So Little to Share
Image by Jon Tyson @jontyson
So little to share, so much time . . .
Strike that, reverse it.
(Fans of the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, with Gene Wilder, will recognize a version of that quote. If you don’t recognize it, well, hie thee to a streaming service and watch the movie. Better yet, read the book.)
Image by Zach Ramelan @zachramelon
My wish for you today:
May your time be your own.
At least until
after that first cup of coffee or tea.
For this newsletter, I want to keep my promise to focus on book reviews and recommendations.
Because there’s nothing quite as wonderful as curling up with a good book
(as demonstrated
by our in-house model, here)!
I just finished Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr (Scribner 2021).
I’m glad I got a heads-up from our bookstore – shout out to Lopez Bookshop! – that it’s a little confusing at first, and I’m oh so glad I persevered, because:
I. LOVE. THIS. BOOK.
Seemingly disparate stories are connected by a mostly illegible ancient manuscript about a man who seeks a city in the clouds and becomes, along the way, a donkey, a fish, and a crow. The characters who interact with the story in the manuscript include a girl living in the future after ecological apocalypse; a boy in the fifteenth century who suffers from prejudices related to his poverty and his cleft lip, and a resourceful girl living in the same era but on the opposite side of a war into which the boy has been conscripted; a disaffected teen who mourns the loss of wildlife to accommodate tourists in a tiny town in modern-day Idaho; and a man who, orphaned at a young age and misunderstood by everyone except the local librarians, is in love with a man he may never see again.
The marvel of this book is that each of the wildly different characters and their wildly different settings is completely credible. Some writers excel at creating sci-fi or fantasy landscapes, some craft beautiful historical fiction, or romance, or coming-of-age stories for young adults. Doerr does it all, in a single book, and made me love and care about every one of the characters.
While I was reading it, I made excuses to go to bed early so I could get back to the book, and when it was over, I heaved a bittersweet sigh because the ending was oh so satisfying but still, sadly, an end.
Favorite Quotes from Cloud Cuckoo Land
“Repository. You know this word? A resting place. A text—a book—is a resting place for the memories of people who have lived before. A way for the memory to stay fixed after the soul has traveled on.”
***
Seymore feels like he used to . . . as though he’s being allowed to glimpse an older and undiluted world, when every barn swallow, every sunset, every storm, pulsed with meaning.
By age seventeen he’d convinced himself that every human was a parasite, captive to the dictates of consumption. But . . . [then] he realizes that the truth is infinitely more complicated, that we are all beautiful even as we are all part of the problem, and that to be a part of the problem is to be human.
(Believe it or not, the photo was taken by my phone, from Watmough Bay.)
In other news . . .
For friends in the Pacific Northwest, the book launch party is coming up! Friday, May 17, 2024, 5:30 – 8:00 pm, at the Lopez Island Library. Bring an egg-dish to the potluck and join the fun!
If you can’t make it to the book launch, join me at the Griffin Bay Bookstore in Friday Harbor on Sunday, May 26, at 2:00. We’re thinking of making a party out of that, too! We’ll either sail over together, or caravan on the ferry, and spend the day in Friday Harbor having brunch, shopping, maybe even take in an evening movie. Email me if you’re interested in taking the trip with us sharilaneauthor@gmail.com.
And on Thursday, July 25, 2024, at 6:30 pm I’ll be at Roundabout Books in Bend, Oregon. Roundabout Books has a unique policy (which I applaud): entry is a $5 ticket or purchase of a book. It doesn’t have to be my book, by the way! The goal is to support independent bookstores, and I can definitely get behind that.
More information about these and other events can be found on the home page of the website www.sharilane.com
Last but not least, another novel I wrote, Jaysus, MooMoo, and the Immortal Woos, was longlisted in the international Stockholm Writers Festival First Five Pages contest. I am truly walking on sunshine…
Sunshine and wildflowers at Iceberg Point
