summer night light reading

Finally tired of imaginary stories and authors lingering with their indulgent banter, I decided to do a reading switch this summer and examine nonfiction. Loussac Libary is my favorite place to go in Anchorage and it was my first destination when I first arrived to Alaska ten years ago. The library does incredibly well; often needing inner library loans, they provide them quickly and meet your demands.

Last Sunday though, I decided to peruse the travel area of the library and picked up two books; one that I recently finished called Among Flowers, A Walk in the Himalaya by Jamaica Kincaid. I grabbed Kincaid's book excitedly because I had read her years ago in the New Yorker and was touched by her candid and open writing dialogue. (Kincaid is from Antigua and she told of her first experiences arriving to New York and what she had to do to survive in the big city.) Her style is a bit clunky but when you get past it, her honesty becomes bitter sweet and she takes you step by step into her crossings. This story in particular examined a two week journey into the Himalaya with a group of other naturalists while they collected seeds for their gardens back in Wales and Vermont. How novel I thought! Kincaid expresses her fears so openly and brings new insights into her trail wanderings that I felt I made the journey with her. Here is a short passage from her book - As I walked and observed, each plant, be it tree, shrub, or herbaceous perennial, seemed perfect in its setting or in its sighting. I was in fact looking at Nature, or the thing called so, and I was also looking at a garden. The garden is an invention, the garden is an awareness, a self-consciousness, an artifice. Eden is never far from the gardener's mind. It is The Garden to which we all refer, whether we know it or not.

Another book I picked up is called No Mercy, A Journey to the Heart of the Congo by Redmond O'Hanlon. Africa is one of my long times places to travel and had seen parts of Egypt years ago, but am fascinated with the western area of this huge continent not to mention the miles of expanse into other countries that would be equally spellbinding to visit.

(And by the way, last summer, I read a work of fiction called Small Island by Andrea Levy. I would hope all books would carry a brilliant prose such as Levy completed making your reading time a worthy investment. It takes place in London and Jamaica; weaving in and out of these places, carrying colorful and beautiful characters that you will not forget. It makes you believe that good contemporary literature exists and it stands out from many books on the market.)

Other books on my list for this summer are The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, Nothing Daunted by Wickenton, Desperate Characters by Paula Fox and The Journals of Delacroix to name a few......not to mention my library meanderings that always bring continual surprises to my table.