reading - Reading Where

Oh, Canada!

July 1 is Canada Day. It’s like Canada’s Independence Day, for those of you who don’t have your finger on the pulse of Canadian holidays. I do because, y’all, I love Canada.

If you haven’t learned anything else about me, you should at least know that wanderlust and booklust are incredibly intertwined for me. I know I’m not unique among the reading world, but if I am planning to go somewhere new, I want to read every possible thing I can find that is set there or written by people from there. Lately, though, I seem to have reversed this. After reading books with a strong sense of place, I quickly develop mini-obsessions with the real-life settings and have no rest in my hindquarters until I get there (see my Longmire post for another example of this affliction).

One such place I’ve become absolutely obsessed with visiting is Canada, and it has been a dream bookish destination for me for the last year or two. This is largely thanks to Louise Penny and her excellent Inspector Gamache series. I’ll reveal my love for Ms. Penny and her work in another post soon (she deserves her very own post). For now, suffice it to say these books, among the many other things they do for me, paint such a lovely and vivid picture of a pretend place inspired by a real place that my feet are itching to cross the border.

The Great White North first entered my consciousness as a young girl when my mother (who swears she doesn’t recall this conversation) answered my question of “Where do you think I’ll end up in life?” with, among other more vague statements, “I can see you married to a bearded Canadian, living deep in the woods in a cozy house with your two bilingual sons.” For a kid with a deep and romantic imagination, this was all it took for me to start fantasizing. (And to her credit, my mom got the “bearded man” and “two sons” parts right, although, ironically, it is only my daughter who speaks French.) Canada, to this day, still remains a romantic destination for someone like me who:

loves being outside but hates being hot
adores walking in forests, or within sight of mountains, especially in the snow, but lives in a mostly treeless and relatively flat Southern suburb where even a chill in the air is relatively rare
is passionate about hockey
longs to have nature adventures without having to fight traffic or crowds
is thrilled by the idea of putting maple syrup or brie (or at least cheese curds) on everything

While Quebec (the province in which Ms. Penny’s fictional Three Pines is set) is on the agenda, for me it needs to wait until the weather is frosty enough outside to necessitate cozy, roaring fires inside. As a compromise of sorts, and because I possess nearly zero patience when I get excited about something, especially travel, I recently visited Calgary and some national parks in Alberta (Banff) and British Columbia (Kootenay and Yoho). It was a breathtaking trip I’ll never forget.

Calgary was an absolute gem. I’m so glad we booked a full day of city strolling because it was a remarkably hip and walkable town. I got to visit my first Tim Hortons, stroll past the Saddledome (hockey) and through the grounds of the Calgary Stampede (rodeo), brave the glass floor at the Calgary Tower (it was a process), learned about Canadian history at the superb Glenbow Museum, had an amazing affogato at a local cafe -and had a moment of both bookish serendipity and full geek-out worship when I stumbled upon the newly opened Calgary Central Library.

Not only was the building itself an architectural wonder, but it took less than five minutes inside for me to realize this was truly a community hub for readers and students and children, of books and learning and curiosity. I mean, you gotta love a place that has a word bison (a sculpture of a bison made out of letters) and a ceiling like this:

I highly, highly recommend the Canadian Rockies at any (accessible) time of year, but going in the late spring was magical. The snow melt was filling lakes and rivers with a gorgeous frosty aquamarine, and the temperature was perfect. Days were warm enough not to need a heavy coat, but cool enough that I was always comfortable. (Did I mention I hate being hot?) I could not get over the site of the beautiful mountains, and thankfully they were everywhere!

Daytime during this trip was full of driving and hiking and gaping in awe at the snow-capped peaks, crystalline lakes, and verdant forests, so reading time was reserved for evenings in the hotel. I tried to read only Canadian authors with relevant Canadian settings on this trip, and I’m happy to say I found a couple of good ones. I had The Outlander by Gil Adamson on my Kindle, and although it took me awhile to get into it, I finished it shortly after I got home, relishing this wonderfully rich, raw, and kinda strange historical novel set in the Canadian Rockies. I also read In the Shadow of the Glacier by Vicki Delany, the first book of a police-procedural mystery series based in interior British Columbia. I love stories set in small towns, and Delany’s Trafalgar (based on the real town of Nelson, BC) has me enchanted, so I’m sure I’ll revisit the rest of the series.

We saw a couple of mule deer and a black bear (from a distance), but the wildlife I was most obsessed with in Canada were the birds. I’m a bird lover anyway, and it was fascinating to me to meet feathered friends I haven’t seen “down south.” But when I saw a raven up close for the first time ever, I was in love. So even though the author is not Canadian, I had to listen to the audiobook Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds by Bernd Heinrich. It’s a very science-y book, so I am still dipping into it every now and then, but I’ve learned an incredible amount about these clever, clever birds. This is one of the things I love about being a book nerd: No matter where you are or what sparks your interest, there’s a book for that.

Visiting the Canadian Rockies was the best kind of pleasant and life-affirming surprise. When I planned the trip, it was sort of on a whim, a way to indulge in my Canada love and sate my curiosity until I could make it to the province of Quebec in winter. I didn’t do a ton of planning, figuring I’d let Canada show me what it would. I expected an adventure, certainly, and, wow, was it ever. I had no idea how hard I’d fall for the hip, vast, western, grand, simple, pure loveliness of it all, and I’m still overwhelmed by it. In fact, I’m running out of words to describe its awesomeness.

Oh, Canada, you truly are “glorious and free.” I left a piece of my heart in the Canadian West, so I’ll be back. (And this time, I’ll pick up some new adjectives from the word bison.)

Why Longmire? That’s WY

I suppose anyone reading this already knows that one of the reasons this blog exists is not just because I love to read, but because I love to immerse myself fully in reading worlds, to feel like I’m really there. When an author can inspire me to actually visit a place just through their stories, well, that’s the golden ticket.

Thanks to my dad, I was brought up on a steady diet of Western movies and TV shows. As a youngster, I could endure them, but I didn’t see the appeal of dusty, fuzzy, formulaic stories centered, it seemed to me, around horses and guns and saloons. It never occurred to me to read books in this genre, so the screen images I had of cowboys and lawmen and villains and the American West were firmly rooted. Then, sometime in the 1990s, I had a moment. Having unexpectedly finished the only book I had with me during multiple delays at the very beginning of (what I knew would be) a (long and boring) business trip to Houston, I bought Lonesome Dove in the airport. Chiefly because it was nice and fat and would see me through the week. I opened it, fell in, and climbed out a couple days later, blinking and disoriented and gobsmacked by McMurtry’s beautiful story.

I didn’t immediately jump into reading a bunch of Westerns, though. But I did develop a curiosity about the genre that led me to watch the fantastic Lonesome Dove miniseries, and eventually brought me to the Netflix series Longmire, which I watched early last year. I was instantly hooked on both setting and story. It’s a modern Western whose title character, Walt Longmire, is a sheriff in a county with more square miles than people. He is sensitive yet tough, broken yet redeemable, a stubborn, old-school cowboy who has had his share of hardships in life, which he bears pretty much silently. He’s a lawman, so the show’s episodes are crime- and mystery-focused, though the underlying character development is more important than plot. Unlike his bygone Western counterparts, though, Walt is not a complete loner. He’s got a grown daughter and a chosen family and a community of which he’s a crucial part. I can’t call it a “tribe” — although it sort of is, in the modern sense of the word — because a Cheyenne tribe and its nearby reservation figure prominently in Walt’s world; his best friend is a Cheyenne named Henry Standing Bear, their relationship is the source of some conflicts, a lot of humor, and a great deal of warmth and loyalty. The storylines are both timeless and blisteringly modern. All the characters are complex or at least interesting. The drama is heart-pounding and sometimes heartbreaking.

And, oh my gosh, the setting. The prairies. The mountains. The teeny, quirky town of Durant, Wyoming. The ever-present wind along the plains. The enormous sky. The vast expanses of empty highway. The stark, scruffy loveliness of it all. I didn’t want it to end.

When it did, I took matters into my own hands. It used to be extremely rare for me to watch a movie or TV show before I’d read the book(s). I just think your first love can’t be topped, so I read first and generally subscribe to the wisdom of “the book was better.” In the past couple of years, though, I’ve thrown this rule out the window, and I’m glad I did with the Longmire series because it reawakened me to the possibility that Westerns could be awesome. I started on the books almost as soon as the credits from the last episode scrolled by, steadily inhaling their world, which is both eerily the same and a striking contrast to the Netflix show. Craig Johnson, Walt’s creator, is a wonder. Such a great writer and world-builder. Not only did his characters, setting, and stories charm and captivate me, they were able to do so on both page and screen. Part of that is because the author’s love for the place comes through so strongly in both mediums. Even though the series was filmed in New Mexico, it is Wyoming itself that seeps out of the pages and into your heart. It may be our nation’s least populated state, but its sense of wildness, of times gone by, its offering of the simple life and of honest, proud people were the true inspiration for the characters and the stories. Because I was so affected by this “reading where,” I knew that if I made the effort to find it, this Wyoming of Walt, I would be rewarded with a chance to feel all of this again, like the quiet pleasure of finding a long-lost, long-loved pair of worn-in boots and taking a ramble in them.

Having a one-time real cowboy for a lifelong travel companion made it easy to make the case for the trip, so we tacked on four days to a scheduled visit to our son in California and set out on a whirlwind adventure. For four days, we explored, starting in Cheyenne, traveling north through the whole central part of the state, even skirting the Bighorns before eventually turning east toward South Dakota, gaping in wonder at the sights along the way.

I honestly didn’t do much pre-trip research on Wyoming, so there were no plans, other than getting to wherever we were going to stay each night. Which was kind of wonderful. It afforded us a long and winding side trip to Fort Laramie that had us bumping over dirt roads and livestock grates for miles and miles, for example, and it brought us to hidden gems – a reservoir with a campground and beach, a little town with a memorial to country singer and rodeo champion Chris LeDoux and an adorable museum, and gorgeous ranchland so pristinely vast you could smell the sagey hay smell from 50 miles away. So it was complete bookish serendipity when we wandered into the town of Buffalo.

Something about the town spoke to me the moment I got out of the car, and I had barely turned around before I saw it: the”Longmire Headquarters” sign on a Main Street store across the street. As it turns out, Buffalo is the inspiration for the town of Durant, the fictional town in the fictional county of Absaroka, where Longmire is sheriff. (Which, of course I didn’t know because, duh. No research.) The store belongs to Craig Johnson’s wife, Judy, and it holds a plethora of beautiful Western wares, including a ton of Longmire gear and memorabilia. We spent an hour (and quite a lot of money) in the place, chatting with the woman minding the store as a favor to the Johnsons. She shared my passion for the books, so we geeked out about the differences we liked and the similarities we loved between the books and the series. And that’s when I learned what I probably should have known already (except, of course, no research) – not only is Buffalo the inspiration for Durant; it’s also the site each summer of something called Longmire Days, a long-weekend festival that brings thousands to the little town to bask in the Longmire world and enjoy music, events, storytelling, and fellowship with other fans. The author and quite a few of the actors from the series faithfully attend, as well, making it the ultimate destination for anyone who has fallen in love with the characters and story and setting as much as I have.

So here’s the punchline. I’m headed back to Wyoming within a month, this time to purposefully visit Buffalo and experience Longmire Days for myself. It’s shocking to admit I’m that much of a fangirl, but it also feels like having the chance to be part of something special. I’m sure there are as many reasons for others to make this journey as there will be attendees of the event. But I strongly suspect we all will have these in common: a desire to connect with others, a fondness for good, old-fashioned storytelling, a belief that life can be both much simpler and richer at the same time, and a fascination with the ideals and traits that nurtured our country to greatness (and a feeling they still can, and do). I’ll update you, of course, but I predict it will be magical.

It was when I was first obsessing over Longmire and making plans for last year’s visit that I learned the tourism site for the state of Wyoming has the coolest little slogan: That’s WY. It’s kind of perfect. Why has always been one of my favorite words, as I’m a curious person and like to figure out the answer to that question most of all. (I also like the word where, in case you didn’t catch that yet.) That’s WY! is both a proud exclamation of (the postal abbreviation for) a state and an answer that implies, simultaneously, the completely obvious and the highly subjective. It encapsulates for me, in just a few letters, all the wonder and adventure and beauty and history Wyoming stands for, but that you really have to discover for yourself. I was thrilled to see this slogan is still a thing, and maybe I can actually pick up a flag this time!

What would I say to those who question this obsession that had me traveling thousands of miles because of a book series and its imaginary world? And that now has me planning another pilgrimage to hang out in a picturesque mountain town with those who brought it to life and those who are equally smitten?

That’s WY.

Reading into my journal

I’ve been keeping a book journal for two and a half years now. Funny I never thought to do it before, but I’m glad I finally got around to it because it’s given me some tremendous insights into what I read, how I do it, and, most relevant to this particular venture, where I am while reading it, both physically and spiritually.

I love connections. When I was a full-time communications professional, finding hidden (or at least not obvious) connections between people and leaders, motivations and results, seemingly disparate events and history, actions and consequences was a passion of mine. I’d like to think it’s one of the things that made me successful in some of these roles. Nonetheless, it was a tremendous way to learn and grow, and that’s exactly what keeping a book journal has done as well. It’s allowed me to see connections that have, in turn, helped enrich my enjoyment of the books I’ve read.

A couple of things prompted me to finally start recording a bit about each book I read. First, I got the best notebook (pictured here) for Christmas 2016 from my daughter, who had spent the fall semester studying abroad in the UK. The journal was designed by Cath Kidston, a very London brand I had never heard of before and that just charmed me. Not only was it beautiful, it was that much cooler for being (a) from the U.K. and my daughter, and (b) covered in illustrations of books, so I had to use it for something epic. And what’s more epic than books? Second, I wanted to write more, and I found that I don’t have the discipline required to write a regular journal by hand – I think my mind moves faster than my hand can write, so any traditional “journaling” is best done with a keyboard. Little snippets (like notes on the books I’d read) were way better suited to my analog writing efforts, so this seemed the perfect outlet.

And finally, I found I was losing track of my bookish life. I have an embarrassingly large Kindle library, full of hundreds of books, many bought on a whim or because they were on sale, and a shocking proportion of which I have yet to read. I love having an e-reader for its ease of use and compactness (especially while traveling), but it’s not always easy to find these unread books when they’ve been buried by more and more purchases. To make matters worse, I have always been a bit of a crazy person when it comes to owning “tree” books, as well. I have absolutely no sales resistance when it comes to bookstores, and if you throw any kind of sale or deal into the mix, I become a woman obsessed. The groaning shelves of my library bear witness to this affliction. And my eyes are always bigger than my reading stomach when I go to the library where, for some reason, I find it impossible to leave without at least four books. All of this adds up to a beautiful problem (sorry not sorry) but also mass confusion in knowing what I own, let alone what I’ve actually read.

So Christmas was probably the perfect time to receive my gorgeous blank notebook and to make this decision about how to use it. I was looking at a stack of recently acquired bookwealth that I knew I’d spend the post-Christmas-hangover days tearing through. But it was also good timing because, for many years now, I’ve set myself a book goal each year that begins (as the year does, duh) in January. Good Reads has been a fantastic resource for this because it allows you to set yourself a “Reading Challenge” that reminds you of your progress without having to keep track and count yourself. (Hello, English major over here. Numbers are important, but I prefer someone else does the work of actually adding.) I’m proud to say I’ve met (exceeded) my goal of 100 books (but who’s bragging) every year since I started the journal project, and I’m on track to exceed it this year. (Previously, I hovered around the 60- to 75-book-a-year range, although I was pretty lazy about recording them. Because numbers.) I’m even prouder that I’ve kept up the journal entries to this very day (book). It has definitely become a habit, and it’s been fun and enlightening to look back at all the books that have moved permanently off my TBR list.

What have I learned from reviewing and “reading into” this journal? Well, my writing clarity improved as I wrote more entries, and it took me less time to compile my thoughts. I also discovered that, although I didn’t plan this, I didn’t write reviews or synopses of the books so much as I jotted down how they made me feel. Turns out, connections are still pretty important to me. I recorded context in nearly every single entry: Who gave me the book or told me about it. How or why I selected it to read then, at that particular time. How riveted (or not) I was with the story. What I learned. And oddly enough, I almost always noted where I was physically when I read the book, and I definitely made a big deal about it if the author’s world-building prowess made me feel like I was totally somewhere else.

Each entry evokes more than just time and place. Collectively, they form a road map of where I’ve been, highlighting the paths that took me to amazing places, ones I want to return to, as well as those that were dead ends or slow, dense slogs. I’m reminded of a loved one’s care in selecting, recommending, and presenting me with the gift of reading. I’m brought back to the armchair, bed, car, kitchen table, airplane, coffee shop, garden, backyard, or hammock where I communed with my surroundings or completely shut them out. Keeping a book journal has made me be more mindful of connecting all the dots when reading, and when writing about reading. I have learned I love to think about, talk about, and relive books almost as much as I enjoy consuming them.

My book journal of very recent history began in 2017 because it had a pretty place to live and was necessary to keep my reading life straight and focused. It continues (in a less-gorgeous notebook) because it has been an outstanding way to stick to all my goals — and to force myself to write something down on a regular basis. But more than that, when you read a ton of books a year, it’s lovely to revisit where your reading took you. Though I still lack discipline at controlling my book purchases (and at writing regular blog posts? Ugh.), I have managed to create another habit that brings me joy, and to make reading an even bigger part of my life.

Welcome to my world of reading adventures…

Booklust. Wanderlust. These are two of my most favorite words because together they evoke my passions of reading books voraciously and of discovering new (to me) places (or revisiting beloved ones). These words will fuel this blog about books and the magical ability they have to transport and the adventures they inspire.

To me, “literary transportation” means several things:

Traveling – When I go somewhere, I like to take a deep-dive into the literature that evokes it and is from there, or explore the area that inspired the author. “Literary tourism” is, I think, the trendy term for it now, but this is pretty much how I’ve always traveled. Sometimes I read a book before I go somewhere, through either intentional preparation or just serendipity, and sometimes being someplace will create an urgency within me to learn about the place through the books that have been set there.
Exploring world-building — The setting is one thing, and sometimes it’s arguably the most important “character” of any book. My favorite novelists are really fantastic at creating a multi-sensory experience, either through their characters and how they interact with their world or by describing and using “place” profoundly in their writing. Even authors who have entirely created from scratch an imaginative and immersive new world or a brand new way of looking at one we think we know, if they’re successful, it’s still someplace you want to go. Whether or not you can literally exist there, breathe the air, take in the essence of a world, and walk around its landmarks, it’s become a real place. — even if you can only travel there in your imagination. I think the English major in me wants to dissect this magic just a wee bit, so I bet this is something you can expect to see in this blog.
Reading wherever you are – I have favorite places to read in my house, my yard, my community, and so on, but as someone who likes to use every stolen or idle moment for reading, I’m always finding new “wheres” to read. And I always want to find new ones (see wanderlust, above!) Lately, though, I’ve noticed that my book journal often includes the reading experience I had and how it was affected by where I was while reading (or where I was driving if I listened to a book instead). Sometimes my journal also includes how focused I was on the story, or how “into” it I was, where its setting reminds me of, or even the context of why I chose that book. There are also just places that are filled with books, like libraries and book stores, and these are my homes even though I don’t (unfortunately) live in them. I’ve also occasionally discovered a “where” that includes books, even though they shouldn’t logically be there — and who doesn’t love a good book surprise? All of this, in my mind, is very much related to ReadingWhere, so expect to see it here.

Most posts will fit into one of these ideas. As with any new venture, I reserve the right to figure this out as I go, so stuff might change as the situation evolves. I can promise you this: It will be an adventure! Ultimately the goal is to share my experiences reading and how we can be moved by story and by words — sometimes physically, but always spiritually. In short, I find that to be a reader means you believe in living curiously. Traveling promotes that, too. And the more we explore new worlds and the more we read, the more we can empathize with and understand others, and the more we are ourselves enriched. And isn’t that the best way to live?

Books take us on adventures without leaving our chair; let’s take that one step further together, shall we?