The Cellar Door Book Society: It's about Time: Memories and Musings from the 2019 Bookshelf

Time is a brisk wind, for each hour it brings something new... but who can understand and measure its sharp breath, its mystery and design? -- Paracelsus

In many ways, 2019 was a year of questions, a relentless, heartrending journey wherein we attempted to find answers, to navigate life's mystery, and to understand life's design. Questions. Who can we turn to? What can be done? Where should we go? Why is this happening? When will there be peace? How do we honor a life well-lived, a life well-loved? How do we heal? How do we hope? So many questions. While some of these questions remain unanswered, and while a few of them are perhaps unanswerable, I've come to believe that many of the answers involve time. In time, things become clearer. In time, the sharp breath mellows and evolves into something gentle and benign. In time, we'll find answers-- or answers will find us. In time. But in the meantime, there are books to read. Books to comfort us, to curl up with on a frosty winter's night. Books to inspire us on a fine spring morning. Books to relax with in the shade of a summer afternoon. Books to savor with crisp autumn in the air. Books to entertain us, to educate us, to transport us, to transform us. Books to take us all over the literary map and across the timeline of history.

Time heals what reason cannot. --Seneca

Saratoga Trunk by Edna Ferber.

Harper Perennial, 2000 (1941). 293 pages.

Oldies But Goodies

This is good-old-fashioned reading, a saga of love, greed, and power set in late nineteenth-century New Orleans and our beloved Saratoga that reads like a stylish black-and-white film. Edna Ferber's tenth novel was in fact adapted into a stylish black-and-white film, a 1945 romantic drama starring Ingrid Bergman as spectacularly ambitious Creole beauty Clio Dulaine and Gary Cooper as Clint Maroon, a handsome Texan with a head for business and an eye for spectacularly ambitious Creole beauties. The two disarming outsiders take on formidable, spectacularly corrupt Southern gentry and Eastern society types in pursuit of All They've Ever Wanted. In the course of their obsessed pursuit, they (almost) succumb to a popular pitfall in good-old-fashioned reading: failure to recognize they have All They'll Ever Need... Each Other. This is not Edna Ferber's finest work-- she won the Pulitzer Prize for So Big in 1925-- but it's fine storytelling from a different time, and it features one of our favorite summer places.

The Time of Our Lives, 2012: In Historic Congress Park. Saratoga.

The Time of Our Lives, 2013: Handicapping Brain Trust at the Spa.

T Rex and the Crater of Doom by Walter Alvarez.

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1998. 208 pages.

History and Travel

This is the story of one terrible day in the history of earth. I pull this paperback from Ben’s bookshelf: assigned college reading for him, voluntary exploration for me. Let's try to wrap our heads around it. Sixty-five million years ago, an extraterrestrial object larger than Mount Everest slams into Earth, prompting an explosion equivalent to detonation of a hundred million hydrogen bombs-- which in turn creates disastrous environmental consequences-- vaporizing lifeforms, scattering debris, spawning a monster tsunami, sparking wildfires, subjecting the planet first to chilling darkness and then to sweltering greenhouse heat. The story is more than geology and paleontology: the author, one of the Berkeley scientists who discovered evidence of the impact, shares the human story behind the initially controversial theory-- adventures in remote locations, painstaking data collection and analysis, lively intellectual debate, ample frustration and periodic breakthrough, long-standing friendships and fraught relationships As I read, I gain new appreciation for the concept of deep time-- adjusting temporal calculus from years to million-years-- and I am struck by how much we know... and by how much we don't know,. There are mysteries wrapped in enigmas lingering out there, confirmation of the miracle of life and the immensity of the story- beautiful, terrible, complicated moments lost in the broad sweep of time.

Eruption: The Untold Story of Mt. St. Helens by Steve Olson.

W.W. Norton & Company, 2017. 336 pages.

History and Travel

This is another selection from Ben's bookshelf: it likely worked its way into his library by way of his interest in the natural world and prompted by several family visits to Mt. St. Helens over the years. The cataclysmic 1980 eruption in a remote corner of southwestern Washington state obliterated the top of a mountain, devastating hundreds of square miles of land and killing fifty-seven people. This is a compelling descriptive narrative of the event, interweaving human anecdote with riveting history, sociology, and science. Our visits to Mt. St. Helens leave an indelible impression and impart an important message: across a once devastated landscape, we encounter wildflowers, butterflies, birds, small wildlife. Indeed, there is a quiet, persistent voice, an echoing insistence that life wants to happen, that life indeed will happen, in time. In time, we witness birth and life, death and destruction-- followed by rebirth and regeneration, the cycle of life renewed.

The Time of Our Lives, 2002: Checking out Mt. St. Helens.

The Time of His Life, 2004:

Ben Winning the Morton Logger's Jubilee, Washington State.

The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir.

Ballantine Books, 2008. 512 pages.

Historical Fiction
Time is of all losses the most irrecuperable, for it can never be redeemed.... In the mood for solid historical fiction, I pluck this from the to-be-read bookshelf mid-year. In The Lady Elizabeth, we're transported to the most celebrated, the most tempestuous, the most treacherous court in English history. Elizabeth Tudor is the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and her young life takes a grisly, tragic turn when her mother loses her head for treason. Elizabeth is in short order disinherited, declared illegitimate, and left to live by her considerable wits, a youthful pawn in the vicious game of Tudor politics. Alison Weir is the author of numerous histories and biographies of British royalty; consequently, her historical novels never stray far afield into the land of fantasy and conjecture. The reading is rich in detail, authentic and plausible, as it explores timeless human emotion and intricacies of the human heart.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon.

Dell, 1992. 850 pages.

Fiction Favorites
But just then, for that fraction of time, it seems as if all things are possible. You can look across the limitations of your own life, and see that they are really nothing. In that moment when time stops, it is as though you know you could undertake any venture, complete it and come back to yourself, to find the world unchanged, and everything as you left it just a moment before.... Brad and I are not big television enthusiasts: our viewing is by and large limited to live sports and CNBC. We don't follow series often, but when we do, it's fair to say that we enjoy a specific genre: Historical-Fiction-Scottish-Travelogue-Romantic-Drama-Science-Fiction-Time-Travel-Fantasy-Adventure-Based-on-a-Best-Selling-Series-by-the-Same-Name. Outlander fills the bill and then some! I decide to read Book One to get a sense for how closely the flat-screen adaptation parallels the author's pen-to-paper work. The answer is: it's pretty close. This is not great literature, but it is a rip-roaring whopper of a tale.

Transcription by Kate Atkinson.
Back Bay Books, 2019. 368 pages.
Historical Fiction
Everything was interconnected, a great web that stretched across time and history.... I select this appealing paperback from a Buy-One-Get-One-Half-Price Table at Barnes and Noble. Kate Atkinson is a favorite author-- her beautiful Life after Life holds a special spot on the bookshelf and in my reading heart. Transcription, while neither her wisest nor her wittiest work, is wise enough and witty enough, a compelling historical fiction-spy drama hybrid with oodles of connections across time and historical space. In 1940, eighteen-year-old Juliet Armstrong is recruited by M15 and assigned to an obscure department of the intelligence agency, tasked with monitoring comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers. Her job is at once tedious and terrifying. Ten years later and now a radio producer at the BBC, Juliet presumes that shadowy events of the war years have been lost in time-- but she is, not surprisingly, confronted by figures from her past who seem to be telling her that there is no action, past or present, without consequence.

The Alchemist: A Fable about Following Your Dream by Paulo Coelho.

HarperOne, 2014 (1988). 208 pages.

Fiction Favorites

To realize one's destiny is a person's only obligation.... This slim, deckle-edged volume is my other selection from the Buy-One-Get-One-Half-Price Table at Barnes and Noble. Short and sweet, enchanting and evocative, chock-full of soul-stirring wisdom, it's a pleasure to hold and a pleasure to read. The story follows an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago as he embarks on a journey of discovery, traveling from his Spanish homeland to the Pyramids of Egypt in search of unnamed treasure. Along the way, he encounters Symbolic Obstacles(!) and Emblematic Characters(!) even as he comes to understand the transforming power of dreams. My copy is a 25th anniversary edition: The Alchemist is declared by critics and millions of readers around the world a modern classic, and frankly, this gives me pause. Why hadn't I encountered it earlier in my reading life? So many short, sweet, enchanting, evocative, international bestselling fables, so little time, I suppose.

The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Imposter by Mark Seal.

Plume, 2012. 368 pages.

Non Fiction and Biographies

My mom, ardent reader of non fiction and devoted student of jaw-dropping human behavior, would have been fascinated by the story and would have enjoyed this fine piece of investigative journalism. The author here tells the tale of German native Christian Gerhartsreiter, a slippery chameleon-esque career con man who steps in and out of various identities for decades, ultimately posing as Clark Rockefeller, wealthy scion of a distinguished American family. Clark-who's-not-Clark-at-all climbs the proverbial social ladder, gains access to exclusive social clubs, works on Wall Street, shows off an impressive art collection, and marries an upwardly mobile Harvard-educated businesswoman. It's a fact-far-stranger-than-fiction psychological thriller about a character who doesn't technically exist.

Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg by James M. McPherson

Crown, 2003. 144 pages.

History and Travel
Growing up in the wilds of South-Central Pennsylvania or, if you like, Pennsyltucky (a charming sobriquet bequeathed upon the region by amusing political demographers), my family took many a weekend road trip to Gettysburg National Military Park. This was one of my family's favorite things to do in a woody station wagon, right up there with spotting deer along winding country roads on bitterly cold November Pennsyltucky nights. But I digress! Dad, a Gettysburg College graduate, gave us personal battlefield tours: Seminary Ridge, Devil's Den, Little Round Top, The Wheatfield, The Peach Orchard, Cemetery Hill... so much violent history here. In Hallowed Ground, a noted American Civil War historian walks the same terrain, elucidating the historical impact of a battle that is etched into our collective memory, events that defined our nation's character.

The Time of Our Lives, December 2019: Brad Walking the Gettysburg Battlefield.

Twilight at Little Round Top: July 2, 1863—The Tide Turns at Gettysburg by Glenn W. LaFantasie.

Wiley, 2005. 336 pages.

History and Travel

I follow up Hallowed Ground with this historical study of the second day of the battle, read in conjunction with a holiday visit with my good and loving sisters and their people in Gettysburg. Brad and I walk the battlefield during our stay: wandering the peaceful, bucolic landscape, it's sometimes difficult to envision the chaos of battle, the clash of two armies, the bloodshed and carnage that once enveloped the land. Reading this book helps to bring sights and sounds from another time to life. The author sifts through an abundance of often complicated, sometimes contradictory historical testimony-- letters, diaries, memoirs-- to present an eloquent, comprehensive account of the action, a moving meditation on what was won and all that was lost on those historic days on a hillside in South-Central Pennsylvania.

The Time of Our Lives, December 2016: Little Round Top, Winter Morning Fog.

Here we are then, December 31, 2019: a year and a decade drawing to a close, a time for revelry, a time that will prompt many around the world to declare and document on social media proof that We're having the time of our lives! Merriam-Webster defines revelry as noisy partying or merrymaking. New Year's Eve is a time for revelry, to be sure, and also a time of reflection and retrospection here... because tonight we're remembering Ben, a natural-born reveler if ever there was one. Not in the strict dictionary sense-- although he undoubtedly participated in a bit of that, too, in the course of his thirty-one-and-a-half years on the planet. But in the time of his life, Ben reveled in his own inimitable way, finding the good in every day, moving through the world with unwavering optimism, kindness, thoughtfulness, good humor, and creativity; working hard and trying his best, knowing that, as American middle and long-distance runner Steve Prefontaine so aptly opined, To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.

The Time of His Life, 1990:

Ben in a Blue Snow Suit.

As a toddler, bundled into a snowsuit that matched his blue-blue eyes, Ben would stand outside for hours, seemingly unfazed by sub-freezing temperatures, looking skyward, catching snowflakes, reveling in the winter world around him. Ben reveled in family holiday Nok Hockey tournaments, in backyard football with his dad. He reveled in memorizing the flags of the world, in spotting John Deere tractors, in creating his very own tabloid newspaper, The Broadview Post.
In time, he reveled in fifteen-mile training runs in sweltering summer heat-- followed by a fistful of freeze pops and a soak in an ice-filled garbage can. He reveled in a good book, a good laugh, a good hike, a good horse race, a good pizza, a tall glass of Turkey Hill Iced Tea. He reveled in his work at the Thoroughbred Daily News. Indeed, Ben was a quietly resolute reveler.

The Time of His Life, 2006: Ben Wins Nike Outdoor Nationals 5000 Meters.

The Time of His Life, 2016: Ben Feeds Peppermints to Popcorn Deelites,

Best Known for His Role as Seabiscuit on the Silver Screen.

The Time of His Life, 2011: At the Richmond Half Marathon,

Ben and Ronald McDonald Ignore Each Other.

The Time of His Life, 2016: Ben is Interviewed

by a Japanese Newspaper about Horse Racing.

And so as we prepare to flip the calendar, my wish for all of us is that we revel in the times of our lives. Past, present, future: the times of our lives are already gone, are happening here and now, are waiting for us as the great world spins us to a new year, another turn around the sun. My wish is that we hold fast to precious memories, that we find comfort in the past and inspiration to face tomorrow in the love, the laughter, the lives that touch our lives. That we greet each morning like the illimitable gift it is and that we conduct ourselves with a sense of purpose and anticipation. And finally, that the new year, the new decade, bring us a measure of happiness, hope for peace, good books and the time to read them... that we celebrate the story in all of its bittersweet beauty, its passion, its poignancy... that we celebrate and fully embrace the times of our lives.