Musing Monday...By The Sea, By The Sea, By The Beautiful Sea

Yep, it is Monday, so let's check out this week's Musing from Miz B at  at Should Be Reading.

This week’s musing asks…

Have you ever found a book out of the blue, read it, and then had it be surprisingly good — one that stuck with you for years? If so, what book was it?

I think, unlike a lot of people answering this question, the book I thought of is not one that I read when I was a kid. Although I must say that The Hobbit had a lasting effect on my imagination...I still want to live in a hobbit house with those round doors.
No, when I read that question, one book, a book I read just last year, popped into my mind. It is Safe From the Sea by Peter Geye, his debut novel. I am not sure were I heard of it. It might have been another review, it could have been an ad online or a recommendation from Amazon or Library Thing. And I must say that I was encouraged to by it, as we have mused about in previous MMs, by that cover. Yes, I do love books about the sea, on the sea, about people who love the sea..

But actually, this book does not take place on the sea. Water yes, sea so. The majority of the book is set in two places, both past and present, on Lake Superior and at a cabin on a lake in northern Minnesota.

"Set against the powerful lakeshore landscape of northern Minnesota, Safe from the Sea is a heartfelt novel in which a son returns home to reconnect with his estranged and dying father thirty-five years after the tragic wreck of a Great Lakes ore boat that the father only partially survived and that has divided them emotionally ever since."

I liked this book a great deal.
In fact, it was actually one of my favorite books of the year.
But what about it sticks with me? I have to assume it is the way the places in the book are described. That cabin at the lake is an image that actually comes to my mind from time to time to this day. Not that it is so spectacular..no, it's not, but something about it just struck something in me. A really good book.

Of course, that raises a point I have discussed before, about the 'memories' from all the books we have read in our lifetime. I have read thousands and thousands of books, each adding just a bit more, a little bit or a bigger bit, to me. To my brain, to my consciousness, my unconsciousness. It is a little odd when you think of it...maybe you remember something and then it occurs to you that it might be something you once read rather than something you actually experienced. Personally, I still consider it my experience, just a slightly different sort of experience.

I must say that I am happy to see that Mr. Geye has another book coming out this year in October, called The Lighthouse Road. Golly, does that sound like a book I might like?
Maybe..lol
By the way Mr Geye, if you should happen to read this and you want someone to read your new book and help get some early reviews out there, let me just throw my hat in the ring!

And now, for a musical interlude, Mickey and his Friends with a nautical tune...