I probably can't. People read what they want to read, of course. But the book I want to talk about is on everyone's best seller list, so maybe that will move you in the right direction. Of course, that might move you in the opposite direction, which is what it often does to me. Many best seller books are written at a 6th grade level (it seems to me) and are not worth the time it takes to turn the pages. Examples, you ask? OK, here's a couple of current books that, to me, are not worth reading: "Gone Girl" by Flynn and "Fifty Shades of Grey" by whomever. Honestly. Have any of you tried reading the "Fifty Shades" books? An over-libidoed 8th grader could write a better book. Did the author ever read real erotic literature? No. There is very good erotic lit out there, lots of it. It ...... well, I won't go into the effects of it on the human body (or mine, at least) but suffice it to say the "Shades" books should hide out in the shade and feel sad and ashamed. It is poor writing, poor erotica and yet the masses ate it up. Go figure.
And "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn. Well, I give it this: great premise. Woman hates her husband, (spoiler alert here) and fakes her own death, sassy, cute husband doesn't really care but acts devastated. The book details the wife's deception and the husband's indiscretions and it goes on and on and when it ends, you want to throw the book against the wall and yell "Fuck! How did I get duped into reading this piece of crap!" So you do. Throw the book, I mean. I have read other books by Flynn and they don't end so stupidly, but still...... ARG!
OK, so, that's my rant about best sellers. (I won't go into what I think about "Wild" by Strayed.)
So here's a book on the list that is one of the best books I have read in a long time and the one I want to convince you to read: "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr. It spans more than 60 years but it feels like it spans 2 years. It starts in WWII and ends in 2014. The characters are real to us, the towns are real, the bombings feel terrifying and real. You can easily find a synopsis of the book but the story isn't everything. The characters are everything, and the characters are not just the people. The cities and towns are characters, the ocean is a character, the models the father builds of his towns are so great of a character that it is impossible to tell you how much I wanted to see those models. Those streets, those tiny buildings, the way for Marie-Laure to see her world, it's unforgettable.
But it's also the incredibly descriptive writing and the philosophy behind it. It's as if Doerr knows everything about the war, about being blind, about radio transmissions, building model cities, about snails, the ocean, birds. About the failing of the human heart and the triumph of that same heart in the matters of love. About determination, about will, about doing what is right in the face of the unknown wrong. You can open this book at any page and read prose as poetry or poetry turned into prose: "To shut your eyes is to guess nothing about blindness. Beneath your world of skies and faces and buildings exists a rawer and older world, a place where surface planes disintegrate and sounds ribbon in shoals through the air. She hears the bones of dead whales stir five leagues below, their marrow offering a century of food for cities of creatures who will live their whole lives and never once see a photon sent from the sun. She hears her snails in the grotto drag their bodies over the rocks."
I finished this book ten days ago and I can't stop thinking about it. I want to go to Saint-Malo in France and see the city that was bombed and walk the streets in search of fictional characters! People who do not exist, except in the book and now in my mind. That's how intense and personal this book is.
Several years ago I read a book called "Four Seasons in Rome" by Anthony Doerr. He had an American Academy grant (or fellowship, whatever it's called) to spend a year in Rome. Turns out Tom and I were in the SAME neighborhood at the SAME TIME as Doerr was in Rome. We walked the same streets, strolled the same park, waited for the same Pope to die. We probably saw him walking by with his twins in a stroller. That book is one of the best travel books I have ever read, giving the reader the essence of the place and making that place wriggle with life. And he does it again in "All the Light You Cannot See". It's just a different time and place but it is as real as Rome is right now.
Read this book. Beg, borrow or steal it. And tell me what you think.
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