I'm in a book funk. I get like this after I read a few great books in a row and then dont know what to read next. I stand every night staring at our walls and walls and walls of books and few like I have "nothing" to read. (wait, i do that with my closet to!) We have plenty of books that I havent read but sometimes there just isnt that One that you are looking for. Thats when I head to my inbetween books. These are books that I read a few times a year and are my go-to books when I am in a book depression, until some great work of prose pulls me out. My old faithful in the past was Cs. Lewis' Great Divorce. It's such a wonderful little book that it keeps me occupied and entertained until I can find something I really want to read. Plus, I think it has so many layers (like all of his books) that each time you read it, you read it differently.
The past two winters another standby has been Girl Meets God, by Lauren Winter. I love to read that book during the Advent Season because of the literagy she throws in and the mixing between the Jewish holidays and the Christian Advent season. Plus. its a book I can read one chapter if I want and get something out of it.
One book that I find that I go to often, which is actually pretty depressing is, Kolyma Tales. It is a book of short stories so that is probably why I read it 3 or 4 times a year. But its also historical fiction, which is my all time favorite type of book. Here's what Wikipedia says about Kolyma Tales and the author:
"Varlam Shalamov was born in 1907 and was arrested for an unknown crime in 1929 while he was a student at Moscow University. He was sentenced to 3 years in a former monastery in Solovki which had been converted into a concentration camp. He was arrested again in 1937 and sentenced to 5 years in Kolyma, northwestern Siberia. His sentence was extended in 1942 until the end of the war and then in 1943 he had to serve another 10 years. In total, Shalamov spent around 17 years in the camps. He began to write Kolyma tales after he was released but it was not to be published in the Soviet Union until after his death in 1982. Instead he published five collections of poetry, although it didn't bring him much success.
The complete set of Kolyma Tales is based on two areas: personal experiences and fictional accounts of stories heard. He attempted to mix fact and fiction, which leads to the book being something of a historical novel. The style used is similar to Checkov's, in which a story is told objectively and leaves the readers to make their own interpretations. Often brutal and shocking, the matter-of-fact style makes them appear more hard-hitting than using a sensationalist style. The stories are based around the life of the prisoners (political or professional) in the camp and their relations with the officials. We find accounts of prisoners who have become totally dispassionate, insane under the barbaric conditions, unemotionally murderous and suicidal. Despite being written about imprisonment under the Stalinist regime, Shalamov didn't make a single mention of Stalin in the book."
I guess I find this book draw me again and again, is its still so hard to believe people went through what he went through in these camps in Russia. I mean, its like 50 below degrees and the men had to carry huge lumber across the fields and mine for coal. He was so close to death so many many times and he writes with such coldness and like Wikipedia says, "objectivity" it makes it hard to really comprehend.
Well, this post wasnt suppose to be this indepth regarding Kolyma Tales... What are your inbetween books? I need some new ones.
Posts
