Books you can't put down–Part 2

Like three women, which I recently wrote about, The Silver Star is a book I got absorbed in from the get-go. If you feel like curling up in a comfortable chair with a compelling story, or if you’re looking for a gift for someone who loves novels that read like memoirs, you might want to take a look at this title.

It’s by Jeanette Walls, the author of the bestselling memoir The Glass Castle. Herself a child of loving parents who nevertheless refused to don the mantle of adulthood, Walls and her siblings had to fend for themselves from an early age. So when Walls turns her hand to fiction in The Silver Star, her writing rings true to life. Narrated by twelve-year-old Bean, the story begins when Bean and her fifteen-year-old sister, Liz, find themselves on their own, their astonishingly immature mother having taken off for a few months to chase her latest dream. 

As soon as the sisters suspect that child protective services is taking an interest in them, they gather the cash their mother left them and board a bus to Virginia, where their only other known relative, Uncle Tinsley, lives. His house isn’t just a house—it’s the family mansion, even though it’s falling down around his ears. Eccentric and used to his own company, he takes grudgingly takes his nieces in.

Bean thrives in Virginia. The trouble starts when the sisters go to work part time for Jerry Maddox, local bully and the foreman of the mill. Liz, whom Bean adores, gradually grows moody and withdrawn. After Bean learns the truth about her sister’s troubles, the two decide fight the abuse of power that has infected not only Liz, but the entire community—with convoluted and surprising results. 

The Southern eccentricity in The Silver Star isn’t overdone because families everywhere, however fragmented, often come together to protect their own. Bean’s voice is as engaging and authentic as any precocious, observant twelve-year-old voice can be. The ways in which she and Liz band together, making plans—sometimes naïve, sometimes savvy—to survive and thrive, drive the narrative forward. By the time I finished the book, even though it deals with the abuse of power, I felt better about the human race.

Books that spark joy

I love Marie Kondo, the cute Japanese lady who coaches people to take stock of their possessions, keeping only those that “spark joy.” Her method has a twist: she asks us to consider not what we want to throw out, but what we want to hold on to. She tells us to go through our stuff in this order: clothes, books, papers, knick-knacks and gadgets and tools, then sentimental objects. The idea is that clothes are the easiest category to sort out, mementos the hardest.

But what’s simple for one person may be complicated for another. Would Kondo’s sequence work for you? It didn’t for me. I couldn’t do my books second. I’m too attached to them. They teach me things, tell me who I am, add warmth to my living room. But did I really need to hang onto Plato’s Dialogues and The History of the English Language? Maybe I’d been keeping them on my bookshelf to impress guests in case they noticed. I’d read these books decades ago. They hadn’t sparked joy then and they didn’t spark it now. 

Kondo believes that your possessions should reflect who you are, not who you were. I happen to have an edition of The Wizard of Oz. It doesn’t reflect who I am now, but the story gave me so much pleasure for so many years, I can’t imagine parting with it. When I was a child, I devoured every Oz book Frank Baum wrote, all fourteen of them. They do everything a good story is supposed to—and what I’ve aimed to do in my memoir about Africa. They whisk the reader to another world. 

When I'm really absorbed in a story, I get annoyed when someone interrupts me like my dad did one long-ago day. I don't remember what I was reading, but I didn't like being wrenched out of whatever world I was in.

Books like this, Kondo says, are the ones that belong in your Book Hall of Fame. I liked this idea. It helped me clarify what I wanted to keep, so I drove to the liquor store and filled up my car with boxes.

My Hall of Fame ended up holding titles I’ve read more than once and might read again—a few kids’ books, some international thrillers, and a lot of historical fiction. Tolstoy, Faulkner, and Hemingway had to make the trip to Goodwill. Those guys definitely don’t spark my joy. But they taught me something, so as Marie Kondo advises, I thanked them as I let them go. 

Altogether, I loaded eighteen boxes of books into the trunk of my car. My house feels lighter, airier, more cheerful. I feel lighter, airier, more cheerful. We all have books we love. Which are books you couldn’t put down? Which ones belong in your Hall of Fame?