Some Books You Need to Read More Than Once...

August 23, 2010

"My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchanges for all the treasures of India."- Edward Gibson.

It’s not like it’s a big secret – people who work in libraries are people who love to read. Ask almost anyone who works in one and they will tell you that they love to read.  I’m no exception.  I’ve loved to read since I don’t know when… and over the years, there are some books that I find myself reading again and again. It doesn’t matter how many times I read them, each time is as thrilling and as exciting as the first. The best place to find books like this? My choice is Adult Non-Fiction.

The first book that fell into this category for me was Roar of the Heavens by Stefen Betchtel. The first part of the book deals with the formation, perpetration, arrival, and ultimately the destruction of the Gulf Coast by the arrival of a fearsome hurricane named Camille. The only category five hurricane to make landfall on the Gulf Coast in the Twentieth Century, Camille decimated the area, destroying everything in it’s path – and that’s only half of the story. As Camille moved inland, it turned and wreaked another path of destruction in rural Virginia. Camille’s second wave of attack on the civilization is the second half of this story. Still a hurricane, Camille brought record rainfall to sleepy hamlets along creeks that she turned into raging rivers to rival the Mississippi. 

The second book in this series of my constant re-reads is The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim DeFede. When the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 occurred, the airspace of the United States was closed. The trouble was, many international flights were already inbound to the U.S. from places like Munich, London, and Paris. The pilots of these planes were given a choice: go back to the city of departure, or land in the sleepy hamlet of Gander, Newfoundland. Having been to Newfoundland myself, (though not to Gander) this small city in the northern part of the province would be roughly the size of Leavenworth, Kansas. Most planes chose to land in Gander. When the world came to Gander, the people of Gander rolled out the welcome mat for thousands of stranded passengers who had no idea why the diversion had taken place. The people of the world found themselves housed in church activity rooms, in community lodges and some people even let complete strangers stay in their homes. This is the wonderful story of how a small community of people rallied together in a time of need for people they would never have met.