|
|
| photo: Brian Patton | |
Kim Dinan is the author of the travel adventure The Yellow Envelope: One Gift, Three Rules, and a Life-Changing Journey Around the World (Sourcebooks, April 4, 2017). Her writing has appeared in magazines such as Parks and Recreation, Northwest Travel, Trailer Life, Go Explore and OnTrak. She has backpacked to more than 25 countries on five continents and called India, Mexico and numerous campgrounds around the U.S. home. She lives in Ohio with her husband and daughter.
On your nightstand now:
At the moment I'm reading Diana, Herself by Martha Beck and Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance, a book I'm particularly interested in, having grown up in Ohio with parents from Appalachia. I've also got A Year with Rumi, which I read each morning before leaving bed. Stacked nearby are The Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks (I'm on a Rumi kick), The Places That Scare You by Pema Chödrön, The Writing Life by Marie Arana, Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv and about 14 children's books.
Favorite book when you were a child:
I lived for There's a Nightmare in my Closet by Mercer Mayer. Something about the dark, moody illustrations and the idea that a terrifying beast could be lurking behind every closed door. Now that I think about it, I'm surprised I didn't grow up to write horror. Later I obsessively read every single book in the Baby-Sitters Club series, and in high school I read Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, which started my lifelong obsession with the Appalachian Trail.
Your top five authors:
That's a hard one to answer but I'll read anything by Joan Didion, Jon Krakauer, Paulo Coelho, Cheryl Strayed and John Irving.
Book you've faked reading:
I faked reading The Chosen by Chaim Potok, which got me kicked out of AP English in high school. I felt so guilty for so many years that I bought it as an adult and tried it again but still couldn't get through it. I guess that one just wasn't meant to be.
Book you're an evangelist for:
The first book I ever really loved for its beauty was Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. But the books I continuously recommend are Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris, a book so funny that my husband and I still talk about it weekly, and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce, which just sticks with me for both its simplicity and the way Joyce captures the joy and clarity that comes from taking really, really long walks.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I do this all the time, especially if the book is on the sale rack. Basically if it has mountains, bears or any kind of foreboding wilderness scenery on the cover I will buy it.
Book you hid from your parents:
The only book I hid from my parents was my angsty teenage diary--and they found it anyway.
Book that changed your life:
One evening many moons ago I picked up a book called U-Turn: What if You Woke Up One Morning and Realized You Were Living the Wrong Life by Bruce Grierson off of the sale rack at Powell's. I read it on the bus back and forth to my desk job and it gave me heart palpitations. I was living the wrong life and I knew it, but the thought of changing my life felt way too scary. In the book, Grierson chronicles over 300 people he calls "U-turners," who risked everything to "answer a sudden wake-up call." That book made me believe that maybe I could make a U-turn, too. A few years later I sold my house and all my stuff, quit my job and left on a three-year journey around the world, which I eventually chronicled in The Yellow Envelope.
Favorite line from a book:
I have notebooks full of my favorite quotes so this is an impossible task, but I'll pick three at random:
"You don't have to live forever, you just have to live." --Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
"Sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living." --Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
"Of course I wanted to know. I was a writer. I wanted to know everything." --Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
Now that I'm reading those quotes at the same time I can see they perfectly sum up my relentless desire to do everything at once.
Five books you'll never part with:
The Polar Express, a book that I read as a child every night on Christmas Eve, and that I now read to my daughter each year.
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. I buy at least five copies of this book every year to mail to any creative person I know who's stuck in a rut.
Otherwise, I've parted with all of my books at one time or another. I love having books around, but I'll also happily give them away. Great books should be shared.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen. When I'm traveling, I like to read books that are set in that place or written by an author from the area. When I read The Snow Leopard for the first time, I was on a month-long trek in the Himalayas, and Matthiessen's book was the perfect companion--it's beautiful, reverent and filled with yearning. I can't think of my time in those mountains without also thinking of that book. I've read the book again since, and I know I'll be back in the Himalaya someday, but I'll never get to do both again for the first time. It was complete magic.