Authors Electric

It’s raining in Montana so I’ve not been able to ride the Sacred Trails. We’re staying in Glacier Park Lodge - alias Big Tree Lodge. It’s constructed on a framework of enormous trees, Douglas Firs, estimated to be 500-800 years old when they were felled, more than one hundred years ago. Big Tree Lodge is built on land purchased from the Blackfeet Nation by James J. Hill, ‘the Empire Builder’, boss of the Great Northern Railway. He had to go to Congress for permission to buy the land but the anxious 21st century reader can’t help wondering, and worrying, how much say the Blackfeet leaders will have had in this arrangement? The railway was already running through their territory, it had brought in miners and homesteaders, now Hill planned this lodge for holiday-makers, visitors from the cities to explore the beautiful landscape. The concept of the National Parks was still new, Glacier Park, the tenth to be established, was signed into law by President Taft in 1910. People could buy a per...

It is the season for families and feasting; and for some of us, the season to catch up on books we've wanted to read through the year but never did. Which is how I -- FINALLY -- read Olive Kitteridge by the fabulous Elizabeth Strout .  This is a book that won the Pulitzer Prize and is now an HBO miniseries. It interlinks short stories around the central character of Olive Kitteridge, a female curmudgeon whom the reader meets at various stages of her life, as seen through different eyes. Olive is wonderfully nuanced as a character, as are the rest of the cast.  This is also a season of forced jollity and family tensions and this book, by making us empathise with a misanthrope, is a master class on how to love the people in our lives, warts and all.  My favourite story was "Security", and as Olive grapples with parenting mistakes and a grown-up son, the story is excruciatingly painful and heartwarming at the same time.  The message driven home by this b...