Most of the region is now under Stage 2 fire restrictions, there are fishing restrictions on our favorite rivers, and in Missoula hiking city-owned treasures, such as Mount Sentinel and the North Hills, is restricted to the hours between 6 a.m. and 1 p.m.
So what are we to do to keep ourselves occupied?
Finding the perfect story, however, can be a challenge, and with August approaching and fall in hot pursuit, time is of the essence.
Here’s a starter list of inspiring, hilarious, compelling and thought-provoking tales, some true, some not, recommended by veteran “bookies” at the University of Montana and pros at local bookstores, all of whom were asked: “What are you reading?” and “What would you recommend?”
Jim Burchfield, associate dean at UM’s College of Forestry and Conservation, liked “Kite Runner,” by Khaled Hosseini, so much, he’s now diving into the new book by the same author, “A Thousand Splendid Suns.”
But the book he’s telling all his friends about is “Triage,” by Scott Anderson.
“I usually have a couple of things going. I don’t necessarily read one book at a time,” Burchfield said. “I just finished ‘Triage,’ which is about war reporters. It was recommended by a friend, which is how I often pick up a book. ‘Triage’ is really gripping and riveting. It’s about how people who observe war are affected by war.”
The opening of the book is very intense, and hooks readers immediately, Burchfield said. It takes places in a Kurdish hospital where a wounded American photojournalist has been brought in the wake of a battle between Kurdish separatists and Iraqi troops.
“The book is really well-written,” Burchfield, “and a good book for the time in which we live.”
For people interested in a subject closer to home, Burchfield highly recommends “A Rocky Mountain Natural History,” by Daniel Matthews.
“As a trail-side reference, this is really good - and I teach this stuff,” Burchfield said. “This book has nice descriptions of plants and animals, and I recommend it to my students. The book is all about the Rockies from Jasper to the Grand Tetons and the author talks about it all as an ecological region, and he does it really effectively.”
Kathy Nygaard, public relations manager for the UM Foundation, likes to end her day propped up by pillows reading humor, suspense or human interest stories before bedtime.
Right now she’s reading “Sports Illustrated: Hate Mail from Cheerleaders and Other Adventures from the Life of Reilly,” by Rick Reilly, an award-winning columnist.
“He is so funny, and the book is a total escape,” Nygaard said. “I think he is a wonderful sports columnist, and he really gets into the human aspect of sports n not just the wins and losses. It’s very human, very funny and touching.”
The entire book is a collection of Reilly’s weekly columns, Nygaard said, which gives readers a nice break from traditional storytelling n each and every column is a story in its own right and aren’t connected to one another.
Nygaard also enjoyed the book “A Walk in the Woods,” by Bill Bryson, which is a memoir of Bryson’s middle-aged adventures n or misadventures n while hiking the Appalachian Trail with his longtime friend and college buddy, Stephen Katz.
Nygaard recommends the book as classic “vacation” material. “Bill Bryson is really funny,” she said, “and it’s the kind of book where you laugh out loud.”
UM law professor Ray Cross suggests “Can I Keep My Jersey? 11 Teams, 5 Countries, and 4 Years in My Life as a Basketball Vagabond,” by Paul Shirley.
“This is a story of a basketball gypsy who happens to be white, who happens to lack the athletic talent that would really get him on the roster of an NBA team,” Cross explained. “It chronicles his four-year career criss-crossing continents seeking basketball employment n hopefully with an NBA team, but more likely with teams in Greece, Russia and in other far-flung parts of the globe.
“I’m reading it because this summer my son is playing in so many basketball tournaments.”
Cross described the book as “a sobering but funny review of what life as a professional basketball player is like.”
“It’s fun, quick, easy to read,” Cross said. “It is a story of life on the edge and trying to do what you love and paying the price for doing what you love.”
Tom Webster, director of the University Theatre an and adjunct business professor, described himself as “a multi-book kind of guy,” and he always has a variety of choices within arm’s reach.
Webster just finished “Chronicles: Volume One,” by Bob Dylan, and gave it the following three word review: “It was great.”
In honor of the life and work of author Kurt Vonnegut, Webster is working his way through the collection penned by the master of the absurd. He’s currently reading “Slaughterhouse-Five,” and when he wants to mix things up, he picks up “Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock and Roll,” written by three Rolling Stone writers.
He’s read the music review countless times, Webster said, but he never gets tired of it. He likes it so much, he is assigning the tome to students this fall in his class “Introduction to Entertainment Fundamentals.”
“You can’t beat it for a good overview of musical history,” Webster said. “But for a hot summer day, you can’t beat the collection of Jeeves and Bertie books by P.G. Wodehouse,” he said. “They’re really funny, they are about aristocratic British society in the 1920s.”
Between the work of students and keeping up with world news, Carol Van Valkenburg has more than enough to read when fall and spring semesters are under way. So when summer arrives, the print journalism professor dives into a reading list she has informally assembled throughout the year n titles collected from social gatherings, family, friends and book reviews.
At home, Van Valkenburg usually has several books going at a time, and almost always reads at least a chapter of something each night before turning out the lights.
“Right now, I’m re-reading my favorite book, ‘The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down’ (by Anne Fadiman),” she said. “It’s about the Hmong community in Merced, Calif., and a young daughter of a family in the community that develops epilepsy.”
“The story is about a clash of cultures between the Hmong and medical community in California,” she said. “The author does such a good job empathizing with both sides of this n of how Western medicine sees this, and the family who believes her illness is caused by her spirit trying to leave her body and does traditional healing things to help her.
“It is such a fascinating book because it captures both perspectives so well and gives insights into the Hmong community. It’s a terrific book.”
Van Valkenburg is also working her way through “Copper Chorus: Mining, Politics, and the Montana Press, 1889-1959,” written by her colleague Dennis Swibold; is closing in on the final pages of a story about Elvis Presley’s rise to fame called “Last Train to Memphis,” by Peter Guralnick; and she’s just cracked “Saving Fish From Drowning,” the latest work by Amy Tan, one of Van Valkenburg’s favorite writers.
Her report: So far, so good on all the books she’s got under way.
Garth Whitson, owner of the Missoula bookstore Shakespeare & Co., said he is currently spellbound by Antonia Quirke’s memoir “Choking on Marlon Brando.”
The writing, he said, is captivating enough for him to keep turning the pages.
“I read a lot of things and have no patience or time for junk, which is most of what gets published, somehow,” Whitson said. “I don’t want to sound like a curmudgeon, but that’s the truth.
“Strangely enough, I don’t read to sell books; I read what’s well-written and without regard to how it will do in the marketplace. I read all kinds of things n fiction, non-fiction, essays, poetry n and I end up doing a lot of sampling, like a busy chef in a restaurant, because there is simply too much to look at.”
Selections Whitson recommends?
“First Light,” by Charles Baxter, which is about a brother and sister. The story is told with beautiful, poetic prose and moves backward in time to the birth of the sister, who as an adult is an astrophysicist.
“For pure sustained brilliance,” Whitson recommends John Updike’s “Rabbit” novels n all four of them. By his ranking, the works are escapist-realism at its finest.
Keith Glaes, director of Campus Recreation, said he leans toward nonfiction, particularly historical nonfiction. But after a reading jag a few years ago, plowing through book after book, he realized he hadn’t read any fiction for a long spell.
“I realized the world of imagination is really important, so I started to read more of it,” he said. “Now I try to balance it. I read a novel, history, novel, history. It’s working out pretty well.”
Glaes just finished “The Widow of the South,” by Robert Hicks, a fictional account of a real woman who lived on the edge of Franklin, Tenn., when the Battle of Franklin took place in 1864. The woman allowed her house to become an aid station, and allowed a vast number of Confederate dead to be buried on her property. After the war, she made sure the graves had headstones.
The book is well-research and is interesting, he said. Anyone who likes Civil War-era reading will likely enjoy the bike.
Glaes is now reading “The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction,” by David Quammen, a collection of essays.
He hasn’t read enough to know if he’d recommend it to anyone, but Glaes said anyone looking for a powerful story should pick up the book “Saturday,” by Ian Mcewan.
“It’s about a Saturday in the life of a highly-skilled neurosurgeon in 2003 just as the United States and Britain are ready to go to war with Iraq,” he said. “It’s a day in the life of an interesting, talented man n and it’s about a family.
“I recommend it. It’s gripped me the most, and probably one of the best books I’ve read in seven or eight years.”
Effie Koehn said she is taking the summer to learn more about the people and places close to her heart. The director of UM’s Foreign Student Services is currently reading “North of Ithaka: A Journey Home Through a Family’s Extraordinary Past” written by Eleni Cage, and “Notes from the Hyena’s Belly: Memoirs of my Ethiopian Boyhood,” by Nega Mezlekia.
“I have a connection to both places,” Koehn explained. “I was born in Ethiopia and I grew up in Greece, so I already have an interest in the topics.”
Both books, she said, are a wonderful way to better understand the people, places and culture of Greece and Ethiopia, and she typically reads books that teach her about distant lands.
Cage’s book is about the author’s journey home to Greece to literally and figuratively rebuild a family home that has long been abandoned because of tragic family events.
Mezlekia’s book describes life in the African country after the 1974 revolution in Ethiopia.
“Fiction and books like these are a wonderful way to understand cultures,” Koehn said. “It’s safe and it’s situational.”
Barbara Theroux, proprietor of Fact & Fiction bookstore in Missoula, has just finished “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” by J.K. Rowling. Theroux said she liked the book a lot and said of the final book in the series: “It’s perfect.”
She also recommends “Water for Elephants,” by Sara Gruen, which is about a man who worked as a veterinarian tending to circus animals during the 1930s; Deirdre McNamer’s “Red Rover,” which is based on a true story of a family and takes place in Montana and Argentina; and “The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl,” by Timothy Egan.
“I read fact and fiction, and I try to read one book at a time,” Theroux said. “But now after all these years of reading, if I’m not totally captivated by 100 pages, there’s no reason for going further.”
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