Someone had asked what I’m reading and listening to up here. For me that was part of the ‘cabin in the woods’ fantasy, to finally read all those books that I’d never ‘had time’ to get to. I’d pictured myself spending long hours at a table (that I’d made myself, naturally), reading by lantern light, so gripped by the words that I’d let my pipe go out. And to some extent this has happened (minus the handmade table, lantern and pipe). But it still takes conscious effort to avoid the allure of the flickering screen. Full seasons of HBO shows (The Wire for the third time perhaps?) and Internet ‘research’ (‘Would a .243 be the best caliber for a second hunting rifle?’) can vapourize valuable reading time with a simple pull of the gennie cord.
Analyzing the reading that I have managed, I can see that it falls into three camps. The first is comprised of the heavyweights of literature that had sat on my shelf back in the city. I’ve worked through a few modern-day classics, Pulitzer Prize winners: Richard Ford’s Independence Day, Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and I’m still working my way through Don Delillo’s Underworld. I’ve been chipping away at this 800-page tome by making it the only one that I bring with me to the outhouse (apologies, I may be over-sharing here). But there is a point, I think that it’s analogous to Rich’s advice that a cabin can be built by just working on it ‘a little bit every day.’ He claims that before you know it, the thing is built and you hardly feel like you’ve worked at all. Delillo is far from work to read, indeed there’s something amazing happening in every paragraph, but with other distractions it would be easy to get knocked off-course on such a long book.
There are authors that I brought who are compulsively readable, who keep me up reading by headlamp, and these have included Elmore Leonard and Stephen Elliott.
The second group of reading is the books that others have sent or lent me. Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and Michael Pollan’s A Place of My Own are a couple that have come my way since coming here. The latter, is The Omnivore’s Dilemna author’s first book, about building his writing cabin.
The third set of books is purely informational. Things that I’m reading to get hard facts, usually to solve a current problem. I’d referred to a couple of the pole-construction building books that I’d bought when we were sorting through some structural issues but I’ve found that for the most part I barely cracked any of the reference books on plants, mushrooms, sea life etc. that I’d lugged up with me. I find that I learn best from other people rather than books. Although, right now I’m reading Blacktail Trophy Tactics II by Boyd Iverson and feel like I’m gaining insight into the habits of this specific species of deer that no locals have explained to me. Even though he’s a pleasure to read, I’ve been high-grading the book to get just the information that I need (i.e. I skipped the first 74 pages that deal mostly with details relevant to trophy hunting vs. meat hunting).
Then of course there are the books that I want to pickup, even bypassing the stack of books that I’ve already got on deck to read next. These include Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall’s book about a year spent in Toronto’s tent city (Down to This: Squalor and Splendour in a Big-City Shantytown), Charlotte Gill’s book about the treeplanter tribe (Eating Dirt), and David Adams Richard’s book about hunting (Facing the Hunter).
There’s a long winter ahead so I may still get in all the reading that I want. Besides a couple totes full of books, someone gave me a Kindle as a gift before coming up so I will never want for material to read.
As for what I’m listening to. At my age, music-wise, I tend to hit what I know (Morphine, Pixies, Pogues) although the odd new music creeps in (I’m curious to hear more Beirut and to check out the Beasties’ new album). Sometimes you just need something with a good rhythm for hammering to. But otherwise, CBC gets heavy play everywhere here. You can be listening to a program in the cabin, step out into your car and continue listening, and almost be guaranteed that when you open the door at your destination that you won’t miss anything as the radio there will almost certainly be tuned to the CBC. The broadcaster is a national treasure (happy 75th birthday, CBC). And on the iPod: NPR’s This American Life, The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith, and a Librivox recording of Thoreau’s Walden Pond.
If anyone has any recommendations for homesteader reading/listening, I’m all eyes/ears.