Book Report

One of my New Year's resolutions was to read more, so I thought I'd share my January reading.

My first book for the year was Chaim Potok's Davita's Harp.  I think this is the fifth book I've read by him and I love them all.  Potok is such an amazing story-teller.  The novel chronicles the life of a young girl as she comes of age amid family, social, and religious strife.  I typically become very invested in the books I read, so I cried all the way through.  Davita's story is heart-breaking in itself, but Potok is able to capture that moment when the harsh realities of life settle on a young person, particularly the realization that life is not fair, even cruel, and we're often powerless to change it.  But it's a hopeful book, offering a solace found and built upon the power of ideals and imagination.  Honestly, just writing about this book makes me want to read all over again.

 I soon followed up with John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley: In Search of America.  I remember during Junior year of High School everyone was dreading reading The Grapes of Wrath, supposedly because it was long and boring.  But I adored it, so I was excited to read this book.  It is a travelogue of Steinbeck's cross-country trip with his poodle, Charley.  First, it was interesting to get to know the author, since this was a non-fiction personal account.  It gave me a different perspective on what I remember of the The Grapes of Wrath.  Second, Steinbeck is hilarious.  He has a very subtle humor, but he is spot-on with his observations. ("spot-on" - this sounds so British but my brain can't think of the American equivalent.)  I was so amused I had to read all the funny passages to Josh.  He was a sport and played along and chuckled at the appropriate moments.  Since we had just recently gone out shooting, I found this passage particularly amusing:

"...every fall a great number of men set out to prove that without talent, training, knowledge, or practice they are dead shots with rifle or shotgun.  The results are horrid.  From the moment I left Sag Harbor the guns were booming at the migrating ducks, and as I drove in Maine the rifle shots in the forests would have frightened off any number of redcoats so long as they didn't know what was happening.  This is bound to get me a bad name as a sportsman, but let me say at once that I have nothing against the killing of animals.  Something has to kill them I suppose...If I were hungry, I would happily hunt anything that runs or crawls or flies, even relatives, and tear them down with my teeth.  But it isn't hunger that drives millions of armed American males to forests and hills every autumn, as the high incidence of heart failure among the hunters will prove.  Somehow the hunting process has to do with masculinity, but I don't quite know how.  I know there are any number of good and efficient hunters who know what they are doing; but many more are overweight gentlemen, primed with whiskey and armed with high-powered rifles.  They shoot at anything that moves or looks as though it might, and their success in killing one another may well prevent a population explosion."

Anyway, I got a kick out of it.