Thursday, October 25, 2018

A winter's reading

     "I read late into the night and go north for the winter," with apologies to T.S. Elliot

     With snow getting closer I just placed my winter book order. Thanks to a friend who alerted me to the PBS Great American Read program I will be taking some good books instead of a bunch of cheap detective novels. Most of my favorite authors are included in the list and though they included "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, they left off Mark Twain's seminal work and generally agreed to be the first modern American novel, "HuckleBerry Finn." James Patterson has a book on the list, I have to say, not a fan. I read one book of his and started another and all I could think was this guy needs an editor. I did like his appearance on Castle though, especially when he chided Castle for putting out only one book a year. Some TV writer had a good time with that one.
      Back in the days before Amazon, book day would always be a big one, when in anticipation of a winter in the woods I would head for my favorite book store and spend a couple of hundred dollars on reading material for the season. These days it's a survey of Amazon some late night, still fun but not the same.
     In recent years I have been having some measure of trouble. My curiosity about new books kind of faded with a few exceptions around the heyday of the generation that brought us Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Hmmm, Mailer wasn't on that list either. Anyway I have not kept up and therefore didn't really know what to look for in new fiction and true to the adage, you can't tell a book by its cover.
    I am fortunate enough to have a long-standing friend who is a voracious reader and who last year recommended several books to me and I liked them all. She is the one who informed me about the PBS book list and program and voting. She was quite excited when her favorite was named the top book of the 100 — "To Kill a Mockingbird."
    Going down the list she told me about on PBS there were several I had never heard of, mostly written after Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal. Each of the book covers on the main page opens to a synopsis of the book and something about the author plus some quotes from the text, all very helpful when looking at works you've never been aware of. I chose four off the list for now, plus another book she had suggested knowing our interest in Native American history.   
     I am not recommending these books because I haven't read them, but they are the ones that interested me enough to buy them:
"The Book Thief," by Markus Zusak
"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime." by Mark Haddon
"A Separate Peace," by John Knowles and, yes, I know this is older than Mailer.
"Looking for Alaska," by John Green  and, again, yes I know it is not about the state Alaska, but about a woman named Alaska. Still, Alaska on the cover is a natural draw.
Those are the four I picked off the list. The Native American history book is:
"Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI," by David Grann.

     Maybe to many readers, five books don't seem to be a lot for a winter in the woods, but I do have some cheap mystery novels I bought earlier, plus I plan to spend much of this winter working on my own potential addition to the next list. I would say wish me luck, but it's easier than that, simply, hard work or as H.L. Mencken wrote, "It's easy you just sit at the keyboard until beads of blood form on your forehead."
     Oh, one other thing. Thanks to Amazon and my excessive use of my credit card late at night under the influence of some adult beverage, I had enough points accumulated to get all those books for a total of $4.46 including shipping. As always I hope the authors get the full royalty despite what I paid for their works.
     Now, just add snow.

Here's  link to the PBS list: The Great American Read

And here's an extra special treat. The entire finale. 





2 comments:

  1. I have read all of the books you chose except Looking for Alaska so I am confident that you will find them worthy ways to spend a winter's evening.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Tim. I'm not sure if you remember me but I represented you in a custody matter many years ago and I recently found a copy of your book, "Keep the Round Side Down" that you gave me as a gift. I now have two kids (9 and 11) and look forward to reading this to them. I hope life has been good. Take care and send me a line if you want. Charles Gunther. guntherlaw@gci.net

    ReplyDelete

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Memorable quotations

The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent

"If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us." — Mick Jagger

"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend

A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader

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“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth. Kurt Vonnegut

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”Stephen King

The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?

My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"

“The rivers of Alaska are strewn with the bones of men who made but one mistake” - Fred McGarry, a Nushagak Trapper

Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”

Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

Exceed your bandwidth—sign on the wall of the maintenance shop at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center

One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends

It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes

Everything is okay when it’s 50-below as long as everything is okay. – an Alaskan in Tom Walker’s “The Seventymile Kid”

You can have your own opinion but you can’t have your own science.—commenter arguing on a story about polar bears and global warming

He looks at three ex wives as a good start—TV police drama

Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker

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“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti

“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places

As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again

Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

Each day do something that won’t compute – anon

I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration

Life should be a little nuts or else it’s just a bunch of Thursdays strung together—Kevin Costner as Beau Burroughs in “Rumor has it”

You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer

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Sports malaprops

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"… there's a fearlessment about him …"

"He's got to have the lead if he's going to win this race." "

"Kansas has always had the ability to score with the basketball."

"NFL to put computer chips in balls." Oh, that's gotta hurt.

"Now that you're in the finals you have to run the race that's going to get you on the podium."

"It's very important for both sides that they stay on their feet."

This is why you get to hate sportscasters. Kansas beats Texas for the first time since 1938. So the pundits open their segment with the question "let's talk about what went wrong." Wrong? Kansas WON a football game! That's what went RIGHT!

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A good one: A 5'10" player went up and caught a pass off a defensive back over six feet tall. The quote? "He's got some hops."

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