The best intentions.....
I have read three books already in 2020 and yesterday I spent some time catching up with my reading notes. I had been remiss concerning this task and I realized the omission felt significant. So too the missing book posts, and although I have decided to forgo catch-up blogging in general, this remains the exception: the one case in which I cannot move forward without first looking backward. The books I read always end up informing my thoughts, past reading informing future reading, the way our experiences, all our experiences, and all our acquaintances end up informing and shaping the people we are. The books I read can become either acquaintances of friends, certainly the books I keep become friends, and I think sometimes we humans are simultaneously too narrow and too broad in the way we define friendship. As to books, I am reminded this morning of this quote from William Churchill:
If you cannot read all your books at any rate handle, or, as it were, fondle them — peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you will at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances.
William Manchester: The Last Lion: Visions of Glory. page 31.
I hear Churchill’s voice in the quote, a voice that is familiar to all of us with a penchant for history at least, and it was a sweet discovery earlier this week, as my own view toward books is quite similar. I have begun the task of rereading the first two volumes of The Last Lion in the coming months, mostly as a refresher and prologue to the third volume, which I own but have not yet read.
But today I must deal with housekeeping. Beginning with November and working may way through to books read in December, I hope to finish up the 2019 reading list over the course of the next week or two. Notes or thoughts arising from current reading may, or may not be interleaved, depending on the whims of the muse.
Books that were just ok to good.
I have long loved Lee Child’s Reacher series, and of course I read the newest installment, Blue Moon. As usual, Child has an ability to capture, in spare but haunting words, the forgotten places, the places we don’t really think about, the places we ignore. This quote, from the opening lines of Blue Moon sticks with me, for all of its simplicity, reminding me of a lifelong fascination with maps, and with dreamy wonderings and imaginings of life, not just in exotic locales, but the places we both see and do not see.
The city looked like a small map of America. It was just a tiny polite dot, near a red threadlike road that ran across an otherwise empty half inch of paper. But up close and on the ground it had half a million people. It covered more than a hundred square miles. . .
Alas, that was the most memorable part of this book for me. As usual the storytelling was excellent but the body count got to me and aspects of the story seemed weak, geared more to provoking thrills or outrage rather than a coherent story. Alas, my own outrage was aimed more at the author than the injustices portrayed. I will read the next one and see if this development is the exception or a trend.
Allison Pittman’s Loving Luther was an engaging, easy-going, and entertaining read that placed no demands upon the reader. Told from the perspective of Katharina von Bora, the first half of the book, which revolved around Katharina’s life in the convent before she met Luther, was more engaging than the second half, which seemed to be trying too hard to turn the story into a conventional romance. Sometimes, light bits of fluff like this are just the thing, temporary amusements.
Likewise, Stephen King’s Elevation. I picked this up in an airport bookstall while I was waiting for a short, one-hour flight. It was the perfect entertainment at the end of a long day, and perfect for the duration of the flight. It is very well written, which is not at all surprising, and sweet; a different perspective from the kind of dark psychological exploration that we tend to expect from King. This novella is a rather pointed look at the kinds of issues that fill contemporary newscasts, but it is also a story of letting go of the things that weigh one down. In fact this dichotomy encapsulates its power. Although I have been accused too often of being cynical, I perhaps am also too easily satisfied by simple hopeful things. In retrospect the memory of this book has grown on me, and although I think the book may be dismissed as simple pandering to cultural unrest, or even blind hopefulness, it is actually a bit more than that. It has snuck up on me perhaps.
Last, in today’s discussion, but far from least, Marty Makary’s book, The Price We Pay, is about how the commodification of medicine has broken the health care system. It is a good book that I think more people should read.
Makary starts with stories, stories that are at times shocking, and then moves from there to the data behind those stories. This is where the strength of this book lies, in the naming and the call to action. Makary admits that he has been, through much of his career, ignorant of these very forces, forces that have created an unwinable game, despite the fact that he works from deep within the system. And yet it is this very fact, the fact that he is in the middle of the system, that has allowed him to reveal some of the inner workings, inner workings that appall him as much as they will outrage the reader.
The book is well-written and clear, and Makary takes the time not merely to expose the problems but to honor agents of change. Makary’s suggestions for fixing the problem are not enough, in and of themselves, but i agree with him that the first step toward healing is in the naming.
And it feels as if I have written more than enough for one post, even though I have discussed merely a third of the twelve books I read in November. This project may take more than a week, but I will get through it. Until next time....
