It behooves a writer to read, and lately I’m supplementing with audiobooks while I walk and do chores. (Music is for driving and cooking.) I’m also in the midst of a bunch of books, but I’m gonna do you the favor if not writing about them until I’m finished.
Here’s what I have finished lately and also recommend to you and all of these are world-rocking bangers so you better listen up!
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
Cloud Cuckoo Land follows five central characters. Two are set near Constantinople in the 15th century; two are in a library in present-day Idaho; and one is in a generation starship heading for a planet called Beta Oph2 sometime in the 22nd century. All of them face mortal danger.
Their plotlines spin around an ancient text, a Greek comedy by Antonius Diogenes, which tells the beyond-ancient tale of Aethon, a shepherd, in search of Cloud Cuckoo Land, a wondrous paradise packed with every sort of bird and fruit imaginable.
Anthony Doerr is mostly known for All The Light We Cannot See, another intricately entwined tour-de-force. Where that story clicked like clockwork, Cloud Cuckoo is more airy and loose. After both novels, I’m astounded at Doerr’s ability to build out complicated yet compelling storylines, then write them perfectly. Truly, the Boise-dweller is one of the peak novelists of our time.
As someone who also finds my central meaning in an ancient text, I also heard the arc as an allegory for faith, that our lives through time are interwoven through stories
Two other interpersonal notes on CCL:
I shared some of the plotlines with Lana as I read, so I was thrilled when she asked to bring the book to school a few weeks ago (I think partly to prove a point to her Language Arts teacher) and finished long after.
This book was recommended to me by Rick McKinley, who’s been giving me formative book recommendations for 30 years. (Standouts off the top of my head: Jeff Shaara’s Killer Angels and Douglas Coupland’s Life After God.)
A Burning in my Bones: An Authorized Biography of Eugene Peterson by Winn Collier
Speaking of pastors, A Burning in My Bones is an in-depth and inspiring biography of a spiritual giant, carved out of firsthand candor and tales from the man himself. Winn Collier’s tenderness toward Peterson is evident, yet the story doesn’t veer from the failure, pain, and sadness in Eugene’s life. I was moved, over and over, to hear of Eugene’s devotion to Jesus and yearning to be a saint, even as he constantly fell short, and even as he left behind a mighty body of influence and work.
In regards to that work, I was especially satisfied to learn why The Message resonates so deeply me: Peterson was born in western Washington and lived much of his life in Kalispell, Montana. His language, and the tone of The Message, is The Gospel in Western American vernacular. I’ve always felt the natural world stands out in Peterson’s translations, and I can see now he was shaped by the wildness of the land.
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow
I heard about this book from The Atlantic’s intriguing summary and began listening on my trip to Anza-Borrega State Park. There I was, just devouring sour Haribo worms, Salton Sea out by starboard window, having my mind exploded by prehistory. Davids Wengrow and Graeber deserve great credit for discussing such vast ideas with aplomb and skill.
Their essential thesis is that we view the hundreds of thousands of years of human history before civilization through two Enlightenment-rooted lenses, each of which assume humans only functioned in small tribal bands:
The left-leaning Rousseauian lens, akin to the idea of the “noble savage,” that our ancestors were functionally innocent hunter-gatherers, later tainted by agriculture and the rise of agriculture, which gave rise to coercive leadership;
And the right-leaning Hobbesian lens, that or forebears lives were “nasty, brutish and short,” and that we are destined to be lorded over by the most dominant leaders.
Both views are wrong, claim Graeber and Wengrow, and the truth is infinitely more interesting and complex.
To illuminate their points, the two archaeologists describe recent discoveries at sites from the Mississippi Delta to the Nile to Pacific Northwest to Tenochtitlan to digs around the Black Sea which have city-sized settlements with no evident central leadership. They pore over documents from the early days of European conquest in the Americas, read of the astonishingly distinct ways Americans lived from their European counterparts. According to Ben Franklin and every other account from the time, anyone exposed to the native American way of life would invariably end up returning to that culture over that of constant supplication in Europe.
This is a vast and fascinating book, and I can’t possibly cover everything discussed in such a small space. However, like 1491, another book about what archaeology has uncovered about the Americas before Columbus, there are astonishing implications for how we currently and could live.
World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
World of Wonders was apparently one of the most revered books of 2020 though it was only just now recommended to our writing group by my friend Alli of Shelter Writers (who also has a brand new Kickstarter campaign you should support if you appreciate heartfelt music and words).
After listening the last two weeks, I can absolutely see why WoW took the world by storm. Nezhukumatathil cheerily explores the glories of the natural world—axolotls, cactus wren, fireflies, and narwhals—while effortlessly weaving in her own recollections of a wildly-traveled life. Her sense of flora, fauna, and place is highly attuned, and the prose is both light with charm and dense with information and meaning.
I listened to the author narrate the audiobook, though the illustrations are astounding so I’ll also be buying a copy for Lana because I guess she’s into grown-up books now. Sunrise, sunset. 😭
I’ve been thinking about cloud cuckoo land. Definitely going to check it out now!
Thanks for the encouraging suggestions! That's an impressive bookshelf.