Three New Trail Reads
by Kathleen Meyer
October 2012
October 2012
Lovely to find that someone indeed peruses and employs my Books list. Huzza, Ellie!
Click on stack of books, it’s a button.
In looking over the list myself a few weeks ago, trying to sneak up on it, see if it would inadvertently reveal something fascinating (or perhaps horribly dull) about me—and having never kept track before—I found it a pleasant surprise. It’s nicely diverse. That is, of course, in limited arcs, probably having something to do with my haphazard, rather than scholarly, process of finding books. They come my way through libraries, friends (as gifts and loaners and email suggestions), NPR interviews, The New Yorker reviews, authors’ readings, used book sales, and research projects. I will attempt pretty much anything that’s decently written, except fantasy and science fiction, which I sidestep, in rather similar manner to my 60’s bypass of LSD, with the notion that I’m inherently unhinged and thus prefer my feet incased in a few bricks that won’t whip off into the wind, figuring full well I’d never make it back. Plus, reality in this world is hard enough to ferret out of nonfiction. Certainly there are books that flat out never hook me and end up in a growing heap of disarray beside the bed, untouched until I’m overtaken by the rare urge to clear out and vacuum (company probably coming). Only I know that the list points up I’m attacking more fiction with age, but not much more, and also enjoying a bit of dug-straight-out-of-the-earth poetry. Whatever that is; let’s just say I’ve lived most of my life with a narrow to zero appreciation for poetry, thinking it over my head, smugly obtuse, syrupy, or abstract to distraction. Then two decades ago, upon moving to Montana, poets started falling full-bodied out of the sky. The first was Ed Leahy (who’s now passed from our earthly midst); to hear him ply his remarkable voice to his poetry was to love it and to love him. Presently, Michael Earl Craig has me entranced—on the page and at the mike.
Returning to my tally, it looks like history and memoir reign, especially cross-genre narratives of extraordinary physical quests or trials, accounts that are mind-bending in nature. A pen with irony, whimsy, or Bill Bryson-type humor will capture me. I’m drawn regularly to illuminations on ancient cultures and indigenous peoples and the struggles of the downtrodden. Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes lands right at the top of my all-time favorites. (Receiving it one Christmas, with snow piling up around the barn, Patrick and I read it out loud to each other, in bed, alternately laughing and crying. I can’t remember a better book.) The aftermath of my racing through a gruesome crime drama always contains a twinge of guilt, until I recall once again that my father, the eminent scientist, often went to bed with paperback Raymond Chandlers, Mickey Spillanes, and John D. MacDonalds. But then next, I’ll sink into a long, dense biography, an autobiography, an enlightening epistle chosen from a range of sciences, or an intimate look at a species of wildlife (see The Geese of Beaver Bog and The Wolverine Way). Politics is a constant fascination. And then, endlessly, there’s war: its memoirs and journalistic chronicles. (When the film “Killing Fields” came out many years ago, I wanted to strap every American in a chair to watch it. Fortunately, for my friends and neighbors, this idea matured solely into my own commitment not to turn away from, not to remain blinkered to, the horrors and pin-ball effects of war. To do so would feel criminal.) For balance, I’ll read children’s books—for instance, again and again, the delightful Henry Hikes to Fitchburg. Hardly in last place are books about words, language, and writing itself. These I read and reread. And reread.
Not to forget my headline: these three new trail reads appear on my growing list. Three Hundred Zeros: Lessons on the Heart of the Appalachian Trail and Women of the Way: Embracing the Camino (each by a Blanchard, respectively Dennis and Jane) are journeys for both the avid hiker and the La-Z-boy adventurer. They spirited me right down the trail, vista by vista, through blisters and backaches, shin splints and shitting, heat and hail, bedbugs and bears and rattlesnakes—all accompanied by kaleidoscopic infusions of joy. The third is Cheryl Strayed’s highly touted Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. In the first 150 pages, I was tempted over and over to drop it in the pile beside the bed, but then she reeled me in, landed me flopping helpless in her net. By the time I turned the final page, I’d decided it was right up there with Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods.
What are you reading?
Returning to my tally, it looks like history and memoir reign, especially cross-genre narratives of extraordinary physical quests or trials, accounts that are mind-bending in nature. A pen with irony, whimsy, or Bill Bryson-type humor will capture me. I’m drawn regularly to illuminations on ancient cultures and indigenous peoples and the struggles of the downtrodden. Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes lands right at the top of my all-time favorites. (Receiving it one Christmas, with snow piling up around the barn, Patrick and I read it out loud to each other, in bed, alternately laughing and crying. I can’t remember a better book.) The aftermath of my racing through a gruesome crime drama always contains a twinge of guilt, until I recall once again that my father, the eminent scientist, often went to bed with paperback Raymond Chandlers, Mickey Spillanes, and John D. MacDonalds. But then next, I’ll sink into a long, dense biography, an autobiography, an enlightening epistle chosen from a range of sciences, or an intimate look at a species of wildlife (see The Geese of Beaver Bog and The Wolverine Way). Politics is a constant fascination. And then, endlessly, there’s war: its memoirs and journalistic chronicles. (When the film “Killing Fields” came out many years ago, I wanted to strap every American in a chair to watch it. Fortunately, for my friends and neighbors, this idea matured solely into my own commitment not to turn away from, not to remain blinkered to, the horrors and pin-ball effects of war. To do so would feel criminal.) For balance, I’ll read children’s books—for instance, again and again, the delightful Henry Hikes to Fitchburg. Hardly in last place are books about words, language, and writing itself. These I read and reread. And reread.
Not to forget my headline: these three new trail reads appear on my growing list. Three Hundred Zeros: Lessons on the Heart of the Appalachian Trail and Women of the Way: Embracing the Camino (each by a Blanchard, respectively Dennis and Jane) are journeys for both the avid hiker and the La-Z-boy adventurer. They spirited me right down the trail, vista by vista, through blisters and backaches, shin splints and shitting, heat and hail, bedbugs and bears and rattlesnakes—all accompanied by kaleidoscopic infusions of joy. The third is Cheryl Strayed’s highly touted Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. In the first 150 pages, I was tempted over and over to drop it in the pile beside the bed, but then she reeled me in, landed me flopping helpless in her net. By the time I turned the final page, I’d decided it was right up there with Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods.
What are you reading?
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Three New Trail Reads
by Kathleen Meyer
October 2012
October 2012
Lovely to find that someone indeed peruses and employs my Books list. Huzza, Ellie!
Click on stack of books, it’s a button.
In looking over the list myself a few weeks ago, trying to sneak up on it, see if it would inadvertently reveal something fascinating (or perhaps horribly dull) about me—and having never kept track before—I found it a pleasant surprise. It’s nicely diverse. That is, of course, in limited arcs, probably having something to do with my haphazard, rather than scholarly, process of finding books. They come my way through libraries, friends (as gifts and loaners and email suggestions), NPR interviews, The New Yorker reviews, authors’ readings, used book sales, and research projects. I will attempt pretty much anything that’s decently written, except fantasy and science fiction, which I sidestep, in rather similar manner to my 60’s bypass of LSD, with the notion that I’m inherently unhinged and thus prefer my feet incased in a few bricks that won’t whip off into the wind, figuring full well I’d never make it back. Plus, reality in this world is hard enough to ferret out of nonfiction. Certainly there are books that flat out never hook me and end up in a growing heap of disarray beside the bed, untouched until I’m overtaken by the rare urge to clear out and vacuum (company probably coming). Only I know that the list points up I’m attacking more fiction with age, but not much more, and also enjoying a bit of dug-straight-out-of-the-earth poetry. Whatever that is; let’s just say I’ve lived most of my life with a narrow to zero appreciation for poetry, thinking it over my head, smugly obtuse, syrupy, or abstract to distraction. Then two decades ago, upon moving to Montana, poets started falling full-bodied out of the sky. The first was Ed Leahy (who’s now passed from our earthly midst); to hear him ply his remarkable voice to his poetry was to love it and to love him. Presently, Michael Earl Craig has me entranced—on the page and at the mike.
Returning to my tally, it looks like history and memoir reign, especially cross-genre narratives of extraordinary physical quests or trials, accounts that are mind-bending in nature. A pen with irony, whimsy, or Bill Bryson-type humor will capture me. I’m drawn regularly to illuminations on ancient cultures and indigenous peoples and the struggles of the downtrodden. Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes lands right at the top of my all-time favorites. (Receiving it one Christmas, with snow piling up around the barn, Patrick and I read it out loud to each other, in bed, alternately laughing and crying. I can’t remember a better book.) The aftermath of my racing through a gruesome crime drama always contains a twinge of guilt, until I recall once again that my father, the eminent scientist, often went to bed with paperback Raymond Chandlers, Mickey Spillanes, and John D. MacDonalds. But then next, I’ll sink into a long, dense biography, an autobiography, an enlightening epistle chosen from a range of sciences, or an intimate look at a species of wildlife (see The Geese of Beaver Bog and The Wolverine Way). Politics is a constant fascination. And then, endlessly, there’s war: its memoirs and journalistic chronicles. (When the film “Killing Fields” came out many years ago, I wanted to strap every American in a chair to watch it. Fortunately, for my friends and neighbors, this idea matured solely into my own commitment not to turn away from, not to remain blinkered to, the horrors and pin-ball effects of war. To do so would feel criminal.) For balance, I’ll read children’s books—for instance, again and again, the delightful Henry Hikes to Fitchburg. Hardly in last place are books about words, language, and writing itself. These I read and reread. And reread.
Not to forget my headline: these three new trail reads appear on my growing list. Three Hundred Zeros: Lessons on the Heart of the Appalachian Trail and Women of the Way: Embracing the Camino (each by a Blanchard, respectively Dennis and Jane) are journeys for both the avid hiker and the La-Z-boy adventurer. They spirited me right down the trail, vista by vista, through blisters and backaches, shin splints and shitting, heat and hail, bedbugs and bears and rattlesnakes—all accompanied by kaleidoscopic infusions of joy. The third is Cheryl Strayed’s highly touted Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. In the first 150 pages, I was tempted over and over to drop it in the pile beside the bed, but then she reeled me in, landed me flopping helpless in her net. By the time I turned the final page, I’d decided it was right up there with Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods.
What are you reading?
Returning to my tally, it looks like history and memoir reign, especially cross-genre narratives of extraordinary physical quests or trials, accounts that are mind-bending in nature. A pen with irony, whimsy, or Bill Bryson-type humor will capture me. I’m drawn regularly to illuminations on ancient cultures and indigenous peoples and the struggles of the downtrodden. Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes lands right at the top of my all-time favorites. (Receiving it one Christmas, with snow piling up around the barn, Patrick and I read it out loud to each other, in bed, alternately laughing and crying. I can’t remember a better book.) The aftermath of my racing through a gruesome crime drama always contains a twinge of guilt, until I recall once again that my father, the eminent scientist, often went to bed with paperback Raymond Chandlers, Mickey Spillanes, and John D. MacDonalds. But then next, I’ll sink into a long, dense biography, an autobiography, an enlightening epistle chosen from a range of sciences, or an intimate look at a species of wildlife (see The Geese of Beaver Bog and The Wolverine Way). Politics is a constant fascination. And then, endlessly, there’s war: its memoirs and journalistic chronicles. (When the film “Killing Fields” came out many years ago, I wanted to strap every American in a chair to watch it. Fortunately, for my friends and neighbors, this idea matured solely into my own commitment not to turn away from, not to remain blinkered to, the horrors and pin-ball effects of war. To do so would feel criminal.) For balance, I’ll read children’s books—for instance, again and again, the delightful Henry Hikes to Fitchburg. Hardly in last place are books about words, language, and writing itself. These I read and reread. And reread.
Not to forget my headline: these three new trail reads appear on my growing list. Three Hundred Zeros: Lessons on the Heart of the Appalachian Trail and Women of the Way: Embracing the Camino (each by a Blanchard, respectively Dennis and Jane) are journeys for both the avid hiker and the La-Z-boy adventurer. They spirited me right down the trail, vista by vista, through blisters and backaches, shin splints and shitting, heat and hail, bedbugs and bears and rattlesnakes—all accompanied by kaleidoscopic infusions of joy. The third is Cheryl Strayed’s highly touted Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. In the first 150 pages, I was tempted over and over to drop it in the pile beside the bed, but then she reeled me in, landed me flopping helpless in her net. By the time I turned the final page, I’d decided it was right up there with Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods.
What are you reading?
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© 2011 by Author Kathleen Meyer • All Rights Reserved
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© 2011 by Author Kathleen Meyer • All Rights Reserved
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