Books For a Late Night Read

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin. - I read this book in my teens and it made me think, but not quite grasp it. I read it when I hit my 40's and it simply made me weep. The title is taken from the writings of Chuang Tzu — specifically a passage from Book XXIII, paragraph 7, quoted as an epigraph to Chapter 3 of the novel:

To let understanding stop at what cannot be understood is a high attainment. Those who cannot do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven.

The main character in the book is George Orr. George Orr's dreams come true. This might sound like a wonderful ability, but he has no conscious control over it. Nightmares, petty vengeance, or just surreality from his subconscious change the world while he sleeps. And worse, it's changed retroactively, for everyone, and he's the only person who knows that the world used to be different.

The technology in the book is dated (it was written in 1971), it's a bit slow at the start and the resolution lives more in the realm of philosophy than most SciFi novels. But it's a book that sketches whole worlds in a few sparse sharply drawn scenes, including a very intriguing, and concluding, reality.

The Shakespeare First Folio -Edited by Doug Moston. I developed a fondness for the works of Shakespeare in Junior High, and a teacher of mine knew that. This teacher knew about my Mom battling cancer, and how I was immersing myself in my studies, as a way of coping, with that, as well as the simple upheaval of becoming a young woman. One day she sent me a copy of the First Folio, which for all intents and purposes is the authority on what Shakespeare actually wrote. It was a perfect gift from a mentor: an acknowledgment of who I was, and who I was becoming. There's a great sense of tradition in the First Folio—the intimacy of it, the lettering (the f's that replace the s's), the knowledge that these texts were written for his actors. Being able to get that close to the text and its history was something that made me appreciate the emotions, the lives, behind the words. It also helped me through a tough time in my life.

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold By John Le Carré There are few things quite as beautiful as a well-constructed thriller. This, the coldest of Cold War novels, describes the journey of Alec Leamas, burned-out spy, on his final mission behind the Iron Curtain. It has the symmetrical, mathematical precision of a piece of Bach, and to this day, I get all tingly thinking of the line: "And suddenly, with the terrible clarity of a man too long deceived, Leamas understood the whole ghastly trick."


Ship of Ghosts: The Story of the USS Houston, FDR's Legendary Lost Cruiser, and the Epic Saga of Her Survivors by James D. Hornfischer. Long title - incredible book, a wonderful follow up to his first book The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, another favorite of mine.

I lost track of time as I started this book, and I looked up and two hours had passed, as if in seconds, time stopped and there was nothing more to do than to just sit and soak up the words. To register the staccato of snow and wind against the eaves, to hear the branches blowing against the house, providing percussion to the melody of the water. A syncopated song sent from above. An afternoon alone, the day filled with time, as if I could gather it up and save it in my purse; as if I could brush it aside, like a curtain, looking into another world, which is what I did. I stepped inside the pages and they transported me back to another time and another era. The rain become just a backdrop to the exploits of the U.S.S. Houston, the mainstay of a depleted Allied fleet opposing the onslaught of the Japanese in the early days of WWII, until finally she was sunk in a frenzied day of desperation against the enemy in the Java Sea in 1942.

The wind rapped against the house outside as within the pages, booming 8 inch guns, bombs and torpedoes were launched in a desperate dance with time and death as the crew realized their fate.

The rest of the book followed the Houston's survivors, numbering in hundreds. through the Prison Camps in Southeast Asia, specifically the labor camps on the Burma-Thailand Railway (which was depicted in one of my favorite, though well sanitized movies, Bridge on the River Kwai). Stripped of their weapons but not their determination, the prisoners, starved and brutally treated, cultivated a kind of heroism that is often only seen in war time, where survival pivoted around the ability to undergo sadistic hardship and humiliation without complaint, a mode of existing where the poaching of a single can of condensed milk to feed the dying was the ultimate act of reckless bravery. This was the story of that ship, her survivors and the atrocities they faced and what they built in the face of it, true testament to any mans' will to live and return to his home and the one who loved him.

A shadow on the wall signaled that the afternoon was almost over as I finished the last pages. The rain is letting up, yet somewhere there must be a leak in my roof, for I felt the moisture on my cheeks as I reluctantly set the book down.

The Veterans of WWII are dying at the rate of hundreds a day. My Dad, thank the Lord, is still doing well and playing golf at 90, even after a mild stroke. Yet they are fading from us, fast, as are their stories. As of Spring of 2007 there were only 7 survivors of the U.S.S. Houston able to attend a memorial. How important it is, these remembrances, these oft unremarkable memorials. Every soldiers death is a memory that ends with us, their lives are the stakes to peg our future histories on. Be grateful for them, for these men and women who serve today, for the smoke of their courage lingers after every last candle has gone out.

If you get a chance to read Ship of Ghosts, do. Some books are better than others, They know more of the human heart, as well as it's capability for heartlessness. They will haunt you with the water of tears of hundreds of souls who suffered and strove, determined to survive wars deepest brutalities to see their homeland again. Some books have voices that speak out, that say, someone was there before me, someone braver and deeper and stronger, through whose suffering, the next generation knew safety and order. Someone who lived and died so we could be free.

Someone