlix. And I’d go down to the video store and rent a half-dozen of the latest at a time.
And then, another shift occurred. I discovered when I traveled, I no longer turned on the I entered the hotel room. I was out of the habit.
I found to my disappointment that most of the ‘bestsellers’ at the video store were eye candy. Oh, they were full of sensational images and loud decibels but, as Shakespeare once said, “Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” I seemed to cycle in and out of the NetFlix membership. But that, too, is fading and I find that I am not missing it either.
So what has replaced it? Yes, I’m back to radio. Only this time it is the new and improved Internet version. I have discovered Pandora, which is the audiophile’s dream come true. It custom designs a radio station that just plays the music you like (sans commercials, no less).
I started out with my old favorites: Cat Stevens and Simon and Garfunkel, with a bit of Enya and Clannad thrown in for good measure. But the software allows you, in addition to hitting the veto button (I don’t LIKE that song) to also say, OK, give me a bit more variety. I find lately that it is sneaking in some very fine guitarists and vocalists, often from Indie bands that I didn’t know about. And I like it!
I also have returned to reading. Some of it is also popcorn—the latest best sellers and mysteries. But in addition, I find I am reading a variety of other work. In the stack right now is a photo-essay on Bamboo, Pablo Neruda’s poetry, a book on good writing (of course!), a book on conscious eating, and Duane Elgin.
Although I don’t feel deprived, I recognize that the path I have chosen would not fit everyone.
But I would offer, in this season of mass, albeit desperate commercialism, that you monitor what your children are watching, absorbing, and digesting from the TV fare? And I challenge you to become more aware of what is entering your own world, as well.
I submit that the primary world can be infinitely more interesting than the shadows on Plato’s cave wall.
