Getting Lost in the Worlds They Create

Kate Flora: When I was a kid growing up in a small Maine town, the high point of the week was the trip to the Vose Library. I would take out a great stack of books, read them throughout the week, and return the next week for another stack. Sometimes, of course, I would reread the same book many times. When I was around 12, I got to be the librarian’s assistant, checking out books, filing the cards, and shelving books. One of the greatest perks of the job was that I got to be second in line, after librarian, for the great gothic suspense novels by Mary Stewart, Phyllis Whitney, and Victoria Holt.

Back then, although I dreamed of being a writer someday, I didn’t seriously think I could be. I thought that someone would have to be especially gifted with a magic touch to be able to transport a reader from this world into the one they created. I’m still a fan girl today. Still love those books that hold me so totally in their sway that I don’t want to leave the fictional world to return to this one.

[image error]It doesn’t happen that often anymore. I enjoy the books I’m reading, or I put them down and find something else. But while I was running around doing holiday errands, I started listening to Kristen Hannah’s The Women. And it happened. I wanted to stay in the car and listen. I needed to know that Frankie would be okay. It also took me back to those war years. My sophomore year in college, my dorm room was a microcosm of what was happening nationally. I went to Ft. Dix on weekends to see my guy while my roommate would fly to Toronto to see hers.

I had initially hesitated to read the book because it was so popular. When a book is popular, there are so many opinions out there about it that it is hard to come to the reading experience fresh and have a satisfying experience of discovery. Luckily, I hadn’t read a lot of reviews, and so I was able to discover the story without outside influences.

The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is traditionally a time when I set work [image error]aside, do less cooking (except for NYE) and indulge in spending as much time as I want to reading. I’m lucky that we’re a bookish family and so I always have a stack of new books to tackle. Mostly I read fiction that week, but my husband bought me a book called The World-Ending Fire The Essential Wendell Berry, so I have been digging into his essays. The experience of reading his thoughts about the land and its timelessness have reminded me of how magical it was to grow up on so many country acres. We had trails through the woods. Imaginary houses or castles along the moss-covered ledges. Two hills to sled down to the pond. Skating in the winter and swimming in the summer.

Reading the book also puts me in touch with my mother, who was a great Wendell Berry fan. She was also a country-living writer who cared passionately about the land and the soil, about observing the seasons, about watching wildlife and the sunsets over the pond. Once, when she wanted to see a turkey vulture close up, she tied a rope around a roadkill woodchuck and dragged into the field outside the kitchen window so she could watch them.

Indulging in reading both the fiction and the nonfiction also reminds me of how, sometimes, when I’m writing a book, I am so deeply into the plot that it is just like when I’m reading. I will find that I can’t wait to get back to the story to see what happens next, even though I’m the one who is writing it.

What kind of a reader are you? Do you get lost in books? Sometimes resent the fact that you have to leave the world you are enjoying so much to come back to mundane chores like doing laundry or making dinner? Or are you someone who feels guilty taking time away from work to read?

Happy New Year. And here is another gift I got for Christmas, one that made me laugh out loud.