May each and every one of you enjoy the beauty of a light
filled Christmas and extend the love of the season to all.
Melinda
"Christmas is't a season. It's a feeling." Edna Ferber May each and every one of you enjoy the beauty of a light filled Christmas and extend the love of the season to all. Melinda
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It was a pleasure to discuss the Pulitzer Prize winning book, All the Light We Cannot See last Thursday. A good book is one to savor, it is one that transports us outside of ourselves. What other books are we spending time with? What other books engaged us and may bring enjoyment to other readers? At the end of our last book discussion, I asked "what are you reading?" What follows is a list of books that may have entertained, or informed or proved thought provoking. Some titles were given to me afterwards. Some titles I contributed here from my reading endeavors, as I initially drew a blank when posing the question! If that happened to you too, and you have a book title to share, please add a posting here. And now for the list!
I am always interested in what influences an author. Life experiences, books read or research performed that is translated into characters and narrative. Our current author has a wife with a disabled sister; but, he sees her disability as a gift in many ways. Doerr has high regard for her intellectual curiosity, and uses this as a motif throughout the book. Marie wants to learn and learn and learn. When asked in a Goodreads interview what kind of research author Anthony Doerr did regarding blindness, he replied "I read lots and lots of memoirs - anything about someone going blind or had been blind.....my son did blindfold me and walk me around downtown Boise....but primarily just reading: And There Was Light by a guy named Jacques Lusseyran...." Let's take a look at this book that influenced our author. And There Was Light was written in 1963, translated from the French. Author Jacques Lusseyran was born in Paris in 1924, when the German occupied Paris he was 15, and at age 16 he formed and headed an underground resistance movement, beginning with 52 boys and growing to 600 strong. His achievements are remarkable, especially so as he became totally blind at age 8. And There Was Light - he describes his world of blindness, and it isn't what you would expect. He experienced a world of light within, "I was aware of a radiance emanating from a place I know nothing about, a place which might as well have been outside me as within." He found LIght and Joy, seeing light even though he was blind. He describes living in "a stream of light" every waking hour and that "colors, all the colors of the rainbow, also survived." Even with his eyes closed at night, he experienced this light, which was real and necessary to his existence; but, he found this light would fade and disappear whenever he was afraid, angry, hostile or confused. Jacques Lusseyran spent 2 years at Buchenwald. He was one of 30 survivors of 2,000 men sent there at the
same time. After his release, he helped found the newspaper France Soir, the most important daily in Paris. Later, he became a college professor at the University of Hawaii. In the closing words of his book, he talks about two truths: "The first of these is that joy does not come from outside for whatever happens to us it is within. The second is that light does not come to us from without. Light is in us, even if we have no eyes." This book is available through an inter-library loan with Mel (Michigan eLibrary). Remember inter-library loans are suspended until December 11th. Call the library or visit http://elibrary.mel.org/ to make a request from home. You can read an excerpt of this book on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/There-Was-Light-Jacques-Lusseyran/dp/0930407032/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1448909178&sr=1-3&keywords=And+there+was+light |
AuthorMy name is Melinda Grix -Adult Services Librarian at the Clarkston Independence District Library - facilitating our Morning Book Discussions since 2007. You will find me in the library on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Archives
November 2018
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