June 2024 Reads

Lately I've been trying to come to terms with my writerly split personality--nature writer and crime writer--but looking at this month's list (and probably every reading list I've made for the last ten years), I see that it comes directly from having a readerly split personality (nature writing and crime writing)--duh! And no more than I'd give up reading one kind of book should I consider giving up writing one kind of book. So that's settled!

Nonfiction
I've been trying to be better about reading books that other people loan or give to me right away rather than let them gather dust on the shelf for a few years before I get around to it. Owls of the Eastern Ice by Jonathan Slaght is one that a friend passed on to me sometime this winter, and I finally sat myself down to read it this month, and I'm glad I did! It tells the story of the author's several years (5 or 6) doing field work in eastern Russia to find, study, and protect the population of Blakiston's fish owls that make their home in the far eastern part of that country. Slaght depicts many harrowing adventures (snowmobiling over rivers on which the ice is ready to break up, nearly becoming plowed into a logging road, sitting up all night in the freezing cold waiting for owls to set off a trap, trying to keep up with Russians drinking), and his descriptions of the owls and his encounters with them are wonderfully rendered. He also succeeds in his research, developing a realistic conservation plan for these rare and fantastical creatures.

For several months, I've been reading little snippets of Sibley's Birding Basics by David Allen Sibley, in an effort to improve my birding skills. It's an interesting book, but there is nothing basic about it--a better title perhaps would be Sibley's Deep Dive into Esoteric Aspects of Bird Morphology--but it was still a worthwhile read, and though I don't feel any more well-equipped to discern the molt phases of any particular bird species than I was before (nor do I necessarily feel any more compelled to), I at least know that there are different molt strategies among different groups of species.

Fiction
A River Runs through It by Norman Maclean. I list this under fiction, because he calls the collection a novella and short stories, but I wonder how it would be classified if he were writing today. (Something like David Sedaris's "true-ish" stories?) It's a book that I have known about since forever, of course, without ever giving it much thought, except that I attended a seminar once in which the speaker claimed that it's the best horror story ever written, which I found intriguing (since it's obviously not horror). I picked it up recently for a dollar or two at a used bookstore and brought it with on our camping trip last month to read to the boys, if they'd let me. As it turned out, I was at the tail end of a cold, and kept coughing as I tried to read out loud, and they didn't have the patience for Maclean's very drawn out descriptions of fly fishing, so after the first night they declined to hear more and had me read instead from a collection of Grimm's Fairy Tales that E had brought along. I, on the other hand, was totally drawn in by Maclean's writing, despite having less than zero interest in fly fishing (and even less in other kinds of fishing), and now I see what that speaker meant--Maclean had an absolute gift of building up suspense, not only in ARRTI but also in the shorter stories in the collection, and I need to go back and reread them see how he did it.

The Road to Dalton by Shannon Bowring. I picked this book up at a reading I attended last summer that a couple of friends of mine were also a part of, and it won the Maine Book Award for last year. The story follows many characters (there must be 5-10 different points of view) through about a year in the early 90s in Aroostook County, Maine, showing their various challenges and prejudices and heartaches.

If She Wakes by Michael Koryta. Koryta was awarded Crime Master at the Maine Crime Wave conference, which I attended a couple of weeks ago. I wasn't familiar with his work before, but picked up this novel, which is one of a few that take place in Maine. This book also has several point of view characters, which isn't my favorite form, but he pulled it off very well. One of the POV characters is in a coma, which was a fascinating thing to attempt--successfully, I might add--and two others were assassins. And, despite the assassins and several not-very-nice individuals in the book, he manages to keep it light with a fair dose of humor, and despite these two killing a lot of people, it didn't come across as grotesque or gratuitously violent, for the most part. I will definitely read more of his books in the future.

The Ebony Swan by Phyllis A. Whitney. I picked this book up at a used bookstore some time ago, because Whitney provided blurbs on pretty much every Barbara Michaels book, and I've been craving more old-school suspense. I have to admit (and I'm sure Ms. Whitney won't mind, being deceased and also extraordinarily successful before she died) that I found it pretty dull. I read the first couple of chapters and set it aside for months before forcing myself to pick it up again. It moves very slowly, the voices used for the two POV characters are indistinguishable and extremely emotionally distanced from the reader, the suspense build up is very subtle, and the crisis/climax is quick and not very thrilling. I did get engaged with the story about 1/2 to 1/3 of the way through, but it was a slog to stick it out that long. But props to PAW for still writing when she was almost 90. I might look for a much earlier book by her, to see if it's any more exciting.