Drop Everything and Read

When our kids were young, we had DEAR time: Drop Everything and Read. It’s still a good practice, and not just for kids.

This is Memorial Day weekend, which means the beginning of summer – psychologically, if not meteorologically. It’s a great time to slow down and get drawn into a good book. Here’s a synopsis of what I’ve been reading lately. Let me know what books you’ve had your nose in, and what you’ve especially liked.

Fiction 

Pedro Paramo, Juan Rulfo — A surreal masterpiece, this 1955 novel is considered Mexico’s greatest and most influential literary work. Its style is deceptively simple but requires the reader’s full focus to figure out who’s who. Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote that Pedro Paramo was the inspiration for his equally masterful (and equally surreal) One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Nostromo, Joseph Conrad — A brilliant novel about corruption. I loved this book that has it all — intrigue, betrayal, revolution, love, jealousy, and incredible prose. Its structure of jumping forward and backward in time felt innovative for a 1904 work.  

A Perfect Spy, John le Carré — The last le Carré novel I read, The Constant Gardener, was my least favorite and sadly, because I loved The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Russia House, and others, made me hesitant to read another one. This one, which is very autobiographical, published in 2011, has a great plot and the writing is superb — and not just relative to the genre. Le Carré is a remarkably sophisticated writer. Unfortunately, the backstory of the main character’s (and the author’s) father so dominates the story that the plot gets lost. I kept wanting to get past the backstory, which is woven throughout the novel, and get to the damn story.

The Woman Who Fled from Sodom, Jose Geraldo Vieira — A masterfully written story of addiction and the conflict between forgiveness and self-preservation. Like Lot’s wife in Genesis, who was turned into a pillar of salt for looking back with longing as she and her family fled the corrupt city of Sodom, the main character of this novel succumbed to a life corrupted by wealth. Originally published in 1931 by the Brazilian author and poet who also wrote The Slope of Memory, it is steeped in Christian metaphors and beautiful imagery.

The Odyssey, Homer — The 2,700-year-old tale of Ulysses’ 20-year adventure beginning with the sack of Troy to rescue Helen. Homer puts the theme of free will vs. predetermination — with a heavy dose of divine capriciousness — in full view. Early on in this prose translation by Samuel Butler, Neptune grouses, “See now, how men lay blame upon us gods for what is after all nothing but their own folly.” Neptune then proceeds to cause the death of Ulysses’ crew and nearly him too. In this telling, mortals make lots of bad choices, but they’re also blown about by the whims of their gods. Sure, it was a drag when you had to read it in high school, but consider giving it another chance.

Women with Men, Richard Ford – This is a collection of three stories by the Pulitzer Prize winner of Independence Day. Very well written but so much internal dialogue – similar in style to John Cheever but the characters aren’t as engaging. In fact, the main character in two of the three stories is kind of a dick. Jealous, one of the three pieces, written in first-person in the voice of a 17-year-old boy, was by far my favorite.

The Covenant of Water, Abraham Verghese — I dragged myself through this epic, intergenerational novel about a family in India. I didn’t love the style of writing nor the character development. But a great plot with lots of twists and turns.

 

Non-fiction 

Endurance, Alfred Lansing —- Every chapter of this spellbinding account of adventurer Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 attempt to lead a party across Antarctica had me reaching for my heart pills. Spoiler alert: he failed. But through inconceivable hardship, he kept his team together and alive during the treacherous 17-month ordeal. Read it if you dare.

The Boys in the Boat, Daniel James Brown — Beautifully written account of how a group of boys from Washington State overcame hardships amid the Depression to become 1936 Olympic champions in Hitler’s Berlin. Better than the movie.