I saw a picture on Facebook today that said you should keep three days' worth of books at home in case you get snowed in. Books, not books on an electronic reader. What would you do if it ran out of battery and you didn't have power?
You can never have too many choices when it comes to reading material. I like having a variety of books going, just so there's something to match every mood. I recently finished Ted Kooser's two new books - "Splitting an Order" and "The Wheeling Year." For those who don't know, Kooser is a former U.S. Poet Laureate and won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for his book "Delights and Shadows." He also lives about 10 miles from Seward.
"Splitting an Order" is a book of poetry and, while I don't consider myself an avid fan of poems, I like reading Kooser's. He takes ordinary things and creates lovely word pictures about them, encouraging the reader to take a second look. Reading Kooser's poetry is much easier than reading, say, T.S. Eliot. Kooser doesn't write poems with hidden meanings. If he's describing a leaf blowing in the wind, for example, the poem is probably about a leaf blowing in the wind and the reflections it generates.
"The Wheeling Year" is a book Kooser describes in the introduction as a field guide. He got the idea from an artist friend who has filled book after book with sketches and paintings over the years. Kooser went back to his notebooks and selected observations from a sentence long to a couple paragraphs and arranged them by month. It's a book that can be read in small pieces or in larger bites. At times, it reminded me of another Kooser book, "Local Wonders."
I also recently finished "Death Comes to Pemberley" by P.D. James. Yes, that Pemberley. Set six years after the end of "Pride and Prejudice," this book begins on the eve of one of the biggest social events of the season, Lady Anne's Ball. Leave it to the Wickhams, however, to upset the fruit basket and wreak havoc all over the expected festivities. The book was made into a Masterpiece Theatre production, which I haven't watched yet, but now that I've read the book I can critique the film more intelligently.
For those of you keeping score at home, right now, I'm reading "Inca Gold" by Clive Cussler and "The Realms Thereunder" by Ross Lawhead. There are a couple books on my shelf that I started reading a long time ago and need to get back to, but the mood hasn't struck me yet. There are also several that I'd like to reread, so we'll have so see how many snow days I get this winter.
