What to save? - Kandy Shepherd

What would you save if your house was on fire? I’ve sometimes pondered the answer to that question—but a few weeks ago I was put to the test.

We had a fire at our farm house, started by an electrical fault. Thankfully our wonderful neighbors not only discovered the fire and contacted the fire department, but also broke a window and put most of the fire out. In our valley, most of the men are bush fire brigade volunteers, so they knew what they were doing. They saved our house from total ruin. Real life heroes!

The kitchen was destroyed and the rest of the cottage severely smoke damaged. Fortunately we were insured, because every single thing in the house was covered in horrible, stinking chemical soot. The “disaster management” team leader who came in to clear the house and will assess what can be saved and what will have to be replaced, asked me to tell him what was particularly important to me. There was nothing that wasn’t replaceable or repairable but he stressed that you can’t put a price on items with sentimental value.

Of course I was too shell-shocked to think straight at first. Luckily all the photo albums and other irreplaceable items were stored elsewhere. But I went through the rooms with him and found it wasn’t so hard to direct him what to try and save at any cost. My teen daughter’s horse riding trophies. Her adored border collie stuffed toy. The furniture my husband had spent months restoring and finishing. The carpet I’d hauled back from India with me many years ago. The watercolors of lavender painted by my friend for my bedroom. My mother’s china. My stepmother’s linens. So much stuff that was precious.

Then he came to the bookshelves and the atmosphere got gloomy. Books, he told me, were very difficult to salvage from smoke damage. I would be advised to only rescue the minimum. So, in the limited time we could stay in that poisonous atmosphere, I had to sort through hundreds of books and prioritize them. The collection needed culling. I wondered why I had hung on to so many books I knew I would never read again. But then there were the ones I adored and wanted to immerse myself in again. And there were the signed editions from my author friends. Precious children’s books I had read aloud over and over again to my daughter. Cook books. Gardening books. Interior design books. Travel books.

What I saved for possible repair, and what I didn’t, gave me pause for thought. All of the above I saved. But I said goodbye to many novels I knew would cost more to restore than replace, without too much heartache. Why? Because I knew I could easily replace them with e-books. And that’s a decision I wouldn’t have made so easily even three months ago. But a digital library is so much more fireproof than the other kind!

Above all, the thing the whole family mourned the most was the cupboard full of my preserves: the cherry jam, the peaches, and most of all the plums. Our disaster manager said it simply wasn’t safe to keep them. Please, plum tree, bear a bountiful crop again this year!

What would you put first in your list to save from a fire or other disaster? Could a digital book ever replace a “proper” one? I’d love to hear your thoughts! Please leave a comment for a chance to win a signed trade paperback copy of either of my novels HOME IS WHERE THE BARK IS or LOVE IS A FOUR-LEGGED WORD and include your email address and which book you would prefer if you want to be in the draw.

http://www.kandyshepherd.com

Desert Island Reading : : Anne McAllister

Somewhere in the deep dark recesses of my mind there is an echo of someone on a desert island in the middle of a vast ocean saying, "Water, water everywhere -- and not a drop to drink."

I'm sure I should footnote that, and I would if I knew who said it.

And yes, I can probably find out who said it on Google, but I don't have time because it is one minute to midnight, and I have to finish this and go to bed so I can get up and go to the dentist.

Life is what happens when you are making other plans -- John Lennon said that (as have I on occasion) -- which is why I am going to the dentist bright and early in the morning.

But I digress.

What made me think about the water quote was that I just spent a week by the water and I had time on my hands and for once I could actually read - for pleasure.

There were plenty of books on the shelves of the house I was staying in. And some of them were really Worthy books.

But honest-to-goodness, there wasn't one I wanted to read.

Why?

Because they seemed uniformly to have unhappy endings. They were books about miserable unhappy unfulfilled people who encountered other miserable unhappy unfulfilled people who in the course of the book anguished and sighed and made each other cry and pretty much feel even more awful. And while they might think about doing something about it, life was too terrible for them to manage. And so they didn't. They just got more miserable for 300 or so pages.

And then, at the end, they either offed themselves or sank further into depression. Usually, though, they died. And not believing in the Ever After, in case you wondered.

So much for happily ever after.

And all I could think was, why does anyone read these books?

Because, I guess, they are Worthy. And they are often very well-written by authors with a good command of spare elegant insightful prose. And certainly these books have something to say about the human condition. Without question, they have their place in the pantheon of English and American literature.

But God knows I do not want to read them on vacation.

On vacation I don't want to be reminded about the misery of the human condition. I don't want to read about the plague overtaking the world while time runs out and, in the end, everyone is dead, and won't that just teach us to be better custodians of the earth?

Etc. Etc. Etc.

While I'm not Pollyanna-ish enough to believe that everything is going to be hunky-dory forever, I do manage to keep a reasonably optimistic attitude on life -- even when it sucks.

And I like the books I read to pay lip service to that same notion.

I like stories in which good triumphs over evil. I like characters who strive and struggle and love and believe that they can change. I like to spend time with people who care. They can hurt, they can cry, they can kill (in a good cause) but they had better not be killed.

My emotional landscape -- in the books I write and the books I like to read -- doesn't allow that. It isn't part of the bargain I make with a writer whose book I take off the shelf and agree to spend time with. It isn't part of the bargain I make with readers who buy my books.

Is that unrealistic? Probably.

I don't care. I can't control real life. Not enough of it anyway. But I can control what I read.

I'm not in high school anymore. I'm not taking The Nineteenth Century British Novel. I'm not signed up for Modern Drama.

I don't even belong to a book club because I don't like to talk about books. I like to read them. And books with "questions to think about" at the end of them make me grind me teeth.

So I took one look at all the books on the shelves and I went to the bookstore where I bought books that I wanted to read -- books that might be classed as 'popular fiction' (as if it were a bad word -- or two bad words), but IMHO, books that would feed my spirit, not depress the heck out of me.

I came back with several.

I read The Bourne Sanction (bodies, bodies everywhere. But definitely not Jason Bourne's).
I read Gabriella Herkert's Catnapped and Doggone (more bodies, but Sara and Connor were still alive at the end).

I read Janet Evanovich's Fearless Fourteen (Stephanie, Joe, Ranger and Grandma -- even Rex the hamster stayed alive). I read Hester Browne's The Little Lady Agency and the Prince (no dead bodies at all).

And I had a great vacation. I felt much happier. Refreshed. Envigorated.

And not only because I got to spend my non-reading time with my one year old granddaughter whose smile could light the world.

So, tell me, if you were on a desert island for a week -- or two -- (without access to my smiling granddaughter, though you're allowed to bring whomever else you want to brighten your life) what sort of books would you bring along to read?

Titles are fine. Authors are good. The type of books you like I especially want to know.

Post a comment and on Thursday Gunnar the Proust-reading dog (whose taste in books does not even remotely reflect mine) will pick a winner who will get a copy of some book of mine with a happy ending -- your choice, as long as I can find it in the attic or on the shelves. Or Proust, if Gunnar will part with it and the winner is of like mind.

Check my blog or here at the end of the comments to see who wins.