Meeting and Making Mutual Friends

"Isn't it all about me?" Not always, girl!

New England is a long way from Michigan, and I’ve never been closer to the former than New Jersey (which doesn’t count at all, I’m sure). Neither has New England been part of my dream life, a place I’ve longed to see. My parents made the trip once to see the famed New England autumn and were appalled by the traffic and the difficulty of finding overnight accommodations, not having booked ahead. My father’s conclusion was: “Michigan is better.” And October 2024 in Michigan was certainly one of the loveliest ever. But this is all beside my point, which is that A Memory of Vermont as a book title would not necessarily draw me in, except for the subtitle, Our Life in the Johnny Appleseed Bookshop. Now that’s more like it! 

My outdoor winter world, as of a day ago --

Poet Walter Hard’s drugstore, following a tradition begun by his own father, featured a table of books, so when Walter and Margaret’s daughter wanted experience in the book world before graduating from college, her idea was to have her own summer bookshop in their little town of Manchester, Vermont. As a bookseller and reader, I am always interested to learn how someone else got into the business. What happened with Ruth’s seasonal shop was that after she graduated and went on to a career in publishing, her parents continued the Johnny Appleseed Bookshop. Her father even sold the family drugstore to have more time to devote to his own writing (a decision that shocked many in the town), and he and his wife, besides their other writings in poetry and prose, collaborated on a travel book called This Is Vermont. 

Well, there she is again!

As I read their story, which inevitably includes many other writers and mention of many books, what strikes me over and over is all the connections books make in a reading life – connections to other writers and other books. Walter Hard, for example, was asked to write The Connecticut for the “Rivers of America” series, and only just the other day I finished Hodding Carter’s The Lower Mississippi from the same series, having been led to Hodding Carter by Albert Murray, after having been led to Albert Murray by some other author’s book, though now I forget which book or author. And imagine my delight to learn that Ruth Hard, in stocking her original Johnny Appleseed Bookshop, carried all of Mary Webb’s books then in print, having fallen in love as I did with Precious Bane after reading about that book in yet another book, so that when I read of Ruth's love for Precious Bane, I feel I am meeting a friend with whom I share something important.

In their winter caps....

And then Hendrik Willem Van Loon himself pays a visit to the Johnny Appleseed Bookshop and inscribes his book on Rembrandt to Margaret (after she procures 10 copies of the remaindered volume for him and one for herself) with a wonderfully detailed drawing of Rembrandt in his studio! Van Loon! The first of his books I had a chance to obtain was his Geography, found at a yard sale in Leland one summer long ago, so long ago that the author’s name was then still unfamiliar to me, but the art on the pages captured my eye, and I was very happy years later to have in my own shop, for a while, a first edition of his The Story of Mankind, the very first Newbery winner (1922), written for children and so popular with grownups that a paperback edition had to be issued issued for adults.

The trees in their winter white....

My favorite Van Loon, though, has to be Lives. In Van Loon's Lives, the narrator and a relative decide to give a series of dinner parties with the most interesting guests they can think to invite. Following a brilliant decision that invitations do not have to be limited to the living, the first guest they invite is Erasmus. For each social evening planned, there is discussion of the menu and what aspects of “modern” life might most interest their guest or guests from the past. What intrigues the guests is not always what the hosts expected! But again the charm of the illustrations -- ! For instance, Descartes with his cape blowing in the wind! I have always wondered if this book might not have been the inspiration for the old television show, Steve Allen’s “Meeting of Minds.” 

 

Reading books and finding in them mention of other familiar books and authors, as well as encountering titles and names one is inspired to seek out, is only one aspect of the meeting of minds that takes place in reading, but I find it endlessly enchanting. 

 

In the more than three decades of my own bookshop, I too have met many interesting and delightful people from all walks of life, not only writers and other booksellers but people with backgrounds and callings very different from my own. Sometimes in the morning before we began our days in Northport, the Artist would muse, “I wonder who we’ll meet today.” For me, there has always been the additional question, What books will find their way to me today? Other minds, many connections, old friends and new.

Homeward bound

As you can see from the images in today’s post, winter has arrived at last Up North. I drove to Traverse City on Tuesday morning through the most beautiful scenes imaginable: sun-kissed, snow-laden branches glistening bright, blinding white against ominously dark masses of clouds. I’d been in my bookshop on Sunday and Monday, both supposedly days off according to my winter schedule, but there were still a lot of holiday visitors in town on Sunday, and I had deliveries to meet on Monday. Tuesday, then, was my first chance to get to Traverse City to pick up the new order of book bags, and Sunny and I made it to the dog park in Northport by noon, where we saw several of our mutual friends. Nice!

I thought I might be snowed in on Wednesday, but my plow guy had come, and the winter storm warning was from 7 p.m. on Wednesday to 7 p.m. on Thursday, so I went to Northport, picked up mail, bought some groceries, and opened my shop for four hours. One in-store customer and one phone order made my being there worthwhile. Now, will Thursday will be a snowed-in-at-home day? 

Back way into the village on Wednesday

Coming down the hill

Our beautiful village tree!

Postscript: All right, that is the bookish part of my life, but what of the rest? Here in the dark of Thursday morning, I am sitting up in bed with my dog leaning up companionably against my side, the wind “howling” (it doesn’t really howl; there must be a better word for the way it wraps itself insistently around our old farmhouse), and the furnace blower coming on at intervals, thinking about my life and the lives of others. 

As for people I meet in my bookshop (a big part of my life), the first batch of holiday greetings I rushed to the post office contained an egregious error. I had reported a visit by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin as one by Michigan Senator Carl Levin! Impossible, since Levin died in 2021! All I can say in my (feeble) defense is that both are on my “good guys” list, and I have been, after all, since January 1967 a “Michigan girl.” Senator Durbin, please accept my apologies!

And yet -- there they are together, connected, in my bookshop!

Widow brain? Lack of focus? The perils of haste?

I talked to a dear friend last night whose husband died on Thanksgiving Day, a week ago today. One week into widowhood, she is in no hurry to clear away his piles of books and papers and says that being in their home, surrounded by the life they made together, is a consolation to her. I had a letter from another dear friend on Tuesday who thinks I am “brave.” I am not brave. I get up in the mornings and do what has to be done and arrange for little treats for Sunny and me, e.g., dog park on Tuesday, potato chips on Wednesday, and look around at the beautiful world and feel gratitude for my life. 

At the same time – Tuesday’s drive to Traverse City, for instance, one of the most beautiful mornings I have seen in my entire life: Every moment of that lovely morning, drinking in its loveliness, awed by the world’s beauty, I also felt the pain of the Artist’s absence. He was not seeing it. We were not sharing it. Joy and sorrow commingled, the bitter and the sweet. Life is, in the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins, “a dappled thing,” no less lovely for its mixed and paradoxical nature. 

And yes, I am taking today, Thursday, as a snow day, staying home and off the roads.

The Way It Is, The Way It Was

Golden trees along M-115 on Monday 

The season --

 

Not every autumn is as colorful as this year’s fall in Leelanau County, which was, to me, surprisingly beautiful -- surprising, since I never remember what factors go into making fall color particularly vibrant and therefore had no idea what to expect. (For others like me who forget from one year to the next, here is the full explanation.) But the season was spectacular, as it turned out, and many of us could not stop trying to store the beauty. Now not much red and orange is left – mostly gold and brown -- and even the gold fades a little more every day, as more and more trees let the winds strip their branches bare.

Corner of woods near my home on Tuesday morning

Sunny Juliet and I had our last agility session for the year and are on our own now until late spring 2025. Also, because of live traps set in the yard for Mr. Porcupine, Sunny does not have her usual at-home freedom. So I take her on-leash beyond the yard, where we can have tennis ball play (off-leash) in the neighbor’s driveway through the orchard, and we go for our long walks at least once a day, sometimes twice. As for those porcupine traps, though, I’ve pretty much lost hope of any result. Mr. Porcupine seems to be finding enough to eat without being tempted by baited traps….

 

Two leashes joined give her much more than an extra inch!

Combining business and pleasure --

 

Monday took us to Cadillac, where I visited a photographer’s warehouse to stock up on jigsaw puzzles for holiday and winter bookstore visitors, afterward meeting a dear friend from Kalamazoo who brought me books I was purchasing from an estate down her way. The deal was arranged by others, my friend taking responsibility only for delivery, but our rendezvous gave us an opportunity to catch up on each other’s lives, which we enjoyed despite a very strong, cold wind across Lake Cadillac that day. 

The library in Cadillac was our rendezvous point.

Lunch was a picnic -- in the cold wind!

A beautiful beech tree nearby had a warm look.

Sadly for Ms. Sunny Juliet, finding the photographer’s warehouse and making my purchase took longer than expected, so we didn’t have time for the dog park. Laurie was willing to look for it with me after our picnic lunch (in the cold wind), but by that time I only wanted to get home again, where tennis ball play plus a good walk made up to Sunny for all her boring time in the car -- I hope!

 

Driving back from Cadillac on M-115, for several miles I noticed the brilliant red of Michigan holly berries, but with a car behind me I didn’t try to pull over and stop. In the morning, on my way southeast, driving into that bright rising sun, I hadn’t noticed those reds at all; then, going back, noticing, I thought there would be more down the road that I could stop and capture with my phone camera. But no -- most of it was right there close to Cadillac, and I didn’t spot any at all on M-37. However – surprise! When I picked up my mail at the post office in Northport and found a letter from a friend in the U.P., what did I find enclosed with the letter but a photograph of Michigan holly! 

Having friends, seeing friends, talking with friends, letters from friends -- what would we do without them?

 

 

Reading the past –

 

After reading, one after the other, all four of Albert Murray’s semi-autobiographical novels, taking him from boyhood and schoolboy through music tours to his vocation as a writer, I’ve now been reading Murray writing not of a fictional self but as himself in South to a Very Old Place, a book in which he visits -- not for the first time but this time as a writer preparing a book -- various scenes of his earlier life: New York, New Haven, Greensboro, Atlanta, Tuskegee, Mobile, New Orleans, Greenville, and Memphis. The stuff of racial conflict omitted from his fiction comes out strong in these memoir essays. He pulls no punches. Still, white as I am and can’t help being, I find comfort in the cadences of his language, even in the way he and his refer to their towns – Lana, Beel, Ham (that last, Birmingham, is not given its own essay title, but the name comes up often).

The book I find myself telling people about these days, though, was published in 1833. Three Years in North America, written by James Stuart, Esq. (1775-1849), and published in New York by J. and J. Harper from the second London edition, is an account of the English author’s time spent touring the North American continent, the second volume taking him by stage from New York through Washington, D.C., down the Eastern seaboard, through the slave-holding South (often on horseback), back north up the Mississippi and Ohio by steamboat, and to St. Louis, Cincinnati, Hoboken, etc. 

 

Stuart was horrified by slavery, noting that even those enslaved people who were treated “well,” such as hotel restaurant servers, did not have beds but slept in the hallways on the floor without blankets, and after an extensive tour of Southern states, he met with many white Americans in northern states who had fled north because of slavery’s evils, though the possibility of civil war did not seem on many minds.

More and more leaves are on the ground now.

A very fact-oriented writer, Stuart gives population numbers for every city and town he visits, the width of every river traveled or crossed, cost of transportation, lodging, meals and just about anything else that can be assigned a dollar amount. At the same time, his observations and descriptions keep the account lively, and he also elicits opinions of everyone with whom he has conversation and gives his own opinions of people and places and customs and manners.  

 

Very early in the book, he attended a meeting of Congress in Washington, D.C., and he contrasted the dignity of that assembly with his own country’s Parliament (where even today interruptions and jeers are common). What struck me more, however, was the content of legislative discussion he described that day, providing lengthy quotes. A bill had been put forward to propose that the U.S. post offices be closed on Sunday. (I don’t know if a postmaster worked Sundays then or if, as has been the case all my life, the window to purchase stamps and send packages was closed but the lobby was open so that post office boxes could be accessed by their holders and mail dropped off.) The arguments given against the bill were beautifully and impressively articulate. There were several “Because” paragraphs, but I will quote only one, and that only in part to give a flavor of the objections to the bill: 

 

“Because, The bill violates that equality which ought to be the basis of every law, and which is more indispensable in proportion as the validity or expediency of any law is more liable to be impeached. If ‘all men are by nature equally free and independent,’ all men are to be considered as entering into society on equal conditions,--as relinquishing no more, and therefore retaining no less one than another of their rights. Above all are they to be considered as retaining an ‘equal title to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.’ While we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess, and to observe the religion which we believe to be of Divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is an offense against God, not against man: To God, therefore, not to men, must an account of it be rendered. 

 

(I said I would quote the paragraph in part, but stopping halfway through seems wrong. It goes on.)

 

As the bill violates equality, by subjecting some to peculiar burdens, so it violates the same principle by granting to others peculiar exemptions. Are the Quakers and Mennonists the only sects who think a compulsive support of their religions unnecessary and unwarrantable? Can their piety alone be entrusted with the care of public worship? Ought their religions to be endowed, above all others, with extraordinary privileges, by which proselytes may be enticed from all others? We think too favourably of the justice and good sense of these denominations to believe that they either covet pre-eminence over their fellow-citizens, or that they will be seduced by them from the common opposition to the measure.” 

 

That gives a fair idea, I think, of the quality of argument in the legislature in the first half of the 19^th century. Basically, opposition to the bill rested on freedom of conscience and separation of church and state, and those arguing against it saw not only rights violated if religion were to be a part of government but religion also weakened if the separating wall were removed, because it would be then as if the law said that religious practice could only be ensured if churches were backed up by government, that faith alone would not compel adherence.

 

This was the United States in the 1830s, almost two centuries ago. Look around the world, these legislators said, and see what harm has been done by state religions, not only to individuals but to religion itself. 

 

“…It is perhaps fortunate for our country that the proposition should have been made at the early period, while the spirit of the revolution yet exists in full vigour. Religious zeal enlists the strongest prejudices of the human mind, and when misdirected, excites the worst passions of our nature under the delusive pretext of doing God service. Nothing so infuriates the heart to deeds of rapine and blood. Nothing is so incessant in its toils, so persevering in its determinations, so appalling in its course, or so dangerous in its consequences. The equality of rights secured by the constitution may bid defiance to mere political tyrants, but the robe of sanctity too often glitters to deceive. The constitution regards the conscience of the Jew as sacred as that of the Christian, and gives no more authority to adopt a measure affecting the conscience of a solitary individual, than that of a whole community. The representative who would violate this principle would lose his delegated character, and forfeit the confidence of his constituents. If Congress shall declare the first day of the week holy, it will not convince the Jew nor the Sabbatarian. It will dissatisfy both, and, consequently, convert neither. Human power may extort vain sacrifices, but Deity alone can command the affections of the heart. It must be recollected that, in the earliest settlement of this country, the spirit of persecution, which drove the pilgrims from their native homes, was brought with them to their new habitations; and that some Christians were scourged, and others put to death, for no other crime than dissenting from the dogmas of their rulers.”

 

Surprisingly, I'm sure, to many Americans of today, the legislators of the 1830s did not even exclude atheists from the right to freedom of conscience. We were not a "Christian nation," they said. In other words, we don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the Puritans, now that we have a constitution guaranteeing freedom of conscience to all. “Fortunate,” they said, that this question is before us now and can be settled so as not to plague us in the future. Little did they know! 

But I don't want to close on a note of despair. Tomorrow is another day. And as long as we care about the future, there is hope for the future.

Tuesday turned strangely warm again and closed with grey clouds.

Look Behind You!

 

I turned around, and, with the sunrise is behind me, I loved this view.

Sunny Juliet is always ready for outdoor fun, but our style will be somewhat cramped for a while, because after spotting a very large porcupine in the yard (luckily, Sunny was in the house at the time), borrowing a live trap, and watching a couple videos online, I decided I did not have the necessary confidence for Stage 2, i.e., the release of the porky into the wild (far from my home) all on my own. And so, while Trapper Ron is on the job for the next two weeks, Sunny and I will be coming and going from the house with a stout leash between us. 

 

A friend suggested “maybe he’d leave you alone if you put out a salt block. They like salt." I thought, How about a welcome mat, too? Really, they are so cute, so droll! But they did a lot of expensive damage to a neighbor’s house and ate many tires off cars in my husband’s woodland past, and, if a dog tangles with a porky, consequences can be potentially life-threatening. It isn’t simply an inconvenient, no-fun headache, like a dog-skunk encounter.

 

So that’s a little news from the outdoor home front, where we also had our second morning of hard frost at our place. The two frosty mornings were not consecutive, however, and now Leelanau is in for a nice little stretch of sunny days, with highs of 60 degrees and above – perfect for enjoying the beautiful fall color, which is what inspired several of today’s photos.

Sunrise, still from behind me, has reached across the field to trees.

Looking at sunrise-lit trees glimpsed under cherries still in shadow.

As for the bookish home front, I have been doing everything possible to postpone coming to the last page of Precious Bane, by Mary Webb. Since bane is something poisonous, toxic, while what is precious is dear and beloved, the title (which comes from an oft-repeated phrase of the narrator) presents us with an oxymoron. Or should we see it (as Susan Cain might) as paradoxical but all the truer to life by reason of acknowledging paradox? Do you think a paradox is a contradiction?

 

Rather than provide a link to a standard source for Mary Webb's novel, I’m sending those of you who can’t wait to hear more about it to a blog post I found online, because I think the “literary gypsy” loves Precious Bane as much as I do, and I love it so much that I ordered a couple of new paperback copies for my shop, in hopes of sharing the book with others. It is a story in which we look behind us to a very different time, and the dialect is archaic and regional, but a reader falls right into its magic. At least, this reader did.

But here is the rising sun, which I can't deny you.

  

The porcupine’s appearance and a couple other minor challenges, on top everyone’s current major obsession (campaign season, dontcha know), had me in a rather downbeat mood for a day or two, and I feared that if I came to the end of Mary Webb’s novel during that time, it might just be the straw that broke the camel’s back, so I set Prue’s story aside for two nights and read a couple cozy mysteries back to back, and by Wednesday evening, with Trapper John’s promise of action on the porcupine front and a beautiful sunset, my courage returned. Below is the brilliant sky following the setting of the sun on Wednesday -- but for a more unusual and even more enthralling sight (in my opinion), take a look over on my photo blog, A Shot in the Light, to see what I saw when I turned around. At sunset as well as sunrise, it often pays to turn around and look in another direction. 

Figuring Things Out

Morning clouds, October

This could be a short post. We'll see! If I were writing about all the things I have not figured out, it would be long, but I’m taking the easy way out. 

Happy girl!

First (because I know that’s why many of you tune in), Sunny and I are making great strides in our agility sessions with Coach Mike. I’m able to keep more of the course in my head at once, and our race from one station to the next is becoming smoother all the time. If there were an indoor agility course in Leelanau Township, I would be more than willing to continue through the winter. 

Scene of someone's adventure glimpsed on our way to agility --

(Parenthetically, in answer to the often-asked question, “How late in the season will you keep the bookstore open?” the answer is that Dog Ears Books will be open all winter. Come November, weeks will be shorter [Wednesday through Saturday], and days will be shorter, too [11 to 3], but weather and roads permitting, the shop will be open four days a week.)

 

I’m pretty sure I have the answer now to why Albert Murray is not better known as a writer of fiction. By now well into the fourth of his semi-autobiographical novels, more and more I realize that while his characters and settings are vivid, the world large and complex (from Alabama to Hollywood to Paris and back to New York), there is simply no conflict. The narrator makes a single mistake as a boy, is saved from the consequences by one of his boyhood idols (an understanding and sympathetic character with the wonderful name of Luzanna Cholly), and from there on there are no obstacles in Scooter's life path. When he learns a secret about his parentage, he takes in the new knowledge without a moment’s angst, and it never troubles him later, either. He is given a string bass and within months is touring the country and the world with one of America’s top dance bands. All women want him, no men are ever jealous, and the woman he wants to marry waits contentedly for his return. Marked out from the beginning for great things, he is the golden boy from start to finish, with everything falling into place for him. 

 

Just as Murray decried interpretations of the blues as music of suffering, he had little patience for stories of Black victimhood. He heard the blues as celebratory, not moans of misery, and he wrote his hero’s progress through the world as a story of success, and that’s great – except that we don’t see Scooter triumphing over anything, because nothing ever blocks his way. There is no agon to make him a protagonist. 

 

I say all this more as explanation than critique because I am still very much enjoying these books and looking forward to rereading them in years ahead. Any one of so many little vignettes, e.g., a scene in a barbershop, is as delightful as many a short story from a less-skilled writer, and discussions between characters about history, literature, and music are endlessly fascinating. I’m no longer troubled by neglect of Murray as a novelist, though, because I see what’s missing in his books as fiction: there is no tension, conflict, struggle, and so no real drama. 

 

It’s hard to believe that Murray’s own life was as velvet-smooth and free of difficulty as Scooter’s road. Life is never that easy for anyone! But he apparently felt free to leave out the bumps in the road, thoroughly covered as they had been by other Black writers. I’ll be interested to read this author’s nonfiction work and see how it compares to the fiction: Next up on my Murray agenda is The Omni-Americans: Black Experience & American Culture.

An already colorful curve in the road --

We should have peak color here in Leelanau by next weekend, although I almost hate to see it build to a climax, knowing that the gales of November will soon follow. And we still need rain! But who can argue with blue skies and the warm, albeit temporary, palette of our upper Midwest trees in autumn? 

So here it is for today – dog, books, outdoors. Because that’s my life. 

Wait for it...

...to turn blue!

Toasty Times Are Here

Beech leaves

First, fall color report: Red and orange and yellow are giving way to brown and gold. I’ve written here before, earlier this fall and in years past, that beech leaves in the fall make me think of buttered toast dripping with honey. Now that November is upon us, beech leaves are less yellow, more brown, and the oaks have turned a rich brown, also. Both oaks and beeches, especially the young ones, will hang onto some of their dark, papery leaves all winter.

 

Oak leaves in full sun do have a warm look, don't they?

The French have two words for brown: brun/brune (a hair color, for example) and marron/marrone,  used more often and also one of two names for chestnuts and the chestnut tree (which also goes by the name chataigner -- but see the blue box on this site if you want to increase your confusion), with marron also used as slang to refer to something strange or bizarre. C’est marron! If you want to refer to the color called 'maroon' in English, however, go for bordeaux in French. Like the wine. Oui, c'est marron!

-- Non, ce sont des chênes!

Lakeside oaks

Brown leaves, blue sky

With toasty colors outdoors, it’s time to reach for sweaters and comforters indoors, and I would willingly have sacrificed an hour of after-midnight dark on Sunday in order to have daylight seem to come earlier – I get confused by time changes -- but no! We were gaining an hour (of reading or sleep) to achieve the earlier morning light. (How we humans pretend! “It’s really 8 o’clock, but we’re pretending it’s 7 o’clock” is how I explain the time change to myself.) Earlier morning light is very welcome! Not so welcome is the increase in evening darkness, but next month we’ll turn the corner, I tell myself. It’s good that the equinox comes in December, so that each cold day in January and February we have a tiny bit more daylight.

There she is!

Meanwhile, only on Saturdays now is my bookstore open until 5 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, if there’s no one browsing at 3 p.m., I turn out the shop lights, lock the door, and go home to my dog, staying until 5 only on Saturdays. My bookstore was so busy last Saturday! I was surprised and gratified by all the number of visitors, browsers, and book buyers. Most of first two groups were also members of the third group, I'm happy to say.

Last week we had sunshine three afternoons in a row, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday – and then again for most of Saturday! Basswood and black walnut trees in my yard had dropped all their leaves and stood bare, letting the sun reach accumulated leaves on the ground as Sunny Juliet and I enjoyed light and fresh air along with exercise. Every sunny hour this time of year is a gift. Soon the silver maple leaves will fall, carpeting the ground, leaving bare branches holding up the sky. (Monday: I think today's bitter cold wind will achieve that result!)

Meanwhile, indoors next to my bed these books await my attention: History of the Rain, a novel by Niall Williams; Lexington: The Extraordinary Life and Turbulent Times of America’s Legendary Racehorse, by Kim Wickens (this is a nonfiction account of the horse featured in the Geraldine Brooks novel); To Speak for the Trees: My Life’s Journey From Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest, by Diana Beresford-Kroeger; Meriwether: a novel of Meriwether Lewis and the Lewis and Clark Expedition, by David Nevin; and an ARC of Bonnie Jo Campbell’s new novel, The Waters, due to be released in January. 

I’m trying to save my reading of the Campbell book as a Christmas present to myself. Or maybe Thanksgiving weekend, if I can even wait that long.

The rest? I can’t say I’ll get through them all this month, what with the chance, as happens frequently, that something not in the stack will present itself and cut in line, so to speak -- an ever-present danger of owning a bookstore! After what seems like a lifetime of school and assigned reading, it still feels like a luxury to pick up whatever appeals to me at any given moment, and heaven knows we need little comforts and simple luxuries to keep us going, with winter’s dark and a strife-riven world pressing in upon us.

 

Previous post was my top fiction picks of 2023 from January through October, and next post will be top nonfiction. By the way, a handful of people left comments on my last post, but not a single one chimed in with a favorite novel read this year, and I know that some of you have read novels this year! One person left a new comment on a very old post, recommending a work of fiction from Scotland. Anyone else have recommendations? Anyone?

Another note, not about cold wind: If the only person who comes in the bookstore today was the one who wanted to tell me how much he loves Bonnie Jo Campbell's Q Road, my day was made!

 

Repeats and First Times: These Are Mine; What Are Yours?

Last week in Traverse City --

Morning sunshine brought out orchard gold in Leelanau, as those cherry trees not yet bare of leaf burst into song. I burst into smiles myself when the sun came out, feeling as if an old friend not seen in ages had suddenly called my name from across the road. While the gold of the tamarack seems tarnished now, dulled from its brightness of only days ago, there is still a lot of yellow and orange and warm burnt umber in the landscape. I’ll add a few more end-of-October images as I go along so you can see what I mean.

Morning sun on Leelanau cherry orchard --

Tuesday of last week Sunny and I got to our new agility class for the first time, passing through a torrential downpour to get there. This week we had sunshine for the drive but a little scare with the tire pressure warning light in my car, necessitating an unscheduled stop at the tire shop. Sunny behaved beautifully! Not a single bark! I was so proud of her. When we got to class, though, my confidence for the sport was low, Sunny’s energy much too high, and she was so wild on our first turn through the course that she had to be put on-leash. By our third turn, however, she acquitted herself well, so I felt better driving home through snow squalls. Typical Michigan Halloween weather!

Sunny at Juniors -- being a good dog!

Halloween snow!

 

Seasons are repeats, though never identical from one year to the next. When I re-read a book, as I often do, each reading differs slightly from previous experiences, so that re-reading favorite books is always for me a rich experience. My focus for today, however, is on novels I read this year for the first time and thus, those at the top of my recommended fiction list from 2023.

 

What order should I use to present them? Alphabetical by author? By title? Chronological in the order read? In the order published? Considering and rejecting all these possibilities but also thinking that the order of presentation really doesn’t matter at all, I decided to be whimsical and list in reverse alphabetical order of author’s last name.

Asparagus in autumn is beautiful.

Yourcenar, Marguerite. Memoirs of Hadrian. I wrote a bit about this historical novel back in August, somewhat amazed at myself for reading it at all. In the past, I was not much of a reader of historical novels: I thought of them as genre fiction, somehow less than literary, but such certainly cannot be said of Yourcenar’s fiction (nor of many of the other historical novels I have recently found so engrossing). Nor was I ever drawn to the Roman Empire. But Memoirs of Hadrian captivated me. I read it in French and intend to read it again in English translation – and then probably again in both languages in my future re-reading.

 

Straight, Susan. I Been in Sorrow’s Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots. This is an amazing novel. ‘Amazing’ is one of those words I seldom use, as it seems used far too often for books, movies, ideas, events, etc. that are far from amazing, but Sorrow’s Kitchen, like Memoirs of Hadrian, is a tour de force. The main character, Marietta, is like no other fictional woman I’ve ever met before. Born into an isolated Gullah community in South Carolina, Marietta is physically and imposingly large, “blue-black” like her father, silently observant, and self-reliant. The course of her life, as is true of every human life, is in part self-chosen and in part shaped by circumstance, but Marietta’s response to circumstance is all her own. Many reviews describe as “lyrical” books that do not seem that to me at all. Straight’s novel is lyrical. It also rings true. Marietta is not an easy character to know, but as her essence slowly unfolds every reader will want a happy ending for her. Read this book!

 

Gloss, Molly. The Hearts of Horses. Back at the beginning of August, I wrote that The Hearts of Horses was the horsiest novel I had ever read. In that earlier post I also wrote of the Gloss novel (repeating myself here for those who don’t follow links), that The Hearts of Horses takes place in the period of World War I: “Although far from the fighting, some of the farmers and ranchers in Gloss’s novel are swept up in a jingoism that puts their German immigrant neighbors in peril. There is also discussion between the characters of the fates of the thousands of horses shipped over to Europe to become cannon fodder or shell-shocked survivors right along with the soldiers. The main story, however, takes place out West. It is no longer open, fenceless rangeland, but big-boned teenager Martha Lessen is determined to lead as free a cowboy life as she can and rides away from home to offer her services 'breaking' horses. Martha does not have much in the way of social graces, but, perhaps because she was so sensitive to the feelings of horses, she wasn’t bad at picking up cues about people’s feelings without having to have everything spelled out for her.” Like Marietta in Sorrow’s Kitchen, Gloss’s Martha is atypical of her gender, but she makes her own way, as does Marietta, and I loved this story, too.

 

Dorris, Michael. Yellow Raft in Blue Water. Why had I never read this novel before? When I look online now, I find that it is taught in university classes all across the country. Dorris was the first chair of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College but perhaps remembered most these days for having been the husband of Louise Erdrich. I won’t comment on any of that. I only want to say that this novel is beautiful and surprising. It could almost be described as three novellas, the first with a young woman as the main character, the second focused on the mother of the first, and the third going back to the Horse mother’s mother. Three generations, the youngest of mixed race, her father Black, mother Native American. Now there’s a problem, and I don’t have the book here to refresh my memory and can’t find the answer online: Is “Native American” as close as we get to First  Nation affiliation? Online search turns up the idea, sometimes in question, that Dorris was “part Modoc” on his father’s side. All we know of the three fictional characters in Yellow Raft is that their reservation is in Montana. But the novel can be looked at on its own, apart from all that (and the author’s suicide and so much that preceded it in his personal life), and my opinion of this book is that it holds up well as powerful fiction, each earlier generation shedding light on where the more recent finds itself. 

 

Brooks, Geraldine. Horse. Yes, another book of historical fiction, yet another horsey novel, but it wouldn’t get on my top fiction picks for 2023 for those reasons alone. Set partly in 19^th-century America (the novels jumps back and forth between time periods), Horse tells the story of real-life Lexington, adding for the purposes of fiction an enslaved Black character and his free Black father, as well as a young mixed-race man in the sections of the book set closer to our own time. Brooks and Gloss write knowledgeably and convincingly about horses and no less so when it comes to their human characters. If you want a second opinion, one of my good friends here in Northport (an accomplished author herself) said that Horse was “the best book” she read this year! If you missed and want to read what I had to say about this novel in August, here is the link. 

And finally – 

 

Atwood, Margaret. Hag-Seed. First a confession: I have yet to read The Handmaid’s Tale, though every year I swear that this winter I’ll finally get to it. It is not a matter of avoidance. Just hasn’t happened. But a friend brought me Hag-Seed, and because I have respect for her recommendations I sat down to read the book. Reading on the back of the book that the main character was reduced to a hut in the – was it woods? country? Whatever it was, that pulled me in, and I was immediately hooked. If you are a Shakespeare reader, if you have any experience with or love for live theatre, if you relish literary themes of betrayal and revenge, magic and illusion, you will be delighted with this story. About the title: "Hag-seed" is one of the epithets spat at Caliban in Shakespeare's "The Tempest," the play which forms the background and structure of Atwood's novel, life mirroring drama and containing drama of its own, of course. Absolutely brilliant. And entertaining!

 

There you have it, my top read-for-the-first-time novels of 2023, so far! There are two months left in the year, and more books await my first reading (including an ARC from an author who never disappoints), so I may be adding a couple works to this list before New Year’s is upon us. And really -- it is only coincidence that two of my top novels read this year could be called "horse books," given that very, very few novels for adults feature horses, let alone novels this good. It's also only coincidence that all but one book on this short list are by women authors. Another year it would have been different. 

Just because --

Next I suppose it would only be fair to name my top nonfiction picks. For now, though, what are your favorite novels from this year’s first-time reading? Note that they need not be newly published this year. Maybe you finally read a modern classic for the first time and would put that on your top picks list. Whatever your top recommendations are in fiction from your reading this year – that’s all I’m asking for today. 

Tamarack on All Saints' Day