My dad turned 70 recently. Big deal, because close to a decade ago, doctors told him he had a few months to live, thanks to the loitering mass of mesothelioma in his lungs.
He passed that deadline. Time wore on. Eventually, remission. Then it started to come back. And then: remission again (this was a recent development, the mass going from the size of a nickel or shooter marble to something you needed to zoom in on to see in digital scans; a faded pinpoint on a large, worn map.)
A couple days before he – again – defied the odds and joined the Septuagenarian Guild, I handed off some gifts to him (technically Father’s Day stuff I hadn’t had a chance to impart to him.)
This included the latest Erik Larson book, “The Demon of Unrest,” a tour-de-force about the five or so months between Lincoln’s victorious bid for the White House and the start of the U.S. Civil War .
(I gushed about Erik Larson in a previous blog post, which you can see here.)
My dad will read this book, as he has with other titles I have thrown his way. “The Black Company” by Glen Cook and an H.P. Lovecraft anthology are recent notable examples. He frequently gets back to me to let me know what he thinks when he’s finished. My mom does this, too.
I say all this because I am not as good at heeding their recommendations, and I need to do better. Because book recommendations are offerings of ourselves, ones we want to share with others we, at least, like.
It’s been this way for both my parents my entire life. They are the main reason I love reading, but my father’s specific tastes were passed on to me: science fiction and history, most notably. And with those imparted tastes came recommendations suited for the genres he loved. There are a few on the list he’s continued to mention because I just haven’t gotten around to them.
“Red Storm Rising” by Tom Clancy is one of them. “Winesburg, Ohio” by Sherwood Anderson is another. Basically everything Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov ever wrote, too. “Dune” by Frank Herbert. For Mom, T.H. White’s “The Once & Future King” sits atop the heap.
And but for “Dune” and Asimov’s “I, Robot,” I’ve checked zero boxes on this list they’ve seen fit to share with me. It’s part self-fulfilling prophecy that supposes I won’t like what they’ve offered up, part FOMO (but what if a new book I’m super excited about comes out right when I start?!), part personal property management (if I have more than two unread books on my shelves/in my audiobook cue, cue flop sweat.)
These reactions aren’t unique to books my parents recommend. They’re frequently primed when other family members or friends have the audacity to share something that meant something to them and/or they’re confident would mean something to me.
And that’s the point, really; why I’m training my book lizard brain to feel wholly unwelcome and working on replacing it with an attitude of gratefulness. Especially after the profound health scare roller coaster my dad has endured.
Books can be mirror fragments. We can catch glimpses of ourselves in them. And we think others in our life will, too. So it is with my mom and dad.
“We’re both in here,” their recommendations always seem to say. “Somehow, someway. Sometimes in ways that are easy to quantify and articulate, sometimes in ways that are just vibes, beyond explanation. And I need you to see it and experience it for yourself. Will you? Not just for me or for you, but for us.”
Will Schwalbe expands on this idea in his book “Books For Living.”
“‘What are you reading?’ isn’t a simple question when asked with genuine curiosity; it’s really a way of asking ‘Who are you now and who are you becoming?’” he writes.
Heck, I’ve got three such titles of my own: Erik Larson’s “The Devil in the White City,” Dennis Lehane’s “The Given Day,” and Mo Willems’ “Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus.” They are on this list because I think just about anyone can get a substantial amount of enjoyment and/or thought-spurring moments out of them.
“The Devil in the White City” is the book that got me interested in reading nonfiction recreationally and consistently. It also taught me about an incredibly significant historical event I’d never heard a peep about during my K-12 years and somehow wove a compelling and horrifying true crime story into the fold: a beautiful side dish on a five-star meal.
“The Given Day” is pure Americana. If Ken Burns wrote a historical fiction novel, this would be it. It’s somehow better when read on hot summer days, reminds me of blues music and laundry drying on breeze-blown clotheslines and baseball games held in abandoned lots. It’s sweeping and intimate in the same breath, and it reads fast. Somehow.
“Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus” is an exceptional story for young, budding readers, inviting them to participate in the story as the namesake main character breaks the fourth wall, begging – and sometimes trying to manipulate you – into getting him in a city bus driver’s seat. My daughters adore it and all the subsequent books in the series.
What about you? What are the literary windows to your soul that you hope others will adore and make time for with a similar intensity?