Bookshelf Review

 

I didn't a have a photo of my bookshelf, but this will do... 

I am staring at my bookshelf. It is teeming with books and maps and DVD’s and all sorts of other consumable entertainment. I sorted most of it when I installed the bookshelf, but I have mis-shelved items so many times that the organizing system is now defunct. Sam, a former MSU library employee, has given up on ever finding the book she is looking for.

I don’t mind though, because I very rarely approach the bookshelf with one book in mind. It is like the old days of going to Blockbuster video stores; there are so many options to choose from, you just randomly select a title off the shelf. And so today, I am doing just that. It is time for a new bathroom reader. I just finished “The Greatest Beer Run Ever,” a true story of an ex-Marine and sailor from New York City who brought cases of American beer to his friends and buddies on the front lines of the Vietnam war in 1966 to boost morale and give thanks. They are making a movie about it now because, well, it was quite an adventure. 

I deposit that book back on the shelf and hesitate over my battered copy of Illusions by Richard Bach. My dad gave me this copy in one of his trademark USPS flat rate postal box menageries that he sends out from Vermont once or twice a year. His contents are often legendary, both for their weight, packing style and sheer volume of items that he crams into such a tiny box. Brief tangent story; he once sent me sixty feet of heavy duty 200 amp wire coiled up inside a flat rate box; When I cut the box open, it exploded. To this day, I have no idea how he successfully got the wire in the box. 

Anyway, he sent me Illusions, which is about the return of the Messiah to Indiana in the 1940’s as a barnstormer biplane pilot and mechanic. I read it so many times, the cover disintegrated. Then I gave the book to my buddy, who took it to Africa with him, dropped it in a Zimbabwean river, rescued it and returned it to an ex-girlfriend who fashioned a new book cover, decorated with eggs for some reason, before it found its way back to my collection. This book is a true world traveler and a thought provoking read.

I am scanning for the book Shantaram, a semi-true tale of gangsters in Mumbai, India. The author, an Australian serving a life sentence for armed robbery, broke out of jail and fled to Bombay, where he became integral in the criminal underworld. Eventually, after getting caught in the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, he was recaptured and sentenced to prison again, where he wrote down his life story. His manuscript became Shantaram, which isn’t exactly true to his actual life, but even if it is just a fraction, his life was bonkers. The vividness of life in the slums of the monsoon hounded, cholera ridden, fantastically colorful city absolutely grabbed me the first time I read it. The sequel, Mountain Shadow is okay, but the original Shantaram is epic. 

I now realize that I sent my copy of Shantaram to a buddy in Washington recovering from a shattered vertebrae. But, in return, he sent me Sun is a Compass, which is a true account of a husband and wife who traveled from Seattle to Kotzebue, Alaska entirely under their own propulsion. They built rowboats and rowed up the Inside Passage to Skagway, Alaska. Then hiked over the Wrangell St Elias Mountains, got into packrafts and floated to the Arctic Ocean, then walked across the tundra to Prudhoe Bay, climbed up and over the most remote mountain range on Earth, the Brooks Range, and floated down the Yukon River to the Bering Sea. While I have no interest in doing a journey like that, the mental and physical fortitude of the task make the book worth reading.

I scan past my Clive Cussler collection, and all of Sam’s Bridgerton books before alighting on Bill Bryson. I have nearly all of his books and every page is earmarked and worn. I have carried his books across Australia and Spain, to Alaska and Mexico. Each time I read them, I glean a little bit more out of Neither Here nor There or The Lost Continent. Ironically, the book he is most well known for, Walk In the Woods is actually my least favorite, as a self-described Bill Bryson scholar. It has been a minute since I tackled another meaty chapter of A Short History of Nearly Everything. That would get me at least two months beside the toilet. I guess that is the one for today.