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11 september 2000

i'm reading a really good book

For those of you reading this from outside the United States, this has been a most unusual summer for our country. The Western states have endured unbearable heat and drought, as well as raging forest fires over millions of acres. It's the worst they've seen since the Dust Bowl days of the 1930's (which my great-grandparents witnessed firsthand on their wheat farm in Montana). Parts of the Midwest have had the heat and drought, but then my friends in Chicago say it's been the nicest summer they've seen in years. In the East, it's been downright temperate over here, even cool. It's also been wet. This is undoubtedly the rainiest summer I've seen, which doesn't bother me much at all. Aside from the increased mosquitoes, the cool and sometimes dreary weather has allowed me to accomplish more reading than I have in a long time.

And I don't mean the bigraphy of Burt Reynolds or the National Enquirer. Nope, I may as well confess...I actually read books of substance. There. I said it.

When I was a kid and we went to the mall, I would sit in the back of the bookstore and read Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree. Time and again, I would reach the middle of the book and become teary-eyed, watching that nice tree sacrifice itself for the little boy. Even now, I will occasionally pull my copy off of the shelf for a quick read. And again, I become all verklempt and sad for the tree. It is a timeless book, written for children but relevant to everyone. And after all this time, The Giving Tree is still my favorite.

I don't know that my tastes have changed all that much. I still have a yen for beautiful books. No, I don't mean the kind with heavy-chested women and juicy men, throbbing for one another on the cover. I mean the kind of books that make you happy that you can read in the first place. Happy that you have any sort of language at all.

I have been reading such a book for the past month or so. It is Independent People, written by Halldor Laxness. He is the first Icelander to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, which you know is well-deserved if you've read this book. It is the sort of novel that I find myself savoring, instead of trying to plow through in a few days. At a sitting, I usually read ten or twenty pages, then put it away for later. To read more would be greedy. The language alone is worth the time --- robust, languid, and poetic. It is, I suppose, the equivalent of a fine painting that you want to revisit, for fear of missing part of the picture. I've finished a couple of books since beginning Independent People, but this is my special reader. I'm in no hurry.

There have been some books throughout my life that stay with me, kind of like memories of good food. I still laugh out loud to remember some of the Ramona books, by Beverly Cleary. While I don't agree with her politics, I always enjoyed Ayn Rand's novels, particularly The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Abelard and Heloise is a gem, and I love to re-read one of my all-time favorites, Pearl Buck's The Good Earth.

I am the same way with magazines, enjoying the ones with a little more substance. Yeah, I buy the National Enquirer. So sue me. (Actually, sue them. Everyone else does.) When it comes to decent periodicals, though, I buy my fair share. This week, I'm reading Mother Jones, the latest Atlantic Monthly, and finishing a few articles in Bitch: A Feminist Response to Pop Culture. I like to think that reading stuff like this saves me from the tripe that is published in most women's magazines; which are mostly weight loss, beauty tips, and how to trap a man by acting like someone else who is underweight and dresses better than me.

There is no chance of rain today, so I think I'll go take Wilma for a walk. While I won't hear raindrops outside when I do pick up my book, the leaves are starting to slowly fall. If I listen, I'll hear them.