Please Stay

How do you say goodbye?  It's not painful when you know you will see that person again; it's just a little pinch to the heart.  It burns inside of you when you realize that it's likely a longstanding separation.  It lingers and aches when you know you will never see that person again.  Saying farewell is admitting that you are about to lose someone or something that is important.  Hence the difficulty that many of us have with monumental changes in our lives.
The Year of Magical Thinking is an outstanding example of the difficulty of accepting loss.  Anyone who has experienced the loss of a beloved person can identify with the author's expectation of seeing that individual occupying their usual place at the table or couch.  Accepting that the person is gone forever, is another loss.  Blue Nights is a different book of loss.  This is the anger. The inability to believe that a young person could be taken away.  Joan Didion shares the loss of her daughter and begins the process of acceptance while reminding us that the inevitable continuation of living our lives does not mean forgetting about what we've lost.
Beth Howard's book, Making Piece, about the loss of her young husband is a study in guilt.  Throughout their short married life, they experienced long periods of separation due to his employment and her unwillingness to move or live abroad.  On the day of his death, her husband was on the way to the lawyer's office to sign their divorce papers.  This was the second time they had attempted to go through the process.  Tragically, he died of a heart attack prior to signing the papers.  The author is convinced that she caused the death of her young husband.  She works through her grief and guilt by taking her hobby of making pie and sharing the love of that experience with others.





Goodbye is loss and starting anew.  Smashed by Koren Zailkckas, chronicles the author's struggles with the seductive power of alcohol which had been her social crutch for years.  She will have to give up the one thing she thinks she loves in order to connect with the real world.  In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls tells her tragic story through the rose tinted glasses of childhood.  Life is an unpredictable adventure with her eccentric parents.  As an adult, she comes to realize that she must separate from her parents to find happiness and stability.  Nicholas Sparks' Three Weeks With My Brother is a window into the heart and soul of brotherly love.  Though they are on the travel adventure of a lifetime, the brothers spend time sharing the joys and woes of their childhood memories and mourning the death of their beloved sister.
As we move from summer to fall, perhaps now is the best time to pick up a "goodbye book".  Fall in Wisconsin is a lovely time of year.  We live for the Packers and the local football teams.  The foliage entices visitors to drive "up north".  We put away our boats, docks and swimsuits and unpack our winter coats, snowmobiles, snow blowers, and skis.  The kids head off to school, and mourn the end of their freedom.  We live in a state of quiet anticipation while we watch everything slowly go still and dormant around us.  Summer will return but unlike the reliability of the seasons, our lives may take drastic turns and we are left wondering how long we will be saying our goodbyes before we are able to move on.

   

Old Friends

Comfortable books.  Old friends.  The tried and true.  Favorite reads.  Those authors that you keep track of in anticipation of their next volume.  Sometimes we get on a reading treadmill and it feels like we can't keep up nor are we able to get off.  Those of us who earn our keep staying current on the latest popular authors, genres, and other book trends are in a never ending reading race.  However, it would be foolish of us to forget about old friends whose meaning and message have not faded with time.
I don't know how many times I've read Pride and Prejudice (or some variation of it).  I am not ashamed to say that I have read several Jane Austen books multiple times.  My favorite fantasy books are still J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy followed closely by C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia.  According to a close friend, Ender's Game is above and beyond the best science fiction book ever written which is why he tends to read it again at least once a year. 
Gone with the Wind, The Red Badge of Courage, and The Killer Angels are books I revisit for a taste of the Civil War.  One of my all-time favorite historical books is The Autobiography of Henry the VIII written by Margaret George.  This book is written from the point of view of the court jester who has an interesting take on the various intrigues of Henry the VIII's court.  On a visit to my parents when I ran out of my own books to read (gasp!) and was tired of re-reading Agatha Christie, I was introduced to Caleb Carr's The Alienist.  
Come to think of it, most of my "comfort books" came to me through my mom.  I introduced her to The Help and she gave me Bernard Cornwell.  She leaves books like David McCullough's 1776 and Hampton Side's Ghost Soldiers at my house and I recommend Stephen Ambrose and Sarah Vowell to her.  Last time she visited, I sent a battered copy of Sarah's Key home with her for her plane ride as the fictional companion to Caroline Moorehead's A Train in Winter which she read at my house for two days straight.
Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that being in the business of books is not about how fast you can read or if you can remember the hottest new author.  Reading for pleasure and connecting with other readers is about finding the story that means something to you personally.  It may be that the book you need at the moment is NOT the latest and greatest but an old friend who will take you on a journey through the back roads of your memory to a familiar place you've visited before.  Like grandma's house, the smell of fresh chocolate chip cookies, a favorite sweater, your comfortable jeans, a hug when you need it most, a "comfort read" is the old friend that you can still relate to and want to share with others.   

The Boys of Summer and Other Hits

It has been a number of years since my husband read Bob Uecker's book about his less than illustrious baseball career and laughed out loud in the process.  Since then, I have tried to tempt him with a number of other non-fiction books but success has been limited.  Yes, despite my best efforts, he does not consider himself a "reader".  When we take a trip with a longer drive, I can normally get the entire family engrossed in a book on CD (as long as there isn't a Brewers or Packers game to listen to).  Following that, there will be a short burst of dedication to reading a book but it is usually cut short by some other distraction like the television (after all, there is probably a game of some sort on SOMEWHERE) or video games.  I have found that there are many people with busy lives who feel they don't have the time to read, and there are many people who don't consider reading to be a relaxing activity.   

Here are a few things that HAVE sparked an interest with my difficult-to-engage reader.  On our way out west, we listened to Bob Greene's Once Upon a Town with tears in our eyes and regret in our hearts when it was over.  Andy Rooney's My War, (sadly, available only on audio cassette) was filled with his trademark wit and social criticism made all the more potent because he was the narrator.  We once listened to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy and could not stop singing the Tom Bombadil song for at least three days.  I have also discovered that teen and children's fiction can keep the entire family from squabbling their way through Montana.  Series such as Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events, Harry Potter, and Brian Jacques' Redwall can help maintain the peace in an enclosed space for hours.  The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle had us so engrossed that we almost missed the last rest area for the next 82 miles.

Back to the sport of baseball, which has many inspirational stories based on reality.  Everyone loves an impossible comeback or to cheer for the underdog.  Jim Morris' book, The Oldest Rookie, inspired the movie, The Rookie starring Dennis Quaid.  The book (and movie) Moneyball might give hope to any baseball fan, even a Milwaukee Brewers' fan.  Stories and movies like Eight Men Out or Cobb remind us that baseball is more than a game and the people playing it are fallible human beings.  However, don't we all want to remember the boys of summer through the rosy light of a Field of Dreams?

Next time you want to tempt someone into a book, try making it a shared experience by using an audio book in the car.  Or, instead of Friday night pizza and a movie, bring home the book too.  It may be the inspiration you're looking for to get someone reading again.