All the Light We Cannot See

So much of our world's best literature is set during our world's wars. It's just the way it is. We heal from our biggest errors with our best offerings of art, and because of this, the most monumental events in our history are always the crucibles for our best stories. 

No one should shy away from All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr simply because it is set during World War II. Though nothing that happens here could have happened without the war, this is not a book about the war.*

The novel is about truths that are much, much smaller than wars. It is about the quietest kinds of bravery you can imagine. It is about the barest bones of human compassion, and how much each of these gestures can mean. It is about the extraordinary things we can do when we realize we have no other choice. It is about saving people.

The writing in this thing is perfect. Seriously. I can't remember the last time I've finished a book and wanted to start over from the beginning right away. I need to re-read this novel just to marvel at Anthony Doerr's wordcraft.

My neighbor (the marvelous one who recommended this book to me) said, "You can't remove a single sentence from this book." And she is right. If I were still teaching writing classes, I would challenge my students to pick a page and pick one sentence on it that was unnecessary. Then I'd have the rest of the class clamoring to tell us why Doerr kept it.

But I wasn't thinking of these things while reading, because the story itself was so beautiful. I couldn't bear to stop (too often) to marvel at the writing, though I was aware of it glittering all around me.

Have you ever admired a gorgeous work of art, a painting, say, or a mosaic, or an heirloom quilt or tapestry, and been blown away by the beautiful picture before you? And then have you been blown away all over again by the intricate handiwork, the attention to detail, that you notice only when you step close enough to see what makes up that picture? Have you marveled at the incredible skill it must take to see how every single stitch or stroke or stone or word will fit into place amongst the many other thousands beside it to create the breathtaking whole?

That's this.

Love,
The Gutsy Mom

 *Okay, okay. It's inevitably about the war. But there's very little shoot-'em-up, bang-'em-up, atrocity after atrocity after atrocity numbing you to the horror-of-it-all going on here.

Reading with Jillson

In addition to my own reading plans for 2012, I am cooking up a reading plan for Jillson and me.

For a while now I've been worried that Jillson is missing out on one-on-one reading time with her parents, since we combine story time for the girls at bedtime. I love our bedtime routine and don't want to mess with it, so if I want to read aloud with Jillson it has to happen at another time.

But when? Monday through Friday she gets home at 4pm. She is exhausted from school, and it is not as though I can ask Madelyn to take care of Bronwen while I have one-on-one time with Jills.  More often than not the time between Jillson coming home and dinner time slips away in the blink of an eye: snack time, going through the back pack, a little horsing around, and then it's time to start dinner.

Soooo... we will be carving out some time on the weekends during which we can escape into a good book together. We're starting of course with Little House.

I'm a little worried whether we'll be able to sustain the plot of a book from week to week, so maybe we'll sneak in a mid-week read here and there. We'll have to see.

We're getting a head start right now over Christmas vacation. The other day, I had the Gutsy Dad dig out a box of books from my childhood that we have been hauling around with us for ten years. (I cannot tell you how satisfying it is to finally be justifying that haul. And how lovely and comforting it is for me to see and touch and hold and smell the very books I loved as a child, that my mother held and read to me, too.)

As soon as we opened the box, Jillson saw the Little House books, snatched them up and--I kid you not--said "Oh, Mommy, Mommy, can you read this to me?" Be still my beating heart.

We've been reading a chapter a day since then, each time at Jillson's request. I love it. I absolutely love reading with her. I love the way she stares off into space and I can tell by her eyes that she is imagining it all. I love hearing the stories again myself. And I really love Garth Williams's illustrations. Man, am I in dork heaven or what?

I think that after we finish this first book we may start a notebook together. (Okay, we can call it a scrapbook.) We might just write down the title and a few sentences about how we each felt about the book.  Maybe draw some pictures? We'll have to see. Oh, the possibilities...

(Don't worry, I've got a plan for some one-on-one time with Madelyn, too.)

Reading in 2012

This is always an incredibly exciting time of year for me, the time when January is in sight and I begin planning projects and goals for the new year.  I love the process of it, the anticipation, the figuring out how it all will work. Let's be clear: these are not resolutions, they are plans. I like to bite off just enough to feel motivated.

I plan to read more in 2012. That is, I plan to read more intentionally. I recently stumbled upon Jim Trelease's advice on reading with your children in which he says "Don't continue reading a book once it is obvious that it was a poor choice." Preach it, brother.

I don't think I wasted much time reading duds in 2011, but I also think I didn't spend enough time consciously choosing delicious books. There are so many plums to be picked. Let's not fritter our reading time away on poor choices, or out of a sense of obligation that a book, once started, must be finished. Life's too short. Let's purposely pick the juiciest plums.

To this end, I would like to make 2012 the Year of the Classics. There are so many I have never read, especially ones that people assume I have read given my background. There are even ones that I assume I have read, because I talk about them as though I have.

So. I'm compiling a list. A list of good books, good-for-me books, classics I shouldn't skip over. I'd like to populate the list with 20 or 30 books, then pick one a month in 2012. If I read more than that, hooray for me (and the books). But I think given my current at-home constituency, one "real" book a month is a fair goal, especially when we know it will happen in addition to my usual lighter reading.

I'm starting my list of books to read. (See below; you'll notice I interpret the word classic fairly loosely.) And this is where I need your help. Can you help me compile my list? What classics do you love so much that you can't imagine a life without having read them?

I can't wait to hear from you, here or otherwise!

Love,

The GM

My Plum Tree for 2012

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese