Tag: books

When I recommended Blue Highways, William Least Heat-Moon’s story of his journey around the United States via its backroads, I mentioned that the book was one of the influences behind my dream career as I was finishing high school. Another influence? The Foxfire series, which has more in common with Blue Highways than you might think.

A high school project on steriods

Foxfire began in 1966 with a frustrated high school English teacher at Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School in Georgia. Looking for some way to engage his students, he talked with them about a magazine, which they decided to focus on the stories of local residents, whose folklore and ways of doing things were already fading. The magazine was a success and by 1972, anthologies of articles were coming out in a series of books. Several of those first books sat on my parents’ shelves, and I would poke through them, fascinated with the oral histories, collections of folklore, and instructions on how to do everything from raising a log cabin to making a fiddle.

Oh, how I envied those students who got to interview interesting people and write about them.

And that’s the reason I think of Blue Highways and the Foxfire series as being cut from the same cloth. Just as Blue Highways is, in my mind, more about the people than the places, so Foxfire has its roots in people, even when the focus of the article is on hog dressing.

Immerse yourself in burial customs, moonshining, horse trading, and “more affairs of plain living.”

Drawing on content from the magazines, the books cover a range of topics. Some chapters just focus on an individual–the most well-known being Aunt Arie, a favorite of Foxfire readers. I can’t define what sets her apart from the many other people interviewed throughout the series, but I do remember turning to the chapter on her again and again. She seemed to be someone you’d love to sit down and talk with.

But many of the articles are focused on crafts, lore, or nearly forgotten pastimes. Foxfire 4 includes a chapter on knife making based on interviews with two different men. Filled with step-by-step photos and carefully labeled illustrations, the chapter also includes informal narratives about the knife makers. Author Tom Carlton writes this about Troy Danner:

Several people told us that Mr. Danner used to be the best blacksmith in that part of the country. … He finally had to quit, though, because, as he said, “I just got old and wore out.” He said that at one time, he could stand for a whole day shoeing horses and putting wagon tires on wheels. Once he shod sixteen horses at his little shop in one day, “and boy you could feel the sweat run out of you too!”

“Knife Making” by Tom Carlton, Foxfire 4 (1977), p. 60

Besides that chapter, Foxfire 4 alone includes five chapters featuring interviews with individuals or couples plus chapters on wood carving; fiddle making; wooden sleds; gardening; bird traps, deadfalls, and rabbit boxes; horse trading; making tar; logging; water systems; berry buckets; and cheese making. There’s also a chapter with supplementary information related to stories from the previous three books in the series.

Tell me a ghost story.

As I flipped through my parents’ books, glancing through a story about log cabin building or skipping over a piece about ginseng, one of the chapters I turned over and over again was “Boogers, Witches, and Haints” in Foxfire 2. It was just the right level of scary for me, and I loved reading the stories as they were told by a number of people from Appalachia. My favorite stories were the “ball of fire” stories, especially one of a few told by Hoyt Thomas:

And one night it looked like th’world was afire back in there. Like a big forest fire, y’know. And it come on around, and at twelve o’clock it went right square up in th’middle of th’sky and made a question mark. Just as pretty a question mark as you ever looked at.

“Boogers, Witches, and Haints,” by David Wilson, Foxfire 2 (1973), p. 328

But you, dear reader, are probably thinking, “That’s not a ghost story!” So here’s one with a ghost in it.

When my gran’daddy was a little boy, he had a aunt that died. She run a old-time loom. Worked herself t’death.

She died, and th’old man tore th’loom house down where she worked. Wanted t’get it out a’th’way. And he was going’ a’courtin’ three weeks after she died–courtin’ with another woman. Gran’daddy said he heard th’boards a’rattlin’ just like th’old loom a’runnin’. Heard th’loom a’rattlin’. Said they had a big fire a’goin’–a big blaze–and she walked up t’th’door.

Th’little baby–her baby–they had t’hold him to keep him from goin’ to her. Kept sayin’, “There’s Mommy! There’s Mommy!”

“Boogers, Witches, and Haints,” pp. 332-3

The stories don’t give me chills like they did when I was a kid, but they were deliciously spooky then. And the photos still strike me. Besides portraits of some of the people interviewed in this chapter, there are simple black and white photos of cornstalks in a rainstorm, the sun hanging low over the mountains, a tree with a sign nailed to it: “AT THE END – YOU MEET GOD.” The photography is wonderful and somehow very appropriate.

Foxfire magazine’s still around.

While the last numbered Foxfire book, Foxfire 12, came out in 2004, the magazine is still around. When I started thinking about writing about Foxfire a year ago, I ordered the Spring/Summer 2020 issue. As times have changed, and many of the people who shared their stories 50 years ago are long gone, the magazine’s topics have changed. This combined issue included three articles on drug addiction and a history of Clayton First United Methodist Church in Clayton, Georgia. There were stories of craftspeople–just like the blacksmiths and weavers who were interviewed decades ago–only these were a photographer and a prop maker. Closest to what I grew up with were the interviews. Vivian Carver, born in 1939, reminisced about when she was dating her late husband:

Me and Olin knew each other growing up. Our first date, we were painting and fixing up the church. After we finished, we had a hotdog supper. …

“Remembrance: Interview With Vivian Carver” by Willow Fisher and Jacqueline Love, Foxfire, Spring/Summer 2020, p. 51

Sharon Stiles, about the same age as Vivian Carver, said this about growing up with her grandmother:

We helped her in the garden, we helped her bring in wood, we helped wherever, whatever she needed. We carried water, because we didn’t have water at the house; we got our water from the branch. [Without refrigeration,] we took our milk or our butter and kept it in the stream. Later, one of my uncles, who had a store in Hiawassee, [Georgia], bought my grandmother a refrigerator, so we didn’t have to go to the branch however many times a day you needed to take the food or needed water. And after my grandmother had worked for a while, she was able to make enough money to get us water at the house. That was a big deal. You didn’t have to go carry the water, you could go to the back porch and there was your water. You didn’t have hot water, you only had cold water, but at least you had water.

“Making the Mountains Home: Interview With Sharon Stiles” by Kami Ahrens, Foxfire, Spring/Summer 2020, p. 73

Times change. I know that. And I don’t expect people in Appalachia to live as if they belonged to an era long gone. But Foxfire, at least the glimpse I got through one issue of the magazine, has lost some of its enchantment for me. As a child, I was visiting with people who were very different from me every time I opened one of the books. Now I can read about a prop maker who uses a 3-D printer… just like one of my family members. It is, I suppose, a little too close to home, like seeing a McDonald’s in Rome.

Despite my melancholy over the changes that have been brought about by time, there’s a lot I still cherish about the book series. I may never have the opportunity to speak to someone who’s been to a “barn raisin,'” but I can hear their stories secondhand in the Foxfire series.

Religion is a touchy matter, and it can become even more touchy when a person changes their beliefs, possibly estranging themselves from family and friends. Even so, if you’re willing to journey with me into this territory, I highly recommend two recently published books — one fiction, one nonfiction — about people who questioned and changed their beliefs but retained respect for the faith they were raised in.

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi’s second novel, is about more than questioning one’s beliefs, but that questioning plays a major role in the book.

Gifty is a Ph.D. student in neuroscience at Stanford University. She is haunted by her background: her broken family; the racism and xenophobia they faced; and her Pentecostal upbringing, which weighed heavily on her as a child. In Gifty’s words: “Back then, I approached my piety the same way I approached my studies: fastidiously. … I wanted, above all else, to be good. And I wanted the path to that goodness to be clear.”

By the time she was 11, her father had left the United States for Ghana, never to return; her brother had died from a heroin overdose; her mother was no longer able to care for her; and she was on the way to losing her faith. But while she resents how her strict religious upbringing affected her–“It wasn’t until my freshman year in college, in biology class, that I learned what and where a vagina truly was”–she also refuses to hate it. As an undergraduate student, she got into a discussion about religion, specifically Christianity, with some of her classmates. When one described religion as dangerous, saying “Religion has been used to justify everything from war to anti-LGBT legislation,” Gifty countered, “Belief can be powerful and intimate and transformative.”

Reflecting on the disagreement, Gifty tells us, “… though I hadn’t worked out how I felt about the Christianity of my childhood, I did know how I felt about my mother. Her devotion, her faith, they moved me.”

Meanwhile, Gifty has exchanged her religious faith for a faith in science. With an almost religious fervor, she hopes that her hard work will save her from the fates of her brother and mother.

I think when people heard about my brother they assumed that I had gone into neuroscience out of a sense of duty to him, but the truth is I’d started this work not because I wanted to help people but because it seemed like the hardest thing you could do, and I wanted to do the hardest thing. I wanted to flay any mental weakness off my body like fascia from muscle. Throughout high school, I never touched a drop of alcohol because I lived in fear that addiction was like a man in a dark trench coat, stalking me, waiting for me to get off the well-lit sidewalk and step into an alley. I had seen the alley. I had watched [my brother] walk into the alley and I had watched my mother go in after him, and I was so angry at them for not being strong enough to stay in the light. And so I did the hard thing.

Transcendent Kingdom, pp. 36-37

But as she pursues her Ph.D. research, Gifty realizes that science is failing her just like her childhood faith did, and so her quest for answers, for meaning, continues.

If you are looking for a clear sense of closure, you will be disappointed. Gyasi will give you hope, but she will also give you ambiguity. It is Gyasi’s willingness to sit with that ambiguity that makes Transcendent Kingdom such a beautiful book.

Sealed: An Unexpected Journey Into the Heart of Grace by Katie Langston

Sealed is a memoir chronicling Katie Langston’s journey from the Mormon faith to Christianity. While Gifty and Langston are lightyears apart in terms of their basic biographies, there are striking similarities between them. Like Gifty, Langston grew up in a profoundly religious home, and like Gifty, she was fastidious in her piety. From an early age she was haunted by the idea that “you can do something horribly wrong without knowing it.” Because worthiness through purity was central to her faith, Langston relentlessly pursued purity, even confessing to minor sins she hadn’t committed. “I was thinking of words that rhymed with lamb and I accidentally thought ‘damn,'” she told her mother. “I’m not sure, but I’m worried that I whispered it out loud.”

As she entered her teen years, she began to be troubled by what she had been taught. Faced with a God who requires you to earn your way to the Celestial Kingdom, Langston learned to hate him. “I hated his rules and requirements, his worthiness, tests, his severity,” she writes. “Most of all, I hated him for the fact that I was beginning to suspect that he had never loved me–and never would.”

Langston continued to be troubled by her faith into early adulthood. She checked all the boxes (and more) expected of her as a Mormon woman, serving as a missionary, getting married, and starting a family, but her endless fears of unworthiness fed her resentment toward God. When she first heard Mormon speakers arguing for a different view of God–a God whose favor does not need to be earned but who loves us as we are–it was a breath of fresh air leading her on a journey that eventually caused her to leave Mormonism to pursue ministry in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Despite rejecting the faith of her family and the community she was raised in, she ultimately writes about that faith sympathetically. She cannot belong to it, but she loves her family members who embrace it, and she still cherishes some of its deepest values. “My [Christian] baptism was the final uncoupling with Mormonism,” she writes, “the last, definitive break. … Simultaneously, my baptism was the culmination of everything Mormonism taught me to value. Connection, togetherness, hope for a future unity: these are what God desires, and as creatures made in God’s image, we desire them, too.”

Like Gifty, Langston may have left her childhood faith, but she refuses to condemn her loved ones who still hold to Mormonism or to proclaim that faith as evil, even though she no longer agrees with it. Both books are honest, loving approaches to the story of someone questioning their faith, well worth reading if you are interested tackling this sensitive subject.

Full disclosure: I know Katie Langston, though not well, and we are both employed by the same organization, sometimes collaborating on projects. I read Sealed because I learned of it through my work and, as someone who lived in Utah for a couple of years, was interested in the topic. Katie did not ask me to review her book (she probably doesn’t know about my blog), and I did not do it as a favor for her; I am reviewing it here because it moved me and felt like a good companion to Transcendent Kingdom.

Month after month, Google tells me that my most popular blog post is “Something Wonderful: Slow-burn Sci-fi/Fantasy Romances.” Clearly, I’m not the only person who enjoys that kind of book.

So when I fell in love with the Sirantha Jax series by Ann Aguirre, half of the team behind Bronze Gods and Silver Mirrors, I knew I had to write about it for people who, like me, enjoy sci-fi with a little romance mixed in.

It starts with Grimspace.

I have an odd relationship with Grimspace. It was on my “to read” list for a long time. I’d heard it was a good sci-fi romance, so I wanted to read it, but… too many books, too little time.

I don’t always remember books and movies unless I must (or if I revisit them). Once I got a copy of Flightplan from the library, thinking about how I’d been wanting to watch it. As the story unfolded, I realized that I had already seen it. It wasn’t very good, but I couldn’t remember the ending, so I finished it anyway.

I experienced that kind of forgetfulness with Grimspace. When I read it last year, it felt oddly familiar. At first I thought I’d read a sample chapter online. But the sense of déjà vu stayed with me through the entire book. I’d read it before and then somehow forgotten that.

So when I finished the book for the second time, I initially told myself that, even though I’d enjoyed it, it was clearly a forgettable book. I decided that I didn’t need to bother with the rest of the series.

But the characters wouldn’t let me go.

This time the book was anything but forgettable. I wanted to know what was next for Sirantha Jax and her companions. I wanted to stay with them a little longer. So I picked up the next book, Wanderlust, and from then on I gobbled the rest of the series up. (Warning: Grimspace stands alone, but books two through five end in cliffhangers.) When I reached the end of the sixth and final book, Endgame, I had a serious case of post-series depression.

One of the things that makes the characters so marvelous is that they grow and change throughout the series. Jax becomes more selfless and much less shallow. She moves from someone who sees herself solely as a star “jumper” — someone with the ability to help a ship navigate through “grimspace” — to someone who wrestles with moral issues and works to acquire more skills so that she can better contribute to her team and the world.

The physical changes she undergoes are even more significant. By the end of the series, she is quite literally no longer the person she was at the beginning. She undergoes several physical enhancements to help her with her various missions. These enhancements could have taken the series over the top if Aguirre hadn’t handled them well. But because Jax has to wrestle with questions about what she discloses to people and with the downsides to her enhancements, it’s easier to take those changes. And really, they’re more realistic than we like to believe. People are already modifying their bodies through things like cosmetic surgery, performance-enhancing drugs, and medical interventions, such as increasingly advanced pacemakers and stents. The changes that happen to Jax are a fairly realistic projection of what we might do in the future.

March, the primary love interest, is also complex. He has a strong sense of duty, which Jax both admires and hates. He is able to read minds, but that ability went uncontrolled for a long time, resulting in some emotional scars. His experiences as a mercenary also haunt him. Throughout the series, Jax and March are both drawn to and hurt by each other as a result of their experiences.

But the series is about far more than the relationship between March and Jax. Aguirre brings in a host of believable characters, including Saul, a kind scientist who is too focused on his research; Dina, a prickly mechanic; Loras, who seethes with anger over the fact that his people have been forced into submissive dependence on humans; Velith Il-Nok, an insect-like alien who is an outcast among his people; and Jael, a genetically engineered human who is understandably cautious about sharing that fact with others.

Then there’s the world-building

Aguirre doesn’t just create realistic characters, she does a great job with world-building. Over the course of the series, Jax travels to several different planets, encountering cultures that are truly alien. Loras, who is La’hengrin, is humanoid, but many of the aliens are far from human. There are long-lived Ithtorians like Velith Il-Nok, who express complex thoughts through an intricate bow called a wa. There are the frog-like Mareq, classed as primitive by humans. And there are the Morgut, spider-like creatures with sophisticated technology, who see humans in much the same way that we see cattle.

But what about the romance?

“Was I screaming?”

I don’t remember. My throat isn’t sore, although the rest of me is.

“No,” Doc says from the doorway. “At least not so the rest of us could hear.” I register March’s surprise, but Saul continues, regarding us with an inscrutable expression. “He came from the cockpit at a dead run, yanked you out of your seat. What happened, Jax?”

“Psychotic break.” I feel like I’m signing away my personal liberty by admitting as much, like maybe the Corp had a point in keeping me confined.

But Doc just nods, looking thoughtful. “Let’s get you to medical.”

It’s only then I realize that I’m still sitting on March’s lap, and his arms fall away from me with the slow, swimming reluctance of a mudsider learning to move in zero G. And I say quietly in the confines of my own head: Thank you. Not expecting to be heard. To my surprise, as I fold to my feet to follow Saul, I receive a very soft response that maybe I am not meant to hear.

I will always come for you, Jax.

Grimspace – by Ann Aguirre

While romance plays a key role in the series, it is not primary to these books. This is Sirantha Jax’s story. That story includes her relationships, but it is also very much about her adventures and development as a person. The Sirantha Jax series is solid sci-fi filled with adventure, political intrigue, and war.

That said, the romance is also an important part of every book in the series. Grimspace could definitely qualify as a slow-burn romance, but Aguirre manages to maintain a sense of romantic tension throughout the series, including slowly developing a relationship between Jax and another character that presents additional challenges to her relationship with March. Aguirre had me on a rollercoaster; there were times when she broke my heart and times when my spirits were soaring along with Jax. If you love both science fiction and romance, this series should satisfy you.

I should note, because I know that it may matter to some readers, that there are explicit sexual encounters in the series. These scenes aren’t frequent.

I’ll be reading more of Aguirre’s work.

I’d already started paying attention to Ann Aguirre after reading Bronze Gods and Silver Mirrors. Now that I’m a fan of her Sirantha Jax series, I’m certain that I’ll be reading more of her novels. In fact, I recently picked up another book set in the Sirantha Jax universe, Perdition, the first book of the Dred Chronicles. I plan to start it soon. If you decide that you, too, like her work, I recommend signing up for her email list (you can subscribe on her “free book” page). She’s also active on Facebook.

The Chronicles of Narnia are popular for a reason, but…

In writing this, I’m not knocking C.S. Lewis’ most popular fiction. I love the Chronicles of Narnia. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is one of the few books to influence my dreams; I will never forget dreaming that I stepped through the wardrobe and met Aslan.

Then there’s the Space Trilogy… especially Perelandra. I love the scene in which the Un-man taunts Ransom by repeating his name, and then, when Ransom responds, the Un-man replies, “Nothing.” It’s a child’s game, yet somehow chilling.

And while it has been a long time since I’ve read The Great Divorce, I cannot forget Lewis’ depiction of Hell as a gloomy place where people keep moving further away from each other because they cannot bear each other, while Heaven is so solid that, when tourists from Hell arrive, the blades of grass cut their feet.

But I think that Lewis’ best work of fiction may be his least known.

Till We Have Faces is in a class by itself.

Lewis’ last novel, Till We Have Faces is his retelling of the myth of Eros (or Cupid) and Psyche, which had fascinated him since his youth. Instead of choosing Psyche or Eros to tell the story, he picked Psyche’s oldest sister, whom he named Orual.

From the outset, the story sounds nothing like what I usually think of as C.S. Lewis:

I am old now and have not much to fear from the anger of the gods. I have no husband nor child, nor hardly a friend, through whom they can hurt me. My body, this lean carrion that still has to be washed and fed and have clothes hung about it daily with so many changes, they may kill as soon as they please. The succession is provided for. My crown passes to my nephew.

Orual: Lewis’ most developed character?

Unlike the sisters in the original myth, Orual is a sympathetic character. You understand why she encourages Psyche to look upon her husband despite his command. Poor Orual is not beautiful and, often neglected and sometimes abused by her father, is lonely much of the time. She loves Psyche as much as she can love anyone — an imperfect love, to be sure, but nonetheless a love of a sort. It’s easy to imagine yourself as Orual, embittered against gods who are largely silent and who seem capricious and cruel. Job-like, she asks, How could the gods take away the person I loved the most? Why did they not make it clear to me that her husband was a god and not something monstrous? How dare they then punish me for guessing wrongly by punishing Psyche?

Orual is not Lewis’ first strong female character. Tinidril, the Green Lady in Perelandra, has a great deal of strength in her innocence. There are several strong female characters in the Chronicles of Narnia, chief among them Lucy. But in Orual, Lewis created a woman who is strong, complex, and, because of her complexity, very real. People say that Joy Davidman helped Lewis alter his perspective on women, and when I read Till We Have Faces, I can believe it. Orual has a depth that none of his other female characters reached. In fact, I would argue she feels more real than any of his characters, male or female.

Nearly halfway through the book, Orual travels with Bardia, captain of the guards, to find and bury Psyche’s remains after she is given to the god of the Grey Mountain. They must spend the night on the mountain, where it is bitterly cold, so Bardia suggests they lie close, “back to back, the way men do in the wars.” Lewis writes:

I said yes to that, and indeed no woman in the world has so little reason as I to be chary in such matters. Yet it surprised me that he should have said it; for I did not yet know that, if you are ugly enough, all men (unless they hate you deeply) soon give up thinking of you as a woman at all.

I don’t recall anything else quite like that — so bitter, so real — from any other character in Lewis’ fiction.

Faith meets mythology

Lewis brought his faith rather overtly into all of his fiction. That’s just as true for Till We Have Faces as it is for his other books, but here it seems more subtle and nuanced. Part of that may be because he was working with an existing myth. The god of the Grey Mountain (Eros) is the son of Ungit, a strange, dark goddess who is the counterpart to Aphrodite in Glome, Orual’s birthplace. In her old age, Orual dreams that her father drags her to a mirror and asks her, “Who is Ungit?”

“I am Ungit,” she replies, just before she wakes. While she realizes that she was dreaming, Orual also believes that the dream has shown her the truth.

It was I who was Ungit. That ruinous face was mine. I was that… all-devouring womblike, yet barren, thing. Glome was a web—I the swollen spider, squat at its center, gorged with men’s stolen lives.”

A few pages later, she muses: “I was Ungit. What did it mean? Do the gods flow in and out of us as they flow in and out of each other?”

The god of the Grey Mountain is clearly a Christ figure, but with Ungit, Lewis introduces such complexity that we cannot read Till We Have Faces as a straightforward allegory. There are certainly allegorical elements, but the story is far more than that. It’s something that must be pondered and returned to, and that is part of what makes it so good.

Not a beach read, but a good read.

Till We Have Faces is a beautiful, powerful book, but I don’t recommend it for a relaxing read. While it is nowhere near as taxing as James Joyce’s Ulysses nor is it troubling like Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale, it is not lightweight. Read it when you are prepared for something thoughtful. But do read it if you haven’t already.

Note: I’m sorry that I didn’t post a blog entry for a couple of weeks. My website required some updating, and when that happened, I discovered I could no longer use my theme (the theme affects how a site looks). That meant that I had some work to do to fix things. I’m not crazy about this theme, but I’m happy to have a working site again, so I’ll use what I have for now.

There was no doubt in my mind that at some point I was going to write about Diane Mott Davidson. I just hadn’t planned on doing that quite so soon. My initial plan was to reread (or in some cases, read for the first time) all of her culinary mysteries in chronological order, make at least one recipe from each book, and then blog about the series.

COVID-19 led me to decide to write about these books sooner rather than later. In fact, I’ve scrapped my content calendar in favor of posts that seem more appropriate for these crazy, stressful times. And when it comes to “something wonderful,” I figure I should be writing about something comforting — like light reading and good food.

Davidson puts the “cozy” in “cozy mystery.”

Like many cozy mysteries, Davidson’s books take place in a small town, and the mysteries are solved by a female amateur sleuth. In this case, the sleuth is a 30-something caterer named Goldy, who lives in the fictitious town of Aspen Meadow, Colorado. As a caterer, Goldy often turns to cooking when she needs comfort or wants to think things through. Davidson’s cooking scenes make these some of the coziest mysteries you will ever read.

I put some hazelnuts in the oven to toast, then melted a jagged brick of unsweetened chocolate in the top of our double boiler. I combined sun-dried cranberries and oversize morsels of semisweet chocolate in a bowl, then scattered the hazelnuts to cool on a plate. I began to feel better. By the time I was beating unsalted butter with sugar and cream cheese, I was humming… . (from The Grilling Season)

I also love the fact that Goldy unabashedly enjoys food.

Schultz settled me at his cherrywood dining room table, and then began to ferry out dishes. He had outdone himself. Plump, succulent shrimp nestled inside blue corn tortillas smothered with a green chile and cream cheese sauce. Next to these he served bacon-sprinkled refried black beans, a perfectly puffed Mexican corn pudding, and my fragrant Irish bread. A basket of raw vegetables and pot of picante made with fresh papaya graced the table between the candles. I savored it all. (from The Cereal Murders)

There’s more to these fluffy, fun books than food. I’ve fallen in love with many of the recurring characters, and I enjoy the plots. But if I’m being honest, I’m a sucker for Davidson’s food scenes.

This isn’t just a series of mysteries; it’s a series of mini-cookbooks.

Want to try those cookies Goldy is making as she puzzles over the motive for a murder? You can. While Davidson doesn’t include recipes for every single meal or treat she mentions in her books, she does include several. Many of those recipes are quite good.

I’ve only started cooking out of this series over the past year. So far, I’ve made several things from the first six books, and I’m quite pleased with the results. The worst of what I’ve made was still “okay,” and some of the recipes were to die for (sorry — couldn’t resist). In a few of the books, Goldy makes a lot of low-fat recipes: first, for a group of women who are concerned about fat content and later for a friend who has had a heart attack. I’ve found that those recipes are some of my least favorite. But there are lots of winners. In addition to the Chocoholic Cookies pictured above, my family has particularly enjoyed Rainy Season Chicken Soup (The Main Corpse), Julian’s Cheese Manicotti (The Cereal Murders), and Scout’s Brownies (Dying for Chocolate).

I’ll admit that finding ingredients right now can be dicey. But if you have a well-stocked pantry and want to cook your way through these days of social isolation, this series is a great resource. A cozy mystery and a cookbook… what more could you ask for?

If you’re familiar with the long-running British sci-fi series Dr. Who, you know that the Doctor’s TARDIS can take you to any time and place. Maybe you have dreamed of being the Doctor or having the Doctor show up and invite you on an adventure.

Have you ever thought of books as your TARDIS?

I know my suggestion is somewhat of a letdown. You want to have actual adventures with other people in distant times and far-flung corners of the galaxy, but I’m telling you to substitute that desire with books.

Of course, even rabid readers like me know there is a difference between reading about something and experiencing it. But if you can’t hop in a TARDIS, books are some of the best substitutes around.

Want an example? Read Carlsbad, Caves, and a Camera by Robert Nymeyer. Nymeyer was an amateur speleologist who, after working for famous cave photographer Ray V. Davis, explored and took photos of several wild caves in the Carlsbad, New Mexico, area, primarily during the 1930s. In his book, Nymeyer takes you on adventures that you will never otherwise have, even if you are a caver.

And if you’re not a caver, Nymeyer will enchant you into wishing you were one:

Faintly, far ahead, I caught the gleam of white stalagmites. And it was at that moment that something sneaked up from behind and bit me, something unseen and insidious, but potent, nonetheless. The bite was painless, and I wouldn’t realize its import until hours, or days, or maybe even weeks, later. It was the cave bug. And it injected me with a cave-hunting virus that I was never to shake off. Through the rest of my years the lure of these dark, mysterious realms beneath the earth would remain with me, the thrill of anticipation of what might lie ahead around the next bend of the corridor, the utter quiet and peace and solitude, the unearthly beauties they held. To me there is more to crawling into caves than “just because they’re there”; to me it is the promise of what they hold that lures me, the mystery of what might be found, the glistening wetness in the cool, quiet chambers, the fantastic charm of their decorations in millions of forms and types, the ever-present element of danger that might be encountered anywhere in the darkness. To me, there is no greater adventure.

Nymeyer definitely had adventures, getting lost in one cave, going deep into another and discovering he didn’t have the strength to climb back up, getting hit by falling rocks in yet another. Sometimes the effort wasn’t worth it, because a promising-looking cave would end up being small and with no formations of interest. But he and his friends went caving again and again, because there were moments that made all the danger and disappointment worth it.

A great shape loomed up before us, but even when our lights dimly outlined it we still could not believe what we saw. Something that huge simply could not have been built up by dripping water. We felt that we had certainly found the world’s largest stalagmite. …

Fluted section upon fluted section its massive brown shape reared up into the darkness. Twenty or more feet in diameter at the base, it swelled progressively for another twenty feet, then tapered gradually to a rounded point just connected with the ceiling. With the aid of a rangefinder on one of our cameras, we measured the distance from the base to a spot on the ceiling … Eighty feet! No wonder we could hardly believe our eyes! … Draped around its base were great folds of onyx, deep enough for a man to step completely within. A light behind a fold revealed beautiful transparent shades of rich browns and deep reds.

Through his book, Nymeyer documented many caves in his area that no one else had recorded. Sometimes vandalism meant that no one will ever again see what Nymeyer was lucky enough to capture on film. In fact, the end of one chapter on a particularly beautiful cave nearly brought me to tears. After graduating from college, Nymeyer talked with a friend about the possibility of a trip to the cave. His friend discouraged him and then broke the bad news.

“I kinda hate to tell you this. You know that guy that polishes and sells cave formations?”

“The one who offered me twenty-five dollars to take him…?”

“Yeah.” Tommie’s voice mirrored his disgust. “Well, someone sold out to him for five dollars and took him to the cave. And, Sam [Robert’s nickname], he wrecked it. There’s hardly a formation hanging or standing. He just stripped it clean. Anything that could be sledge hammered down is gone. …”

We will never see the wonders that Nymeyer and his friends beheld at that cave, except through Nymeyer’s eyes.

You can visit many of the caves Nymeyer mentions in the book. First and foremost, Carlsbad Caverns is well worth a visit if you are able to make it to that corner of New Mexico. Also, the park offers guided tours of “New” Cave, now called Slaughter Canyon Cave, as well as back country permits that will allow experienced cavers to explore some of the other wild caves on park property. Other caves are accessible if you can find an area guide.

But whether or not you can travel to New Mexico to visit a cave, only Nymeyer’s book can take you to the wild caves around Carlsbad, New Mexico, in the 1930s. Hop in his TARDIS and prepare for an adventure like no other.

When I was a senior in high school, I came up with an oddly specific career goal. I wanted to travel dusty back roads in New Mexico, searching for people with interesting stories. I’d interview those people and turn their stories into museum exhibits.

I have yet to do exactly that, although I came close enough to satisfy me when I profiled alumni for various magazines at the University of St. Thomas.

Part of the inspiration behind my dream was the book Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon. The book was one of many I plucked off my parents’ bookshelves during my adolescence. It soon became one of my favorite works of nonfiction. While part of what moved me was the author’s description of places, his encounters with strangers meant the most to me.

Ever wanted to run away from it all?

As he notes in his 1999 Afterward, Least Heat-Moon had thought about traveling across the United States without using a federal highway a few years before his trip. The dream was delayed by obligations, but in 1978 a series of circumstances — he was separated from his wife and had lost his job — gave him the final push to pursue his project.

Although Least Heat-Moon was traveling both to pursue a dream and reboot his life, his story speaks to anyone with the urge to explore new places. Even if we can’t leave everything behind for a few months, we can at least ride along with the author.

Least Heat-Moon takes us to the hidden corners of the U.S.

By traveling the “blue highways” — the rambling routes that many drivers abandoned after federal freeways were created to move people quickly from place to place — he largely avoided the big cities, visiting small towns instead. Sometimes he stopped at a town because it was along his route. Other times he went out of his way to visit a town simply because he liked the name.

Dime Box, Texas, is not the funniest town name in America. Traditionally, that honor belongs to Intercourse, Pennsylvania. I prefer Scratch Ankle, Alabama, Gnawbone, Indiana, or even Humptulips, Washington. Nevertheless, Dime Box, as a name, caught my ear, so that’s where I headed the next morning out of College Station.

Much of Blue Highways is about place. Least Heat-Moon writes beautifully about the towns and landscapes he travels through. Some of it he loves, some of it he hates, but it all makes for good reading.

Wartburg, on the edge of the dark Cumberlands, dripped in a cold mist blowing down off the knobs. Cafes closed, I had no choice but to go back into the wet mountain gloom. Under massive walls of black shale hanging above the road like threats, the highway turned ugly past Frozen Head State Park; at each trash dumpster pullout, soggy sofas or chairs lay encircled by dismal, acrid smoke from smoldering junk. Golden Styrofoam from Big Mac containers blew about as if Zeus had just raped Danae. Shoot the Hamburglar on sight.

But it’s the people who really make the book

While the author says more about what he sees and thinks than who he talks to, his conversations with people from across the U.S. are the true heart of the book. I don’t think that’s just true for me as a reader. When Least Heat-Moon includes photos, they are always photos of people he talked to, not photos of landscapes he traveled through. That hints that the people were the heart of the journey in his eyes, too.

Least Heat-Moon is a realist; not everyone he talks to is a likable person, and he doesn’t pretend they are. Nevertheless, many of the people are so enjoyable to “hear” through his words that they will make you want to sit down and start up with a conversation with a complete strange. I say this as an introvert who usually needs a writing project to get me to talk to strangers, as much as I enjoy listening to them.

The people Least Heat-Moon converses with give him advice. (He meets a metallurgical engineer who tells him, “I notice that you use work and job interchangeably. Oughten to do that. A job’s what you force yourself to pay attention to for money. With work, you don’t have to force yourself.”) They teach him things, telling him about hang-gliding or, most memorably, taking him out on a fishing trawler. They tell him stories. (In Hachita, New Mexico, one man talks about being near Alamogordo when an atomic bomb was tested.)

For me, the best parts of the book are the times when Least Heat-Moon connects with people who are very different from himself — something many of us hope for in a time when we feel hopelessly divided. One of my favorite encounters is between the author and Arthur O. Bakke, a hitchhiking Seventh-Day Adventist who dedicated his life to telling other people about Jesus following a frightening car accident. His earnestness scares many people off, including, at first, the author, though he offers Bakke a ride and eventually engages him in conversation about his calling. On their second day together, Bakke and Least Heat-Moon have an exchange consisting largely of quotations from the Bible on Bakke’s side and from Walt Whitman on the author’s side. Neither changes his point of view, but the discussion is friendly. Least Heat-Moon writes:

He [Bakke] lived clean: mind, body, way of life. Hegel believed that freedom is knowledge of one’s necessity, and Arthur O. Bakke … was a free man hindered only by his love and conviction. And that was just as he wanted it. I don’t know whether he had been chosen to beat the highways and hedges, but clearly he had chosen to. Despite doctrinal differences, he reminded me of a Trappist monk or a Hopi shaman. I liked Arthur. I liked him very much.

Least Heat-Moon’s journey may have occurred more than 40 years ago, but it’s exactly the sort of thing we need to be reading now.

When I finally got around to reading Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman, I was surprised to see that she was also the author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, which I read several years ago. The Spirit Catches You is a nonfiction book about the culture clash between a Hmong family in California and the American medical system. It was hard for me to imagine that the author of that book had also written a book of essays on “a lifelong love affair with books and language” (from the copy on the front flap of Ex Libris’ dust jacket).

Why I’m so surprised that the same person could write about very different subjects in very different styles is beyond me. My own interests are all over the map. At any rate, while I found The Spirit Catches You well-written and informative, I thought Ex Libris was downright delightful. The fact that Anne could write a good book on cultural conflict and medicine and a great book on bibliophilia just increases my admiration for her.

If you’re a bibliophile who has not yet read Ex Libris, here’s why you need to get your hands on a copy (if you don’t already have one sitting in a stack of unread books) and immerse yourself in Anne’s delightful essays.

Ex Libris Is Funny

While I wouldn’t go so far as to call Ex Libris “comedy,” it’s very funny. At least, it is if you’re a word nerd. Anyone who has had the urge to correct public signage will love the essay “r/ Inse∧t a Carrot e/.”

My brother revealed that in a 364-page computer-software manual he had consulted the previous month, he had found several hundred errors in spelling, grammar, and syntax. His favorite was the oft-repeated command to “insert a carrot.” He had written the company, offering to trade a complete list of corrections for an upgraded version of the software, but had not received a reply.

The author did her brother one better: After finding 15 misprints in an edition of Nabakov’s Speak Memory, she wrote to the author to let him know. You’ll have to read the essay for yourself to find out what happened.

In “The Catalogical Imperative,” Anne writes about the joys of reading catalog copy. Again, if you are a person who gravitates toward print — any print, just give me something to read! — you will understand.

Who could read the Garrett Wade tool catalogue without thinking, ‘This is a poem’? Not I. In fact, here it is. The following syllabically impeccable haiku consists entirely of items you can order by calling (800) 221-2942:

Joiner’s mash, jack plane.

Splitting froe? Bastard cut rasp!

Craftsman dozuki.

I hope you noted the Japanese touch in the final line, which refers, of course, to Item No. 49117.01, a saw whose blade ‘has a very smooth action with a very narrow kerf.’ (I am currently composing a villanelle inspired by the word kerf.)

This is nerdy humor at its best.

You Will Feel Like Anne Could Be Your Friend

You know those books that make you think, “I wish I could meet the author, because I’m sure we could be friends?” This is one of those books. Anyone whose idea of the perfect birthday present is walking out of a store with 19 pounds of used books is someone I could talk to for hours.

Read Ex Libris, and you will find yourself saying again and again, “Yes, yes! Me, too!” In the same “Catalogical Imperative” essay I mentioned above, Anne writes about the J. Peterman catalog:

My analysis of J. Peterman’s appeal is that it is a Harlequin romance for the kind of people who vacation in Krk. For example (to quote from the blurb for an ankle-length crêpe-de-Chine floral dress with leg-o’-mutton sleeves):

‘He spends the morning repairing the deer fence. The next job is to start a compost pile. It’s getting warm. As he takes off his flannel shirt, he observes that you are no longer reclining in the bay window reading Proust.’

This paragraph makes a number of assumptions, all exceedingly pleasant:

1. I own a country house.
2. I own a deer fence.
3. I own a compost pile.
4. I have enough time to read Proust.
5. While reading Proust, I wear ankle-length dresses with leg-o’-mutton sleeves.

But I didn’t order the dress. My problem—and it has made Anne F., though a devoted reader of catalogues, a faithless patron—is that I never want the item, I want the associated fantasy.

Amen, Anne.

Most Importantly, Ex Libris Is a Celebration of Books and Words

In Ex Libris, Anne explores everything from how libraries are organized to the joys of “reading books in the places they describe,” which she calls You-Are-There reading. She writes about the perfect pen, about changing language to make men and women equal, and about reading aloud. If your idea of a horror story is being confined to a place with no reading material, Ex Libris was written for you. You will not be disappointed.

Dear Emma Newman,

It’s tempting to ask, “Where have you been all my life?” but I already know the answer to that question. Until 2013, you had only one published work, a 2011 anthology of short stories

Then the floodgates opened. Since 2013 you’ve published five books in your Split Worlds urban fantasy series, four books in your Planetfall sci-fi series, and two books in your Industrial Magic steampunk series.

So you’re a relatively new and very prolific author. Still, it seems a shame that I only learned about you this year.

I heard about the Planetfall series through one of the women in my book group. Based on her recommendation, we decided to read the first book, for which the series was named.

As soon as I finished Planetfall, I started gobbling up the other books.

Your vision of the near future is believable. It’s not hard to see how in a matter of decades corporations might run governments; humans might have a small station on Mars; food, clothing and other items might be printed on 3-D printers; and most people might choose to be chipped, making cellphones and similar technology virtually obsolete. Because you looked at current trends and envisioned a future based on these trends, you built a very credible world.

I love the fact that each of your books features a different protagonist. Your characters are complex and believable. You write about their struggles with such sensitivity that I wasn’t surprised to discover you have a background in psychology.

Your plots are also masterful. In Planetfall, you drop clues, then shock us as we realize just where these clues were leading. After Atlas is completely different — a murder mystery set on Earth — and the detective’s personal story is even more surprising than what he learns during his investigation. Told through the eyes of geologist and artist Anna, Before Mars hands us a conundrum: Is Anna sane, and if she is, what exactly is going on? With its delayed messages between Anna and her family and a communications blackout, Before Mars reminded me just a little of Moon. Finally, Atlas Alone is a chilling story that would make a great discussion-starter in an ethics class. All of the books are different, all of them are good, and all contain enough surprises that I wouldn’t want to give too much away to prospective readers.

While talking with someone about the series I told them that, while each book stands on its own, they should be read in order of publication. Each book builds on what we learn about your world and its characters in the previous books. So I was intrigued to see that you proposed an alternative order that would give readers a different experience. I can see how that would work; After Atlas is key to what we read in Before Mars and Atlas Alone, so putting it first would still make for a coherent experience. Too bad I can’t go back and read the books for the first time that way to see what that reading experience would be like!

The quality of your work and the number of books you have published in the past few years make you one of my writing role models. I plan to look for your other books and look forward to seeing what else you produce in the future.

In awe and admiration,

Kate