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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.
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