Good Reads

I have wimpy lungs. My paternal grandmother died at age thirty-three of asthma, so I probably inherited a weak gene somewhere. As of last Sunday, I’ve been living in jammies trying to shake off a cough that turns my lungs inside out. The up side is that I have three new books to recommend:

The first is non-fiction from Oxford Press: The Owl, the Raven, and the Dove: The Religious Meaning of the Grimms’ Magic Fairy Tales. We grew up on these tales—stories like Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty—some of Western lit’s most-beloved pieces. In recent years these stories have been analyzed for psychological meaning (the seven dwarves as phallic images, for example. Sheesh.). In this more recent study, a professor of German at Georgetown analyzes five of the Grimms’ tales finding in them Christian symbolism.

Did you know that in Germany years ago, young people wore red cloaks on Confirmation Day? Figure that into the story of Red Riding Hood, who, donned in a red cloak, wandered off the straight and narrow. She was old enough to know better. And what danger she encountered!

Three birds—owl, raven, and dove—appear in the Grimms version of Snow White. Tradition links the owl with Athena, the raven with Woden (Odin), and the dove with the Holy Spirit. It is the author’s contention that the Grimms brothers weaved elements from classical antiquity, Germany mythology, and Christianity to tell their stories, much as the apostle Paul showed up on Mars Hill and used the existing altar to an unknown god to communicate the gospel.

Take-away value for writers: It’s okay to borrow and tweak favorite stories and infuse them with redemptive meaning.

The other two books I recommend—highly—are fiction. First is Leif Enger’s Peace like a River. You’ll see right away why I identified with the first line: “From my first breath in this world, all I wanted was a good set of lungs and the air to fill them with.”

Peace Like a River is a page-turner with a motherless child narrator, coming-of-age reflections, a journey, some secrets, mysteries of faith, a little romance, and plenty of realism. And oh, how Enger can craft prose! He has an astonishing gift for simile, not to mention great insight into the human psyche. When I grow up, I want to write like this.

But best of all: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I will never write this well. Oh, me. Anything I say about this will sound like Juliet sighing on a balcony. We have another motherless child narrator, but this time he’s in a land of political turmoil—Afghanistan. In fact this is the first Afghani novel crafted in English. Hosseini begins, “I became what I am at the age of twelve on a frigid, overcast day in the winter of 1975.” What follows is a riveting tale of poverty and wealth, loyalty and betrayal. It has been years since I literally could not put down a book. But with this one, like a child unable to sleep on Christmas eve, I could not stand the suspense. I had to know how the story turned out. This is why we buy fiction, folks. Do not buy this book if you have other responsibilities pressing.