Reading to Sharon

I exchanged messages with Anthony Bidulka about reading to my wife. Our exchange is below.

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Dear Anthony,

I am glad to advise that a review copy of Home Fires Burn was in the mailbox last Thursday.

Netta from Stonehouse Publishing sent it to me.

Whether it is my age, soon to be 73, or just the excitement of getting a book in the mail I get a special pleasure in seeing a package from the post office that I know is a book.

There is a sense of anticipation different from seeing a book on a shelf in a bookstore or library.

I try to resist just ripping away at the package yet even when I slow down the wrapping ends up ripped. I do not have the patience to carefully open a parcel I know contains a book.

Holding a new book in my hands is a joy that began when I went to my first library, a small room full of books, in the basement of the school at Ethelton, the hamlet next to Meskanaw. I was 7. The exhilaration remains as strong 65 years later.

I was hoping a copy of Home Fires Burn would come my way. I have been anxious to learn of Merry Bell’s life in Livingsky before she moved to Vancouver and transitioned and then returned to Saskatchewan. I have longed to see her life story completed by hearing about those earlier years.

I have not completed the book.

I am reading Home Fires Burn in a way I have not read a book for 40 years.

As you know, Sharon cannot read a book. She has been interested in Merry Bell.

I asked if she would like me to read Home Fires Burn to her. She said that would be nice.

We started on the weekend. We have read the two prologues and are intrigued and involved with the story.

In the mid-1980’s when my Dad had severe vision problems and there were very few audio books I dictated onto cassettes a few of his favourite books about the outdoors and Western Canadian history.

The book he loved most was Three Against the Wilderness by Eric Collier. It tells the story of Collier, his wife and young son settling in the interior of B.C. and starting to re-establish an ecosystem by building by hand dams where there had been beaver dams. All the beavers had been trapped out. Seeing the potential of further revival they were able to get two pairs of beavers and Meldrum Creek and marshes were restored. I taped the book and Dad would sit in his room at the nursing home weaving the edging on trays, a craft he had learned at the CNIB, and listening to this book and some other books I taped. He never tired of listening to Three Against the Wilderness.

I had forgotten how you appreciate every word in a book when you read it aloud. It provides a different experience from reading with your eyes.

I am curious whether you ever read any of your books aloud from start to finish.

My review is going to be towards the end of the month. We are savouring 10 - 15 pages a day. 

I am heading out to the kitchen to sit at the table and read to Sharon who will be sitting in her armchair with a blanket curled around her.

All the best to you and Herb.

Bill

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Oh, Bill. I love this message, especially the part about your dad. It will bring me joy to picture you and Sharon reading/listening to Merry’s final tale (in book form anyway).

Indeed, I do read each of my books out loud at least once before I send it to editors. The experience is different, richer in some ways.

Be well and happy reading.

Tony