Wild by Cheryl Strayed

I had a vague recollection of having written something about Cheryl Strayed's Wild at the beginning of December, but a lot of things from the first week of December are fairly foggy for me.  When I opened the draft I was surprised to see that it was as complete as it is.  So, I am posting it as it is:
 

The travelogue is a particularly favourite genre of mine.  A travelogue written by a woman hiking an extended wilderness trail alone is sure to catch my interest.  I was surprised when I saw the 2012 publication date on Cheryl Strayed's Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail because it seems as though I've been hearing about it for years.  I heard her interviewed when the book was first released and I thought, "That sounds right up my alley!"  But then I stumbled on a few online reviews, the jist of many expressing the opinion that the author was whiney and self-pitying, perhaps a bit self-indulgent, and with boundary issues about how much private information is Too Much Information.  And then Oprah gave it her stamp of approval.  Well, I read it anyway, and have to say that I really, thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Wild is a memoir of the summer of 1995 when the author treked long portions of the Pacific Crest Trail in California and Oregon.  Cheryl Strayed hiked 1100 miles on her own in an attempt to come to terms with the loss and pain in her life.  With connections to The Pilgrim's Progress continually coming to the surface, Strayed records her journey carrying her enormous rucksack she named "Monster."  As she progresses, the weight of her burden is lighter as she becomes stronger.  This book is heavily weighted with this kind of symbolism.

The entire journey is examined with almost twenty year hindsight, but never feels nostalgiac or sentimental.  Strayed is a bluntly honest writer, telling all even when it is unflattering and embarassing.  There were definitely some squirm-inducing moments, but I respected her need to tell the whole story.  She explores her family history, the death of her mother, the abusive birth father, the traumatic death of a horse.   I will admit to reading some of these scenes through squinted eyes, skimming first to prepare me for what was to come. But it never got so bad I had to skip or stop reading.  She writes with the same frankness about sexual encounters, menstruation and heroin use, and with an unvarnished honesty that I admired even whilst feeling a tad uncomfortable with the bluntness of it.

I suspect it has probably taken Cheryl Strayed all these years to appreciate how important that summer was in her life.  Many of the revelations must have happened long after the trek was complete, for as she says, the expectation that she had before her trip (that she would be filled with catharitic experience sitting by a mountain lake at sunset) was pushed aside by the reality of just surviving the ordeal of traversing the land every day with too-small boots and a too-heavy rucksack.

When I was twenty-two I left Canada for a six-month trek around Europe alone.  While my journey was considerably less physically arduous, and I definitely had more opportunities for bathing, I could identify with many of her experiences as a woman traveling alone.  It brought back many wonderful memories of the deep bonds that can form between travellers, and the transformational quality of long-term travel.

Cheryl Strayed

Some of my favourite travel memoirs:

• A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson
• The Voyage of the Northern Magic: A Family Odyssey by Diane Stuermer
• Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer
• Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts
• Slow Journeys: The Pleasures of Travelling by Foot by Gillian Souter
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert Pirsig
• Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer
• Long Way Round: Chasing Shadows Across the World by Charley Boorman and Ewan McGregor
• Giant Steps: The Remarkable Story of the Goliath Expedition From Punta Arenas to Russia by Karl Bushby
• The Woman Who Walked to Russia: A Writer's Search for a Lost Legend by Cassandra Pybus
• Scraping Heaven : A Family's Journey Along the Continental Divide by Cindy Ross
• How the Heather Looks: A Joyous Journey to the British Sources of Children's Books by Joan Bodger

How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen

I recently picked up Anna Quindlen's contribution to the Library of Contemporary Thought series entitled How Reading Changed My Life.  It's a tiny little book - 84 pages including the acknowledgements - comprising four short essays and several lists of her Top 10 books by category.  Rather than a story of transformation, which you might expect from the title, this is a memoir of Anna Quindlen's reading life with gentle diversions into topics such as censorship, how technology is changing the way we read, the literary canon, and book groups.  I enjoyed her stroll down memory lane, and found myself nodding and agreeing with much that she wrote.  My only real disappointment with the book was with her Top 10 Lists which looked as though they were compiled from secondary school syllabi: so predictable.  I expected someone of her political persuasion not to be so heavy on the Dead White Guy, especially when she writes:

Most of those so-called middlebrow readers would have readily admitted that the Iliad set a standard that could not be matched by What Makes Sammy Run? or Exodus. But any reader with common sense would also understand intuitively, immediately, that such comparisons are false, that the uses of reading are vast and variegated and that some of them are not addressed by Homer. 

I think most avid readers will recognise themselves in many of Anna Quindlen's recollections.  Haven't we all walked down the street reading the last pages of a book we just can't put down?   Haven't we all escaped into the pages of a book rather than deal with real life?  It was fun to read about her journey but what this book did, was to encourage me to look back at my own reading history. 

I was the teenaged reader of E. Nesbit and Jane Austen, of Mazo de la Roche and Charles Dickens, of Agatha Christie and Robertson Davies and the Brontes.  If I'm being completely honest here, I also spent more than one evening with books from a teen romance series called "First Love at Silhouette" which included the baseball-themed Short Stop for Romance and the tennis-themed Courting Trouble.  My siblings and I used the library frequently, and my parents were always working through some non-fiction that held no interest for me (political biographies or social histories).

I have never been a prolific reader; I have always been slow and plodding, but I finished my degree in English Literature, and then I worked for some years (whilst pursuing my studies in Art History) in libraries and independent bookshops where I was in charge of the children’s books. During that time (pre-children-of-my-own), I spent most of my time endeavouring to read all the children's books I could. I discovered all the classics I had missed, and all the new authors of which I had never heard.   I became fascinated with historical Canadian children’s fiction, and Sheila Egoff’s critical work in the field.

When I entered the next phase of my life - The Mothering Years - I was able to put all that knowledge to good use with my own children.  Sharing all my own favourites and finding even more new books together has been one of the truly wonderful aspects of parenting for me.  My focus was on their reading, and because I chose to read them books that satisfied me as well, my own fiction reading declined.  For the first time in my life I began to search out non-fiction books.  I needed to find the answers to the questions presented by daily life. So, I read parenting books, philosophy of education books, cooking, sewing, lifestyle books, books about simple living, books about yoga, illness and nutrition, books about travel and learning a new language.

I am now recognising that I have settled into a new phase in my reading life, and this blog is part of that.  The search once so pressing for practical solutions to daily life seem less urgent. I am no longer focused so much on the simple answers to the simple questions (What do I make for dinner tonight?  Which is the best hike to tackle with a three year old?).  Now that the girls can (and do) read for themselves I find myself once again free to pursue my own interests.  I now find that I am looking for the complex answers to the complex questions of life, and the books to which I am drawn are invariably authors I encountered years ago and whose work I have not finished exploring.  I first met Aldous Huxley, Jane Austen, Robertson Davies, Josephine Tey, Orwell and Margaret Laurence when I was in secondary school; Margaret Atwood, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Alice Munro, George Eliot, Carol Shields, Hermann Hesse, Michael Ondaatje, Turgenev, and Hardy continue to appeal from my university days and all of these authors and more continue to speak to me.  I have loved being introduced to new authors through blogging and have found so much inspiration from bloggers.  I had never read Rumer Godden's adult fiction, Willa Cather, Dodie Smith, Beryl Bainbridge or Colm Tóibín's work before reading blogs.

For seven years I have been dealing with a chronic physical disease which affects my daily life.  I am fascinated by the mind-body link I have experienced during this time, and my fiction-reading has played a significant part in my treatment.  I have seen incredible links between my health and the books I am reading; the body follows where my mind leads.  I choose my reading very carefully especially when I am having a flare-up.  I will write more about this aspect of my reading life soon.

While I like my non-fiction simple and informative, I like my fiction deep and nuanced. I read non-fiction to learn what I do not already know. I read fiction to put words to the truths I feel deep in my soul. I like my non-fiction to-the-point and direct, well-organised and fast. I like my fiction with as many interpretations as there are readers, books that reward the re-reader, and the close reader. I search non-fiction for the simple answers. I search fiction for someone else's answer to the big questions that I can weigh against my own convictions. I like writing that is as complicated, and interwoven, and multi-layered, and symbolic, and challenging as life itself. I love reading.

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading by Nina Sankovitch

Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a little book.

- Thomas à Kempis

When Nina Sankovitch's older sister Anne-Marie died suddenly after only a few months of illness, Nina spent three years not coping particularly well with her grief.  When it became clear that she needed to do some work to come to a better understanding and acceptance of her devastating loss, rather than merely running away from it, she decided to spend a year immersing herself in reading, as a way to connect with her book-loving sister, as a comfort, as therapeutic self-reflection, but mostly as a path to restore her focus on living a good life.  Throughout the book, the story of the whole Sankovitch family is told, from Nina's Belarussian parents and grandparents experiences in WWI, with life, death, love and loss in every generation.  The feeling of family prevades - a family deeply connected to reading.

Unlike many challenge-for-a-year memoirs, this quickly settles in to telling the story of the real learning and transformational thinking that occurred during the year.  Rather than dwelling on the logistics and obstacles of meeting her daily challenge, she quickly (thankfully!) settles in to a rhythm of reading.  I was sceptical that she would actually have anything insightful to say reading at such a rapid pace, but Nina Sankovitch seems to have real moments of clarity, and does a wonderful job of translating that to the page.  She does not attempt to discuss every book she reads (although she does include a booklist of title and author at the end of the book), but in a natural progression makes connections to her past, her heritage, and the events which unfold very coherently and in an unforced manner.

Books loved anyone who opened them, they gave you security and friendship and didn't ask anything in return; they never went away, never, not even when you treated them badly.  Love, truth, beauty, wisdom and consolation against death.  Who had said that?  Someone else who loved books.

- Cornelia Funke, Inkheart

I found this book inspirational in a way I had not anticipated.  Because I am a relatively slow reader, I assume that reading quickly for that long would not facilitate deep reading.  I assumed that some days the "challenge" aspect would overwhelm the actual purpose of the project.  But then I remembered that in 2010, I did a photography project in which I challenged myself to take a photograph a day. 
(Now, I realise that taking a picture and reading a whole book require significantly different time commitments, but I could identify with her experience through my own.)  Some days I took a picture just to keep up my streak.  In fact, once, very sick in bed, I called for my camera and took a photo of the ceiling.  But I know that I grew immensely as a photographer that year and had many insights into the beauty that surrounds us, even on a grey day in January spent entirely in the kitchen.

Clearly, Nina Sankovitch had a similar experience with the books she read.  By forcing herself to push beyond what was typical, by forcefully immersing herself in other worlds, by commiting to it, focusing on it, and sticking with it, she was able to find some of the answers she needed to heal from her loss and come to terms with issues from many other aspects of her life.  She writes about her relationship with her children, her husband, her extended family and friends and how the reading she did gave her greater understanding into each of these facets of her life and identity.

Nina Sankovitch

image found here at the author's website

 I enjoyed this book much more than I was expecting.  Nina Sankovitch is a talented writer with an ability to delve below the surface to find meaning in books.  As escape and as entertainment books are wonderful, but they often have much to teach us about our own lives, how to live, and how to be happy.  I can safely say that I will never take on the challenge of reading a book a day for a year.  But her experience did offer wonderful insights about how to use books as tools of healing and guidance.

How the Heather Looks by Joan Bodger

I remember finding an ancient copy of this book on the library shelf in the late 1990's.  Because my arms were already full with other books I left it behind, writing down the name and promising myself I would come back for it.  When I returned to sign it out, it was gone! - removed from the library catalogue never to be seen again.

Fifteen years went by...

I was recently reminded of How the Heather Looks and you can imagine my thrill when I discovered that the book had been re-issued in 1999 with a new Afterword and updated Notes by Joan Bodger.

In 1958, Joan Bodger and her husband John used some inherited money to take their two small children on a tour of England. The holiday becomes a quest:

Our children were so literal!  They besieged us with questions.  Would we see where Rat and Mole had had their picnic?  Could we climb to the Enchanted Place at the Top of the Forest?  Would we go down to towered Camelot?  Could we pay a call on Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle?  Privately we adults told each other that of course such places did not exist in reality, but the children's faith was unfaltering - and unnerving.  Perhaps, we said, a few of the places really did exist.  Perhaps, we said cautiously, we could seek them out.

And after some intense research...

The more I read the more convinced I became that the children were right.  Most places in children's literature are real.  We could find them if we searched.  All we needed was faith.

So, the Bodgers set off on an adventure, and in her wonderfully written narrative we go along for the ride.  Along with her account of the family's adventures, Joan Bodger interjects interesting and relevant research done before and after their trip which fill out the story, adding layers of information that seamlessly combine with the memoir aspect of the book.

One of the most charming aspects of this story is in the quaint and simple way the family actually does its travelling.  To begin, they have taken a steamer across the Atlantic from their home in America, they spend a couple of weeks living in a converted gypsy caravan by the seashore, and very nearly spend a week on a barge.  It's not difficult to see why Joan Bodger has been the recipient of many requests for parenting advice, for the tone she uses when writing about her children is entirely charming.  The writing was done, no doubt with no small amount of nostalgia, for by the time the book was published in 1965, her family of four had broken apart, suffering death and illness.

I would highly recommend this to anyone who loves classics of children's literature, to anyone who enjoys travel memoirs, and to anyone who has children or knows children.  If I were prone to rating books I would give this one a perfect score.  It was worth the wait.

My Leaky Body: Tales from the Gurney by Julie Devaney

Julie Devaney writes about her experiences with Ulcerative Colitis, a type of Inflammatory Bowel Disease in My Leaky Body: Tales from the Gurney.  From the onset of her illness at the age of 22, through the challenges of repeated hospitalisations, medical procedures and surgery, she shares the details of her illness and recovery with candour - sometimes graphic candour.  But she also writes with humour, and a self-deprecating charm that is endearing.  We root for her as this illness affects every aspect of her life: her relationships, her education, her activities and interests are all sidelined or must adapt to her compromised health.

Yet, this is not merely a medical memoir.  Her stated purpose in writing and sharing her very personal story is to reach the medical establishment and open eyes about her experiences "from the gurney" - to raise awareness in the medical community that bedside manner matters; that the way the system trains doctors does not support healthy interaction.  In the process, she became a health care activist working within the system to bring awareness to the systemic imbalances of power in doctor/patient and nurse/patient interactions.

photo credit: Nadia Cheema

 

This was a fascinating story!  Julie Devaney shares her experiences in a no-holds-barred narration with a disease that social custom dictates remain quietly behind the triage curtain.  She writes with truth and humour. At times it feels as though she transcribed straight from her diary, and I would have preferred some judicious editing, as hospital visits and attending physicians became a blur without adding much to the point she's already made.  However, this is an important voice in the world of health care reform, and I would highly recommend this book to everyone.

Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

All I knew about Anne Morrow Lindbergh before reading Gift from the Sea was that she was the wife of Charles Lindbergh the aviator, and the mother of Baby Lindbergh who was stolen from their home and murdered.  I set all that aside as I tried to get to know the woman behind the newspaper stories.  But Anne Morrow Lindbergh lets us into her mind, not her life, and although I feel that I know who she is (was) much more, I am still vague about the details of her life.  And I couldn't be more pleased with that.  For, whatever the circumstances of her life, Anne Morrow Lindbergh has a mind that is worth getting to know.

For a couple of weeks in the middle of raising a large family and running a busy home, Anne Morrow Lindbergh escapes to a cabin on the seashore to write and replenish her spirit.  She writes and writes, mainly to work out the issues that confront her as a woman and a mother.  Using the seashells she finds on the beach as symbols, she delves deeply into the tender topics of fulfillment, and love, and marriage, and motherhood.  As she later discusses these topics with other women, she sees that she is not alone and decides to share her writing with others.  Almost sixty years later her words continue to resonate.

She writes that the challenge of every person (although she mainly focuses on issues of motherhood and womanhood) is to be at peace with oneself in order to face the demands of the modern world.  Anne Morrow Lindbergh shares her thoughts on what we can do to make it easier to stay focused and peaceful. In her beautiful and gentle manner she examines the ways we can bring ourselves back to ourselves through quiet time alone, contemplation, prayer, music, a centering line of thought through reading or study or work.  We must make time to be inwardly attentive.  It is from this place of inner calm that we will be strong enough to face our responsibilities.

I wish so much that I had read this book ten or fifteen years ago when I was on the verge of motherhood.  But, as I read the passages about valuing middle age as a new stage of living, "as a period of second flowering, a second growth, even a kind of second adolescence," rather than a period of decline, I think of her as a mentor for the next decade of my life.

The Reading Promise by Alice Ozma

When I saw this book on the shelf at the public library my interest was piqued.  I was raised by parents who believed in the power of books, and as children, my siblings and I were read to on a daily basis.  Some of my most powerful and comforting memories are of my parents reading to us as we lay strewn across one bed or another, cuddled on the chesterfield, or in the car on long drives.  When I was about five, Mum bought me a complete set of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books and they were treasured possessions throughout my childhood, read and re-read and re-read.  But more than Laura Ingalls Wilder, it was Lucy Maud Montgomery who stirred my soul.  A perennial favourite after Anne of Green Gables was Rainbow Valley.  As children of the manse we felt a connection with the wild motherless children who accidentally and scandalously did their spring cleaning on a Sunday morning!  As we got older she read us more adult books such as the autobiography of Johnny Cash, The Man in Black which required, I am sure, some judicious on-the-spot editing.  I was powerfully affected by Corrie Ten Boom's The Hiding Place and even that gem of the Christian gangster genre, The Cross and the Switchblade.


This book is the story of a elementary school librarian father and his daughter who had a habit of reading together in the evening, but when she was nine years old they made a promise to read together, initally for one hundred consecutive nights, and then one thousand, and their streak ended up continuing for almost nine years.  Jim Brozina, Alice's dad, has written a touching tribute to his daughter in the foreward.  A single dad who clearly loves books, he finds a way to connect with his daughter through a daily commitment to spending time together.  What a gift!

Alice Ozma

Light-hearted and humourous, Alice Ozma (yes, named for that Alice and that Ozma) records the inspiring journey she and her father take to accomplish The Streak.  They read on the phone during impromptu middle-school sleepovers, on the train, on prom night, and touchingly, on the day he delivers her to university.  They read their way through classics and modern issue-driven stories and series.  From Dickens and Lois Lowry to Jerry Spinelli and Shakespeare, Alice Ozma reflects on what that commitment meant to her, and how it shaped her life.

In a simple writing style she presents vignettes of their life together.  Other members of their family and even friends and extended family fall into the background; this is the story of father and daughter, and their shared love of books.  Alice Ozma has a lovely narrative voice, enthusiastic and fresh, and she takes on the challenge of writing a memoir at such a young age with honesty.  At times the memoir aspect of the story unnecessarily superceded the theme of reading, and since her mother did not appear to be a big part of her reading life, it might have been more prudent to leave her involvement out.  However, by including stories of her mother's rather dramatic shortcomings (infidelity, suicide attempt and abandonment) she does make it clear that she had challenges to deal with, and that reading was a healthy escape for her, and a way for she and her father to bond during trying times.  What I feel is missing from this book, and what I would have loved to have heard more of, is how she and her father interpreted the books they read, how they were affected and challenged and comforted and supported by them.

Alice Ozma and her father, Jim Brozina are both in their own ways continuing to champion books and reading, especially for young children.  The final chapters which document the decimation of her father's life work in the public school library which led to his early retirement leaves us hanging  Apparently this will be reconciled in the paperback version which will include updates on the past few years since the book was written.  I would recommend this book for parents keen to incorporate reading into the lives of their young children, for educators, and for those with booky childhoods as a bit of nostalgia.

Wheels Within Wheels by Dervla Murphy

Having never read any of Dervla Murphy's writing before picking up her autobiography at the library last week, I only knew that she wrote travel stories about cycling in far-flung parts of the earth.

If I were to have read about her epic cycling journeys before reading this autobiography first, I suspect I would have spent a lot of time wondering: "How on earth does such a woman exist!  And what kind of a life brought her to the point of contemplating this lifestyle?"  I wonder if the writing of this autobiography was in part an answer to such questions she no doubt received after becoming well known as "the mad Irishwoman on the bicycle."

Reading Wheels Within Wheels is like being transported to the Irish countryside in the 1930s and 1940s; Dervla Murphy is capable of so vividly rendering people and place I feel as though I know what she describes.  I could easily picture all the scenes she recounts, although she follows the advice given to every learner of writing: "Show, don't tell." and she does this with aplomb.

Born in 1931, in Lismore, Ireland, the only child of her librarian father and invalid mother.  She depicts a childhood of permissive rambling and cycling around the countryside.  Dervla Murphy paints portraits of some of the most significant figures in her childhood - her grandparents, various servants, teachers, and friendships. Her ability to self-educate especially when her opportunity for schooling was taken away is astounding, and yet she never seems to fall into the trap of either bravado or self-pity.  Her writing style is smooth, apparently effortless, and eminently readable.

When she was removed from school and retained at home as her mother's carer she reveals a disintegration in her lifestyle both shocking and terrible to read.  She suffers greatly, but tells her story with an unvarnished honesty we have come to trust.  When both of her parents are gone and she has gained her freedom she emerges from her seclusion as a butterfly from a cocoon.  She struggles to suppress her socially inappropriate exuberance at the death of her mother.

Dervla Murphy is a deft storyteller, an honest writer, a kindred spirit and a mentor.  I will be searching out her other writing as soon as possible.

A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle

 Divided by the months of the year, we dip into the lives of Mayle and his (largely unmentionned) wife as they settle into life in their new home in Provence.  As they adjust to the food, the pace of life, and their colourful neighbours we glimpse a somewhat curmudgeonly lord of the manor.  One can't help but wonder why he can't be a little more upbeat about the charms of the place.  Afterall, he presents it as a fulfillment of a lifelong dream.  But his appreciation of the gastronomic pleasures are plainly seen.

There is a lack of concrete details about time and place that frustrated me whilst reading.  The book feels ungrounded.  I kept wondering, "Where is he now?  How did he get there?  What does he do for a living?  And why does he seem to ignore his wife so much?"  Not that I was looking for a daily journal entry, but his impressionistic narrative style seemed a bit vague and distracting to me.

He focuses in on the vignettes of his life beautifully, and gives the flavour of the place.  I know nothing about Mayle beyond what I learned in this book which is precious little, but I got the sense that he had looked back over a couple of years worth of journal entries and compiled those that he could easily translate into a comprehensive narrative form.

I've been curious for years about the exact nature of these books and although it certainly made a sick day on the chesterfield pass more quickly, my curiosity has been sated and I probably will not bother to seek out any more of his work.