Leeks and Books -- Why Not?

Monday morning sunshine

We got through March! Did it go out like a lion, or would that be an exaggeration? I’ve already forgotten if the “wintry mix” that veered into big snowflakes happened Saturday or Sunday. Saturday, I think. Easter Sunday was just overcast and gloomy. But Monday morning was bright, as you see in the photo above, and those wild leeks, a.k.a. ramps, were popping up all over in the woods.

We might not have had a real winter, but chances look good for a real spring. And now that April is underway, here is my list of books read in March: 

44. Bartlett, Charles H. Tales of Kankakee Land (nonfiction). I bought this book for descriptions of the Kankakee River and Swamp before dredging, draining, and canalizing, and it was dreamy to picture it in those days. Later tales in the book, however, had more to do with human conflict. Sigh!

45. Cep, Casey. Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee (nonfiction). Furious Hours is divided into three parts. It tells of an Alabama man who took out life insurance on wives and other relatives who kept turning up dead, the lawyer who defended the multiple beneficiary and later defended another man who shot him in front of a large funeral crowd, and finally of Harper Lee’s career, from college until her death, culminating in her abandonment of this complex story. The Reverend, by Harper Lee, based on piles of documents and hours of interviews, never took final shape, victim of one of the world’s most well-known cases of writer’s block. But then, how many prolific writers have equaled To Kill a Mockingbird?

46. Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale (fiction). Finally! I finally read this novel, after saying for several years that “this year” I would surely read it. I began in the afternoon and stayed up until midnight. Terrifying!

47. Cady, Jack. The Night We Buried Road Dog (fiction). A novella and a collection of short stories, all highly original and compellingly written, this book was given to me by friends who brought it home from their travels, only to realize they already had a copy. Thank you, Walter and Marjorie, for introducing me to a writer I might not have encountered otherwise! 

48. Wagamese, Richard. Indian Horse (fiction). Like #46, this is another novel I could not stop reading once started. From the pristine Northern wilderness to the horrors of a Catholic school for Indian children to clashes and catcalls of professional hockey, Saul Indian Horse is someone whose happiness the reader passionately wants him to find. “One of Canada’s foremost writers.” I’m glad to have discovered him at last.

49. Block, Lawrence. Hit Parade (fiction). Block is lauded as a mystery writer, and yet these tales of a professional hit man hardly fit the genre. The charm (if one can call it that) of this novel, as no doubt is true of others in the series, lies mainly in the clever dialogue between the hit man and the woman who acts as his agent, sending him out on jobs that come their way. The hit man is also a serious collector of postage stamps.

50. Chater, Melville. Two Canoe Gypsies (nonfiction). A New York couple whose apartment building is due for demolition decide to canoe and camp their way through Belgium and France in a custom-built canoe, a journey between the two World Wars, when the “back door country” had not yet been modernized. Oh, if only we could travel back in time for real!

51. Parker, Robert B. Ceremony: A Spenser Novel (fiction). Read my first Lawrence Block on Sunday and my first Robert B. Parker on Tuesday. Kind of like popcorn.

52. Paterniti, Michael. Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein’s Brain (nonfiction). A quirky and bizarre, one-of-a-kind road trip, with reflections on personal relationships, history, science, and America in general. For a while, I set this book aside, not sure if I would get back to it, but I did pick it up again and read to the end. Uncategorizable. 

53.             Erdrich, Louise. The Painted Drum (fiction). Definitely one of my second category of page-turners (explained in this post), as mother-and-daughter antique dealers follow an artifact back in time and into their own history. I should probably have read this after rather than before other LE novels, but jumping in anywhere is worthwhile. Do it!

54.             Lystra, Don. Searching for Van Gogh (fiction). Coming of age in the early 1960s was so different from today that it’s hard to remember how naïve many of us were. Still, every generation must discover the world for itself, as Lystra’s 17-year-old protagonist does in this moving novel that doesn’t show all its cards at once. Surprises aplenty! Guest review here. Lystra will be part of the Leelanau Township Library’s summer author series in July.

55.             Erdrich, Louise. Tracks (fiction). I read this book much too quickly and so, the day after I finished my first reading, I started again at the beginning while all the characters were clear in my mind. I should probably be reading her books in order, but my reading is never that organized. Which is your favorite?

56.             Hoffman, Alice. Faithful (fiction). I had some of the same feeling about this story that I had about a very different novel, Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, i.e., how is it possible for these people to keep running into each other time after time, in such a big, busy city? Contrived, maybe? But I was carried along by the flow of the story and was cheering for the protagonist all the way to overcome trauma and dare to live again.

57.             Mason, Daniel. The Piano Tuner (fiction). Mesmerizing, dreamlike story of a Englishman whose 1880s wartime assignment is to travel to a remote village in Burma to tune a valuable French piano for a for an eccentric, peace-loving British general. Many shorter stories are included inside the main narrative. The writing is vivid and compelling.

58.             Mosley, Walter. Touched (fiction). A strange, short novel, quickly read, and I have no idea what to say about it, fan though I have always been of Mosley’s writing. Did the author dream the whole thing? I can imagine that being the case.

59.             Chabon, Michael. Manhood for Amateurs (nonfiction). Personal essays in this volume are grouped by theme, rather than chronologically, so some are funnier than others, a few not funny at all. I laughed out loud more than once and also appreciated the serious moments. If you’ve ever been a parent – or a kid – this book is for you.

60.             Strong, David. Crazy Mountains: Learning From Wilderness to Weigh Technology (nonfiction). Strong teaches philosophy, and this is a very philosophical book. The back cover says it is written in the tradition of Walden and A River Runs Through It. There are very personal stretches, as well as deep stretches of Aristotle, Kant, and Gabriel Marcel, to name only a few. Strong wants something he finds lacking in previous environmental ethics: a strong case for an ethics that would protect wilderness from exploitation, generally, and specifically save the Cottonwood Canyon in the Crazies from timbering. Though sympathetic to his philosophical project, I’m not entirely sure it succeeds – but what could ever convince a timber company owner to give up his business for hiking?

61.             Van Dyke, Michael. Radical Integrity: The Story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (nonfiction). The name is well known, Bonhoeffer a Lutheran theologian and pastor whose opposition to Nazism cost him his life only weeks before the end of World War II. This book almost reads as if written for a YA audience. Its strength is in making clear the questions and concerns and values that drove the man who made a sharp distinction between ‘religion’ and ‘faith.’

62.             Vida, Nina. The Texicans (fiction). He had no intention of helping anyone, no desire to become involved. Joseph only wanted to be left alone, on the trail to Texas as in life generally, but life had other ideas for him. A colorful cast of characters and an unusual story of the West, probably truer than most literary and cinematic romances. 

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So there you have it. Now either pick up a book or get out in the woods, one or the other, because April will be over before you know it! Or, you know, whatever makes you happy....

First spring beauties, petals still furled