A Northern Light (copy)

"No one is a failure who has books." Oops, that's supposed to read, “No one is a failure who has friends.” Wait a minute! Aren't they one in the same!?!

I met a new friend, in yet another book, that I admire and care for deeply this week. Her name is Matilda Gokey, or Mattie, and she lives in the North Woods of New York state. She is 16 and she is 17 for her story travels two separate timelines; one story occurs as she carries out chores on her family’s homestead, and the other story takes place at the Glenmore Inn where she toils as a maid.

While living with the family, Mattie chooses a word for the day from her deceased mother’s prized dictionary. (All stories about Mattie’s time with the family begin with the word of the day separated phonetically in the chapter title.) These words are her salvation as she toils caringly for her three younger sisters and overworked father.

Her time at Glenmore is punctuated by the untimely death of an inn guest. Grace Brown is found at dusk floating on the camp’s lake. She and her friend Carl Grahm, or is it Chester Gillette, took a little skiff out after lunch and haven’t been seen since. Well, that is before Grace’s body turns up.

In these parallel stories, Mattie has made promises to the recently dead. For her mother, she promises to look after the family, and for Grace Brown she promises to burn the letters written between Grace and Chester, oh, I mean Carl. Did you know it was a sin to break a death bed promise? Mattie just knows she will come face-to-face with their ghosts if she does.

Jennifer Donnelly has written an extremely engaging story in A Northern Light. This award winner, for the young adult crowd, is perfect for a mother/daughter book club. Given the daughter is mature and understands the facts of life. Think of this book as a Laura Ingalls story for mature audiences.

If the second story sounds familiar, that is because it is based on the 1906 murder which inspired Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy.

This was one of those books I carried everywhere and didn’t want to put down. Not even when I was called to supper. Now, you know it’s a special friend, when you are willing to pass up food!

Note: This concudes my reading for the Damn Yankee Challenge. Thanks Sage and Ed for the funny! ;D

A Northern Light (copy)

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/09/northern-light-copy.html

Rats (copy)

One of my favorite things to do as a reader on vacation is read a book with local flair. You may have noticed my lead to books: The Big Bam by Montville and Pigeons by Blechman. This trip I brought along, Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan, as our 2007 guidebook.

Robert Sullivan, author of The Meadowlands and A Whale Hunt, is currently a contributing editor to Vogue and constant contributor to the New Yorker. In 2004, the year Rats was published, I heard Sullivan on NPR and as a guest of David Letterman.

I remember thinking he sounds sane and looks normal, but what is wrong with this man. No one, in his right mind, willingly gives up a year of their life to observe rats in their natural habitat. I am happy to say, after reading Rats, author Sullivan is like most Americans. He still gets a little freaked-out working around and in proximity to rats, even after a year of “observing.”

Let us start with the whys. Sullivan thought the rats of New York City, although a quarter to half a million strong, were mostly ignored by nature writers. If they appeared in print it was to shock newspaper buyers into full subscriptions. Yet, for all the potential diseases they carry, they have had little consequence on humans in the last eighty years.

Throughout history, where humans created community, so too did rats. As our fictitious Hansel and Gretel skipped into the woods, it wasn’t song birds but rather hungry rats that ate their bread crumbs. For America, it was the rattus norvegicus or Norway Rat, who arrived, “in the first year of the Revolution.” From which they ambled after the settlers into the country, as Sullivan quips, “a manifest infestation.”

In the summer of 2001, Sullivan set up camp outside the entrance to Eden’s Alley. In an L-shaped corridor connecting Gold Street and Fulton, the oldest section of Manhattan, he began his shift at five in the evening where he observed through a night-vision monocular until morning broke. The yearlong experiment included the tragic September 11th loss that fall, when volunteers worked to contain the rats and the pestilence they harbor from Americans.

This is a fascinating read about a disgusting animal many humans would rather ignore. Would it surprise you, John James Audubon spent his later years walking the streets of lower Manhattan, similar to our neo-naturalist Sullivan, looking for rats.

Rats (copy)

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/rats-copy.html

The Big Bam (copy)

Serendipity is the art of finding something meaningful amid looking for something else; or at least, that is how I define it. It happened last week while perusing the Atlanta airport books. I was in the mood for Flannery O’Connor, a native Georgian, when I ran across his face. Who? None other than, "the Sultan of Swat, The Caliph of Clout, The Wizard of Whack, the Rajah of Rap, the Wazir of Wham, the Mammoth of Maul, the Maharajah of Mash, the Bambino. The Bam. The Big Bam." Yes, staring me in the face was The Big Bam by Leigh Montville.

Skipping down the concourse and plopping into a seat next to hubby, I smile as I reveal my manly book. Ah, I can see in his eyes, he is impressed with my decision. He then tells me he has tickets to watch the Yankees at Yankee Stadium while in New York. He wants to see a game in the "House that Ruth Built" before they move across the street.

"Babe Ruth played for the Yankees and they built a stadium for him?"

Yes, yes. Laugh away. It is a good thing this book called out to me! I obviously know nothing of the game of baseball. Maybe Babe’s ghost placed it in my ignorant hands to keep me from further embarrassing myself.

The Babe’s early life is a mystery and author Montville calls it the fog. The book opens with father, George Herman Ruth, escorting his seven year old son to St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys. The school housed orphans, truants, and delinquents; for some reason, a place Mr. Ruth thought better than his home above the family bar. Reasons are in the fog.

It is at school Ruth learned how to pitch, hit, and field a baseball. At the age of 18, a scout for the Baltimore Orioles, Jack Dunn, stopped in for a look-see. He noticed as the large boy came to bat, "the right fielder moved so far back that he left the playing field, crossed a path, and stood in the next field, where another game was taking place." Next thing, the ball careened over the same fielder’s head.

In the early 1900s, a home run was seen as a fluke, as unexpected as an ace in golf. The book states, "The balls were not made for home runs...scuffed up, roughed up, spit upon, and used for as many as 100 pitches in a game. The bats, heavy and thick through the handle, were not made for home runs. The mind was not made for home runs." Here, standing in front of Jack Dunn, was a miracle.

For what ever reason, I’m glad I finally met Babe Ruth. Montville summed it up nicely, "He will be crude and rude and kind and approachable, sometimes all in the same ten minutes, and it all will be fine. He will be credited with miracles. Fine."

The Big Bam (copy)

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/big-bam-copy.html