Summer Reading : elephants and motorcycles

I am a sucker for those "great summer reads" lists that appear in newspapers, on NPR or in magazines regularly in May or June each year. From the NPR list compiled by booksellers, I was introduced to "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen. I started to read it on the trip up to Door County and could scarcely put it down. It was simply one of the most enjoyable novels I'd read in a long, long time. It is set in a depression era traveling C grade circus, the likes of which come through our small town from time to time. Today they travel by RV, but the mix of sparkle and tawdry, amazing talent and freakiness was the same. The ending is wonderful but the journey there is amazing too.

Another book I picked up was "The Places in Between" by Rory Stewart, the true story of a young man's solo walk across Afghanistan right after the fall of the Taliban. I thought it would be a close-up view of what it was like to live under Russian and later Taliban rule. Well, it wasn't. It was a lot of rambling concerning ancient history in the country and a self-centered young man mooching off of impovrished people. He relied on the Afghans to guide him through the mountains in winter because he set up this self-imposed rule of not accepting rides under any circumstance. He'd endanger others in order to complete his quest. To say I found this guy annoying is an understatement. I'd hoped to learn more about the people of Afghanistan, instead I learned about Stewart's bowels and his resentment when he got a less than warm welcome along the way.

Now to my current read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig. I love this book! In fact I began to love this book in the introduction. I had never had cause to pick it up before. I think because motorcycles had no interest then for me, however that has changed now that my boss and son are both riders. But the motorcycle is actually a metaphor..at least that's what I think thus far some 60 pages into the book. If you like "Illusions" by Richard Bach or have been interested at all in Zen, I'd say to check this out. The question of what is sane or what is insane in this world we live in is well worth pondering. In the early pages, the author talks about learning to maintain his own motorcycle as opposed to trusting someone else to maintain it for you. I couldn't help but think of son's recent experience with misdiagnosis at the hands of the human maintenance/repair specialists. Perhaps I am reading way too much into this! To be continued......