There's nothing better than a good book

9/5/00

Labor Day weekend traditionally is celebrated with trips to the lake, picnics in the park and suppers on the grill. But this year, here in Grand Forks, N.D., our chilly Labor Day weekend was more suited to chicken in the crock pot than burgers on the grill. The cool, rainy weather made it easy for me to set aside my resolution to wash the windows. Instead, I decided it was time to find a good book and do some serious reading.

So Friday night I went to the mall and bought "One For the Money," the first in a series by author Janet Evanovich, about a determined down-on-her-luck New Jersey woman who stumbles into a job as a bounty hunter. By Monday morning, I had finished the second and third books in the series as well, and had to hold myself back from going to the bookstore to find out what messes heroine Stephanie Plum would fall into next.

Life is full of simple pleasures, but for my money, there's none so exquisite as a good book. My brothers and sister and I were lucky to have a mother who read to us, nothing particularly high-brow, but rather a mix of Little Golden Books about fairy tales and cartoon characters and stories for the Egermeier's Bible Story Book. As a little girl, one of my favorite books was "Julie and the Nine Dogs." Our copy, the last time I saw it, was in tatters, and some where along the way, Mom apparently pitched it. For years, I've been checking thrift stores and flea markets, hoping in vain to stumble across another copy. Julie was a little blonde girl who had acquired nine dogs, and named them according to the first nine letters of the alphabet: Archie, Bowzer, Cookie, Dancer, Elmer, Fancy, Growler, Happy and Inky. Isn't it amazing that I can remember the names of the nine dogs, but I have no idea what I did with last month's bank statement?

My cousin, Cindy Beck, was also an avid reader, and she had a copy of a very old history book, beat up and minus its covers, that included tales of Greek mythology and the Trojan war. And that is how, at a very tender age, my brother, David, and I were exposed to tales of classic literature. We loved to sit at the top of the stairs at Cindy's house and listen to her read about Paris and Helen of Troy, and the warriors Agamemnon, Ajax, Hector and Achilles, and of Ulysses and his adventures with the Cyclops, the sirens and the lotus eaters.

Then, as we got older, our mother took us to Eureka Public Library. Through the years, I graduated from the Bobsey Twins to Nancy Drew to adventure stories of Daniel Boone and Davy Crocket to the novels of Victoria Holt. My favorite class in school was always English and/or literature. This despite Mrs. Kitzler forcing us to read "Crime and Punishment" in senior lit class. Heaven spare us from Russian authors.

Today, I struggle to make time for reading, and have wished for years that someone would invite me to join a book club. So, just for this week, let's consider this our on-line book club. I'll share some of my favorites, and if I'm lucky, perhaps you can recommend some of yours.

--The tales of Brother Cadfael, by Ellis Peters. This is a great series in the mystery/crime/detective genre, with 18 or 19 books about a crime-solving 12th century monk who came to the religious life after a career as a soldier in the Crusades. I'd start with "A Rare Benedictine," which includes the story of how Cadfael came to holy orders. The Cadfael books are set during England's Civil War between King Stephan and Queen Maud, and include many great characters, some of whom pop up in book after book. Cadfael's military background and his knowledge of healing and herbs, as well as his tolerance and humor, make him a worldly monk and a good detective. I liked the recurring characters from the abbey, including the stickler for rules Brother Jerome; Cadfael's friend, Sheriff Hugh Beringer; and a long-term mistress turned abbess, Avice of Thornberry. Some of my favorits in the series are "A Morbid Taste for Bones," "The Leper of St. Giles" and "The Virgin in the Ice." (If Brother Cadfael sounds familiar, you may have seen him in the public television "Mysteries" series, starring Derek Jacobi.)

--The Judge Deborah Knott mysteries, by Margaret Maron, including "Southern Discomfort," "Up Jumps the Devil," and, the latest, "Storm Track." Deborah Knott is a former defense attorney in North Carolina's Colleton County, now elected a district judge. She comes from a sprawling, brawling family that includes her old daddy, the retired moonshiner, and 12 brothers and half-brothers, plus cousins, family friends and old boyfriends too numerous to mention. Her own brief but spectacularly misspent youth makes her a judge who enjoys comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. In one courtroom scene, Judge Knott disposes of a case involving the mother of an ex-boyfriend who never considered Deborah good enough for her son. Judge Deborah's ruling, while fair and lawful, puts the woman in her place. Says the Judge: "In three sentences, I had patronized her, implied that she was slightly stupid, and then put her in my debt for all time. Top that, sugar!"

--The Outlander series, by Diana Gabaldon, including "Outlander," "Dragonfly in Amber," "Voyager" and "Drums of Autumn." This one is definitely a guilty pleasure. I've read my share of bodice-rippers, and although you'll find Gabaldon's books in the romance section, these are definitely not your standard tales of lust and heaving bosoms. (Although there's plenty of that, too.) The tale begins just after World War II, with former combat nurse Claire and her husband, Frank, a college professor and avid genealogist and historian, on a second honeymoon of sorts in Scotland. One day while searching for local plants and herbs, Claire innocently touches a boulder in one of the ancient stone circles that dot the British Isles, and falls through a portal in time, emerging in 1743. There her fate is soon linked with the Clan McKenzie and with one gallant young warrior in particular. These are Michener-sized books, unlike anything I've ever read before. The author has promised at least two sequels, and some of us wish she would hurry up and publish them already.

--The books of Carl Hiaasen, an award-winning investigative journalist for the Miami Herald, including "Tourist Season," "Skin Tight" and "Stormy Weather." One of his best books, "Strip Tease," was made into a really awful movie starring Demi Moore and Burt Reynolds, but don't let that put you off. These are some of the wildest, funniest books and some of the most warped, twisted characters you'll find anywhere. Some of Hiaasen's favorite characters are sleazy, polluting real estate developers, oily plastic surgeons, burnt-out ex-vice cops and deranged white-trash convicts, not to mention a governor who disappears to re-emerge as a backwoodsman named Skink. I'd recommend starting with "Native Tongue," especially if you've ever dreamed of swimming with dolphins.

--"A Green Journey," "Dear James" and other novels by Minnesota author Jon Hassler. Set in northern Minnesota and especially the small town of Staggerford, Hassler's books seem pastoral in the beginning but evolve into so much more. My favorite character, Miss Agatha McGee, from one of the town's best families and retired after many years of teaching in Catholic school, has never quite gotten over Vatican II. Still, her backbone of steel proves flexible enough to take in an outcast pregnant teen-ager and maintain a long friendship with a somewhat dim-witted neighbor. A correspondence with a priest and a subsequent trip to Ireland make a revealing, satisfying story with a very big and thoroughly unexpected surprise.

--The Sharpe's books, Bernard Cornwell's series about an up-from-the-ranks British officer named Richard Sharpe, who fought as hard from the respect from his peers as he fought fiercely against the armies of Napoleon. Beginning with "Sharpe's Eagle," there are at least 15 books, the latest of which, "Sharpe's Tiger" and "Sharpe's Triumph," take our hero back to his early days as a soldier in the English forces in India. The Sharpe's books are full of battles and romance, heartbreak and humor, fascinating characters and historical detail. Sharpe, the bastard son of a prostitute who joined the Army to avoid the hangman, marches across Spain, Portugal and France all the way to the Battle of Waterloo. Along the way he saves the life of Wellington, who makes him an officer. Sharpe may be a heckuva a soldier, but he has a real blind spot and weakness when it comes to women. These books, too, have made it to public television in a series starring Sean Bean.

Please excuse me now. The windows and all the other chores are going to have to wait. I'm off to the book store - the fourth and fifth novels in the Evanovich series are calling my name.

(Paulette Haupt Tobin graduated from Eureka High School in 1973 and now is a reporter for The Grand Forks Herald. You can email her at [email protected])