Other than a few bad words that all seem to be synonyms for “bleep,” there is one word that really gets my hackles up.
I consider myself a fairly agreeable, law-abiding citizen, well-mannered and well-churched from childhood, but no other word that I can think of makes me dig my heels in and challenge authority like the simple verb: should.
“Why?” is a knee-jerk reaction when I’m told I should go here, believe this, or do that. A logical explanation of “why” can un-jerk my knees, but those knees have accumulated a heap of wear and tear over the years and I don’t want learn the hard way how many jerks are left in them.
Should implies to me that I’m lacking in the judgment to decide a thing for myself and I should defer to something pre-determined, whether I like it or not. For some un-fathomed reason, the word “shouldn’t” doesn’t hit me with the same wallop, so I couldn’t have authority issues, right?
I know there are certain classics that I should read. While I firmly believe that in order to write good writing, a writer should read good reading, that edict has caused me to waste a lot of my precious time. And if time is money, mine is in negative cash-flow.
A long while back, I was gifted with the audio book version of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, high on the scale of should-reads. Facing a mindless chore, I grabbed the opportunity to cross that tome off my to-do list and broaden my scope by multi-tasking. The experience taught me two things. First, that the reader was excellent – and probably rode that gig into retirement. And second, that life is too short to do anything based only on the imperative of should. At that point, I formulated my personal reader’s Bill of Rights that, no longer needing to pass English Lit, I’d give any book the time of day. If, early into it, I don’t like anyone in the book, including the writer, if it gives me nightmares, or leaves me feeling diminished, I give myself permission to give up on it, approach the library book-drop under cover of darkness, and consign it to the abyss.
Certain prolific contemporary writers like Ivan Doig, Jodi Picoult, Bill Bryson, Louise Penny, and Wendell Berry never let me down, but discovering someone new who can scratch my mind where it itches is the most fun of all, from this book-lover’s point of view.
Meeting author Christina Baker Kline through her masterful ORPHAN TRAIN was a revelation, not only of her skills, but of the actuality of superfluous children from the New York streets being herded onto a train in the height of the great depression, to be distributed across this broad country like so much surplus produce. Ms. Kline didn’t disappoint in her next work: A PIECE OF THE WORLD, with more historical fiction. Crafted around Andrew Wyeth’s painting, “Christina’s World,” her Author’s Notes, in the back of the book are best read before the text. She left me with a phrase “…the astringent light of morning,” which has the power to resonate whenever that time of day happens earlier than I feel it should.
A forward by Bill Moyers gave GRANNY D: WALKING ACROSS AMERICA IN MY 90TH YEAR by Doris Haddock a certain gravitas, but not as much as her statement: “Small towns make up for their lack of people by having everyone be more interesting.” By the time I’d finished this biographical work, my 30 Post-it arrows denoting her profundities indicated how much I’d relished that vicarious 3,200 mile walk with her. “The culture of a good nation must not be at odds with the work of parents” exemplified her grasp of and outrage over the political sway that currently goes to the highest bidder – the motivation for her trek.
L. Stedman poses an ethical dilemma in her first novel, THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS, that could leave the reader harking back to King Solomon. Then she throws in this think-piece: “The contract to forget is as important as any promise to remember,” and drops masterful word-pictures like “…thunder grumbles at being left behind by the lightning.”
Sometimes, in the wee hours, after imprudent attention has been given to a book instead of the imperative of sleep, there’s a compulsion to show affection for the author and his or her well-crafted prose. Hard-cover books, electronic tablets, even flexible paper-backs are scarcely huggable. That’s when the arm-chair reader appreciates the comfort of an eiderdown pillow.
