Columns

“Novel Thoughts”

I began writing this column for the Norfolk Daily News in Norfolk, Nebraska, in February of 2010. The column runs the first and third Saturday of each month in the print edition and is available online for subscribers on the newspaper’s website of http://norfolkdailynews.com.

Here are some of my favorites from the years as well as a few that my readers have enjoyed. I hope you like them, too.

***At the end of the page is a list of all the books I’ve covered in my column over the years.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin was a December, 2023, column

Journey in the Dark was a January 20, 2024, column.

Reading in a Second Language

November 4, 2023

You may or may not know that I taught Spanish for 30 years. As I write this column, and even as you read it, I am currently in Mexico visiting a friend. While here, I’m reading “Zorro” by Isabel Allende, the book that I’ll be discussing in my next column, and I’m reading it in its original form – Spanish.

I consider myself fluent in Spanish. I’ve been to Mexico more than 10 times, and I’ve been to Spain three times. I taught the language, and, in teaching something, that’s when you really learn and understand the subject yourself.

Reading a full novel, though, is quite challenging. For example, every time that I read a quality piece of literature in English, there are still many words that I don’t know and that I must look up in a dictionary. I enjoy doing that because it broadens my vocabulary. I’ve spoken and read English my entire life, yet I constantly come across words I don’t know – now compound that multiple times to get a feel for what it’s like to read in a second language.

I didn’t have space to pack my large Spanish/English dictionary, so I am relying on my translate app to help me read the book. I could skip many of the words I’m not one-hundred percent sure of, but I want to fully understand the novel, and I want to strengthen my own Spanish vocabulary.

Stopping to look up a few words on each page makes my reading pace much slower than it would be if I were reading an English translation of the book. I don’t read all that quickly in English as it is because I prefer to savor what I’m reading, so I’m okay with a slower pace, but I would like it to be speedier. I’ve noticed that my rate of reading has improved, though, because some of those initial words that I needed to look up reappear over and over in the text, so they enter my working Spanish vocabulary from seeing them repeated.

            Translations are great because they bring works from other languages and other cultures into our English-speaking world, but there’s something to be said for reading a book in its original language even if you must translate the occasional word yourself. The Spanish language is a rich and nuanced language, so sometimes even the best translation cannot bring about the full beauty and intent of the author’s original story.

Isabel Allende isn’t from Mexico, but surrounding myself with people who are speaking Spanish all the time is helping train my brain to pick up the cadence of the language, which then helps with the flow of words as I read. Also, all those years of teaching Spanish and pointing out Latin-based cognates between English and Spanish to my students trained my eye to pick up those connections for myself within words while reading without having to break my flow to look up those words.

With each new word and each consecutive page, I sense my reading fluency improving. Being able to read, speak, listen, and even think in a second language is a challenge but a very satisfying challenge at that. I hope to do it in Italian someday, too.

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius

August 17, 2022

Marcus Aurelius was the Roman Emperor from March 7, 161, until his death on March 17, 180. He lived and died over 2,000 years ago, but his legacy lives on in “Mediations,” a series of twelve notebooks in which he recorded his thoughts as he practiced the art of constant self-examination. He may have been the master of a vast empire during his lifetime, but he’s remembered and revered as an amateur philosopher whose literary musings are as relevant today as they were two millennia ago.

I’ve long admired the classics of literature because of the universal truths, lessons, and themes that withstand the test of time, and that’s why they should be read and taught on a regular basis. The four central themes to his notebooks are death, how we should manage our anger, the way we treat others, and how fame is an utterly meaningless thing. Think about those four concepts and about how much of our everyday lives are spent fixating and worrying about them to the extent that we have an epidemic of anxiety and mental illness on our hands right now.

Even though he was the head of an empire whose language was Latin, Marcus Aurelius composed his notebooks in Greek, and since I don’t read that language, I must rely on one of the many translations that exist. I own a copy that is translated and heavily annotated by Robin Waterfield, but there is a wonderful (and free) translation on Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org) that is available for anyone who wants to read it.

I enjoyed the notes that Waterfield included in the copy I own. Many of them only serve to further explain or illustrate the text, but he also added some pop-cultural references. One was to a favorite movie of mine, “Dead Poets Society,” and how the teacher, played by Robin Williams, illustrates to the boys that everything in life is transient – we all (no matter how great we are in life) become “food for worms.”

Another note points to a rap song by Akira the Don. I looked him up and listened to the song that’s referenced in my book, but if you have the time and the inclination, there is also one by Akira the Don that is over forty minutes long and includes the entire first volume. Why would a modern-day British musician use words written over 2,000 years ago in not one, but many, songs? Because they are words of deep truth and wisdom that we need more of today.

That’s why the classics matter. So, we can see that the things we fret about aren’t anything new, and that if we stop and think for a minute, we might just see that it’s all going to be okay because nothing lasts forever, including ourselves, and that in the grand scheme of the entire universe, we (and or so-called problems) are insignificant.

I like this quote from Notebook 4.3: “There’s no retreat more peaceful and untroubled than a man’s own mind, and this is especially true of a man who has inner resources which are such that he has only to dip into them to be entirely untroubled.” This is from Waterfield’s translation; the one on Project Gutenberg reads quite differently because that’s how translation works, but the essence is the same.

Throughout his notebooks and reflections, Aurelius often compares life and reality to a river that is constantly changing, flowing, reviving itself, growing, and forever moving forward and never backwards. Here’s my pop-culture reference – be like that vessel in Garth Brooks famous song, “The River.”

Reading Lists

February 2, 2022

When I began writing this column in February of 2010, I started a book journal to record what I read, not only those books I read for this column but also the books I read for my own pleasure. It’s something I wish I’d begun sooner in my reading life because I enjoy seeing how my reading choices have changed over the years. I’m a list maker by nature, so, in addition to recording the books I read, I also make lists of books I want to read and check them off as I go.

Now, as I begin the thirteenth year of writing this column, I have recorded 495 books in my journal. That’s a bit below the number I’d like to see recorded there, but I’m still proud of it. That number represents a lot of truly wonderful books as well as a few stinkers that I wish I’d not wasted my time upon.

For Christmas, I received a couple Barnes and Noble gift cards. First, I found six of the books from my list of books I want to read. Then I perused the shelves for a while and stumbled upon a book I just had to buy.

It was James Mustich’s 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die: A Life-changing List. It is well organized with lovely illustrations and concise summaries of each book, and there is a checklist of all 1,000 books in the back. The kicker for me, though, is that there is also a large poster containing an alphabetized (by author) checklist of all 1,000 books. What more could a recordkeeping, booklist maker like me desire?

Of those 1,000 books, I’ve only read about 150. Many of the remaining ones are books I plan to read, others are books I have no desire to read, and some are books I’ve never heard of at all. The latter is fine; in fact, it’s wonderful because I love learning about new books – “new” meaning new to me, not necessarily newly published.

Mustich arrived at his list of 1,000 books after decades of working in bookstores and writing entries about books for his mail-order catalog called “A Common Reader.” While he and I, as well as any inveterate reader, would certainly come up with different lists of the 1,000 books we think someone should read in a lifetime, Mustich and I do agree on many books.

On his list, as well as on mine if I were to make you a list of books to read, he has Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, all of Jane Austen’s novels, Middlemarch by George Eliot, Essays and Lectures by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, Walden by Henry David Thoreau, and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.

To his list, though, I would add The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, The Martian by Andy Weir, and any book by Carol Shields.

Naturally, no list can be exhaustive, and we can never hope to read all the books we’d like to in a lifetime, but I’ll keep adding to my record in the hopes that I’ll eventually record many more than 1,000 books.

The Weight of Ink

September 15, 2021

Let me begin with a small confession: I bought The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish because of its beautiful cover and its intriguing title. Admittedly, the story, itself, also sounded intriguing, but the cover and title were simply too lovely to resist.

Now, after having read the book, all I can say is, “Wowza, what a story!”

It’s set in two time periods of London. In the 1660s, a young Jewish woman named Ester Velasquez does the forbidden — she serves as a scribe for an old, ailing rabbi who was tortured and blinded in the Spanish Inquisition. In the early 2000s an ailing historian named Helen Watt and her reluctant assistant, a floundering American Jewish grad student named Aaron Levy, are summoned to a grand old home on the outskirts of London to look at a genizah that was found walled up under a staircase.

A genizah is a repository for timeworn sacred manuscripts in Judaism. The genizah that was discovered in the old house takes Helen and Aaron on a journey through the ancient words inked upon the pages contained in the cache.

We readers are taken on a wonderful journey, too, into a past and its people, both real ones like Sabbatai Zevi, Julian of Norwich, Baruch de Spinoza, and William Shakespeare, and fictional ones like Ester and her beloved rabbi as well as the rabbi’s devoted servant, Rivka, and many others who helped and hindered Ester as she toiled at her forbidden passion of learning. While the modern portions of the story concerning Helen and Aaron attempting to make sense of the wondrous find are indeed interesting, the real story belongs to Ester.

She fled Amsterdam in the care of the rabbi after her parents’ deaths, she wrote and learned (both of which were forbidden to Jewish women then), she survived the plague that killed roughly a fifth of Londoners, she endured and survived the continued persecution of Jews, and she found a way to pursue doing what mattered most to her — learning, thinking, philosophizing, writing, and corresponding — even after the rabbi’s death.

“A womans’ body, said the world, was a prison in which her mind must wither.” Thus was the sentiment of the timeframe and religious constraints in which Ester lived. However, through her quill, ink bottle, and parchment, Ester’s mind soared, and her words survived, hidden away for more than three hundred years, until they were set free by two historians whose lives would never be the same. 

Words matter. Being able to read, to write, and to think freely all matter more than some people realize. The title of the book comes from a passage on page 196 when the blinded rabbi tells Ester what he truly lost when he lost his sight. “. . . I came to understand how much of the world was now banned from me — for my hands would never again turn the pages of a book, nor be stained with the sweet, grave weight of ink, a thing I had loved since first memory.”

The Weight of Ink is a weighty tome itself at almost six hundred pages, but I was sad when the story came to an end. For now, I will simply gaze once more upon its lovely cover and remember the wonderful story that lies within.

The Professor and the Madman

August 21, 2019

            I’m not much of a nonfiction reader, but with books like “The Professor and the Madman” by Simon Winchester, I just might become a huge fan. For me, this book checks all the boxes for reading enjoyment.

            It tells a great story, it’s an unputdownable read, it’s educational, and it’s about my favorite topic of all – WORDS. It also has one of the best secondary titles I’ve ever encountered, and it was this title that grabbed my attention and made me want to read this work of nonfiction in the first place.

            Here it is: “A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary.” That’s a cool title, and it clearly let me know that the book contained a great story and that the story was about words!

            The original Oxford English Dictionary (OED) took seventy years to complete, contained over 400,000 words and definitions, and needed ten volumes to encapsulate all the information. Many, many volunteers were needed to read and document every English word in existence. Every. Single. Word.

That’s where the madman of this story comes in.

            William Minor was an American Army doctor who suffered from insanity. Despite his mental illness, he travelled to London where, in his madness, he killed a man. He was then locked up for forty-seven years in asylums in England. Since he was an intelligent and erudite man, though, he was allowed to compile and keep a substantial library of his own. With that library, for many years he submitted thousands of words and examples to the original editor of the OED.

            That editor, James Murray, didn’t know for a long time that one of his biggest contributors was a man who was locked away in a mental asylum. Eventually, though, he did learn the truth, and Murray visited Minor on various occasions until Minor was finally released and allowed to return to his hometown of New Haven, Connecticut, where he soon passed away.

            Winchester clearly spent a long time researching and writing this book. Not only does he share the compelling story of these two men and the unfortunate crime that ultimately brought them together, but he also interweaves examples from the OED into each chapter’s opening, and he sprinkles his text with wonderful word choices. He also does a stellar job of explaining how the original OED was assembled and the philosophy behind its development and organization.

            Too often, people think that a dictionary merely contains definitions when, in fact, it contains so much more, and those definitions are, in actuality, a product of the usage of the people. Richard Chenevix Trench, speaking before the Philological Society on November 5, 1857, deserves all the credit for the original idea of what was to become the clear standard for all dictionaries since. As Winchester explains, Trench’s “underlying theme was profoundly simple. It was an essential credo for any future dictionary maker . . . to realize that a dictionary was simply ‘an inventory of the language’ and decidedly not a guide to proper usage.”

            Thanks to a brilliant madman and an unflagging first editor, English speakers everywhere since 1928 have been able to enjoy and benefit from that first full edition of the OED, its later supplements and now its online availability as well as the other dictionaries that have followed its exemplary model.

O. Henry’s Final Plot Twist

October 2, 2019

            This past summer I spent part of my vacation in Asheville, North Carolina, a city I’d long wanted to visit for its cultural and literary draw. One of the places I visited was one of writer Tom Wolfe’s boyhood homes that the town preserved as a memorial to him. There is also a small museum next to the house containing a lot of memorabilia from his short, yet very productive, life.

            I also have an odd fascination with cemeteries, especially old and unique ones, so I stopped by Riverside Cemetery to find Wolfe’s grave. Since he, along with other well-known people, is buried there, the city provides a handy marked paper map of the cemetery in a container near the main gate. As I scanned the information on the map, I was astounded to find O. Henry’s name on the list of “celebrities” buried there.

            In my pre-trip planning for Asheville, I hadn’t seen anything about O. Henry in reference to that city. As I’ve since learned, that’s because he wasn’t from there, and it wasn’t his desire to be buried in Asheville. However, once he was dead, his second wife, Sara Coleman Porter, made the decision for him. She was from Asheville, so she put him in the ground in Asheville despite his family’s objections.

            O. Henry’s real name was William Sydney Porter, and that’s what’s inscribed on his small tomb marker; however, since he was known in the literary world as O. Henry, there is a small sign bearing that name pointing the way toward his gravesite. The map also lists him as O. Henry, and that’s the only reason I even knew he was buried in the same cemetery as Tom Wolfe.

            Ironically, and quite fittingly in a sad sort of way, O. Henry’s stories are so well-known and loved because of their ironic and oddly humorous endings, and I was struck by that irony as I learned that he had no plans or desire to be buried on a hillside in a large yet obscure cemetery in a town he’d barely spent any of his life in. He was the master of ironic story endings, and then his own story ended with a very literal “plot” twist.

            If you’ve never read any of O. Henry’s hundreds of short stories, or if you’ve forgotten how they tend to end, then you need to read a few. The classics are “The Gift of the Magi,” “The Cop and the Anthem,” and “The Ransom of Red Chief.”

Years back, I directed and coached a one-act team to conference championship with a play based upon several O. Henry stories. I recall the judges being very impressed by the teenage actors’ understanding of what many consider to be much more mature and even difficult literature; however, I’ve always thought of O. Henry’s work as being thoroughly relatable. Who amongst us hasn’t worked and worked for something only to have it backfire on us in some unforeseen way? Daily life deals us the most ironic twists and turns.

Sadly, for William Sydney Porter, death brought him his final ironic twist in the unlikely and unwanted (according to many sources) burial in a place he never called home. For me, the discovery of his grave site was an unexpected, yet quite welcome, twist at the end of a long day of literary sightseeing.

Walden

December 4, 2019

            Like many people, I’ve long known of Henry David Thoreau and his famous stay at Walden Pond, but until recently, I only knew the most famous quotes from Walden – the ones that have made appearances in movies or been used in other pieces of writing. (“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” is probably one of the best known and oft-used quotes.) Now, though, I’ve read the entire book, and the list of mind-changing quotes a person could take from it is overwhelming.

            Thoreau’s two major themes throughout the book revolve around simplifying one’s life and living a life of nonconformity. That second theme is one I’ve always been passionate about because its main focus is on thinking for yourself. I read this book with my junior English students, and they can tell you that I often harp at them to think for themselves, so this was the perfect thing for them to read to get them to try to think deeper than they normally do.

            I filled an entire notebook with direct quotes, thoughts I had while reading, information I looked up to better understand his allusions, words I didn’t know or remember well, and many other things. Walden hit upon many of the philosophical things I spend my own thinking time on, so I was in literary heaven while reading this book. Being that they are teenagers, my junior students were not as enthralled as I was; however, even many of them showed a definite interest in some of the passages.

            Naturally, my favorite chapter was the one entitled “Reading,” and I’d like to share some of my favorite quotes from this section as they are the most relevant to this column. Like me, Thoreau appreciated the classics and claimed that “ . . . the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man?” I like that phrasing – “the noblest recorded thoughts.”

            He praised books as being worthy of one’s attention, but he cautioned that to be able to truly read well, a person must put forth the work to do so. “To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise . . .” “Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.” This would entail learning and understanding the languages, the history, the cultures in which some of the great works of literature were written; so, most people, in actuality, do not truly read well even though they read a lot. Thoreau wrote: “The best books are not even read by those who are called good readers.”

            He realized the importance of words. “A written word is the choicest of relics.” “It is the work of art nearest to life itself.” Words come from our lips and our breath, so words are “carved out of the breath of life itself.”

            While I agreed with virtually everything he wrote in the chapter about reading, the quote I most loved was this: “Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.” I’d like to tell Thoreau, who died in Massachusetts in 1862, that a columnist in Nebraska in 2019 read his book deliberately and appreciated it as one of the classics of American literature it has become.

The Professor’s House

December 19, 2018

            Willa Cather is one of our most recognized and beloved Nebraska authors. I’ve discussed two of her novels in this column in previous years. The first was her Pulitzer Prize winning novel, “One of Ours,” and the second was one of her most famous books, “O Pioneers!” Many readers recognize these titles as well as her “My Antonia” novel, but unless you happen to be a Cather connoisseur, you may not be able to name any of her other books despite her renown.

            I really couldn’t either before I stumbled upon “The Professor’s House” this summer while I was browsing for books in the famed City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. I’ll even admit that initially I didn’t even pick it up, but as I circled the store, I found myself thinking about its title which had piqued my interest. So, I returned to the Cather section and grabbed the book.

            It’s a slender tome, and the cover of the 1990 Vintage Classics Edition that I now own is simple, yet eye-catching. What can I say? I’m a sucker for a pretty book, especially if it’s a well-written novel by a world-renowned author.

            The premise of the story is quite simplistic actually – a college professor, nearing retirement age, and his wife have moved into a new house, but the professor can’t bring himself to abandon his musty top-floor writing room in the old house; so he doesn’t. Along the way, the reader gets to know his wife and his two daughters along with their husbands, and there is a separate (yet related) story about an old student of his.

            Perhaps that doesn’t sound like an exciting, thrill-a-minute story. Well, it isn’t. For that reason, many readers don’t want to waste time reading Cather’s work. In fact, I read a few reader reviews on Goodreads that really slammed this book; however, those people are missing the point.

            This novel is quite simply a work of art. The sentences are beautifully constructed, and Cather paints a perfectly formed picture of Professor Godfrey St. Peter’s life. She gives us this man to both admire and to pity – just as we both admire and pity the very people we love in our own lives.

            When St. Peter says, “Life doesn’t turn out for any of us as we plan,” we all nod our heads in understanding. When he contemplates his retirement and his impending old age and says, “I’ve put a great deal behind me, where I can’t go back to it again – and I don’t really wish to go back. The way would be too long and too fatiguing,” those of us facing our own retirement and impending old age nod our heads in understanding. And when Cather writes, “All the most important things in his life, St. Peter sometimes reflected, had been determined by chance,” those of us who ponder upon the serendipitous events in our own lives recognize the absolute truth in that statement as we nod our heads in understanding.

            The entire short novel is rife with deep insights – with the stuff of philosophers and common thinkers alike. I put it in higher esteem than the two novels Cather is best-known for writing yet one slot below her “One of Ours” prize-winning book.

            Cather managed to speak to the heart and souls of people everywhere through her writing, so her worldwide popularity is well-deserved, yet we Nebraskans are fortunate to be able to claim her as one of ours.

Favorite Books

January 2014

            Those who know that I love to read, often ask me to name my favorite book or books. This is a difficult thing to do even though my all-time favorite book is “The Count of Monte Cristo” by Alexander Dumas.

            Sometimes I’m loath to tell people that because I don’t want to come across as a literary snob, which sometimes I feel is the sentiment when people spout off the classics of literature when listing favorite reads. However, when pressed for my second favorite book, I either say “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens or “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, and both of those fit firmly into the classic mold.

            Some of my more current favorites are “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak, “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, “Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen, and “The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. If you know anything about literature, you have ascertained that I prefer fiction over non-fiction, and you would be correct.

            I do read the occasional non-fiction book, but I don’t read enough of them to feel qualified to steer readers toward one book over another. Memoirs like “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert appeal more to me than biographical books, but I did really enjoy Steve Martin’s “Born Standing Up,” and I would recommend that book to anybody.

            I don’t read romances, but a quality story that contains some romance is perfectly fine with me – for example the novels of Jane Austen or George Eliot among others. Once again, you can see the classical literature preference showing itself there.

            I like a good detective or suspense-filled novel, so I blew through “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and the two that followed it by Stieg Larsson. I’ve recommended those books to many people since reading them all in a matter of weeks.

            Another problem with trying to name my favorite book or even recommend a great book to somebody is that, despite the fact that I do read a lot, there is no way to effectively read all the great literature that is out there, and more great reads are added daily. I continue to amass books, both classical and modern, that I haven’t yet had the time to read but that I hope to get to in the not-too-distant future. For example, I’ve heard wonderful reviews of “And the Mountains Echoed” by Khaled Hosseini, and it is nestled amidst many other books just waiting for me to read them on one of my numerous shelves, but who knows when I’ll get to it to find out if the good things I’ve heard about it are true or not.

            Each New Year, I make a resolution to read at least fifty books that year, and even when I accomplish that goal, that’s still only fifty books of the millions that are out there waiting to be read. (Believe me, I want to read hundreds each year, but my teaching and coaching schedule just don’t leave me enough spare time to do that.) Hopefully, within my reading this year, I will find some new gems to add to my list of favorites and to then recommend with confidence to those who ask me for reading suggestions.

Travel by Reading

November 2013

            After reading, the thing I most enjoy is traveling. I love to see new places and experience new cultures. Sadly, I don’t make enough money to travel very often or to the places I’d most like to visit, but fortunately I am an avid reader, and this allows me to travel to all sorts of places without spending a dime, packing a suitcase or standing in a long line at security.

            Books let me travel to other locations, but they also let me travel through time and even through space. While the first is something I’d gladly do in person if I had the time and money to do so, the latter are experiences I can only gain through books (or movies, of course, if I enjoyed those as much as I love reading).

            I’m grateful for novels that allow me to experience wars without actually living through their horrors; stories that take me to the heights of mountaintops and the depths of the sea without the need for me to actually climb those peaks or submerge into the frightening world of the fathomless ocean; books that show me what it’s like to live a nomadic life with a traveling circus while I enjoy a stable lifestyle, that let me visit a haunted mansion set high on a hill while I’m safe and sound in my non-haunted house, that blast me into outer space while my own feet are firmly planted and remain here on Earth, and many other types of stories too numerous to elucidate here.

            Not only do books allow me to visit other places, they allow me to see those places through the eyes of people who live there, and that is the way I like to travel. I go places where I know a native who can show me what it’s like to be a Spaniard, an Italian, a Mexican, etc. I’ve currently been spending a lot of time with books set in Africa and written by people who have lived there, so I’ve been getting a real sense of places like Kenya and Botswana – a sense you can’t get by looking at photographs or by visiting fancy resorts on the fringes of nations.

            Just during this past year, while reading books for this column alone, I’ve visited New York and Florida in “The End of Your Life Book Club,” seen Paris in “The Elegance of the Hedgehog,” journeyed with trappers along the Missouri River in the late 1800s in “A Cycle of the West,” become more intimate with Nebraska during its pioneer days in “O’ Pioneers,” traveled in both time and place in “People of the Book,” stayed a long time in Memphis in the middle of the last century in “A Summons to Memphis,” studied nature and hiked all over the U.S. with a man and his dog in “Merle’s Door,” shared in some fantasy-travel in both “The Grave Yard Book” and “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children,” and thoroughly enjoyed my two-month hiatus in Africa in “Out of Africa” and in my current reading of “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.”

            Eleven books have taken me all around the world and both backward and forward in time. I’ve traveled farther while sitting in my reading chair than I could ever imagine doing on my own. Reading truly takes you places.

The Old Man and The Sea

September 21, 2016

            As I continue to chip away at my goal of reading and owning all the Pulitzer Prize winners of fiction, there are some winning books which I jump right in and read, and there are those that I postpone reading for various reasons. The 1953 winner, “The Old Man and The Sea” by Ernest Hemingway, was one of those that I put off reading for some time simply because I used to hear the high school students where I teach complain over and over about how “boring” the book was.

            Silly, silly me. Teenage complaints are never the basis for judging a book, but I did hear enough of their complaints to know in advance of my reading it that the premise of the book was simple and, well, relatively boring sounding. Basically, an old man named Santiago goes out to sea one September morning and then spends the subsequent days and nights bringing in a huge fish only to then watch it get eaten by sharks.

            However, just as the sea itself seems flat and boring at times, there is a depth to this short novel that can only be found by setting yourself adrift amidst its pages. I think the benefit of wisdom that comes with age also helps an older person glean much more from this book than the average high schooler is yet capable of getting.

            If I had read this in high school I wouldn’t yet have learned enough Spanish to appreciate the smattering of it found in this book. I wouldn’t yet have swum in gulf waters like those in the story, and I wouldn’t have been able to understand the sense of both isolation and calm that comes over a person who is so far from land that the land has disappeared. I wouldn’t yet have seen large fish (Marlins and sharks for Santiago, whale sharks for me) up close and personal in their natural habitat and come to love their beauty and majesty.

            Hemingway shaped many things through his writings. He single-handedly started the craze for Pamplona’s yearly running of the bulls during that city’s festival for San Fermin by including it in a novel he wrote called “The Sun Also Rises.” There are many other Spanish cities that hold annual running of the bulls during their festivals as well, but the world doesn’t know about those because Hemingway didn’t write about them. He also stirred the thrill for deep sea fishing in many the man, young and old, through this novel about an old man and “la mar,” the Spanish word for the sea.

            In Spanish, you can refer to the sea in either a feminine fashion as Santiago does, or you can use the masculine “el mar” for it as well. In one of the most quoted lines of the book, Hemingway writes about Santiago’s preference for “la mar.” “He always thought of the sea as la mar which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her.” For me, the sea is “la mar.”

            Perhaps if some of those students who once complained about this book were to reread it now that they are older, they would come to love it as both Santiago and I love the sea and the giant fish who swim in it.

Novel Thoughts column – begun on February 3, 2010

Books covered, arranged alphabetically by title

Pulitzers marked with a P and favorites of mine marked with ** afterwards

• 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens                              **
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain
• A Cycle of the West by John G. Neihardt
• A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles                           **
• A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler  **            P
• A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman                               **
• A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean
• A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor                                                       P
• A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
• A Woman of Substance by Barbara Taylor Bradford            **
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
• Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington                                                             P
• All the Gallant Men by Donald Stratton with Ken Gire
• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr                 **                    P
• Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor                                                            P
• Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis                                                                      P
• Atonement by Ian McEwan                                                   **
• Beach Music by Pat Conroy
• Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walters
• Bel Canto by Ann Pachett
• Beloved by Toni Morrison                                                                            P
• Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris
• Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres            **
• Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner                                **
• Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
• Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather             **       
• Different Seasons by Stephen King
• Doctor Sleep by Stephen King
• Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield                                                               P
• Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. Le Guin
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
• Empire Falls by Richard Russo                                                                    P
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• Friendship, Hateship, . . .  by Alice Munro (short story collection)
• Ghosts: A Treasury of Chilling Tales Old and New compiled by Marvin Kaye
• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell                           **                    P
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens                             **
• Guernica by Dave Boling
• Hard Times by Charles Dickens
• Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro
• Heidi by Johanna Spyri
• Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
• Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie
• His Family by Ernest Poole                                                                          P
• I am a Man: Chief Standing Bear’s Journey for Justice by Joe Starita
• Independence Day by Richard Ford                                                             P
• Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell                        **
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin          **     P
• Kim by Rudyard Kipling
• Lincoln by David Herbert Donald
• Loving Frank by Nancy Horan                                             **
• Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
• March by Geraldine Brooks                                               **                    P
• Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser       P
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius                                          **
• Merle’s Door by Ted Kerasote
• Middlemarch by George Eliot                                             **
• Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville
• Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf                                        **
• Night by Elie Wiesel                                                             **
• Now in November by Josephine W. Johnson                        **                    P
• O’ Pioneers by Willa Cather
• Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout                                  **                    P
• Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen by Bob Greene
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• One of Ours by Willa Cather                                              **                    P
• Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
• People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Possession by A. S. Byatt                                                     **
• Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi **
• Roots by Alex Haley                                                             **
• Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler
• September by Rosamund Pilcher
• Silas Marner by George Eliot                                              **
• Slumdog Millionaire by Vikas Swarup
• Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
• So Big by Edna Ferber                                                          **                    P
• Summerland by Michael Chabon
• Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener                                        P
• Teacher Man by Frank McCourt
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton                                                      P
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho                                            **
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon           P
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak                                         **
• The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder                                       P
• The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk                                                            P
• The Chimes by Charles Dickens
• The Christmas Train by David Baldacci
• The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter                      P
• The Conde Nast Traveler Book of Unforgettable Journeys: Great Writers on Great Places, Volume One
• The Constant Gardener by John LeCarre
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas                **
• The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens
• The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings
• The Dollmaker by Harriette Arnow
• The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O’Connor
• The Eighth Day by Thornton Wilder                                                         P
• The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery              **
• The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe             **
• The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje                            **
• The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer                         **                    P
• The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
• The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt                                                                      P
• The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows                                                                                  **
• The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien **
• The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb
• The Hours by Michael Cunningham                                    **                    P
• The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
• The Hummingbird’s Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
• The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau                                           P
• The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
• The Late George Apley by John P. Marquand                                              P
• The Library Book by Susan Orlean                                      **
• The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules by Catharina Ingleman-Sundberg
• The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington                                    P
• The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith    **
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway                 **                    P
• The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton                                               **
• The Overstory by Richard Powers                                        **                    P
• The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
• The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs
• The Poems of Robert Frost by Robert Frost
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
• The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester        **
• The Professor’s House by Willa Cather                             **
• The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald
• The Reivers by William Faulkner                                                                 P
• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy                                                                   P
• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón                    **
• The Shipping News by Annie Proulx                                                            P
• The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen                                                      P
• The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor                        P
• The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White                              **
• The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair by Joel Dicker
• The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt
• The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish                                    **
• The White Album by Joan Didion
• The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
• The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck
• The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike
• The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings                                                 P
• The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman                          **
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• Tinkers by Paul Harding                                                                               P
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee                                  **                    P
• To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
• Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks                                          **
• U.S.A. Trilogy by John Dos Passos
• Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen                                      **
• Watership Down by Richard Adams                                    **
• Wonder by R.J. Palacio                                                         **
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
• Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes                                                    P
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
• Zorro by Isabel Allende **

As of December 2023, 164 books.