The Right Book At the Right Time

Do you find it or does it find you?

Jan 30, 2021

“The right book at the right time, may mean more in a person's life than anything else.” - Lee Shippey

In this issue

Call me crazy but I think that book is talking to me
What we’re reading: books from the Spark community
What you never knew about Louie Louie

Lately I have not been picking books to read as much as they have picked me. It’s as if these books know more about what I need than I do. Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach, for example, has been sitting in my Kindle since June 2020. I’d bought it cheap, one of those online deals that last only a few days because I’d had the book on my “to be read” list since its launch in 2017. After clicking the “buy” button, I let the novel lie there; I knew little about it except that it was a historical novel and that Egan is a writer I can learn from whether I liked it or not. I would read it eventually but the time was not right.

Women of the Brooklyn Navy Yard on break (for a publicity photo) in 1942, the setting for Jennifer Egan’s **Manhattan Beach**

Then, last week, as I closed the last page of Master and Commander, I found myself browsing the list of books on my Kindle. My gaze fell on the title Manhattan Beach, and a kind of current passed from the screen to my brain, the same current I have felt when I run my finger over the spines of books on my bookshelves or when I stroll slowly through the aisles of a library or bookstore. I clicked, read the first page, then the next, and soon found myself in 1942 Brooklyn, not far from the U.S. Merchant Marine Training Station where my father trained before he became a Merchant Marine in 1944 (he later served in the U.S. Marine Corps.) I tumbled into the story head first and didn’t come out to write, to watch television, or any of the tasks I’d set myself to do from Sunday to Tuesday of this week. I had to finish it.

When I read the last words, I was both happy and a little sad. I realized that as I’d read, I’d been looking through a window into a time and place and a war that my dad must have known when he was on the brink of the rest of his life. He was 17 when he “went to sea,” as he often put it and at 18 was Chief Radio Officer aboard the Winthrop Victory, one of only two merchant ships present at the signing of the surrender in Tokyo in 1945. Although the book is set a few years earlier than this, I could almost hear his voice as I absorbed the sounds and bustle of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and followed a character aboard a Liberty ship, the merchant vessels cranked out to help supply the military which were followed by the Victory ships my father knew.

The Winthrop Victory, circa 1945 when my dad was chief radio officer

The story is riveting for lots of reasons and I’ll share them in a bit but what I will remember most about my first read of this book is the way the story led me gently from Master and Commander, a novel my father gave to me about a time and place he loved to imagine, to one that helped me fill in the spaces left by his accounts of an experience he lived. It was like coming upon him unexpectedly. The heaviness in my chest lifted a bit as I read. Several days later, I still feel lighter.

The Art of Eating, Master and Commander, and now, Manhattan Beach-- all three of these are books I’ve had for years even though I’ve only read one of them before. Yet these were the ones that called to me these last several weeks when I didn’t know what I was looking for, only that I needed to have a book in hand to feel grounded. Some other force or instinct pushed these books towards me.

I’d chalk it up to the circumstances of this year and my fragile frame of mind but the fact is, I’ve always felt there was something mystical about picking a book to read. Acquiring books is one thing but finding the right book at the right moment is another. I owned Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto for five years, tried to read it three times only to put it down. Then came the fourth time on a rainy weekend in New Jersey when I was staring at my shelves and felt that current coming from the blue paperback version I owned. I fell in love with that novel. I don’t remember much about the conditions of my life at that time, only that I was ready for it now and somehow the book -- or some mysterious force -- knew.

At this point you might be reassessing your impression of me: she seemed reasonable at first but now …

I’m not talking about every book I’ve read. Many times I pick the book or the book is picked for me. We’ve all had books we’ve had to read -- for work maybe, or for school, or because we want something specific from it. Some of us pick up a book because a friend liked it or because the first page looked good or it is by an author we love. There are all kinds of reasons, good ones and they often lead to a thoroughly satisfying experience. But there is something magical when we find the right book at the right time -- or it finds us.

Think about the book you just read or the one you remember most from another time altogether. Did you pick the book or did the book pick you?

Manhattan Beach

“Lying in the vast dormitory, hearing his breath melt into the collective sigh of so many boys asleep, Eddie was shamed by his own meagerness: narrow hips; a sharp, unremarkable face; hair like dirty straw. Even more than the orphans’ annual excursion to the circus, he thirsted for the moment each month when the protectory barber’s hands would touch his scalp briefly, indifferently, yet capable of soothing him almost to sleep. He was of no more consequence than an empty cigarette packet. At times the brusque mass of everything that was not him seemed likely to crush Eddie into dust the way he crushed the dried-out moths that collected in piles on the protectory windowsills. At times he wanted to be crushed.” - Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

“He was her enemy. It seemed to Anna now that she had always wanted one.” - Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

I’ve read three of Jennifer Egan’s novels now - A Visit From The Goon Squad, Look At Me, and now, Manhattan Beach. They have nothing in common with each other except the confidence, skill, and ambition of the author who challenges herself to try something new with every book. Manhattan Beach is a feat of research and storytelling centered around three characters, a woman who defies all obstacles to become a deepwater diver for the shipyard, her father who she believes has abandoned her, and the successful gangster who is, unknowingly, connected to each of them. There are the secrets each carries and, always, the sea that draws each of them in different ways. It’s one part crime story, one part family story, and one part a lens through which we can see the way the country and individual fates are irrevocably altered by war and the opportunities for transformation that it offers. Egan moves from character to character, from the twenties to the forties, from land to the middle of the ocean without once leaving the reader behind. I couldn’t stop turning the pages until I was finished and then, when I had, I wanted to start it over again.

Here’s an interview with photos about Egan’s research for Manhattan Beach.

New Reads, Re-reads

Stuck for your next book? Here’s what a few of you are reading now. You’ll find them (and all the books mentioned in this newsletter) in the Spark Community Recommendations page at bookshop.org where each sale supports independent bookstores and can, when we raise enough, support literacy programs.

Sandra D., San Diego: "I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do to recapture the ability to laugh out loud, these past years have been devastating in so many ways. So, I tried to remember what I read that made the laughing happen, and Me Talk Pretty One Day was one of the best for me. Nothing makes me laugh more than misused words, forgotten words, wordplay of all types. David Sedaris is at his best (imo) in Me Talk Pretty One Day. I am indeed laughing out loud while reading it again.”

Janet G. & Scott, San Diego: “This month I'm reading a book by Ben MacIntyre, Agent Zigzag. It's a true story of a double agent during WW2. Last month I read my first book by him, called The Spy and The Traitor . I enjoyed it so much--true stories of hero and villain. It was a good place to put my thoughts. P.S. Scott is reading H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds.”

Mike W., Montclair, CA: “Last week I got through Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny. (A must read in my view, particularly from the Post-Trump perspective.) In it, he has a suggested reading list. From it, I have begun Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being. Though I read it a number of years ago, I do not really recall it. Times change. Our perspectives change.”

Louie Louie: The Whole Story

“Louie Louie, oh no
Me gotta go
Aye-yi-yi-yi, I said
Louie Louie, oh baby
Me gotta go” - Louie Louie by Richard Berry

“Louie Louie:” we’ve all heard it. Most of us never knew the words. I guarantee when you finish reading this great piece by Jim Ruland you will not stop hearing “Louie Louie” worming through your ear for three days. But it’s worth it for the history of theft and intrigue, for all the different versions, for the memories. It seems only fitting to me that after being immersed in stories of the sea I'm now hearing a sea shanty over and over in my brain.

That’s it for this week. Let me know how you are and what you are reading or going to read. Let me know how you came to choose that book — or if it chose you.

Gratefully,

Betsy