Reading for Solace in an Age of Angst

All over the online book world writers and reviewers are baring their souls as they try to make sense of our stress-filled days, our anxiety if we choose to admit it, and our fears for ourselves and our world. Concentration, for many, has flown out the window and our tastes change daily. Some of us are separated from our loved ones indefinitely. Heart palpitations and butterflies in the stomach are with us day and night. Who or what can we turn to for solace?

My friend Don and I searched for a book that we could read together as we each shelter in place a thousand miles apart. I had heard of an online group that was reading twelve pages a day of War and Peace. I ordered my copy but as we chatted more about it we decided that something more beautiful might be in order, something more poetic. Many years ago he had gifted me the five volume Chinese classic The Story of the Stone, a daunting history of the Jia family's rise and fall in fortune, spanning decades and featuring a young man's journey from favored child, to bohemian, to indigent, to Taoist monkhood. 

The lush descriptions of the clothing, the gorgeous, spare architecture, the

simplicity of the natural surroundings, and the exquisite poetry that graces every page, have a deeply soothing effect on the psyche. In fact I am unable to stop at twelve pages and find myself way ahead of Don in the story. But no matter, he's read it twice before!

Mulling over the pleasures I'm deriving from this book I thought back to other titles I've read and shared with Don. One that comes to mind for its lyricism and beauty is The Garden of Evening Mists by the Malaysian writer Tan Twan Eng. I raved about it here about half way down the page: https://bit.ly/3ailfFn

Solitude is a strange animal. Many of us thrive on it, find it renewing and refreshing. I was one of those people. But there's a different tenor to forced solitude, one that requires strength and fortitude to endure. Might this be a time I wondered to return to characters both real and imagined who faced enforced

confinement with courage and imagination. Perhaps it's time to re-read Ann Frank's Diary of a Young Girl. Searing in its honesty, I read Ann's diary every ten or fifteen years or whenever I feel that I need to be humbled. 

Another book I could read over and over again is Amor Towles' A Gentleman in Moscow, the genre-defying story of Count Rostov, a member of the leisure class, now an enemy of the state, who is confined to live the remainder of his life in the famed Metropol Hotel. Here's what I had to say after the first reading: https://bit.ly/3cy6dN8 There can be no better example of a man who created a full and fulfilling life out of his isolation.

Another writer I turn to when the world doesn't make sense is Barbara Kingsolver. Her background in biology is often on display in her novels, try the glorious story of the monarch butterflies in Flight Behavior, but never has it been more integral to the tale than in the wondrous Prodigal Summer. Set in Appalachia, an area she knows very well, this story of a park ranger savoring her solitude in a one room cabin in the mountains spans three seasons just bursting with life. Read my review here: https://bit.ly/2Khobrl

Last week Don sent me a link to Maureen Corrigan's NPR essay on books to read for solace.https://www.npr.org/2020/04/13/831684823/need-a-mental-escape-these-books-offer-solace-in-troubled-times I love Corrigan. She even attended one of our first library reading festivals. She's so no-nonsense in her views. I'm anxiously waiting for my copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn to arrive from Maryland where it was on my "to read" list for this summer. I don't want to wait for travel restrictions to be lifted. I need it now!

In fact, it was Corrigan's essay and a little push from Don that made me decide to sit down and think about the books I might recommend during these scary days. At first I was in a rather dark place and didn't think that I had anything worth saying. But this morning I sat down to look over the lists of books I've read and enjoyed over the past fifteen to twenty years and the options were astounding. Now I have too much to say! Tomorrow I'll look at some uplifting memoirs and a few more novels that I promise will take you out of yourself. And please, please, please, do share with me and whoever else is listening the titles that you can't live without.