An unusual book

Nothing really happens in "A Book of Matches," except a middle-aged textbook editor gets up at dawn to light a fire in his country house and record his thoughts in a diary. This could be fascinating, or very boring. The book starts like this:

"Good morning," Emmett begins, "it's January and it's 4:17 am, and I'm going to sit here in the dark."

Something about "A Book of Matches" appealed to me, because I like to putter around the house in the early morning, drinking coffee and writing in the quiet. I also liked Nicholson Baker's writing in his recent novel, "The Anthologist."

Our lives are made up of ordinary events. Most of us are not trekking in the Himalayas, climbing the great pyramids, or studying rare butterflies in the Amazon. So...it can be a big deal when the swallows come back to the barn in the spring. Or your old horse follows you around, just because she wants to. Or the crocus blooms. Or a baby smiles. Or the thousand other tiny things that make up an ordinary day. The point of the book is this: only when we pause to observe and record the "trivial" does life have satisfaction. And this is my early morning exercise, too. I know how difficult it is for a mediocre writer to describe ordinary things, using plain language.

Well, Baker is a fine writer and uses crystal clear prose that is more like poetry. Through "Emmett," he writes with reverence about things like how his fire starts, the family pet duck, and a trip to Home Depot. This book won't appeal to everyone, but I thought it was like a beautiful short story without any plot. And after plowing through the "Wolf Hall" novel for weeks on end, it was a reading mini-vacation!