The Empty Land, A Novel, by Louis L'Amour

A trapper found a chunk of gold, and in six days Confusion, a new gold-mining boom town near todays Ely, Nevada, appeared where there had been nothing for thousands of years. New discoveries always attracted honest men who came to work the mines, but along with them came thieves, gamblers and outlaws. In just a few days several thousand men and some women came.

Dick Felton was committed to digging his fortune out of a muddy hillside but the town itself was his biggest challenge. Matt Coburn found himself in the new town and his reputation for being a hardened realist and a man that had cleaned up tough towns before had followed him.  The town lacked law and order and the mines themselves became the target of a violent plot. Matt Coburn wanted no part of Confusion because too many of his enemies knew he was there, but he found himself with only one way out with honor, but it could cost him his life.

On one side are those who understand only brute force. On the other are men who want law and order but are ready to use a noose to achieve their ends.  Matt Coburn and Dick Felton are the only thing separating these two sides, outnumbered and outgunned, they can’t afford to be outmaneuvered. For as the two unlikely allies confront corruption, betrayal, and murder to tame a town where the discovery of gold can mean either the fortune of a lifetime or a sentence of death, they realize that any move could be their last.

See the Literary Favorites Section for Louis L'Amour for more about this authors impact / Click Here. 

Quotes by Louis L'Amour

“If you’re going to have peace rather than violence, both sides have got to want it. One side alone can’t make peace.”

Education of a Wandering Man, by Louis L'Amour

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Louis Dearborn LaMoore was a high school dropout who by the time he died in 1988 he had sold 200,000,000 of his books. He had written primarily  Western novels (He preferred to call them "frontier stories")

L'Amour's success needs to be considered even before we look at "The Education of a Wandering Man, A Memoir by Louis L'Amour because, as an author, his success shouts loudly for some critics who label this book as less polished.

Many (myself included) didn't know L'Amour for anything except what seemed like a successful Western writer of historical fiction, before this book came out in 1989.

This book is a surprise giving us an overview of L'Amour's experiences in the western U.S. and Far East as seaman, ranch hand, mine guard and hobo. It shows that a person’s real life history is hard to beat for a good book.

The story starts with L'Amour dropping out of school at age 15 and becoming a wandering young man. He first became a hobo on the Southern Pacific Railroad, then a Cattle Skinner in Texas. He even became a world traveler, merchant seaman, based in Singapore. He made a living anyway he could. He worked as a hired hand, cowboy, and even as a prize fighter. He traveled the rails, lived in hobo camps, and learned while listening to men around the fires in the evening teaching him to be a natural storyteller.

When you read a story like this you don’t expect to have so many of the old classic’s discussed. During these years of traveling, Louis read everything he could find, educating himself. He learned from the masters in those books about the questions that have been discussed over centuries. His love affair with the books was real.

He always carried books with him in his travels. He would work a little and then always buy a book or two, if he could. What he bought was a regular part of the story along with what he was reading.  

One summer he spent three months alone in the mountains, living in an old shack, while taking care of cattle.  The shack had been used in prior years by those doing the same summer job and he found a sack of old books under some wood.  He wrote about his adventures during that time, and about the books he had found an read. The books were classic’s. Today they would also be called part of the "Great Books". They consisted of Aristotle, Plato, Nietzsche and others.

His story is a good lesson on being a reader first, and then a writer. L’Amour was a reader. He had an appetite for reading that seemed to never be satisfied.

He served in World War II and after the war started writing novels. One of his first was the novel "Hondo". It became a movie and John Wayne was the star and like other famous writers the movie let a lot of people know who he was.

The book shows where the passion for reading can lead and demonstrates how it serves those who are self-educated. They become someone different though their reading. They re-invent themselves. A great book to read even if you already like Louis L'Amour as a writer.

See Poetry Section for Poem, "I'm a Strange Here" by Louis L'Amour click here

Quotes by Louis L'Lamour

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” 

“Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.” 

“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished; that will be the beginning. ” 

“For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.” 

“The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. Travel too fast,
and you miss all you are traveling for.” 

“Few of us ever live in the present. We are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone.”

The Widow's House by Carol Goodman

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Clare and Jess grew up in a small collage town in the Hudson River Valley and met in a special, selection only, high school writing class taught by Alden Montague. He was an experienced well known writer and he took a strong interest in Clare.

This is really Clare’s story, she is the narrator, as she tells us about her life story.  Both Clare and Jess are writers, and Jess had his first novel published when they first got married. Both broke up previous relationships to be with each other. Clare had gotten pregnant but loses the baby and then they got married, went on to finish collage, and later moved to New York.

Clare is the more talented writer but works as a copy editor to pay the bills. Jess spends full time writing his second novel but seems to have writers block, their money is running out and their marriage is not happy. Jess thinks they should sell everything, pay off their bills, and move back to the Hudson River Valley where he feels they both can do better writing.

Jess finds Katrine, a realtor, who turns out to be his old girlfriend from school, and she takes them to see Alden Montague, where he offers them the position of caretakers, rent free, at his Hudson River Valley estate, Riven House.

Montague remembers Clare as his most promising student and, still fond of her, he becomes a resource to her as she starts to try to learn more about her past and begin her own book.

Clare was adopted and grew up not far from Riven House. She wants to know who her parents were and when Katrine  tells her that many of the records from the past are now open she starts researching local records.

Montague’s family has lived in their big estate home for generations and, with Clare and Jess living on the estate, Clare starts to write about the history of the house.

The house is badly broken down with many empty rooms some where the lights don't work. The architecture is unique with the house built around an octagon center, surrounded by marsh fields and a large pond, both of which often are covered with fog. Riven House has a dark and troubled past with a reputation of being haunted and Clare has several encounters with ghosts.

With the story of Riven House unfolding, and Montague’s story of how his great-grandfather broke the heart of the local Apple Blossom Queen, Clare begins to research the legend, discovering parallels to her own life that include secret loves, illegitimate births, lost children, and mothers driven mad.

The strength of this novel is that you really see things the way Clare does but then Clare misses the real story until near then end, just as we do. She is not sure if the ghosts are real until the end and again we are not sure either. The details of Alden Montague’s parents, their parents, and the estate itself, turn out to be very important for Clare.

This is a suspenseful story that you won't want to put down. 

The Art of Memoir, by Mary Karr

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Stephen King's book, "A Memoir Of The Craft, On Writing" is a must have book for writers. The first paragraph of his book says: "I was stunned by Mary Karr's memoir, "The Liars' Club. Not just by its ferocity, but its beauty, and by her delightful grasp of the vernacular, but by it totality- she is a women who remembers everything about her early years.".....

Wow, that is high praise indeed.

The Wall Street Journal said of "The Art of Memoir" that it is a book that should be “required reading for anyone attempting to write a memoir or who lives for literature”. Mary Karr can teach you about memoir but she becomes a little intimidating with her credentials. She is an English professor at Syracuse University, a successful non fiction writer, and you can tell she really knows her stuff.   

Karr is passionate about her belief in the memoir approach and important literary style. She says “There is a lingering snobbery in the literary world that wants to disqualify what is broadly called nonfiction from the category of literature”. 

As expected in a book like this she covers the basics especially focusing on importance of truth and the road to exaggeration and why memoirs fail. 

Chapter 23, "Michael Herr: Start in Kansas, End in Oz", stood out. Herr was an American writer and war correspondent, known as the author of Dispatches, a memoir of his time as a correspondent for Esquire magazine during the Vietnam War.  

Michael Kerr "Voice" in his on-war memoir “Dispatches” is much the same as his narration of “Apocalypse Now”. They both demonstrate that where you start and end is so important. Mary Karr uses this narrative and chapter to show the value of strong opening dialog.

Karr's discussion of this dialog, one sentence at a time, was a learning experience: “There was a map of Vietnam on the wall of my apartment in Saigon and some nights, I’d lie on my bed and look at it.....................”

"The Art of Memoir" will be an important book on both reading and writing in the years ahead. 

As I lay Dying by William Faulkner

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As I Lay Dying is a novel that focuses on the death and burial of Addie Bundren, and how her husband Anse Bundren and their five children, deal with the death, and with each other.  Addie lays sick and asks for a coffin to be made, and for a promise to bury her in a cemetery 30 mile away.  Her husband Anse is lazy and selfish and doesn’t help but her son Cash spends days working on the coffin. Just outside Addie’s window he pounds and saws for all to hear, including Addie.  

Addie dies and they load the coffin onto a wagon and prepare for a trip that will take days to accomplish.

Jewel, the most loved of the children has many issues and violence is one of them, but he is also the one  that seems to be able to express feelings of loss and his own pain at Addie’s passing. 

The two key characters in the story seem to be Jewel and Darl. Unlike Jewel, Darl was the least loved child and was the emotional opposite of Jewel. Darl thinks he is very smart, but he is not, and he even has a hard time just communicating.  The others say he has his own “specialness” (not a good thing) which means his logic is as awkward as his language.  At one point he asks, after his mother has died, “how a mother that was, can not be a mother that is, and therefore, Addie Bundren is not really his mother.” Vardaman jumps on this logic telling Darl his mother was a horse, but Darl replies that Varaman’s mother is a fish.  

(Why a fish? A short explanation of why in Daily Comment Section. Click on this to go to that section)

The dialog that follows between them is just more of a string of consciousness found throughout the novel. “Then where is your ma, Darl?” Vardaman said. “I haven’t got ere one,” Darl said. “Because if I had one, it is was. And if it is was, it can’t be is. Can it?”

The story is deep with double meanings and symbolism. One example is that Jewel, the favorite, was left alone to carry the weight of the coffin. As the wagon crosses a river on the trip to the cemetery the coffin slips off and floats down the river.  It is caught up with and hauled back to the wagon. Vardaman after a time starts to believe his mother is a fish and bores two holes into Cash’s perfect coffin to double check, in the process he bores into her face, much like a hook catches a fish. Jewel and Vardaman seem to be the only ones who have any grief over their mother’s death.

The novel takes a unique view of how this family views death. It is a little hard to follow the dialog, but the language comes off the page with the general character and attitude of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, a place based on his own Mississippi habitat. The story is not a dark comedy, as some may say, it is a transition into another world that is marked by the tone of the language, that is much like music. The rawness of the culture and the people pull you in, and Faulkner largely through the language makes you feel the story.

A unique and interesting family so well presented in detail that you marvel at their existence as a family unit. It isn’t the plot, it is characters that have made Addie’s death into a fascinating story.

An Interesting Writing Approach

The use of language of course but also throughout the novel, Faulkner presents 15 different points of view, each chapter narrated by one character, including Addie, who expresses her thoughts after she has already died. In 59 chapters titled only by their narrators' names, the characters are developed gradually through each other's perceptions and opinions, with Darl's predominating.

William Faulkner Quotes As I Lay Dying

“It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That's how the world is going to end.”

 “...the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.”

 “People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.”

 “Memory believes before knowing remembers.” 

“I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.” 

When Breath Becomes air, by Paul Kalanithi

Dr. Lucy Kalanithi and Dr. Paul Kalanithi with their daughter, Elizabeth Acadia. Courtesy of Lucy Kalanithi

Bill Gates said "This Book Left Me in Tears" but then he included it on his recommended list. 

The book is about Paul Kalanithi, who received a masters degree in literature and was planning on a PhD at Stanford, and his obsession with the question of "what makes life worth living in the face of death?

Paul's father had been a doctor but he started out getting his degree in literature but he set aside his initial plans to write and went on to medical school. He wanted to know “where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” He wanted to have relationships with the suffering, and felt that he could learn more about what makes human life meaningful as a doctor. 

When Paul was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2013, he was a 36-year-old on the verge of making big contributions to the world with his mind and hands. He was a gifted doctor—a chief resident in neurosurgery at Stanford just months away from completing the most grueling training of any clinical field. He was also a brilliant scientist. His postdoctoral research on gene therapy won him his field’s highest research award. He could have written a good book on any subject he chose.

As he was ending his residency he learned that he had stage 4 cancer and that he might have 5 to 10 years to live. He could return to neurosurgery or he could write? He did both. He and his wife, Lucy, then chose to have a baby that came eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. On July 4, 2014, Elizabeth Acadia “Cady” is born and Paul is filled with joy, even in his darkest hour. (see quote below *1)

He said of his pending death and the time he had left that is was unsettling (a big understatement), but he added; “Yet there is no other way to live.” 

Both this book and "The Heart" (see review) are about death. This one is nonfiction, the other is a novel and both are very well written and have the potential to change your thinking.

The beauty and wonder of the body is really revealed in these writings. Paul wanted to find what makes human life meaningful and I think the answer is in both of these books. 

Quotes

*1  “Will having a newborn distract from the time we have together?" she asked. "Don't you think saying goodbye to your child will make your death more painful?"
"Wouldn't it be great if it did?" I said. Lucy and I both felt that life wasn't about avoiding suffering.”

 “Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete.” 

“Life wasn’t about avoiding suffering.

The Hidden Life of Trees, What They Feel, How They Communicate: by Peter Wohlleben

“The Hidden Life of Trees, What They Feel, How They Communicate”, by Peter Wohlleben, explains why forests matter on a global scale and we learn that “that when trees unite to create a fully functioning forest that the whole is greater than its parts.”

Sociability, especially between trees of the same species, leads to the sharing of food through interconnected root systems to create an ecosystem that allows protection from the elements. A tree is only as strong as the other trees around it, and the creation of a forest allows longer lives for many of the trees. The common root system allows weak and sick trees to be nourished by the stronger ones, and sometimes it is extended to even trees of other species, often just considered competitors. 

Trees of the same species grow together best, side by side, achieving the same height. Like good friends they don’t crowd each other but grow their branches out to the tips of the neighboring tree. The trees have their most sturdy branches facing those “non-friends” of other species. The canopy created moderates heat and cold and forms a protected environment where ever tree is important to the community of trees.

Wohlleben explains that trees communicate with electrical impulses much like humans. When we feel pain in part of our body the electrical impulse travels through the nerves and we instantly feel the pain. With trees the electrical impulses travel at 1/3 of an inch per hour and it can take a hour for the impulse to inform the tree of a problem which might be considered pain. Electrical impulses travel through the root systems to inform of issues with neighbors, sometimes even to and from other species.

An example of this was found by scientists studying giraffes who were feeding on umbrella thorn acacias. It was clear that the trees didn’t like this at all. It took a few minutes but when this happened the trees started pumping toxic substances into their leaves and of course the giraffes got the message and left. What was amazing is that the trees notified their neighbors of the problem by giving off an ethylene gas as a warning that to neighboring trees of the same species and they then started pumping toxins. The giraffes moved away but had to go at least 100 feet away to begin eating again. The smarter giraffes moved upwind. 

Beeches, spruce, and oaks were studied Wohlleben and he wrote that when a creature starts nibbling on them they feel pain. When a caterpillar takes a bite out of a leaf, the tissue around the site changes and the leaf tissue sends out electrical signals, just as human tissue does when it is hurt. However, the signal is not transmitted in milliseconds, as human signals are; instead, the plant signal travels at the slow speed of a third of an inch per minute. Accordingly, it takes an hour or so before defensive compounds reach the leaves to spoil the pest’s meal. 

Wohlleben shows the complex ways that trees interact with their environment with a story learned with the re-introduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park.

It all starts with the wolves. Wolves disappeared from Yellowstone, the world’s first national park, in the 1920s. When they left, the entire ecosystem changed. Elk herds in the park increased their numbers and began to make quite a meal of the aspens, willows, and cottonwoods that lined the streams. Vegetation declined and animals that depended on the trees left. The wolves were absent for seventy years. When they returned, the elks’ languorous browsing days were over. As the wolf packs kept the herds on the move, browsing diminished, and the trees sprang back. The roots of cottonwoods and willows once again stabilized stream banks and slowed the flow of water. This, in turn, created space for animals such as beavers to return. These industrious builders could now find the materials they needed to construct their lodges and raise their families. The animals that depended on the riparian meadows came back, as well. The wolves turned out to be better stewards of the land than people, creating conditions that allowed the trees to grow and exert their influence on the landscape.

Peter Wohlleben’s book is ground-breaking in what he has discovered. “He describes the peculiar traits of these gentle, sessile creatures-the braiding of roots, shyness of crowns, wrinkling of tree skin, convergence of stem-rivers-in a manner that elicits and aha! Moment with each chapter.

see American Wolf by Nate Blakeslee for more on the introduction of the Wolf into Yellowstone Park.

Quotes

“This is because a tree can be only as strong as the forest that surrounds it.” 

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The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate_Discoveries from A Secret World

By Peter Wohlleben

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"There are more life forms in a handful of forest soil than there are people on the planet.” 
―

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake

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William Blake was born in 1757 in London. He was a non-conformist who wrote his own style of poetry to put forth his opinions. He told his parents how he seen visions and angels, and that seemed to lead to them to shipping him off to school. The money eventually ran out and he had to get a job.

The Swedish philosopher and theologian, Emmanuel Swedenborg had written a book called “Heaven and Hell”, in which he laid out in painstaking detail what the afterlife looked like. His conclusion was that good people were up in Heaven; bad people were down in Hell

Blake took some issue with the book’s success, added some religion to his own philosophy, and his book was put together; “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” was written in response and it contained a guided tour of Hell that Blake used to correct Swedenborg’s notions. This approach wasn’t unique; both Dante and Milton wrote of their own stories of visits to Hell.

“The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” imitate the Bible in writing style likely done to add credibility, as Blake put forth his own mystical cosmic conception of good and evil. He describes his view that both the material world and physical desire are part of the divine order. Blake believed that each person had a nature that was contrary to the nature of God and that the purpose of life was to reconcile those differences.

The first two sections in the book are The Argument and The Voice of the Devil. In these sections, Blake tells us that good and evil, and even good and evil people, aren't what we think they are but are different kinds of energies, or contraries; both are needed to keep the world going. People are devils or angels, but both are necessary in life

Blake explained: “Without Contraries there is no progression and that attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate are examples of contraries that are necessary to Human existence. He said that from these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.

It is a very short book and way to short to look deeply into a complicated subject.

See Poem about Blake's Thoughts of Heaven & Hell                           and Comments click here

Quotes

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern" 

“Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.” 

"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” 

“You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough

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The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (Oxford Paperbacks)

By William Blake

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Till We Have Faces, A Myth Retold, by C.S. Lewis

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See essay and comments on C.S. Lewis as a Literary Influence at Literary Tab or click here

Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold was C.S. Lewis’s last novel and he used it to question about God’s illogical behavior, a subject he had struggled with all his life. The story is about Cupid and Psyche from the Roman novel, “The Golden Ass of Apuleius”. Psyche is beautiful and loved by Cupid. Orual is unattractive, bitter, critical of the gods, and the story sets her on the path of moral development.

The story is set in the fictional city of Glome and the occasional contact the citizens have with civilized Hellenistic Greece. Pagan myths are part of the plot, but introspection into personal failings and shortcomings lead to accepting that caring gods are present in human lives, but it doesn’t resolve the concern that God is impossible to understand. A partial answer comes with this comment: “Prayer doesn’t change God, but it changes me.” 

Orual examines her life, to give a just account of cruelties and injustices she has faced and believes she has suffered at the hands of the gods, but with that examination Orual begins to change. She sees her own love for her sister for the first time as the selfishness it really was; she sees in what she thought was only deprivation and pain to also be both the mercy and the justice of the gods.

Orual struggled with the question of “why”? “Why do the gods’ actions in men’s lives seem so incomprehensible and unjust. If the gods are real and good, why don’t they tell us so plainly, and just speak to us? Why can’t they simply reveal things to us, face to face, without leaving us having to depend on faith to believe, rather than to be able to simply see?” 

Lewis also uses the story to show that pride, doubt, anger against God, suffering, and selfishness all lead to lives where we make choices, and that those choices have everything to do with who we become in our lives, through our choices?

The conclusion is that to see the face of God, we must be free of duplicities, freed of our pride, freed of the gnawing flaws and poisonous self-centeredness that prevent us from seeing ourselves as we truly are. In the end, “Till We Have Faces” reveals the real challenge of the Beatitudes: “We must be pure of heart before we can see God.” Until we are pure in heart, and have learned from our choices, we won’t have faces that reflect who we really are.

Quotes

“I was with book, as a woman is with child.” 

“It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from.” 

“When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?” 

“Death opens a door out of a little, dark room (that's all the life we have known before it) into a great, real place where the true sun shines and we shall meet.” 

“Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.” 

“Are the gods not just? Oh no, child. What would become of us if they were?” 

Surprised by Joy, by C.S. Lewis

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“Surprised by Joy” is C.S. Lewis’s book telling his own story and of his search for answers to his concerns. He said of this search, “It is difficult to find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me; Milton’s ‘enormous bliss’ of Eden (giving the full, ancient meaning to ‘enormous’) comes somewhere near it. It was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what? Before I knew what, I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse was withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased. In a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else.”

Lewis felt he was suppressing his desires during the time he was an atheist, focusing instead on intellectual interests. Christian authors, such as George MacDonald,  the Scottish author, poet and Christian Minister, seemed to have awakened something inside him, and inspired him, but left him feeling sought after by God explaining: “You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now, the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?”

The book is intended as a memoir but spends more time on the events of Lewis’s finding of feelings he calls “Joy” in his conversion to Christianity. Some details of his early life are included. The book is not ranked as one of Lewis’s best books, but it does tell us some of his feelings about his conversion and is important.

****See William Wordsworth's poem, Poem "Surprised By Joy — Impatient As The Wind" click here

Quotes

“A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.” 

“The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.” 

“…the greatest service we can do to education today is to teach fewer subjects. No one has time to do more than a very few things well before he is twenty, and when we force a boy to be a mediocrity in a dozen subjects, we destroy his standards, perhaps for life.” 

The Firm by John Grisham

 

John Grisham’s second book written in 1991 is still considered one of his best books. It tells what happens to Mitchell "Mitch" McDeere after he graduates from Harvard and chooses to join Bendini, Lambert and Locke, a small firm in Memphis, instead of taking offers from larger firms in New York and Chicago. The smaller firm’s offer was too good to turn down and maybe it was too good to be realistic.

Mitch and his wife Amy Sutherland, a school teacher, move to Tennessee to take the job, but they learn that two of the firms attorneys were recently killed in a scuba diving accident and in the past three other of the firms lawyers died of unusual circumstances. They are concerned and hire Lomax, a friend of Mitch’s brother who is in prison, to investigate to see if there had been any foul play. He learns that there were unusual circumstances in all three cases and reports that to Mitch but soon after that Lomax is murdered. 

Wayne Tarrance, an FBI agent, contacts Mitch, tells him they are watching the firm, and explains that firm is a front for the Morolto crime family’s money laundering operations. They have for years recruited young lawyers who came from poor backgrounds attracting them with the promise of wealth. 

Mitch and Abby secretly decide to leave the country and run. They don’t trust the FBI and feel they are being trapped. They manage to get the FBI to agree to take enough information to accomplish what is wanted, but in return expect $2 million and a prison release for Mitch’s brother. 

The firm becomes suspicious and then they confirm that Mitch is working against them. The wrap up is exciting and intense, and the finish is worth putting the time in to learn about. 

                                  Quotes                                    

“Any lawyer worth his salt knew the first offer had to be rejected.” 
 

Both Stephen King and John Grisham had the good fortune to have their early works made into movies informing those audience of their genre.  King's book, Carrie, and Grisham's book,The Firm, were at the beginning of their successful careers.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

“The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, by Gabrielle Zevin, is the story of a bookstore and the events that lead to A.J. owning it, and his life from that point on.

Key characters in the plot are A.J. the bookseller, his first and second wife, a 2 year old little girl left in his shop with a note, and the  New England Bookstore, It is obvious that the author, Gabrielle Zevin, knows the bookselling business and bookstores, from the sales representatives selling to them, the store owners and right down to the nuts and bolts of the store.

A.J. drinks too much grieving the loss of his first wife. He is opinionated about customer’s literary tastes and seems in the beginning to be a man with few customers and even fewer friends. His life changes for the better when a 2-year-old girl is left in his store with a note attached to her, about the same time his most valuable possession, a first edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tamerlane” worth as much as $500,000, is stolen. Even with the financial loss, and his recent years of grieving, the little girl changes his life for the better.

About this same time, he meets with a publisher’s lady sales rep and that leads to even more life changing events. The tone of the romance that follows is like the conversations that take place throughout the book and seem to be laced with book references. A.J. claims to have a disdain for book clubs, cute little events, and gimmicks but the book is full of how these fit into his life.

A.J.’s relationship with his daughter Maya is special and is something we didn’t get enough of and the sudden grim changes that happen to some of the characters do feed some narrative that the author may have wanted more than we did.

The focus is on love and the joy of living with characters we care for and with humor that compliments the plot.

Quotes

“You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, What is your favorite book?” 

"We aren’t the things we collect, acquire, read. We are, for as long as we are here, only love. The things we loved. The people we loved. And these, I think these really do live on”

“We are not quite novels.
We are not quite short stories.
In the end, we are collected works.” "Remember, Maya: the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life.”

Author Gabrielle Zevin, 

The Shining by Stephen King

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The Shining, Stephen King’s third novel, published in 1977, established him as the preeminent author in the horror genre. The key character is Jack Torrance, a teacher and aspiring writer. Wendy is Jacks wife and Danny is their five-year-old son. Jack has a drinking problem, even worse, he becomes violent and can’t control his temper, even at times when he is sober.

Jack hurt Danny, breaking his arm, when he was drunk and then with other problems he stopped drinking. Just going on the wagon wasn’t enough to stabilize him, and at school he lost his temper with a student, hit him, and has lost his job.

A past drinking partner, who has influence at school and owns part of a winter resort, helps him find a job where he can get away from his problems. The Overlook Hotel, in the high mountains in Colorado, closes each winter and a job is open to stay at the hotel taking care of it’s sensitive boiler heating system and the hotels other needs. Jack gets the job.

He can take Wendy and Danny and they feel Jack will have the winter to have the time to do some writing and stay sober. The hotel is where the real trouble starts. Danny meets a Hallomann who is working on the hotel staff for the summer.

Hallomann recognizes that Danny has “the shine”, like he does but much stronger. The “shine” is the ability to see what other are thinking and see the future. Hallomann also knows that the hotel is evil, and that Danny will likely need him, so he tells him to send a message in the coming months if that happens and he leaves for Florida.

Everyone leaves, and the real problems begin. It is the hotel itself that is evil.  In the decades of it’s history many people have lost their lives in the hotel and terrible things have happened. All the events seem to be coexisting in one place and time and the hotel wants Danny and his powers. Jack is influenced to help them, and he is taken over by them, or probably more accurately stated, by the hotel itself.

It is no surprise that King brings a variety of scary situations to the plot. In the end Danny reaches out for Halloman’s help and evil is confronted.

Quotes

Stephen King said that "When he went home from the hospital he watched the Titanic and he knew his IQ had been damaged" No one can say that King's Horror Genre doesn't make you think. The problem is often what you wind up thinking about!  .... (this quote used in the essay on Stephen King a Literary Influence in that section)

“Sometimes human places, create inhuman monsters.” 

 “This inhuman place makes human monsters.”

“Monsters are real. Ghosts are too. They live inside of us, and sometimes, they win.” 

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

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The title, Catch-22, is so well understood that it alone could serve as a simple review for this book. Even those that have never read the book understand the title, which can be found as a dictionary entry for what the book implies.

"Joseph Heller’s Catch-22," and "Voltaire’s Candied" (see review) are both focused on satirizing the idea of optimism. Events in both allow the author to interchange tragedy and comedy. Both books are literary icons , but Catch-22 speaks loudly to today’s readers, even though it was first published in 1961. 

Heller’s writing style is perfect for a story in the military, as is the military the perfect medium to convey the absurdities, suffering and irreverence that make this novel so interesting and humorous.  Even with the tragedies, which are serious, comedy comes through. 

Yossarian is the key character and he is the one that champions our frustration and we love him for both his strengths and flaws. The book has dozens of characters who all are important and interesting. The essential plot for Yossarian is that he does not want to fly any more missions, but that is the core issue of what Catch-22 is. Pilots can stop flying if they are insane but if they declare to those in charge that they are insane and request to stop flying it proves that they have cognitive abilities and are considered sane. It will just lead to them flying more missions. Yossarian is trapped in “Catch-22”: “Dammed if you do, dammed if you don’t

Other forms of Catch-22 are throughout the novel to justify various bureaucratic actions. Even those accused cite the provision and one character explains that "Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing."

The book presented situations that were insane but then they weren’t. The book is worth reading more than once.  

Quotes from Catch-22

If he flew the very risky military missions, he was obviously crazy and then didn't have to; but if he didn't want to and said he didn't want to go, he was sane, and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. "That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. "It's the best there is. 

“He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt.” 

“Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.” 

“Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.” 

The Art of Stillness, Adventures in Going Nowhere by Pico Iyer

Pico Iyer wrote “The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere” and tells us he did it as “a way of falling in love with the world and everything in it.”

His decision to find and write this message followed his life spent as a travel writer, over several decades, arriving at a time in his life when the pleasures of slowing down and being in one place, especially if it is inside ourselves, was considered the real adventure.

As evidence of this conclusion he points out that today people are going faster and faster in search of contentment and meaning. He tells of a thirty-year study of time diaries where “two sociologists found that Americans were actually working fewer hours than we did in the 1960s, but they felt as if they were working more. He says we have the sense, too often, of running at top speed and never being able to catch up.”

Iyer adds that “We’ve lost our Sundays, our weekends, our nights off — our holy days, as some would have it; our bosses, junk mailers, our parents can find us wherever we are, at any time of day or night. More and more of us feel like emergency-room physicians, permanently on call, required to heal ourselves but unable to find the prescription for all the clutter on our desk.”

Our educational institutions tend to tell us the point of life is to get somewhere, not to go nowhere. But nowhere can be just as, or even more interesting.

This conclusion sounds good, even though it does seem that if he hadn’t been traveling for all those years as a travel writer before he came to this conclusion, that it may ring a little truer. Years of travel suggest stillness but what about the "homebody" is stillness the best for them? Perhaps he redeems himself when he adds to his conclusions that “Too many of us see going nowhere as turning away from something rather than turning towards something” and “Going nowhere … isn’t about turning your back on the world; it’s about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply.”

Iyler quotes Shakespeare who says, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” This isn’t a new truth that how we respond to our experiences is more influential in our lives that the experiences themselves.

Even though it is a short book, Iyler’s quote by William James, “The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another,” with two more words added, “slow down”, would have been enough.

Quotes

“Be still Stillness reveals the secrets of eternity” 
― Lao Tzu  

“There is nothing to save, now all is lost,
but a tiny core of stillness in the heart
like the eye of a violet.” 
― D.H. Lawrence

“The inner is foundation of the outer
The still is master of the restless
The Sage travels all day
yet never leaves his inner treasure” 
― Lao Tzu