I really admire my wife. She can tear through a 300 page book in a day if she wanted to, in a week at the slowest. It’s a great way to relax and regroup, to lose yourself in a good story.
Needless to say, I’ve never been as voracious a reader as she is for a variety of reasons. I think that I’m just more visual (normal for guys, more normal for an Art teacher). I certainly read a little slower than she does and frankly I get crabby easy. What I mean by that is that I’m pretty cynical, if a story is too cheesy or hokey or otherwise melodramatic, it irritates me. Consequently, when I do read, I end up reading more non-fiction than fiction. You know, history, political commentary, religion, self-help, all that kind of gobbly-gook as opposed to actual stories with a plot.
While I’ve never been formally diagnosed by a physician or a psychiatrist, I’ve always thought that I have a bad case of Attention Deficit Disorder. So instead of whole books, I tend to go more for magazines or collections of essays. If I read a book it either has to really grab me, or it has to have lots of short little chapters.
When I was in college I had a roommate one who owned every book Stephen King ever wrote. He wasn’t a sick-o or anything, although he got a kick out of having people be afraid of him once they’d seen the bookshelf in our dorm room. I’m not a big horror fan any more than I am a roller coaster fan. But I love learning about any artist’s creative process, whether they’re a writer, painter, musician or actor. As a result I read almost every “Author’s notes” and afterward that Stephen King included in his books, but I can’t say as I read more than one or two of the actual books themselves.
For whatever reason this summer has been different for me. I set a goal of reading at least two books this summer and ended up getting through three. I’d like to offer you mini-book reviews in case you’re looking for something help you fall asleep at night.
Wobegon Boy by Garrison Keillor was an excellent antidote for insomnia. That doesn’t mean it was a bad book, but you know how you create a voice in your head of the narrator? Well since Keillors voice is on his radio show, A Prairie Home Companion on NPR every week, his voice was the voice I listened to in my imagination. His voice is very relaxing and slow.
The gist of the story is that John Tolofsen is a middle aged Lutheran guy who sort of lost touch with his roots and his values by rising too fast in business in New York. When his father dies, John realizes that what he’d taken for granted or even rejected are the things that he needed most.
Fletch by Gregory McDonald was a much quicker and funner read. One reason for that of course is that Chevy Chase played Fletch in a movie that came out in the late ‘80s around the same time as Eddie Murpy’s ‘Beverly Hills Cop.’ My point is that I imagined Chevy Chase’s voice reading all of Fletch’s dialogue soaked in sarcasm. As usual, the book is better than the movie.
Fletch is an investigative reporter in L.A. who’s avoiding his ex wives lawyers, his editors and dirty cops while trying to uncover a drug operation on the beach. The real mystery kicks into gear when a wealthy aviation executive hires Fletch to kill him. Like a real reporter, McDonald uses short paragraphs, sparse description and a lot of dialogue. That made Fletch perfect for someone with A.D.D. It’s a mystery novel for people who don’t like to read novels.
Because Fletch was written in third-person and used almost all dialogue, I was intimidated by my next book, but I’d been searching bookstores for it for a couple of years now, so when I got my hands on Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella I had to at least give it my best shot.
Shoeless Joe is the novel that the Kevin Costner movie ‘Field of Dreams’ was based on. Once again I had a famous actor’s voice to use and once again the book is better than the movie. That’s a tall order in this case because ‘Field of Dreams’ is one of the greatest movies ever. ESPN rates it as the all time best baseball movie, even above ‘the Bad News Bears’ and ‘Bull Durham.’
The only things that make me cry are the Gettysburg Address and the scene in ‘Field of Dreams’ where Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) finally works up the nerve to talk to the ghost catcher, who’s a younger version of his dad.
Shoeless Joe is written in first person and it does include a lot of description, but its practically poetry and it’s mostly about Iowa. Ray’s father, who played baseball as a young man but never made it to the majors, owned a hardware store in Montana. Ray came to the University of Iowa for college, tried selling insurance, but was talked into farming corn by the girl he fell in love with and married in Iowa City. It didn’t take long for him to fall in love with the land too.
Anyone who’s seen the movie knows that it’s not so much about what Ray can do for Shoeless Joe and the other 1918 White Sox as it is about what Baseball does for Ray. This book is about guys figuring out how to have relationships with other guys. Something we guys aren’t always good at.
There are two major differences between the movie and the book. One is that Ray doesn’t just have to reconcile with his dead father, he also has an identical twin who ran away from home at fifteen that Ray hadn’t seen in twenty years. The other is that the character of the radical sixties writer played by James Earl Jones in the film is actually a real writer, J.D.Salinger.
When Bethany and I first saw ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, we went out and got a copy of ‘An Affair to Remember’ with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr because the characters in the ‘Sleepless’ were so caught up and influenced by ‘An Affair.’
Likewise, I enjoyed Shoeless Joe so much that I went out and bought a copy of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D.Salinger. Be warned, this book has pretty much nothing to do with baseball. I still don’t know what it has to do with the title at all. It’s probably just as well, I mean the title doesn’t make any sense anyway. Catchers don’t stand around in the rye ( a kind of grass), they’re stuck behind the plate in the dirt in front of the fence.
Catcher is also written in first person, but it’s narrated by a 17 year old boy who’s been kicked out of boarding school for poor grades. This is a smart kid, but it’s pretty clear that if this book was published in 2004 instead of 1951, he’d probably be labeled with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
The Catcher in the Rye is one of the most banned books of all time, but I’m yet to figure out why and I only have three or four chapters left. The language is barely PG-13. Perhaps that’s another difference between ‘51 and ’04. I think it pretty accurately depicts the way a kid’s brain works.
Reading is like exercise. The more you do it the easier it gets and the easier it gets the more fun it is. The more fun it is the more you want to do it. I’m already looking forward to John Grisham’s The Bleachers when I’m done with Catcher (just in time for football season). After that I think I may try to get my hands on a copy of Garrison Keillor’s new book, Home Grown Democrat.
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