Five Dollars - Four Treasures - One Public Library
"Well - you know how to read; now you need to learn to love to read".
I can still remember my Mother saying that to me as a boy. And while this might not have proved the most important lesson my parents taught me, it has perhaps been the most cherished.
http://wi-brookfield.civicplus.com/DocumentView.aspx?DID=645
Last Friday our daughter and some Key Club members helped the Friends of The Brookfield Public Library prepare for its anual book sale fund raiser. Information about the sale and its remaining dates can be found at the above link. It's a great chance to pick up some bargains and help a worthy cause at the same time. Saturday morning I took our son there and was pleased to see it well attended. For five dollars I walked out with the following four treasures: Citizen Soldiers and Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose, Goodbye, Darkness by William Manchester, and My Losing Season by Pat Conroy.
The first three reflect my love of history in general, and in this case, military history. Ambrose is superb and relates history in bight-sized, resonant pieces. These two books tell the story of American GI's in World War Two's European Theater, which while led by titans such as Eisenhower and Patton, was fought and won by American GI's and British Tommies. The American GI's were the grocer and hardware store clerk; the engineer and school teacher. They were quite literally, "the man next door". They fought, marched, ate, lived, and died in the snows of Belgium in that awful winter of 1945.
Manchester is the greatest biographer/historian I have ever read. His works are more scholarly than Ambrose's and his writing talents superior. Manchester's insights were so penetrating, and the canvas of history he presented was so completely and richly painted that for me, he simply has no equal. The Last Lion, his three volume biography of WInston Churchill** is so sweeping, and illuminating as to render any other author's work on that subject superfluous. But Darkness was auto-biographical; a personal memoir of Manchester's experience in the Marine Corps and in the hell of Pacific Theater combat. It is a searing tale; starkly and brutally honest, leaving no emotion or experience unexplored. Manchester brings war right into your lap in this memoir, and conveys in unmistakable terms the strongest of all bonds that exist between human beings; the bond between men and women who serve together in combat, and live their daily lives in harms way.
Lastly, My Losing Season by Pat Conroy is one of the most poignantly beautiful works I have ever encountered. Those familiar with Conroy know that he does with words what Raphael did with a brush, bringing the landscape of human experience into prisms of lushly colored range and emotion.
But Season is not fiction - it is entirely auto-biographical, and tells the true story of Conroy's senior year season as point guard of the Citadel Bulldog's basketball team. I loved the book because, having played so much basketball in my youth, I related instantly to his love of the game, and his feel for its texture and beauty. No one has ever described the sounds, emotions, and nobililty of sport better than Conroy did in this book, and I cannot imagine anyone ever will. But more than basketball, it was the tale of a young and troubled man growing into adulthood; using his love of the game and his teammates to find his way in the world. There are episodes in Season that will pierce your heart with the triple-edged dagger of descriptive beauty, personal memory, and the angst for things no longer. Like all great artists, Conroy demands much of his audience. His readers encounter a spectrum of nuanced and even violent episodes, but the one state they never enter is that of comfort. One reads his books as a marathoner runs their races - infrequently. Time is needed to recover, and to put the great bleeding chunks of emotional meat served up by the author into the perspective of lessons learned.
I did learn to love to read. And attendant to that love has been a life-long love of books. The advent of technology and Kindles are changing yet another industry, and while I appreciate the convenience and portable power of a Kindle, I lament its coldness. They will never replace the presence and reassurance of bound and printed books in my home, what Churshill referred to as his "old friends".
Do youself and our library a favor and stop by the sale on one of the remaining dates. In addition to the hundreds of books, there are CD's and DVD's for sale as well.
Enrich your life - enlarge your horizons. And help a Brookfield institution at the same time.
**William Manchester suffered a stroke, then died before completing the final volume. His friend Paul Reid, personally chosen by Manchester and using the thousands of pages of his research notes, is completeing the final volume titled, Defender of The Realm. Look for its publication in 2011.
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