Book Review: Wintering - The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May

 

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

by Katherine May

I received this book as a gift but I admit it took me a while to give it a chance. I was expecting something a bit more self-help in style – do this and don’t do that, so it sat on my bookshelf. The title seemed to call to me this past week. “Wintering” sounded more restful. I took it upstairs to read before bed each night, and found a far more deep and meditative read than I anticipated.

There is a memoir aspect to the book as the author shares her own struggles with admirable honesty, and uses events in her life to illustrate her periods of wintering. However, there is a depth and breadth of topics from which she pulls examples and thoughts about wintering from that I did not anticipate.

In some ways, the book reminds me of The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey. (My thoughts on that book are here https://storymusing.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-sound-of-wild-snail-eating-by.html )

Both books start with the onset of a difficult period in the author’s life, illness and having to retreat from ordinary life in order to heal. Both books also share a great deal more in terms of information and ideas that were found through research and observation, not just their personal experience.

Wintering takes us from September through late March, from her husband’s appendicitis and her own illness through a visit to Iceland, interviews with her friend Hanne who grew up in Finland and another friend who had been in a coma as a young woman, ruminations on the origins and celebration of Halloween, how a dormouse winters, the Swedish veneration of Sankta Lucia, deciding to take her son Bert out of school, how she decided to become a mother, a trip to see the Aurora Borealis, walks on the seashore, a small survey of literature having to do with wintering, seasonal affective disorder, the way bees winter, and so much more. Each is a mini essay that relates to the larger theme.

Throughout it all there is a rich vein of humor and wonder. I laughed out loud at her take on the fable of the ants and the grasshopper, as her perception changes over time. She notes that grasshoppers don’t overwinter so the ants are actually denying the final wish of a dying creature when it asks for a bit of food.

“Whichever way you look at it, the ants are mean and sanctimonious, as well as possibly also genocidal.

But if I take my tongue back out of my cheek, it’s impossible not to taste the resonances of the ants’ stance.”

In the end, this is not really a self-help book, though it is very helpful. It is a thoughtful and illuminating meditation on the nature of winter and how we all go through difficult times where we need to retreat and rest, hopefully coming out the other side. It is the cycle of our lives. I would highly recommend this book.

 

Review: Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

 Arcadia

by Tom Stoppard            

I was perusing the shelves, looking for something to read for this week’s book review, when I came across the play Arcadia by Tom Stoppard. The title appealed to me. I’ve seen it referenced several times. (I’ve actually read a totally different science fiction novel by the same name that was very good.)

I took the volume and went to look up what it was really all about. It sounded interesting, Written in the nineteen nineties, it covers two different time periods. The main character seemed to be a young woman who was very interested in math and physics. But the poet, Lord Byron, was integral to the story as well. I was intrigued.

It begins with 13-year-old Thomasina being tutored by 22-year-old Septimus when she asks him a rather improper question, “What is carnal embrace?” He puts her off with a sideways explanation, “Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one’s arms around a side of beef.” I admit that made me chuckle.

Upon further questioning, it seems she has heard the servants gossiping about seeing one of the ladies of the house engaged with someone who is not her husband.

The play proceeds quickly with witty repartee and various double entendres, not unlike some of Shakespeare’s comedy of errors.  

One of the most interesting things about this play is how the action goes back and forth between this earlier time and present time, but in the same room and the props of both time periods remain throughout the play, simply ignored by the characters in their own time period.

We jump forward in time and meet several characters, most substantially Hannah who is writing a book about the Hermit of Sidley Park and Bernard who arrives with his own ideas to research.

As with many period pieces, and from a different culture, there’s rather a lot that goes right over my head, I’m afraid, but it’s a fascinating combination of relationships, math, science, literature, history, and philosophy. Things that happened in the past are echoed in the future and excavated.

I’m not sure it’s right to call it science fiction, but it does play wonderfully with some of those themes. I would definitely like to see this performed. 

Guest Review with Tarren Young: Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes

 Guest Review by Tarren Young of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr 

This review has two beginnings.

 It started when I was in 6th grade.

1. It started when my son showed an intense interest in WWII, and I knew I had to teach this story when we attempted to homeschool.

 Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Elenor Coerr is a unique book to say the least. I was first introduced to it when I was in 6th grade during a unit about Japanese culture. Our class had to learn how to make origami paper cranes. I remember being in our reading groups and having to take turns reading aloud, but also eating fruit snacks while holding the book in my hand. Although we had someone come in to try to teach us how to make paper cranes, they are ridiculously hard.

Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes is about a girl who says she remembers the bombing of Hiroshima, though her best friend points out that she was only a baby when it happened. Even though Sadako was just a baby, the aftermath of the atomic bomb still had its gnarled fingers of effects reaching through to the future.

At nine, Sadako is the fastest runner in her class and wishes to be picked for the Jr. High running team. Until she starts having dizzy spells. She keeps the dizzy spells from her friends and family until she collapses one day on the school field. She is immediately admitted to the hospital and diagnosed with Leukemia.

Sadako definitely believes in good luck signs and charms, and as such, is in denial for even the first few weeks of being in the hospital, because all she has is a few dizzy spells. But the first time her best friend visits, she brings paper to show her how to make origami paper cranes, as it is believed that if you make a thousand paper cranes, it will help a sick person be granted their wish to be healthy again.

So Sadako sets out to fold one thousand paper cranes.

 

Though the book is only about sixty-seventy pages, depending on which copy the reader has, to my twelve year old self it seemed like a long book. (Perhaps because we were only allowed to read it during our reading groups in class and not at home.)

I didn’t know much about WWII then, and even now, what I do know comes from my eleven-year-old son who is enamored with learning about WWII.

But something stuck in me all these years about this story. Could I tell you exactly what it was? No. The writing is definitely geared towards the grade school level. I read the book in less than an hour and wondered how something so generic in the writing could have been published. But it was published in 1977, and geared towards elementary school kids.

Though I personally feel the writing is dated (because it is) and there isn’t a lot of action, per se, I think what has drawn me in all these years to remember it, is the empathy. It’s geared towards children, because children, I think, understand the concept of peace and empathy more than any adult. At the back of my copy, there are letters to the author about how the book has changed children’s lives. The letters mostly give thanks for writing the story because all the kids ask is that we adults remember the atrocious act of the bombing and beg for peace.

The story also brings a powerful tale of perseverance and hope to the table.

Does Sadako ever finish making her paper cranes? Well, I’m not going to ruin it for you, but, again, I will say, even as Sadako does find herself getting weaker some days, she still manages to make at least one paper crane every day, and on her good days she makes more.

            Sadako is a fighter. She doesn’t want to leave her family. She is determined to make a thousand paper cranes and get better.

            Overall, the writing is a bit generic, but who it is written for is spot on, so I’m going to give this book 4.5 stars for its audience. The overall theme, I’m giving 5 stars, because we could all stand to learn something from the kids in our lives, even if it is just a child in the grocery story line.

            And perhaps that is what has drawn me into it all these years late — that children understand peace, empathy, and grit better than I could any day of the week.

Book Review: Third Person Rural by Noel Perrin

 

Third Person Rural: Further Essays of a Sometime Farmer

By Noel Perrin

Our book club is reading books with a number in the title this month. What we read, beyond that, is completely up to us. I decided, rather arbitrarily, to search our library catalog for a book with “third” in the title. No reason at all. Out of the books that popped up, I chose this one, published in 1983.

I knew absolutely nothing about the author, Noel Perrin. I don’t know how much of a well-known author he was or how many books he sold. But one, at least, made it into our library and has survived weeding rounds all this time. He was a professor of English and wrote for the Washington Post, as well as putting together many books of essays.

Third Person Rural, of course, centers on his time working a hobby farm in Vermont. Living on part of the original land grant to my ancestor, with the somewhat newer barn, a few fields, and lots of chickens, it interested me.

The topics took me back to my time as a teen spent on my grandmother’s farm in the eighties. Heavy snow, maple sugaring, spring thaws, and floods – all the things that people have to think about when they live close to the land.

The style of writing is also reminiscent of what I often read back then. Stories set in the country, often having to do with horses. I was quite enamored with farm life. But the style of writing was different. I don’t know if people are still writing this way now, but it isn’t something I tend to pick up anymore, I suppose. It’s quiet, ruminating, using the full breadth of the language with a command of it often not seen anymore. Oh, I think there are still people who understand the language as well, but we are taught to simplify so much that the character can sometimes be lost. Don’t use this word, or that word, too much. It can be good advice but often leans into obliteration of voice.

The section titled A Country Calendar provides a deep observation of the countryside and contemplation of how nature tends to work in this place. “An evening flurry will come down in huge wet flakes, so thick and fast that you think in an hour the village will be buried like Pompeii.”

The author is a master of pulling you in and taking you right into any season he is talking about. At one point, reading about winter, I looked up and was quite surprised to find it was late summer outside my window.

This is a wonderful book for a contemplative read, a bit of rumination to take you out of the rat race we live in day-to-day. I highly recommend it.