Few pleasures are more satisfying than the late-night search for a new book. The house is quiet. The television has long since lost its appeal. I didn’t want to run upstairs to wander the shelves, so I took my Kindle and started perusing the offerings. Earlier this year, a friend gave away a couple of Kindles after her brother passed away. The one I have, my first digital reader, btw, contains over 1,000 international dramas and mysteries. It has many authors I love and new ones waiting to be explored, as was the case this week.
Readers know how to hunt for new books and authors. No need to write much about wandering through libraries, bookstores, online reader forums, and recommendations from friends who understand that books are not merely entertainment but companions.
Many of us start our search for a new read with the latest published books. The latest literary sensation. Yet I usually find the most rewarding discoveries arrive from the opposite direction. Instead of finding the newest author, I tend to stumble upon an author who has been dead for years, perhaps decades, patiently waiting for me to find my way to the pages they prepared for me.
That was the feeling of discovering Ellis Peters and her Brother Cadfael mysteries, beginning with A Morbid Taste for Bones. The book itself is more than forty years old. The author has been gone for decades. Yet starting to read the book on Kindle in bed didn’t feel dated at all. The mystery unfolds with intelligence and charm. The summary below captures the plot, set in 12th-century Shrewsbury, England, around the Benedictine abbey of Saints Peter and Paul during the civil war between King Stephen and Empress Matilda.
In the remote Welsh mountain village of Gwytherin lies the grave of Saint Winifred. Now, in 1137, the ambitious head of Shrewsbury Abbey has decided to acquire the sacred remains for his Benedictine order. Native Welshman Brother Cadfael is sent on the expedition to translate and finds the rustic villagers of Gwytherin passionately divided by the Benedictine’s offer for the saint’s relics. Canny, wise, and all too wordly, he isn’t surprised when this taste for bones leads to bloody murder.
In a culture obsessed with what is newest and fastest, book lovers remain among the few people who happily move backward. My reading is never confined by the calendar. I can affirm that the finest authors continue speaking long after they are gone. Their voices remain on the shelf.
Last evening James wanted to visit a bookstore. He found Les Misérables, and I found Irwin Shaw’s Rich, Poor Man (for $1.95, the original price in 1969), which was a blockbuster ABC miniseries when I was a teenager.
There is something wonderfully hopeful about searching for a new book and finding a long-forgotten author. If you are like me in those moments, one question demands an answer. How did I not know about this book or series of books until now? How did that author escape my attention?
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