Thankfulosity

Before the tryptophan, before the football, the green bean casserole (which I make a great spicy green bean dish, but my mom doesn't like it, so I never fix it :{ ) , the pumpkin pie, the Eagle Brand Lemon Pie (which I make every year), I do like to reflect on the year, and find things that made me happy.  Finding things that have enriched my life.  I always feel thankful for my large dangerous space heater that keeps my feet toasty and lessens the pain I feel.  I'd be thankful for my Meloxicam, but my doctor won't prescribe those until my blood pressure goes down.  So I stick with Aleeve. And ironic enough, it's my feet that I'm most thankful for this year.

Well, what I do with my feet, which is walk.  One foot down, in front of the other.  So I take my walking stick, some bottled water, and I go exploring through the trails and the backwoods of Conyers, Georgia.  You never know what beauty lies just beyond your street, especially when most of us are concentrating on screens of computers, cell phones, televisions.  And while I couldn't live without those things, I certainly would be far less happy without the weekly walks I took all summer long.  I'm so thankful that the people of Rockdale County decided to keep parts of the area free of civilization, and also to invest in the trails and parking areas that make these jewels of the south accessible.  The Path Foundation (http://www.pathfoundation.org) as well as Newton County Trails (http://newtontrails.org) are great resources in finding walkways and pathways around the towns and out to the countrysides, where dirt trails and nature trails take you to forests towering, hills overlooking the community, the sounds of deer bounding into the forest upon your arrival to their home (just watch out for the snakes.)  It's so wonderful, to be completely away from mankind's distractions and see the road before you.  We must be determined to walk those roads, to see where they go, how far they take us, to what hidden glade lies just beyond the next hill.  And no pain will keep me from doing this.  It is my world, and I will explore it.

I'm also thankful for my job right now, which is to sell books.  In this economy where luxuries are slipping away, and electronics are slowly killing print communication, there are still some places in this world where the written word is alive and well.  I sell books in the Nancy Guinn Library in Conyers as a part of the Friends of the Library group, and I'm glad that Gwen and the other board members scooped me out of the dying embers of Borders and let me be a part of their group.  Also, I sell Bibles and Books at Lifeway, where I was able to bring my V-cart and Steven, for all last year anyway, to keep me tied to the job I really loved.  I really do need to read more, for myself, as I have so many book now, and for the customers that I might have in the future, who will need recommendations when the computer screen will only show covers and synopses, not emotion and passion toward books that are really worth reading.  I've found Georgia Authors, like Tim Westover (and his book Auraria) and Amber Dermont (and her book The Starboard Sea) whose books will continue the fine tradition of Southern Literature.  Tim shares my love of exploring the trails of the Georgia forests, and I am glad I met him at a book signing.  So go buy their books already!!!

The winter is coming, and the cold weather will keep me indoors, away from my walks, and I will be thankful for the spring.  But in that time, hopefully I will read more, and be able to walk the trails of imaginary lands.  For those are roads that we can all walk down, taking only our own experiences with us, and those, despite what Frost said, are roads we can travel down again and again.

Book Review: The Starboard Sea by Amber Dermont

Everyone has a story.  Browse through the Memoir section of your local independent bookstore, and you'll find hundreds of them. They'll give you a slant, a spin, an angle of each person's life, the way they would have you see it.  Ask their friends, their business associates, and they'll give you a totally different story.  You could even sit down with the person in question and listen to their life story, and you'll almost have a picture of the entire life, from the high-crashing waves to the calm eddies that hide along the shore.  But always hidden deep within the cores of our being are the pearls of our lives, which we clamp shut, hold fast, and no amount of muscle will let anyone see it.   They are secrets, desires, the very foundations by which we see the rest of the world.  Every once in a while, a person will come along and dive deep down into our souls, and we will let them in.  We will tell them our stories, showing our pearls and the sand from which they came.

The Starboard Sea by Amber Dermont is just such a novel.  It becomes a porthole into the inner lives of the characters, especially the main one, Jason Prosper, who, little by little, tell us all his story.  Each character is fully developed, fleshed out, with words that are worth reading completely, not skimming over as part of "something every author has to do."  The writing is lyrical, soothing, much like the seaside town that Amber Dermont is writing about.  The frequent forays into yachting, racing with the upper class New England town boys that seem to have no problems or cares in the world are done exquisitely, giving the reader an opportunity to experience the thrill of riding on the open ocean without the boring details that, ironically as he tried to do the same, Melville used in Moby Dick.  I think that if Dermont had written a book about the White Whale, I would have read enthralled from Ishmael to Ahab and through the Romantic landscape of the seas.  Most of all, I enjoyed the intimate contact between Jason and Aiden, and with Cal through his memories, and with Chester and the rest.  I do wish that we could have seen more of Jason showing Aiden the Pearls in his life, or the other times he let people into his inner "oyster," for lack of a better word.  But we have to be content with the side glances of these, as we should never see these ourselves, (one of the distinct advantages of writing in the 1st person) since Jason is telling the story himself.

I've read many debut novels recently, as an employee of Borders, and I have always been impressed with the potential in each of these authors to become better, to write truly great literature.  I look forward to reading the follow up to Ford's The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, but I realized, as I finished this novel, that Dermont is closest to achieving those masterpieces.  I look forward to those as well.  I only wish that she had taught the Creative Writing course I took in my small university in Georgia, as I would have learned much.  I thank you, Dr. Dermont, for giving a window into how you write, how the stories are meant to be told, and only hope that more people will witness the sea the way you have written it.

Short Review: If Dermont had written Moby Dick, I would have relished every word.  The foray into the world of New England boarding schools, with all the heartbreak and ecstasy, is done wonderfully. Jason Prosper navigates his way through love, death, and all the swirling eddies in between in this amazing debut novel.  I hope it finds it's way to the top of all the bookstores' "Staff Picks" displays.  I know it would mine.