I have (finally) just completed Heaven and Hell, the third and final book in the North and South series by John Jakes. (Yes, that North and South, the book on which the miniseries starring Patrick Swayze that we all watched in high school was based.) I loved these books (much better than the miniseries) and they were a perfect example of why I love to read.
The writing is, of course, excellent. If it hadn't been, the books wouldn't have been so popular, wouldn't have generated a miniseries, and wouldn't have interested me enough to finish each of their epic volumes of 700+ pages. Jakes manages to use language to the utmost effect: he writes in modern English peppered with 19th-century vocabulary to help you inhabit the time as you read (I had to look up "reticule" to confirm that it refers to those little drawstring pouch-style purses women used to carry). His imagery is vivid and florid without being flower and extraneous. He manages to supply considerable detail not only about the plot and characters but of the time itself, educating the reader about the era and American history, without being pedantic, tiresome, or in my case, condescending to the Civil War-ignorant. I love reading writing that is engaging, just by virtue of the way the words are assembled, regardless of the topic or character portrayals, and Jakes certainly provides that.
In doing this successfully, Jakes' novels represent one of my favorite things about reading: losing myself in another world where I find myself fascinated by the people and places I'm meeting as I go, wanting to know more, and developing an emotional connection to them that make them seem more a part of my actual life than a story I'm reading. But the beauty of North and South (and Love and War, and Heaven and Hell) doesn't stop there; they also managed to teach me something. All that 19th century American history that I could never quite get sunk into my thick skull in school came to life for me in an altogether new way. Granted, the miniseries helped me get a bit of perspective by feeding my 1980's, TV-raised adolescence with visual imagery to help the information stick. But it certainly didn't educate me the way the novels did. Setting aside for a minute the fact that the TV version had to do the typical degree of "revising" to make the stories, people, and settings more palatable and ratings-worthy - and the fact that some of the more salient points about the objectionableness of slavery were totally glossed over - the novels simply do it better. There is considerably more and substantially richer detail that one's brain can so much more effectively visualize without the aid of television, and an exploration of individual characters' thoughts that TV can't ever quite capture. And although I certainly used some of the actors I remembered from the miniseries as my mental pictures as I read (and completely fabricated others as I would with any novel not made into a TV show), the beauty of reading is in having the mental latitude to take those physical embodiments and do so much more with the character than even the best actor could pull off. Because of that, and directly because of the way Jakes weaves story and history together so seamlessly, I learned more about the Civil War then I could have dreamed possible. So all that said, reading these particular books was a complete joy, and wholly illustrative of the very best of what reading does for me.
That said, I HATE that books like these - and my passion for reading them - becomes so doggone consuming. Like any of my other generally harmless addictions (solitaire, Sudokus, etc.), reading a good book just seems to take over my every thought until the book is done. I read as much as I can, throughout the day, and then I spend my non-reading time thinking about the characters and feeling for them, and wondering what will happen next. But unlike those other harmless pasttimes, it saps all my energy to do this! I not only spend time reading that I could be spending doing something more productive, but I find myself completely paralyzed when I try to sit and write something myself. Somewhere between my obsession with the story I'm reading and my fear that I will inadvertently co-opt the author's style as my own because that's the track my brain is on at the moment, I sit like the deer in the headlights thinking, "Oh $#!%. Now what?" And so the reading task ramps up, because now there's a compulsion to finish the book as quickly as possible so that I can get my life back. As if there was more time I could spend reading. It's madness.
Call it this week's excuse for why I haven't blogged, but there it is, the good, the bad, and the truly evil side of reading a good book. I highly recommend it.
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Ah, yes. Reading. In spite of its addictive tendencies, I can only advocate the nastly habit. I never read the Jakes series, but did watch North and South with my mother who joked that the next book/miniseries would obviously be "East and West"--if you ever meet my mother, you'll understand that comment and probably find it funny.
Try some of these and let me know if you read/like any of them:
The Highlander books by Diana Gabaldon; Ahab's Wife; the Time Traveler's Wife (I know, it looks like I'm obsessed here, but it was a coincidence that I loved these two books); Life of Pi.
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