Winter Reading
One way to get through winter (waiting for the next trout season) is catch up on reading. Here’s a few suggestions…
If you long for the days when American’s thought the British had a monopoly on crass self-important, egotistical men with power you should read Larry McMurtry’s Barrybender series starting with Sin Killer. A pompous English Lord drags his family and servants on a hunting trip to the old west at a time when the American Indians were not buying Manifest Destiny. Lord Barrybender gets chiseled down to size. At times hilarious, at times horrifying, an amazing read.
Not sure why it took so long for me to read Frank Herbert’s Dune. Considered the greatest science fiction ever written it is a very accessible human story in a world of spectacular imagination. Like a lot of science fiction publishers wanted nothing to do with it. First published by Chilton, the folks that bring you car repair manuals. It is my goal to find a Chilton copy of the novel at a garage or estate sale.. A true prize. Then read it all over again.
There is a new category of fiction that blends science fiction and fiction with in your face humanity. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead should be required reading for all high school students. It follows a African American girl as she flees slavery. The depiction of slavery is one thing, how whites use her in a live museum diorama to show how the trip to America on a slave ship was a pleasant experience is quite another. You will learn, make that feel, more about black history. All in the confines of masterful storytelling.
IQ84 by Haruki Murakami is another work of fiction/science fiction that left me stunned. A young boy in middle school picks an outcast, unathletic girl to be on his team when no one else wants her. Their lives become entwined in a parallel world where no deed goes unanswered. One of those books that makes you rethink what we are doing here.
A book I kept putting off for a lifetime: The Diary of Anne Frank. I was afraid to read it knowing it was a true story with a tragic ending, a basis for nightmares. Instead it was uplifting to watch how a young girl could put aside the constant terror of hiding from Nazis and continue her studies and writing. When the diary stops you realize the true horror of the holocaust isn’t the tragic image of the death camp survivors, but rather the loss of of people that could have made a real difference in the world.
Fichigan 