61 Hours Jack Reacher, by Lee Child

Jack Reacher is riding in the back of bus half full of senior citizens on a cheap winter tour going through South Dakota on their way to see Mt. Rushmore.  A storm comes in, the bus slides off the road, and they find themselves in Bolton, South Dakota.  Reacher helps the victims and helps the local law enforcement deal with the situation.

The police tell Reacher about their local prison, one of the largest in the US, and their obligation to always respond first when it has a need, explaining why they were delayed so long to help those on the bus.  

He also learns about a band of outlaw bikers that has settled outside the town and are running a drug making operation. The local leader has been arrested and is being held waiting for trial in the prison and the police are also struggling to protect Janet Salter, a witness to the drug dealings.

Plato is an evil drug lord who lives in Mexico and is the one really in control of the Bolton area drug operation and in directing someone to kill Janet Salter. When Reacher learns of the drug lord he says: “Plato is a weird name for a Mexican, don’t you think? Sounds more like a Brazilian name to me.” When we finally meet Plato, we find out how really weird he is.

The whole story starts with what is going on in the prison telling us: “Five minutes to three in the afternoon. Exactly sixty-one hours before it happened. The lawyer drove in and parked in the empty lot. There was an inch of new snow on the ground, so he spent a minute fumbling in the foot well until his overshoes were secure. Then he got out and turned his collar up and walked to the visitor’s entrance.”

Reacher helps the police and establishes his own contact with Major Susan Turner, the current leader of Reacher's old command, the elite 110th Special Investigations Unit to try to learn the history of the drug facilities location which is in an underground location built during World War 11.

61 hours finally pass, and Reacher made the difference of course. Everything must be ok with Reacher because you find him one page after the end of this story in the “thrilling preview of Night School”.     **

**See Daily Comments - of course everything is ok- this is book 14 of 28 Jack Reacher books. See some thoughts about this and other well known series books click here

Self-Reliance and other Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Self-Reliance,” is considered Emerson’s most influential and important essay.  His message is that we should trust our instincts and listen to our own inner promptings.  If we have truths that are influencing us, others will also have the same instincts and influences: what we say based on these inner thoughts will resonate with others.

“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all … That is genius,” Emerson writes. “Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost.”

Avoid conformity, do your own thing, recognize and listen to your own conscience and do what you believe is right are the core messages in "Self-Reliance." The result may be that society is critical but that is not important to Emerson.

Self-reliance defines independence. Growing your own food and thinking and taking actions without the influence of others.

Ralph Waldo Emerson attended Harvard at the age of 14, where he studied to become a minister. He moved away from the ministry and became a public speaker expressing his philosophical views and gathering followers in a group called the Transcendentalist Club. This book also contains some of Emerson's other best-known essays and his address to the Harvard Divinity School.

Quotes

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.” 

“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.”

 "I like thethe silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.”

“Ne te quaesiveris extra." (Do not seek for things outside of yourself)” 

“You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.”  

“Do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.” 

A Trail Of Memories- The Quotations Of- Louis L'Amur, Angelique L'Amour

Angelique L'Amour has remembered her father, Louis, by organizing many of the quotes from his books into the book, A Trail of Memories: The Quotations of Louis L'Amour.  The chapter titles are categories that the quotes fit into: Life, Opportunity, Hard Work, Family and Home, Women, Time, Growth and Change, Civilization, Belief and more.

The quotes are interesting to L'Amour fans and remind us of the compelling flow of his dialog. He said: "Characters have a way of taking on a life on their own, expressing themselves in the simple philosophy of their times, and expressing beliefs acquired through living, working, and being. Once characters are established, they become their own persons and the ideas of the characters are such ideas as they might have acquired in the circumstances of their daily existence."

Angelique said in book's introduction "By reading his words, each reader has met a part of my father......Each hero has a bit of Dad's experience that makes him who he is. With Lanso, it is all those boxing matches as Dad grew up. With Barnabas Sackett, it is the sailor and explorer in my father...I think that this collection of quotations from my father's books reveals much of what makes Dad who he is, for these words are the heart and soul of what he believes, and what he wants to leave behind."

Louis L'Amour would likely not want to be remembered for his quotes which is clear when he said; "I think of myself in the oral tradition-as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man in the shadows of the campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered- as a storyteller. A good storyteller." 

See Literary Favorites for more on Louis L'Amour      click here

Quotes

Sackett's Land (1974)

• We are all of us, it has been said, the children of immigrants and foreigners — even the American Indian, although he arrived here a little earlier. 

The Quick and the Dead (1973)

•  He was almighty quick at a time when a man was either quick or he was dead.

The Lonesome Gods (1983)

• Each people has its gods, or the spirits in which they believe. It may be their god is the same as ours, only clothed in different stories, different ideas, but a god can only be strong, Hannes, if he is worshiped, and the gods of those ancient people are lonesome gods now. 

See Review of "Education of a Wandering Man- Click Link or Book

Reading the Classics with C.S. Lewis Edited by Thomas L. Martin

Why are the Classic's important? Why read them? Because "in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do." (C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism)

Martin said in his introduction to Reading the Classics with C.S. Lewis, "Lewis's mind was nurtured on the study of literature." Literature was so important to Lewis that he spent a great deal of time analyzing how it affected his thinking.

C.S. Lewis's breadth of impact and influence on the literature of our time is significant. His Oxford education, personal character and creativity is only a starting place.

His knowledge of important literature is deep, and his skills as a theologian, poet, fantasy and science fiction writer give him a deep well to dip into for inspiration. 

His understanding of what he writes is not just other authors but from his own personal experiences. This connects him to those who also have struggled.

Quotes

“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.” Source: “Mere Christianity”

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else

"the good of literature is that we want to to be more than ourselves. We want to see with other eyes to imagine with other imagination, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own".

The Four Loves, by C.S. Lews

The Four Loves, by C. S. Lewis is based on love as defined by affection, friendship, eros, and charity. His thoughts reflects his Christian and philosophical points of view and were taken from radio talks he gave in 1958.

Lewis says that one type of love also depends on the other types:love can be perverted when love “presumes itself to be what it is not”.

He received some criticism for his thoughts about Eros. He felt is was “being in love” or “loving” someone rather than raw sexuality. He made the distinction to clarify this to discuss the difference of “wanting a woman” compared to “wanting one particular women”.

The highest love, Agape, was felt to be the greatest of the four loves. It doesn’t change but remains constant in our lives and is given unconditionally and is what God’s love is.

The book is intended to help the reader see the difference from the different uses of the word "love" which even when this was written seemed to have become more informal. Loving our car and a movie and then loving our friends all fall short of the highest love, of course.

(Is C.S. Lewis a Literary Influence? It is easy to say "of course he is". Some suggest that his beliefs were not literary influences? His writings of fantasy were literary influences. For more on this see Literary Influences Section)

Quotes

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” 

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .” 

“You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.” 

“The mark of Friendship is not that help will be given when the pinch comes (of course it will) but that, having been given, it makes no difference at all.” 

How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen

Ann Quindlen’s book, “How Reading Changed My Life” is exactly what the title suggests, and that is an accomplishment. She loves the books she writes about and you feel her sincerity, when she tells us that and how they took her to different places.

Quindlen said of her own book love: “It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.”  Yet of all the many things in which we recognize some universal comfort – God, sex, food, family, friends – reading seems to be the one in which the comfort is most under sung, at least publicly, although it was really all I thought of, or felt, when I was eating up book after book, running away from home while sitting in that chair, traveling around the world and yet never leaving the room.  I did not read from a sense of superiority, or advancement, or even learning.  I read because I loved it more than any other activity on earth.”

Her revelation in the book about a "special neighbor" serves to help us understand this book love. She said that when she was about ten years old, “Mrs LoFurno began allowing me to borrow books from her basement, books without plastic covers, without cards in brown paper pockets in the back filled with the names of all the others who had read Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates before me.  Many of her books were older books, with the particularly sweet dusty smell that old books have; they had bookplates in the front………………It was both a world in which, I imagined, books would be treasured, honored, even cosseted on special shelves, and a world that had formed its imaginary self in my mind from books themselves.”

The fact that she alone determined what she thought of the books she picked and read from her neighbor’s library let her start her approach to books with a purity that comes through in this book.

Quotes

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.” 

“In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.”

 “those of us who read because we love it more than anything, who feel about bookstores the way some people feel about jewelers.

The Crooked Staircase, A Jane Hawk Novel, by Dean Koontz

Jane Hawk- #1 most wanted fugitive and past FBI agent- is the key character that anchors Dean Koontz's series of 4 books.  

The series third book,“The Crooked Staircase, if you only plan to read just this one book in the series, and even, like myself, if you have only read one other Dean Koontz book so far, then Jane Hawk will still hold your interest.

Hawk, in the prior books, was an FBI agent and now she is on a campaign against the mind-control conspiracy of a cabal of government agencies and private industry who have wrongfully indicted her for treason, espionage and murder making her the #1 most wanted person in the country.

The cabal has created nanotech implants that turn people into slaves. Booth Hendrickson, a high-ranking Justice Department official and his evil brother Simon are Hawk’s targets in this story and she holds them responsible for the death of her Marine Husband.

She evades being caught by the surveillance of cameras on nearly every corner throughout the country that the two who are tracking her can access connecting by laptop to the NSA surveillance headquarters in Utah. She finds a place with no cameras and hides her son Travis with friends.

She first finds Hendrickson’s evil half-brother using psychological torture that breaks him and helps her free the helpless women who he is controlling.

Hawk is a beautiful woman, has excellent taste in classical music, and seems to know everything about everything. Eventually she and Simon must go down “The Crooked Staircase” to find his evil mom.  The trip down and her return offer scenes of torture and terror.

Near the end of the story, that really doesn’t end, Travis is hiding out with Cornell Jasperson a brilliant, highly eccentric, end of times guy, living in a well-fortified hidden bunker. We learn from a Cornell, who is spending his life in this bunker reading books, that reading action novels is just as important as reading the classics.

 (see Dean Koontz compares Real Life and Fiction Essay by Brent M. Jones in Essay Section)

(See Koontz and Child daily comments on series books)

This last fact may not be relevant to the book or the review, but I thought I would stick it in just like Koontz did.

Quotes

“I think to myself, I play to myself, and nobody knows what I say to myself.” 

“There’s not much news in the news anymore. The lies they tell don’t leave a lot of time for the facts about anything.”

 “None of us ever has more than this moment. Tomorrow becomes today, today becomes yesterday. The best I can do for my boy is give him enough today’s that he can make a past for himself that will have had some meaning in it.” 

“a touchstone by which they both could test their commitment to what was good and true in a world of darkness and lies. But a touchstone had value only if they acted with reason, from a sense of duty, rather than because sentimentality overtook them.” 

“I hate the people who think we’re just part of the great unwashed” 

The Raven and Other Poems by Edgar Allan Poe

“Nevermore” is the name of "The Raven" in the narrative poem by American author Edgar Allan Poe.  As the poem progresses “Nevermore”, the only thing “The Raven” ever says, becomes more.

Lenore likely was Poe’s recently deceased wife Virginia, who had died of tuberculosis. They married when she was 13 and Poe’s love for Virginia was deep. She wasn’t the first love he had lost: his mother, brother, and foster mother had all died of the same disease.

The mysterious visit from a dark devil bird, “The Raven”, symbolizes the narrators never-ending sorrow and grief for the loss of Lenore as well as his slow fall into madness. He soon realizes that the raven has come and speaks to him, only because of his love for Lenore.

Now the narrator is incensed and tells the bird to leave, but the bird just replies "Nevermore”. The meaning of the word has gone from an odd name for the raven, for simple replies, to a prophetic warning that he will never again see Lenore, nor will he ever, ever get rid of the bird.

Edgar Allan Poe’s book, published in 1845, begins with the poem, "The Raven", the single most famous American poem of the nineteenth century. The book also contained the poem Annabel Lee and many of the poems Poe had written.  It didn’t make him much money but it established his reputation as a poet and author.

Quotes   See Opening Verses of Poem Below

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.” 

“Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore.” 

“Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore...”

 “Leave my loneliness unbroken” 

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe see Poetry Section

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door —
Only this, and nothing more."
 

See Poetry Section for full Poem............Click Here

Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

Bill Bryson introduces his book, ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything”, saying in the introduction: “Welcome. and congratulations, I am delighted that you could make it. Getting here wasn’t easy, I know. In fact, I suspect it was a little tougher than you realize.".

“To begin with, for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and intriguingly obliging manner to create you. It’s an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once.”.

Bryson continues in the book to discuss the size of the universe, the history of geology and biology and the development of man.  He sought the help and advice of numerous scientists when he wrote this book. He said of what he wrote: "Just because something is important doesn't mean people will read it ... you have an obligation to entertain as well as instruct."

I did find some humor in the overview of the introduction, where it said: “The physicist Leo Szilard once announced to his friend Hans Bethe that he was thinking of keeping a diary: “I don’t intend to publish. I am merely going to record the facts for the information of God.” “Don’t you think that He knows the facts?” Bethe asked. “Yes,” said Szilard. “He knows the facts, but He does not know this version of the facts.”

The book has six sections and related chapters including: LOST IN THE COSMOS, THE SIZE OF THE EARTH, A NEW AGE DAWNS, DANGEROUS PLANET, LIFE ITESELF and THE ROAD TO US.

The last chapter of section six is titled GOOD-BYE, and appropriately ends saying: “We really are at the beginning of it all. The trick, of course, is to make sure we never find the end.”

Quotes

“When you sit in a chair, you are not actually sitting there, but levitating above it at a height of one angstrom (a hundred millionth of a centimeter), your electrons and its electrons implacably opposed to any closer intimacy.” 

“Incidentally, disturbance from cosmic background radiation is something we have all experienced. Tune your television to any channel it doesn’t receive, and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe.” 

"There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person." 

"Consider the Lichen. Lichens are just about the hardiest visible organisms on Earth, but the least ambitious."

"Geologists are never at a loss for paperweights."

Interesting

There is more life under the Earth than on Top of it. ...........“We now know that there are a lot of microbes living deep within the Earth… Some scientist now think that there could be as 100 trillion tons of bacteria living beneath our feet in what are known as subsurface lithoautotrophic microbial ecosystems… Thomas Gold of Cornell has estimated that if you took all the bacteria out of the Earth’s interior and dumped it on the surface, it would cover the planet to a depth of five feet. If the estimates are correct, there could be more life under the Earth than on top of it.”

Fallen Leaves: Last Words on Life, Love, War, and God by Will Durant

What should we expect from a last book from Will Durant, the author of the 11-volume Story of Civilization? He hinted at his work on the Fallen Leaves before his death, but it wasn’t found until 32 years after his death when his granddaughter by chance found the manuscript in a box when she decided to move.

“The Story of Civilization”, was a biography that considered the living conditions of everyday people. Durant said that curious readers had challenged him to speak his mind on the timeless questions of human life and fate having spent so much of his life focusing on just that.

Durant wrote the preface to Fallen Leaves when he was 95 years old and in answer to those curious readers he said: “Please do not expect any new system of philosophy, nor any world-shaking cogitations; these will be human confessions, not divine revelations; they are micro- or mini-essays whose only dignity lies in their subjects rather than in their profundity or their size.”

Even though he says that he isn’t going to bring to us deep insight and great depth of knowledge or thought, the book still leaves us waiting for it. The 22 chapters might be considered Durant’s most important work, condensing his thoughts of sixty-plus years of his work, researching the philosophes, religions, arts, sciences and civilizations of the world.

The first eight chapters are insightful when taken together and Durant's voice seems especially clear in them: Our life begins, On Youth, On Middle Age, On Old Age, On Death, Our Souls, Our Gods, and On Religion.

With all that Durant wrote in his life, about human beings and the human condition, this final book is certainly less of a definitive conclusion about life than some may expected and wanted. He said that he was fond of his own unique soul *, but he left some question as to what comes next. He expressed fond memories and gratitude for his Catholic faith.   

                           *See "Is the Soul Eternal" in Essays

He confirmed his love of, and insight into the value of history, saying: “you are what you are because of what you have been: because of your heredity stretching back into forgotten generations: because of every element of environment that has affected you, every man or woman that you have had: all these are accumulated in your memory, your body, your character, your soul.”

In closing Durant’s said “A wise man can learn from other men’s experience; a fool cannot even learn from his own.”   

Quotes

“The fear of death is strangely mingled with the longing for repose.” 

"I found it impossible to continue my pretenses to orthodoxy” "

Knowledge is power but only wisdom is liberty.”

“Education is the transmission of civilization.”

“To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves. Nothing is often a good thing to say, and always a clever thing to say.”

 “Truth will make us free.” 

Lisey's Story, by Stephen King

Stephen King has often used authors as characters in his stories and that is what he did in “Lisey’s Story”. Lisey Landon is the wife of Scott Landon, an award-winning author who died two years ago.

King said he was inspired to write this book by his own thoughts of death after his accident when he was hit by a car walking on the side of the road near his home in Maine. The accident was so brutal that it almost killed him, and as you read his account of what happened it seems like a violent story from one of his novels. He said when he returned home from the hospital to find his wife had rearranged his study the thoughts for this story came to him:  what becomes of his wife after he dies.

When Scott Landon dies, Lisey is pressed, even threatened, to find any unpublished manuscripts and as she searches and cleans out his writing area, she remembers much about his life that had been buried in her memory.

Scott had come from a family that had a history of mental illness and he often had to find a place where he could go to deal with his demons. He had shared this with Lisey telling her that he transported himself to another world called “Boo’ya Moon” which was a place that terrified and healed him, that it could eat him alive or give him the ideas he needed to write and live.

With these memories coming back to her, Lisey’s found her own demons to deal with when she begins to be stalked, terrorized and eventually mutilated by an insane fan of her husband.

The story brings the past and present together for both Lisey and the reader to deal with.

see section on Literary Influence of Stephen King

Quotes

“There was a lot they didn’t tell you about death, she had discovered, and one of the biggies was how long it took the ones you loved most to die in your heart.”  

“She nods. You're good for the ones you love. You want to be good for the ones you love, because you know that your time with them will end up being too short, no matter how long it is.” 

“Lying in the bed that had once held two, Lisey thought alone never felt more lonely than when you woke up and discovered you still had the house to yourself. That you and the mice in the walls were the only ones still breathing." 

“The harder you had to work to open a package, the less you ended up caring about what was inside.” 

“Time apparently did nothing but blunt grief’s sharpest edge so that it hacked rather than sliced.” 

“I loved you then and I love you now and I have loved you every second in between.” 

"Boo Ya' Moon" up ahead

Turtles All The Way Down, by Gordon Atkinson

Turtles All The Way Down, by Gordon Atkinson is the book I got when I sent out to get the book, Turtles All The Way Down a Novel by John Green.

After reading much of the book I found on the very first page some recommendations for the book. Gordon’s mother said, “A literary masterpiece. Truly a hallmark of American literature, and he’s such a nice boy.” Mom’s are great. Nathan Pruett said, “Its almost like a real book.”

I don’t find myself leaning towards either of these reviews.

Gordon Atkinson is the pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in San Antonio and a blogger known as Real Live Preacher. He explains in the book that “Back of everything is some kind of faith. No matter where you look, whether in science, philosophy, religion, or real estate, if you dig deep enough, you will always find turtles, all the way down.”

The phrase “turtles all the way down” is an expression of infinite regress which means that a truth is dependent on another truth and that truth likewise is dependent on a 3rd truth. This has been historically illustrated by three turtles of varying sizes stacked on top of each other with the largest on the bottom, or all the way down.

Expecting a book by a preacher to be about beliefs, Atkinson seems to miss the mark. He said “faith is about humility, acceptance and being at home in your skin and in your place in the scheme of things. It is not our burden to know absolute truth, which is further good news since we are not able to know it.” He tells us of the many things that we will never know exactly, and it really does seem that this is a man who is comfortable, not only in his own skin, but in a rambling writing style that we are expected to appreciate.

Atkinson says that he has written over a million words, having been a blogger for many years. The book is 50++ short blog entries presented as chapters.  Sometimes what seems to be inconsistent dialog can be explained by knowing the personality and subtle inferences of the writer. That wasn’t the case with this book.

The Art of War, by Sun Tzu

The Art of War is an ancient Chinese military treatise, written sometime during the time between 771 to 476 BC. Sun Tzu is credited with writing the book, but some scholars are not sure if he even existed. The book certainly existed, and it first appeared written on sets of sewn-together bamboo slats with 13 chapters, each of which focus on different approaches to warfare, military strategy and tactics. The book was used for over 1500 years before it was brought together in what was called the “Seven Military Classics” by Emperor Shenzong of Song in 1080 AD.

Rulers throughout Asia used The Art of War to plan their military moves. The oldest Japanese translation dates back to the 8th century AD and was a text to study for the Japanese Samurai.

The book first reached the Western World when it was translated into French in 1772, which allowed Napoleon to study it. In 1805 it was translated into English and is now consulted for advice and direction on business tactics, legal strategy as well as for war purposes.

Chinese communist revolutionary Mao Zedong, Japanese daimyo Takeda Shingen, and American military general Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. have claimed inspiration from the book.

The book presents the basic principles of warfare, giving advice on when and how to fight. Chapters include: how to move armies through inhospitable terrain, how to use and respond to different types of weapons, and advice on rules of engagement. Methods of war are the core of many of the chapters presented as rules, titled; “He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight; He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces; He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks; Victory usually goes to the army who has better trained officers and men; and Know the enemy and know yourself.”

The rules and examples the present can be used not just in battle but also in disagreements and approaching a variety of conflicts.

Quotes

“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.” 

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” 

“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.” 

“Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.” 

“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win” 

The Spell Of New Mexico Edited by Tony Hillerman

“The Spell Of New Mexico by Tony Hillerman” must be a “rich gathering of essays”, since every review you read about this book says just that.  I liked what was said in the preface: Pretentious as it sounds, and tough as it is to prove, there does seem to be something about New Mexico which not only attracts creative people but stimulates their creativity. There seems to be a larger proportion of writers and artists in this special place, and the book is a collection of their stories.

Tony Hillerman was born in Oklahoma and moved to Santa Fe in 1952, where he worked as a journalist. In 1966 he moved his family to Albuquerque where he earned a master's degree from the University of New Mexico, taught journalism from 1966 to 1987, and began writing novels. Hillerman died on October 26, 2008, of pulmonary failure in Albuquerque at the age of 83.

Mary Austin, playwright, poet, essayist, and novelist wrote: “To say that the Southwest has had a significant past, and will have a magnificent future, because it is a superb wealth-breeder, is to miss the fact that several generations of men wasted themselves upon it happily.”

D.H. Lawerence wrote: “There is no mystery left, we’ve been there, we’ve seen it, we know all about it. We’ve done the globe, and the globe is done.” Having said that this statement stands out: “I think New Mexico was the greatest experience from the outside world that I have ever had.”

Additional essays by Oliver La Farge, Conrad Richter, C.G. Jung, Winfield Townley Scott, John DeWitt McKee, Ernie Pyle, Harvey Fergusson and Lawrence Clark Powell all contributed with essays that discuss the appeal of New Mexico.

Mary Austin wrote that “Man is not himself only………..He is all that he sees.”  Seeing New Mexico through these authors eyes is worth the time.

Points of Interest

• Santa Fe is the highest capital city in the United States at 7,000 feet above sea level.

• The Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe was built in 1610, making it the oldest government building in the U.S.

• Each October Albuquerque hosts the world's largest international hot air balloon fiesta.

• The world's first Atomic Bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945 on the White Sands Testing Range near Alamogordo.

• White Sands National Monument is a desert but instead of sand it has gleaming white gypsum crystals.

• New Mexico is one of the four corner states. Bordering at the same point with Colorado, Utah and Arizona.

84, Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff

Helene Hanff is a freelance writer who loved obscure classics and British literature, much of which, she couldn’t find living in New York.  The story, “84 Charing Cross Road”, takes place in 1949 with Helene noticing an ad for books in the Saturday Review of Literature, by a used bookseller in London named Marks and Company. 

She sends a note and request to the shop manager, Frank Doel, and he replies with a note of his own and the books she requests.  More requests and letters follow, and they are returned with the books requested, and more letters, building a warm friendship between Helene and the store staff that lasts over 20 years.

Helene learns from Nora Doel about the impact of rationing on London in the 1950's, so she sends parcels of food as often as she can of difficult items to find in post war London, along with her letters and birthday cards, all much-appreciated items.

Over the years of correspondence, they discuss politics, sports, religion, and local foods.  The comments about the books requested were interesting, just as you would expect from a book about a bookstore. One letter Helene sent had the poem "Miniver Cheevy by Edwin Arlington Roberinson included  in it. (See poetry section)

A visit to the bookstore was planned and anticipated for years by Helene, but she just kept putting it off. Frank Doel died in 1968 before she was able to make the trip, but she did finally visit in 1971 but the shop was then empty.  The five-story building where Marks & Co. was located during the time the book covers still exists.

Quotes

“If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much.”

“But I don't know, maybe it's just as well I never got there. I dreamed about it for so many years. I used to go to English movies just to look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English Literature, and he nodded and said: "It's there.”  

"Why is it that people who wouldn't dream of stealing anything else think it's perfectly all right to steal books?” 

“I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest. The day Hazlitt came he opened to "I hate to read new books," and I hollered "Comrade!" to whoever owned it before me.” 

“I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages someone long gone has called my attention to.”