Not back to school, part I: exploring the fantastic, the implausible, and the outrageous

Sweatshirt weather, soccer season, maples beginning to blush, and my daughter’s lone pumpkin turning orange in the garden. It’s September, and this year marks the 11th anniversary of our decision not to send our first child to kindergarten, but instead to begin our life learning adventures.

One reason we chose this educational alternative is that we wanted our kids to see learning as a seamless part of their existence, not a thing you do in a certain building, during scheduled hours, on particular calendar days. Even though we learn all the time, I do enjoy the feeling of starting fresh in the fall. Along with apple picking, soup making, and jumping up and down to stay warm on the sidelines, I associate autumn with newly sharpened pencils, clean notebooks ready to fill with ideas, and of course, new books.

We plan our kids’ educational endeavors together with them, and they both take advantage of having a book nut for a mother by asking for my help in selecting titles. My daughter and I stopped by both the library and a used bookstore to restock her reading shelves recently. She selected the Worst Witch series by Jill Murphy, about a girl’s misadventures at witches’ school; Half Magic by Edward Eager, and Bedknob and Broomstick by Mary Norton at the bookstore.

I loved these last two myself, and read Half Magic aloud to the children several years ago — so long ago that my daughter cannot remember. She also visited her brother’s bookshelves and chose Hatching Magic by Ann Downer. We call his room the monk cell because he keeps very little stuff, so those books he has saved must have been good.

While fantasy is her fiction genre of choice right now, my daughter also checked out several books about Alaska at the library, because one of her plans for fall is to learn about as many states as possible. She decided to start a “states notebook” in which she plans to jot down interesting people, animals, foods, etc. from each place she learns about. I am hoping she decides to cook the interesting foods for us. Her choice was entirely non-political, by the way. She picked Alaska as a starting point because of the unique wildlife found there.

I am also reading aloud All Creatures Great and Small, by James Herriot. I’ve always liked his books myself, and although the kids aren’t too sure they still want a read aloud, I thought I’d give it a try. They both laughed as I read the first two chapters, so I think we’ll keep it up for now. As we drive to my son’s away soccer games and her many living history and art classes, my daughter and I have been listening to books checked out on our library’s website via NH Downloadable Audio Books. We finished a book about women’s history last week and started a book about artists today. Both are from Kathleen Krull’s “Lives of” series.

As we discussed his fall plans, my son told me that he finds Renaissance history interesting, especially the story of scientific discoveries of the time. I went to the bookshelves and pulled down a book that was my grandmother’s, William Manchester’s A World Lit Only By Fire. He started that last week and pronounced it interesting. When he’s finished, he wants to read more about Galileo. He also started the fantasy series Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks, because he asked for a book like Lord of the Rings. This is mostly to tide him over until Brisingr comes out on in a couple of weeks.

Steve, who suggested the Brooks trilogy because he enjoyed them when he was in high school, has been reading war stories. Before our August vacation, he read Band of Brothers, a library book sale find. He decided he was unimpressed given all the hype. During our trip, he found another Ambrose book, Citizen Soldiers, in a used book store and says it is much better than Band of Brothers.

Like Band, Citizen is about WWII, but the focus is broader, with anecdotes from those serving in many units all over Europe. He also recently took Generation Kill out of the library, which is a book by journalist Evan Wright, who was embedded with one of the Marine Corps units that led the invasion of Iraq in 2003. As some of you know, Steve was a Marine Corps artillery officer in what our children refer to as “the old guy war with Iraq,” more widely known as the Persian Gulf War. He says Generation Kill is a very accurate portrayal of Marines.

If you want to know more about how our country was led into the current war in Iraq, as well as what exactly was going on in the government and the media after 9/11 and during the Katrina aftermath, Steve also recommends The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina by Frank Rich, which a co-worker lent him in audiobook form. We listened to the beginning of it together while driving back from my cousin’s wedding a few weeks ago, and it was depressing. He says it hasn’t gotten any more uplifting but is very well written and eye opening.

Meanwhile, I’ve been reading a lot of fiction, as well as The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction, by Stephen Koch. I’ve had this book for awhile, picking it up after my first try at National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo) a few Novembers ago, and revisited it after reading a review of a more recent book on the same topic. It’s an enjoyable, illuminating book about good writing and the writing life, and I am finding it helpful, even though I am not currently writing fiction.

In my last post, I mentioned starting to read World Made By Hand by James Howard Kuntsler, which I finished on vacation. This was my favorite summer read — a fun, thought provoking book, creative and fresh. It’s one of those novels that makes you stop and think about a particular scene or two long after you’ve finished. I’ve been dwelling on Kuntsler’s imagined future, and wondering how we’d fare in it, personally and collectively.

How would we provide for ourselves if the infrastructure we all rely on — for distribution of goods and services, utilities, even basic law and order — broke down? What if everyone had to be self reliant, and rebuild community systems for helping each other, without any of the modern communication tools or amenities we are used to? Listening to Frank Rich’s book so soon after finishing this novel certainly influenced how I viewed it. The idea of our society imploding after a natural disaster, epidemic, or terrorist attack isn’t as far fetched as it might sound. A colossal failure of leadership could be the catalyst, and we are experiencing climate change we don’t really know how to handle, and probably won’t respond to quickly.

Growing my own large garden this summer for the first time with decidedly mixed results gave me pause — my family would be pretty hungry and probably malnourished if we had to provide for ourselves. Fortunately, though, we have a lot of books (including one on homesteading, which we picked up when we once considered buying some land) for when the power grid fails and there is no television or computers to entertain anyone. I practiced being partially unplugged on vacation (no computers, anyway), and found lots of time to read.

We were in Maine, so I read some of the short stories of Sara Orne Jewett, which I enjoyed for their quiet atmosphere and rich portraits of people and society. Jewett deserves to be as widely read as other writers of her time; through her fiction, she comments on society, culture, and human nature as well as Henry James or Edith Wharton, and I find her writing strong, evocative, and beautiful.

I also read Monica Wood’s linked story collection, Ernie’s Ark, set in contemporary Maine in a town where the paper mill workers go on strike. I was completely drawn in and read the book in a couple of days. The characters were real and interesting, the emotions felt true, and Wood’s writing neither left things out nor over-worked her stories. Several of the stories were just plain lovely. The cohesion of the collection made it read like a novel.

I enjoyed it so much I came home and found another of Wood’s books at the library, Any Bitter Thing. This novel had a plot I found hard to accept, and yet I still enjoyed the book. I can see why it’s been popular with book clubs, because Wood opens the door to many interesting discussions about the Catholic church, the priest sexual abuse scandal, and the perceptions of truth in a small town, where gossip becomes reality for many people. Wood is a compelling writer and seems very comfortable addressing the uncomfortable ways we humans tread on each other’s emotions. Somehow she manages to leave readers feeling hopeful despite the honest portrayals of human nature.

Two other novels I read recently both had implausible plots — one that just never took off for me, and one that I enjoyed despite the wild ride. Plausibility isn’t necessary to my enjoyment of a book — after all, World Made By Hand seems utterly unreal at first, and is placed in a future time I had never imagined, and I loved it — but a lack of it can add to the disjointedness if it’s not a great read.

The Secret of Lost Things, by Sheridan Hay, I finished but didn’t really like. I gave it two stars on Goodreads, which means “it was ok.” I had a hard time deciding when the story was supposed to be taking place — maybe in the 80’s? The 90’s? It didn’t feel really contemporary, and some of the characters felt very out of place. Perhaps that was the point — the characters are a strange group — but I always felt I was missing something. The story revolves around a used bookshop in New York and a possible lost Melville manuscript, but I had a hard time caring about the main character, and I never felt the sense of urgency a good mystery creates.

Tod Wodicka’s All Shall Be Well; and All Shall Be Well; and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well: A Novel had a somewhat improbable plot but was essentially a book about a man who feels as if he doesn’t belong in the modern world, and I could empathize with him and his family and see how the wild events in the book might unfold. Take away the renaissance reenactment and you still have a story about family, about people trying to live with emotional discomfort, and about the breaking point in relationships.

Wodicka’s writing also struck me as absolutely perfect for the novel — his tone and style added cohesion to the story and characters. In fact, I guess fans of tell-all talk shows where dysfunctional families bare their secrets might not even find the plot too crazy. Plus, I learned some things and felt curious about others, and I always admire a book that urges me to look something up or read something else, because whether it’s not back to school time or any other time, I am as much a life learner as my kids. More on that in part II.

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