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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (March 11, 2016)
5C THE DAILY ASTORIAN FRIDAY, MARCH 11, 2016 BOOKS WHAT ARE THEY READING? Submitted Photo Matt Winters’ much-reduced bedtime reading pile is a mix of fiction and nonfiction, old and new. T he Daily Astorian invites people to submit titles of books they are reading and share a few thoughts about the work. This week, Matt Winters, the editor and publisher of the Chinook Observer, gives us his reading list. To sub- mit, send to news@dailyastorian.com E mpty nesters now, far more entertaining, but we’re getting set Inwood delves deeper to downsize to a into a lot of the intriguing compact one-floor home. weeds of London history. Our thousands of pounds One surprise: arch-Pu- of books are getting ritan Oliver Cromwell, packed up, including the who suppressed Christ- teetering stacks on my mas as an overly pagan- nightstand. I joked to my ish celebration, was in wife they were in dan- some other ways quite ger of toppling over and tolerant. For example, Matt crushing me in the night. he completely approved Winters The much-reduced of music, including remaining pile is a curated selec- England’s first homegrown opera. tion of things I’m actively read- In a similar vein, I haven’t yet ing, plus random stuff encountered started “Seven Ages of Paris,” by while packing that might be fun to Alistair Horne. but look forward dip into again. to learning more about the French capital after enjoying it very much ‘Ring of Bright Water’ during a visit last year. Ann Muche and Alan Richards, friends from Naselle, Washing- ‘Guns of August’ ton, who know of my otter passion, “The Guns of August” by Bar- “lent” me one of their tattered cop- bara Tuchman is supposed to be ies of “Ring of Bright Water” by the definitive account of the start Gavin Maxwell. I’ve pined for an of World War I. It’s bound to be otter ever since seeing “An Otter far more digestible than Aleksandr in the Family” on Walt Disney’s Solzhenitsyn’s novel “August Wonderful World of Color in 1965. 1914,” which stymied me when Maxwell’s book, at turns funny it came out in 1972. This summer and sad, makes it plain otters are marks the centenary of the Bat- a magnificent, intelligent alien spe- tle of the Somme, for which I’m cies totally ill-suited to domestica- preparing an Editor’s Notebook tion. Maxwell’s Iraqi otter, contrite in honor of a relation who died in after crunching his hand in a squab- it, so I’m boning up on WWI. It’s ble over eels, brings him a fish always been the most obscure of from the Scottish bay where they America’s wars to me. live and won’t leave until Maxwell “What You See in Clear visibly accepts his peace offering. Water,” by family friend Geoff Charming, but I’ll be sticking with O’Gara, and “The World’s Rim,” the two stuffed-toy ones my daugh- by Hartley Burr Alexander, are ter bought me years ago at the Fort all research for my own still Clatsop gift shop. largely hypothetical novel, “Blue “A History of London” by Ste- Sky at Night,” about the beau- phen Inwood, at 1,000-plus pages, ties and horrors of the reserva- is quite a brick devoted to one of tion where I grew up. Last month, the world’s favorite cities. It was another lovely young woman died hometown to at least two of my out in that sublime, soul-gob- immigrant ancestors, including bling wasteland, frozen to death John Winter who came over to after her car broke down, and Massachusetts in 1635. Peter Ack- not reported missing for a week. royd’s “London: The Biography” is Also in February a mother and son jumped to their deaths from a desolate bridge. Some believe the reservation is haunted. I’m among them. “Dracula” still gives me chills. I first read this cheap paperback in my late teens in a spooky base- ment room of a dingy rental house. I may have left a light on that night, imagining evil spirits ooz- ing out of the moldy walls. On the other hand, “The Three Mus- keteers” (this bright new transla- tion is by Richard Pevear) never fails to amuse. Alexandre Dumas’ books were favorites when I was 12 and working through the stacks at our local Carnegie library. d’Art- agnan’s antics, particularly in pur- suit of romantic liaisons with every pretty girl who crossed his path, helped inspire my own horrify- ingly hapless adventures. Neil Gaiman probably is my favorite writer of fiction at the moment. We’ve had “Fragile Things,” one of his books of short stories, for several years but I over- looked it until now. “Neverwhere” and “The Ocean at the End of the Lane” are good starting points for readers new to Gaiman. I’m also re-reading his mammoth “Sand- man,” a series of graphic novels about the demigod of dreams. ‘The Worst Hard Time’ “Cod” and “The Basque His- tory of the World,” both by Mark Kurlansky, are innovative popu- lar histories, as is “The Worst Hard Time,” an account of America’s Dust Bowl crisis by Seattle’s Tim Egan. All three delve into the lives of ordinary people, who conven- tional historians long ignored. My mom bought the Egan book in rec- ollection of the suicide-inducing failure of her grandparents’ dry- land wheat farm in Montana due to drought and the post-WWI agricul- tural recession. “Under the Tuscan Sun,” by Frances Mayes, which I’ve read at least once before, is a classic in the genre of Americans-living-abroad literature. It’s a perfect fantasy for a fogbound winter day on the Columbia River. “River Town,” by Peter Hessler, about a couple of years living beside China’s Yang- tze River, is one I barely started when it was first published but am looking forward to trying again. ‘American Terroir’ “American Terroir” author Rowan Jacobsen and I exchanged emails earlier this year in relation to a new oyster book he was work- ing on. Terroir is a French con- cept — usually applied to wine — that emphasizes the importance of producing and eating high-qual- ity food closely linked to where it is produced. In our area, Dunge- ness crab and Willapa oysters are possible examples. I’m about 50 pages in and have learned about one of my long-term addictions: maple syrup. Jacobsen quotes an old joke: “What’s the difference between a Vermont sugarmaker and a New Hampshire sugarmaker? When a Vermont sugarmaker finds a drowned squirrel in a bucketful of sap, he’ll look left, look right, then toss out the squirrel and save the sap. When a New Hampshire sugarmaker finds a drowned squir- rel, he’ll look left, look right, then wring out the squirrel and save the sap.” ‘Star of the Sea’ Finally, Joseph O’Connor’s “Star of the Sea” is a novel about a 1847 voyage transporting Irish to America. Haven’t finished it, but love the language. Here’s one pas- sage, chosen at random: “Later, in the evening, whilst taking the read- ings on the foredeck, I observed the young man who had wished to marry, now tenderly canoodling with quite a different goddess; a pretty young Helen with a halo of golden tresses. … Yet such are the ways of younger love. Hot as the sirocco when first it blows up; but it cools just as quickly, or alters direction.” My London-Irish great-great- grandfather Ed Alton came over on such a journey in 1849 alone at age 12, eventually marrying his first true love in Manhattan’s Lower East Side and gaining cit- izenship after grim service in the Civil War. Now available in the The Daily Astorian and Chinook Observer For more information call 503-325-3211 crbizjou rn a l.com
