“Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.” ~ Joseph Campbell
Over the holiday break, even with all the cooking, visiting, and hospital business, I managed to read two books. This is a big deal because I have, over the last several years, become increasingly distracted to the point of having zero attention span. I can manage to get about 50 pages into a book, but that’s about it. Things began to turn around last year when Michael Slone loaned me Terry Pratchett’s Dodger. Immediately, I fell in love with Pratchett. I mentioned this to Bobby Ray who then recommended Wee Free Men also by Pratchett. Who doesn’t love a story about tiny Scottish sounding men and a teenage witch in training? Still, it would be months later before I read Margaret Verble’s Maud’s Line. The rest of the time I just felt bogged down with a bunch of non-fiction and other stuff that just wasn’t very good. Just before the break a co-worker and I were commiserating on our lost passion for reading after Graduate School. Maybe that’s what did me in, instead of the lackluster material. Maybe it was both, I don’t know, but I knew I desperately wanted to reconnect that part of my brain. So, the first book I read over the break was News of the World by Paulette Jiles, recommended by Jen Reynolds. It did not disappoint, and it set the stage for the second book, which I picked it up with my usual Christmas gift card from Doug Boyd. It was Ron Rash’s Above the Waterfall. Here was a book that’s been stalking me since 2015. By stalking I mean it’s a book that keeps showing up in every bookstore or grocery line I walk into until I read it. I have yet to be disappointed in these stalker books, and Above the Waterfall was no exception. Rash writes about Southern Appalachia as a smooth, contemporary storyteller, devoid of the expected dialect or dreamy theme. It was refreshing, to say the least, and the story was excellent. I made myself a promise when I finished it this morning: I’m not buying any new books until I’ve read the two stacks I’ve already got, and that’s going to be hard because I really want to read more from Rash. Still, reading more – specifically more good writing – is my goal for 2017. I’m off to an excellent start.
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