"Well, you and I bolth [sic] like to read. So maybe we should have a speshul [sic] reading night, just me and you. Maybe Wednesday or Saturday." Younger daughter Veronica scribbled this note to me back when she was in primary school: Like mother, like daughter. And we celebrated our shared love of books in a trip to Barnes & Noble, last weekend. Stopping in for Master and Commander--the book and the movie--for my nautically bent patriarchal's father's day gift, we also stocked up on some poolside/couch-lounging summer reading:
- Veronica's haul: Catch 22, by Joseph Heller. I was surprised at this selection of an older title, familiar to my generation but now rather obscure. Roni just shrugged and said, "I've heard of it. It looks interesting." She also snagged three Agatha Christies that might actually be new to us "bolth"! Rather amazing, as I've been reading A.C.'s ouevre since my college days @ the University of New Mexico: If I had any loose change, it went to paperback Agathas at the Lobo Campus Pharmacy, one of my fave hangouts in Albuquerque. V-ron got hooked on A.C. from some of my old UNM-era paperbacks, too cherished to pitch! And I was pleasantly surprised at her selection of What Do Christians Believe, by Pope Benedict. Veronica is leaning toward a vocation as a human rights lawyer, so it's a delight to watch her bend her mind around thoughty, weighty issues. AND she likes Bob Dylan. Interesting cat, that V-cat!
- Christine's haul: Lark and Termite by old fave author Jayne Anne Phillips, whom I discovered while managing Page One Bookstore in Albuquerque back in the '80s. I remember reading her Shelter and an earlier title called Machine Dreams (featuring the old Phillips 66 red winged-horse logo on the cover) and thinking, "When I discover my muse and become a writer of fiction, this is the type of writing that I'd aspire to." Like L&T, I heard about Serena on a recent NPR broadcast. It hooked me with this opening line: "When Pemberton returned to the North Carolina mountains after three months in Boston settling his father's estate, among those waiting on the train platform was a young woman pregnant with Pemberton's child. She was accompanied by her father, who carried beneath his shabby frock coat a bowie knife sharpened with great attentiveness earlier that morning so it would plunge as deep as possible into Pemberton's heart." Gripping, say what?
- I also picked up a copy of A Tale of Two Cities: My girls find it astounding that as a lifelong bookworm/slash/college English major/slash/former bookstore manager and consumer of other Dickens work, I've never read one of the best tales going. Other tomes on my nightstand: Have You Seen...? (a compendium of must-see movies), and the no-doubt laugh-out-loud-riotous When You Are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris. I am still laughing at his Rooster story from Me Talk Pretty One Day, lo these several years later.
- Two additional titles of interest: Petina Gappah's short stories of Zimbabwe, called Elegy for Easterly. I loved in her NPR interview today where she said "Zimbabweans are hungry for the written word"; as am I. She also said frankly and charmingly, “People always ask me how I manage to find humor in so much bleakness, but I think this is almost a necessary skill to have.” And finally: "We find ways of coping with pain by laughing at it and by laughing at ourselves." (One of my favorite lines is, "Those who can laugh at themselves will be endlessly amused.") And a copy of Beowulf tantalized. If I weren't already laden down, I would've caught that one up, too, and read it aloud 'til I felt a modern-day Isolde: Christinglish in Old English!
- And then there was the series on the noble, adventurous, and unprecedented early Athenian navy. I forget the name of the attributed admiral, but he said something along the lines of "I may not know how to catch a fish or mend a net, but I know how to make a small city great." Shopping list started for next trip to B&N....
While Veronica has "growed up" and moved on, and cuddling up with Mommy and a good book may no longer be her top pick for entertainment of a Saturday eve, I am still so pleased that she has inherited my love of the written word and a fascination with the life of the mind and spirit. I'm also pleased to report that her spelling has improved, markedly!
To close, the entire Henry Wadsworth Longfellow line runs like this: "The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, and all the sweet serenity of books." Sweet, indeed.
