Hunkering in your home with a great book is a prescription for relief of cabin fever. Take this opportunity while we are social distancing to reacquaint yourself with the joy of reading. Books can transport us to places far from the Coronavirus and temporarily distract our minds from worry.
Selecting the right book is a personal exercise which depends on your reading genre and current mood. Sometimes we just need a dose of light reading that distracts us. At other times, we immerse ourselves in weighty tomes about cultures or history. Whatever you desire, there is a book for you.
In my spare time...let's face it, we have nothing but spare time...I have compiled a list of my Top Eight Books. I know you are thinking, "Why not Top Ten Books" like most lists. Exactly. Eight was my baseball uniform number in high school. Get over it. It's just a numeral.
Without droning on further, here are my top eight
1. For Those I Loved, by Martin Gray. Published in 1972, this is a true inspiring story of a teenaged boy and his family held captive in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1939. He becomes a clever smugger to help his family survive, against impossible odds. Once Nazis incinerate the ghetto, the Jewish youngster lands in the concentration camp at Treblinka. Despite the subject matter, an uplifting testimony to the human spirit. His first-hand account of Nazi evil will leave a lasting imprint on your soul.
2. The Firm, John Grisham. This is the only book I have read twice. The pacing, the suspense and the thrilling conclusion with keep you reading into the wee hours of the night. The story is about a young attorney, fresh out of law school, who joins a Memphis law firm. The partners lavish the new associate with a BMW, a home and furniture. Everything appears perfect until our protagonist discovers his firm is engaged in corrupt dealings with the mob. In my opinion, this is the best page turner ever written.
3. Lafayette by Harlow Giles Unger. If you love American history, this book will acquaint you with a Frenchmen who was so inspired by the colonies fight for freedom from the British that he sailed to join General Washington's army. This was no ordinary man. Gilbert de Mortier, the marquis de Lafayette, was a newly wed, wealthy landowner who left that behind because he was passionate about the cause of liberty. His sacrifice and leadership qualities proved instrumental to the Revolutionary Army's victory. He returned to his native country after the war only to be caught up in the French Revolution. He was imprisoned with his wife but survived to live out his years in France. He returned to America in later life and was feted with parades in big and small cities.
4. The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum. Give me a good spy novel or a tale of assassins and I am hooked. Master story-teller Robert Ludlum creates the ultimate fictional assassin and endows him with cunning, steely resolve, a photographic memory and survival skills that are unmatched in this genre. The story opens with the main character awakening with amnesia. He doesn't remember his past but people keep trying to kill him. Slowly, he regains his memory and then searches for the black ops hierarchy that make him a killing machine. Better than the movie with Matt Damon.
5. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer. The most authoritative and well researched book on Adolph Hitler's ascent to power and the eventual destruction of the Nazi war machine. Shirer documents how the German people abandoned democracy and embraced a dictator. He exposes the cardinal error of Germans who opposed Hitler but failed to unite against his reign of terror. Powerful narrative, packed with chilling detail of Germany's conquest of Europe. Instructive for future generations on what happens when people ignore anti-Semitism and embrace fascism.
6. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. For decades, I fantasied about scaling Mount Everest. That all changed after I read journalist and mountaineer Krakauer's spell binding personal account of a tragedy on the famed mountain. A murderous storm bore down on the mountain during Krakauer's climb, leaving five people dead. Your shoulders will shiver with a cold numbness as he describes the brutal bitter weather and blinding show. You will begin to feel you are on the mountain with the author. My love of adventure stories was fulfilled by this book, but tempered by the outcome.
7. The Charm School by Nelson DeMille. A spine-tingling tale about a covert Russian scheme to infiltrate the U.S. In the Russian woods of Borodino, a secret, sinister school is at the center of a plot to train young KGB agents to become model U.S. citizens. Captured American POW's are forced to act as tutors. The operation, run my Mrs. Ivanova, is known as The Charm School. An unsuspecting American tourist stumbles upon the camouflaged school, setting in motion a CIA probe that reveals the treachery of Moscow. Although he Cold War is over, the book remains a compelling saga.
8. The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn. Although I am a sports fanatic, I seldom read books on this topic because too many are frankly boring treatises. Kahn's book is about young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930's and 1940's then went on to stardom in the Major Leagues. Kahn, a sportswriter, captures the warmth, humor, courage and triumph of his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers. He traces the career of Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball's color barrier, along with Carl Erskine, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider and others who played during the glory years of the Dodgers. You don't have to be a Dodger fan to enjoy this read. For those of a certain age, it will remind you of a time when baseball was still America's national pastime.
Some of you may be thinking, "What no Shakespeare, Hemingway, Plato or Virginia Woolf?" Sorry, I prefer history, adventure, spy novels, thrillers with a few murder mysteries to spice up my reading.
Books I was forced to read in high school and college have gratefully faded from memory.
There are no recent best sellers on the list either. Sadly, I find most new books pedantic and formula driven. Too many authors feature a recurring character that appears in every new edition. The repetitiveness grows old after two or three books. Creativity has been sacrificed for profit.
Looking back on my list, I will always savor the time I have spent with great books. I hope you experience that same feeling when you read.
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