Cats, Heathcliff, And American Pie

Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.

This week's throwback is one of my favorites, Wuthering Heights—hence Tracy’s gift for my unborn (years out) grandchild.

Those Brontë girls knew how to write a wicked tale, didn't they? Charlotte was a bit more subdued; she kept her crazy in the attic. But Emily. Ah, Emily. She hurled it about with reckless abandon. You want a love story, she asked? I'll give you one so twisted and heartbreaking and haunting that you'll weep at the wonder and the ugliness of it all. Happy endings be damned! Turns out love is a many tortured thing.

No Mr. Rochester here. And most especially, no Darcy or Captain Elliott. I can hear Heathcliff's dismissive scoff now: "If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years as I could in a day." And love his Catherine he did—albeit with a brooding, obsessive, downright dangerous kind of love that unleashed a quest for revenge so ruthless and cold-blooded it would have given even Edmond Dantès pause.

From what I've read of Emily's life, of all the tales of love she could have written, this one rings most true. Preferring solitude and wondering moors to social society, she appeared to care little for convention. Her one novel, much like herself, was vastly misunderstood and under-appreciated at the time of its publishing. Charlotte said of her: "an interpreter ought always to have stood between her and the world."

Spend a little time on the moors near the Brontë home in Haworth, where Emily was said to roam for hours on end, and you'll understand even further why conjuring a Heathcliff was more doable than a Darcy. While Tracy and I were studying in London, we did just that, staying with our group in a large, eerie hostel smack dab in the middle of the moors. It was a late winter evening when we arrived, making the scene all the more foreboding as we headed out in search of Catherine's ghost and her haunted Heathcliff. What we found instead were hundreds of cats combing the moors, and worse, our hostel, and a local band playing "American Pie." Now that's the stuff literary dreams are made of.

Posted by Rachel

So Far Behind I Think I'm Ahead

My best friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read. —Abraham Lincoln

I’m a gift giver by nature.  It won’t surprise that I relish finding an impeccable read for an unsuspecting or celebrating friend.  Acquaintances are no exception.  Like fantasy/sci-fi writer Vera Nazarian, I believe “whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow [for] more light.”

Rachel is one of my favorite people…to shower with books because she’s an insatiable reader. No white lies here—it’s hard to keep up with her.  (Sometimes I’m so far behind I think I’m ahead.)  I gave her Ordinary Grace after she’d read it, too kind to tell me so.  Recently, my defeated self resorted to asking have you read The Rosie Project, The Secret Keeper, or They Came to Baghdad?  Yes. Not yet. No.

But I have my victories—big ones too.  The ones where I surprise her with an enchanting read she has no knowledge of.  Before the leaves started to change color, we met at a quiet cabin to refuel and laugh out loud.  Happily, I handed Rachel The Snow Child.  She delved into Ivey’s world morning, tried at noon, and night.  Like The Rent Collector I sent to her door, she’s written a post about it.  And so, I vigilantly search for pages she hasn’t plumbed through. 

Last year, I picked up the Little Miss Bronte version of Wuthering Heights (a Weather Primer) for Rachel’s unborn grandchild (years out). She can put it near her big girl copy once Emma or Zannah give their mother the opportunity for inexhaustible delight. If you can’t wait for a bambino to enjoy charming illustrations that describe the different types of weather Heathcliff and Catherine encounter while crossing the moors, we’ll totally understand.

Posted by Tracy

Playing Fast and Loose with Literary Magic

A while back, Buzzfeed, a source for all things pop culture, and my college-aged daughters' only source for news (does that give you pause like it does me?), asked their readers to submit their favorite lines from literature. Now there's a request to send me reeling. Choosing a favorite line is akin to choosing my favorite child, or worse, my favorite book. Impossible. 

What makes a sentence speak to us, stop us in our tracks, jump out of the page and into our very soul? I suppose it's different for each of us, and each instance is different as well. Some lines conjure up a memory, dust it off, and make it sparkle. Some shine a light on a darkness we didn't know existed or a speck of beauty otherwise overlooked. Some are a balm; others a deep belly laugh. And some leave us in awe at the simple beauty of the thing.

Whatever it is, I know I can no more choose a favorite, or even 100 favorites, to save my life. That's playing fast and loose with literary magic. Buzzfeed published their 51 favorite submissions here. That they ended with an odd number, rather than a clean fifty, tells me a whole lot of wrangling took place as they whittled down their list. An impasse was clearly reached.

So rather than attempt something so brazen or haphazard as a list of favorites, here are few I love, for all the various, glorious reasons. Please know there are hundreds more. I would ask Tracy to submit some of hers as well, but today her head is spinning with only one: "The brothers in orange are undefeated and unbowed."

SOME BUZZFEED SUBMISSIONS I LOVE

“She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.” —J. D. Salinger, A Girl I Knew

“What are men to rocks and mountains?” —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart.” —Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank

“I would always rather be happy than dignified.” —Charlotte Brontë , Jane Eyre

“It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes.” —Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.” —Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“It does not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that.” —J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

"At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great."—Willa Cather, My Ántonia

"Isn't it pretty to think so?"—Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

"Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same."—Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“‘Dear God,’ she prayed, ‘let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.’”—Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

SOME OTHERS I LOVE, HUGE EMPHASIS ON SOME

"It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us." —Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

"We can love completely what we cannot completely understand." —Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

“A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty.”  —Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

"Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting." —Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

“It is a lovely oddity of human nature that a person is more inclined to interrupt two people in conversation than one person alone with a book.” —Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

"So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?" —Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

"No bathroom on earth will make up for marrying a bearded man you hate." —Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

"I longed for the cushion of family that was theirs." —Ivan Doig, Last Bus to Wisdom

“With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.” —Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep.” —Zora Neal Hurston, Their Eyes were Watching God

"It's come at last, she thought, the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.” —Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life.” —Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

“I believe that if we are going to write about life and death, we should not do it from the cheap seats.” —Rick Bragg, All Over but the Shoutin'

If I don't stop now, I never will. Although it induces great anxiety over the many I've left out. It's your turn: what sentences speak to you?

Posted by Rachel

Portable Magic

I feel like cutting in on Rachel’s dance with Stephen King.  May I, please?  I just want to sashay for a moment.  That’s all.  (Actually, cue the disco ball.) Whether you like to get your creep on or not, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is well worth the read.  I do not exaggerate when I say that it’s thoroughly fascinating.  Indeed, it will make you a better writer; in fact, it has become the most popular book about writing ever written.  Writing tips aside, On Writing is keenly interesting because it chronicles King’s rise to fame.  He’s published more than 50 best-selling novels—at times, he did this against addictive odds.  

King doesn’t consider writing a chore—he finds joy in his craft.  His enthusiasm will inevitably find its way into your head.  And even if you don’t aspire to put pen to page, your curiosity will be piqued.  A supernatural force may possess you to the point of unwittingly purchasing a King novel.  After that, you’ll undoubtedly be entranced.  

Remember this fact: the master of the macabre did craft non-frightening stories as well.  It’s the softer side of King that has me rapt.  I’m told The Running Man is particularly good.  The Green Mile and The Body (filmed under the title Stand By Me) both made it onto the silver screen, which speaks volumes about well, these volumes.  My favorite, hands-down, is Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. King’s writing is exquisite. For me, it’s hard not to feel enchanted by a novella with the subtitle Hope Springs Eternal. If you can handle some of the awful scenarios prison-life promotes, you’ll be grateful for the reminder that, “hope is a good thing…maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

Posted by Tracy

Kill Your Darlings

Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.

Who better to spend a little time with on this All Hallows' Eve than the master of fear himself, Stephen King? While I've yet to read any of his fiction, some of which scares me off by its sheer scariness, I am a huge fan of On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

I've read my fair share of books on writing and this is the most dog-eared book I own—it practically falls open to his Toolbox section. This, along with Anne Lamotte's Bird by Bird, and The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, are all the books that need line a writer's shelf.

You don't have to want to write to love this book. The first half is a memoir: a look into the life that built the writer, and when it's the writer behind the likes of Carrie, Misery, and The Shining, you know you're in for quite a ride. You'll learn that King is part of a writers-only rock band, along with Amy Tan, of all people, and how he wrote his first best seller in the eighth grade, The Pit and the Pendulum. Selling it for a quarter a copy, he had three dozen sold and was riding high with nine dollars in change weighing down his book bag, before he was summoned to the principal's office for turning the school into a marketplace. You'll be regaled with tales of poison ivy, potentially lethal science projects, how his first national bestseller was saved from the trash bin by his wife, and that in the end, it was his compulsion to write that brought him back from the brink of death.

I'll leave you with this early piece of advice from his mother, who encouraged King to get his teaching credentials as a backup, should the whole writing thing not pan out: "You may want to get married, Stephen, and a garret by the Seine is only romantic if you're a bachelor. It's no place to raise a family."

Posted by Rachel

Stardust

In the soul-sister spirit of Anna Quindlen, it’s widely known in a small circle that I make a mean spaghetti sauce, I can spy a surprisingly stunning paint swatch, and I have a semi-successful sideline in matchmaking.  More importantly, I have a gift for making friends—an eye for the very best.  The odds weren’t in my favor of finding Rachel in a packed and bustling JFK International airport.  Admittedly, providence stepped in.  Still within 5 minutes of our first real conversation, I knew she was a keeper.  Who wouldn’t draw close to light? Of course, I was young.  My brain wasn’t fully developed.  There was no way to know then that I had discovered a once-in-a-lifetime friend.

Yes, this is a blog about the best books.  But it’s as much about a consummate friendship.  A friendship that started in a noisy airport terminal, flourished in a foreign country, and thrived immeasurably over years.  It’s one for the books.  For me, some of the most exquisite reads revolve around timeless friendships that are a lot like winter’s first generous snowfall—it beckons you to watch from the window with quiet wonder.

I’m sure I’ve learned how to be a friend, in part, from reading.  I learned about the constancy of friendship from Minny & Abileen.  No matter how ugly life got, they’d pull through because they had each other. Miriam’s sacrifice for Laila reminds me that the most profound relationships are rooted in unselfishness. I shudder to think what if Hamlet didn’t have Horatio?  So maybe your best friend claims to have seen a ghost…or per chance, he tries to kill his uncle—as a best friend, it’s your job to love and support him anyway.  Oh and don’t forget, it was Horatio who lived to tell Hamlet’s story.  I don’t want that job for just anyone—a trusted task for Rae or a sister of mine.

Real friendships should provide us shade and cover.  Respite.  Honestly, I don’t know everything the magical formula entails.  I do know it when I see it.  Rachel and I…we show up.  We listen. We laugh.  The rest is just stardust.

Posted by Tracy

Throwback Thursday

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.

Tracy and I have a list of people we're best friends with in our minds. Anna Quindlen is one. Rachel Remen is another. Emma Thompson definitely makes my list as well. And Helene Hanff. If she were still alive, and I somehow lived down the hall from her New York City apartment, we'd spend long afternoons talking about books and our love for quaint little Englishmen who work in bookshops. We'd also laugh about our hopelessly horrible math skills (My algebra teacher, Mr. Moots, will vouch for mine). When asking for book prices to be given in dollars, rather than pounds, Hanff writes: "Will you please translate your prices hereafter? I don't add too well in plain American, I haven't a prayer of ever mastering bilingual arithmetic."

If you love books, London, and charming used bookshops, this classic is for you. 84, Charing Cross Road, published in 1970, is a collection of real letters, spanning over twenty years, between Hanff and Mark Doel, a book dealer at London's Marks & Co.. Despite the miles between them, the difference in cultures, and the fact that they never meet, they develop a friendship that does what all the best friendships do: changes them both for good.

It's a quick read, as in you can read this in a day quick. Which is sad, because it will leave you wanting so much more of Helene and Frank, and yet beautiful, because you can read it again and again.

I've yet to see it, but it was made into a movie in 1987, staring Anne Bancroft, Anthony Hopkins, and Judi Dench. Of course, true to Hollywood form, they've turned it into a love story, and not the book loving kind. Blatant embellishment aside, I plan on Netflixing this pronto.

Posted by Rachel

Somewhere South Of The Moon And North Of Hell

Luck is the star we steer by.

We called her Grandma with the Chickens. She was no-nonsense, yet also mischievous, with a hearty, deep down honest laugh. She wasn't a hugger, but whenever I walked into her home, heard the familiar "Howdy," and smelled her fried chicken and homemade biscuits, I knew I was loved. The lines on her face spoke of a hard life: one that moved her from farm to farm as my grandfather searched for greener pastures, with eleven children underfoot, and just enough money to keep a roof, albeit a small one, over their heads. There was no time to speak of love, she was too busy showing it.

So when Ivan Doig introduced me to Gram in Last Bus to Wisdom, I found I already knew her. This happens a lot with Doig; his characters feel like old friends. And like a true friend, they stay with you long after you've read the last page. Eleven year-old Donal (minus the d) Cameron, is one of those friends. As with Rusty in Doig's The Bartender's Tale, I found myself not only rooting for him, but wanting to adopt him.

We meet Donal aboard the dog bus (Greyhound) where he wrestles with homesickness for his Gram and nervous anticipation of meeting his great aunt Kate.  It's 1951, and Gram's illness has forced him to leave the Double W ranch in Montana for Manitowoc, Wisconsin, to spend the summer with an aunt he's never met. Armed with an autograph book and all the money he has, which isn't much, pinned to the inside of his shirt, Donal experiences his first kiss, has a run-in with a squirrelly sheriff, and finds an unlikely ally, along with a slew of other memorable characters. Great Aunt Kate turns out to be nothing short of a henpecking bully, but Donal finds a friend in her beleaguered husband, Herman the German. Circumstances soon lead Donal and Herman back on the dog bus, headed for "somewhere south of the moon and north of hell," where they'll find wisdom and goodness in the most unexpected of places. Trust me, you'll be glad you came along for the ride.

Reading Doig reminds me of sitting around the table with my dad and uncles as they regaled us with tales of their youth. It feels like home. While The Bartender's Tale remains my favorite of Doig's work, Last Bus to Wisdom and The Whistling Season are in a close race for second. Sadly, this is his last novel, he passed away before it was published, and I feel bereft over the loss of his magical storytelling. I take comfort in the books he left that line my shelves, to be read time and again. I owe this man an ode.

Posted by Rachel