www.harborlightnews.com Week of February 5-11, 2014

Celebrating Words, Literature, Authors, Libraries, Booksellers and Reading!

With special Harbor Light Newspaper LitChat Editor/Columnist Emily Meier, emilym@ncpublish.com

Emily Meier and Wally

Heard in the Bookstore

Quotable

Between the Covers | 152 E. Main St., Harbor Springs | 231.526.6658 | bcovers@sbcglobal.net

As part of our ongoing efforts to honor reading and writing, “LitChat” will be included in our newspaper on the first Wednesday of every month. Emily Meier, a writer and reader with deep connections to northern Michigan, is our LitChat editor.L i t C h a t

“Why, what’s the matter, That you have such a February face,

So full of frost, of storm, and cloudiness?”

-William Shakespeare

Much Ado about Nothing

“The troublesome ones in a family are usually either the wits

or the idiots.” -George Elliot

Middlemarch

“I’ve got a new book, a Gurney’s sandwich and five bucks left in my pocket. I’m pretty rich.”

-Young man on his way out the storeKatie Capaldi, Between the Covers

4B Harbor Light Community Newsweekly

It’s February. Do you know where your resolutions are?

“What are your New Year’s resolu-tions?” is the hot question to ask between December 30th and January 1st. But come February this question has long been dropped from polite conversation. It’s the pile of new gym clothes and the broken alarm clock on the floor of the closet. No one wants to have this discussion.

I’ve never been good with resolu-tions. Last year, I told myself that if I just tried to do better in small, daily ways--like organizing my closet, eating an extra helping of broccoli, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, helping to make someone else’s day a little easier, going to bed an hour earlier—that I would be on the right track.

This year, I procrastinated the whole resolution thing and now it is February and I am thinking there should be at least one resolution, one goal to strive for in the name of self-improvement. Perhaps something with a literary bent?

Here is where I admit that, despite being lucky enough to have benefited from a great education, there are some holes in my “classics” reading list. Here is where I go on to admit that I may have chosen People magazine over finishing The Brother’s Karmazov. Doesn’t everyone need to know what Julia Roberts wore to the Golden Globes? Or rehash the snarky comments that Amy Poehler and Tina Fey directed at George Clooney?

But like vegetables, I feel that the classics feed us and offer healthy benefits to our mental diet. And so I am planning on attending to the holes in my list. This is my resolution. Anyone with me here?

What makes a book a classic? To me, the classics are books that have stood the test of time. Human struggle, emotion, and family drama are timeless. The quote worthy lines in the works of Shakespeare, Austin, Dickens, etc. still make even a modern day reader nod his head in recognition of basic truths. It’s that

New Year’s Reading Resolutionsrecognition, the spark of shared understanding contained in a single great line of writing that makes readers book lovers.

In a wonderful essay entitled, “Why Read the Classics”, the now deceased Italian writer and journalist, Italo Calvino, writes, “A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” A classic is a book that a reader can return to at various ages and stages of life and find something new. The nuance and wisdom of a classic only get richer upon a reader’s return. And this is why, Calvino explains, that “every reading of a classic is as much a voyage as the first reading.”

Of course, then there is the famous quote by Mark Twain who said, “A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” This is where the comparison

of classic literature to veg-etables seems to fit.

So my resolutions begin: more veggies and more great books. Feeding the mind and the body in 2014.

While I won’t bore you with the whole, raw versus juiced or steamed debate in regard to best vegeta-ble consumption plan, I will share my planned starting point with the classics. I thought I’d start with Middlemarch by George Elliot (aka Mary Anne Evans).

Several years ago, a woman sitting next to

me in the airport was reading this book and we struck up a conversation between boarding announcements and flight delays. She told me that she wasn’t really a fan of the classics but happened to pick it up months before and that she found she’d been thinking about it ever since. That day at the airport she was rereading it in order to “figure out why it’s stuck with me unlike any other book.” She explained that Elliot had used a masculine pen name in order to make publishing easier. The fact that a novel written by

a woman and published in 1874 was a success peaked my interest. It’s been on my “to read” list ever since.

Recently, My Life in Middlemarch by the New Yorker staff writer, Rebecca Mead, caught my eye and has been added to my resolu-tion reading stack. In her book, Mead writes about the influence Elliot’s Middlemarch has had on her own life and career. In the New York Times book review, Joyce Carol Oates classifies Mead’s book as a “biblio-memoir” due to the fact Mead delves into the life of Elliot as well as her own. Mead’s book seems to serve as a nice introduction to the clas-sic and so I chose to begin reading it as a way back down the rabbit hole of classic literature.

While I also have a copy of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens on the same stack, I don’t want to self-sabotage. I have read that scientists believe making resolutions that are too grandiose can lead to failure. So, this year I plan to read Middlemarch. If I happen to also read Great Expectations, it’s just icing. But it’s already February and I don’t want to get too cocky in this business of resolution making.

I also read somewhere that partnering with others in the pur-suit of a similar task assures success more often than not. So, anyone out there want to read Middlemarch? We are still months away from a real thaw and hint of spring. What better time than now to delve into the pages of a good book and let ourselves be carried away from storm warnings, slippery roads, and school closings? C’mon, steam some veggies and crack a classic with me. This is our year.

©2014 Independence Villages are managed and lovingly cared for by Senior Village Management.

More Great Events:Super Bowl Tailgate Party Sunday, February 24:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.Join us for a traditional football tailgate with food, beverages and fun games for all as we wait for the Super Bowl kick off on the big screen TV.

Friendship Center Chorus Monday, February 312:45 p.m.Be our guest as the Emmet County Friendship Center Chorus entertains us with an afternoon of music and friendship.

Gentleman’s Valentine’s Day Celebration Friday, February 142:00 p.m.Gentlemen, bring your favorite Valentine to the Village as we host a Valentine’s Day celebration with cognac, chocolate and cards. Musical entertainment to be provided by the barbershop quartet, “Sonic Tonics”.

Sweatin’ with the Oldies Week of February 17 - 21Mon – Fri, 1:00 p.m. each dayJoin us every day this week as we exercise with a different celebrity instructor and music of years gone by. Stay and enjoy a healthy snack prepared by Chef Erika after each work-out. To kick-off our week, bring your leg-warmers as we exercise with Jane Fonda.

Senior Living | Independent and Assisted Living

At Independence Village, we focus on helping you combat the winter lull that may be creeping up during the coldest months of the year. Our meals and activities focus on brightening up each and every day. Experience how exciting senior living can be!

Fabulous February!

Independence Village of Petoskey965 Hager Drive Petoskey, MIOff US 131 South and Lears Road

www.SeniorVillages.com

231-348-8498RSVP

Don’t miss outon the fun!

According to Kristin Miller in an article she wrote for NPR, entitled 14 books you could read in the time it takes to watch the Super Bowl, the average adult should be able to read a 200-page book during the Super Bowl.

She then goes on to list the following books:

• The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry• Casino Royale, Ian Fleming• The Wasteland, T.S. Eliot• We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson• The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald• The Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri• Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka• Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the

Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, Dava Sobel• Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer• Frankenstein, Or the Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley• Animal Farm, George Orwell• The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells• The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway

Should have been reading during this year’s ‘Big Game’