The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles; and The Elephant Whisperer: My Life with the Herd in the African Wild by Lawrence Anthony

2021, Simon and Schuster; 2009, Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's Press

If you’re in school like I am, vacation is just days away, and with it summer reading— stretching out on the couch, folding into a sand chair calf-deep at low-tide, propped up in bed each night, turning page after page, promising yourself, “Just one more chapter.”

Perhaps impatient for the days ahead, I recently raced through a pair of pleasurable and easy summertime reads.

In The Paris Library, written by Janet Skeslien Charles and published in 2021, we take in the alternating and ultimately intersecting stories of Odile in 1939 Paris, and Lily, a teenager living in Montana in 1983. The book’s primary plot centers on Odile, who against her father’s wishes, has taken a job at the American Library, a real-life institution where the author once served as the programs’ director and where she learned of its wartime history.

Odile’s is a story of friendship and betrayal set amidst the backdrop of the Nazi Occupation. For me, the story comes especially alive in the rooms of the library, which itself becomes a character in the story. I could picture the succor offered its patrons, especially the fussy ones depicted, and I could easily hear the voices of the personalities running the place, several of whom the author modeled after actual historical figures.

Learning about the existence of the library— established in 1920, it would have been just 19 years in operation at the time of the story— I could imagine being a patron either back then or even today, when the library continues to be a rich literary resource to the City of Light. In 2020, Amanda Gordon was its writer in residence and before her, Geraldine Brooks. Just a few weeks ago, the institution celebrated its 102nd anniversary, attended by none other than Ann Patchett.

The American Library in Paris—perhaps a stop on some future visit.

I picked up The Elephant Whisperer: My Life with the Herd in the African Wild after professing my love for pachyderms to a fellow pickleball player. She stopped me as we walked off the court.

“You have to read it.”

Why not? I thought.

Published by the South African wildlife conservationist Lawrence Anthony three years before his death, the book’s afterword mentions that the herd continued to visit his house on the South African reserve anytime a new elephant was born there. Although the creatures had not seen him in years, they still somehow considered him an honorary member of the herd, to whom the youngsters needed to be introduced.

The story of the elephant herd and Thula Thula, Anthony’s reserve, did not commence on any such sweet notes. Rather, Anthony had been contacted in desperation because the herd of seven was on the brink of being exterminated due to its rogue behavior. The creatures had recently witnessed their matriarch and an offspring being shot. Enraged and desperate, they displayed absolute aggression at the least provocation and were certainly doomed unless Anthony agreed to take them.

The Elephant Whisperer tells how Anthony and his staff manage to get the seven elephants inside the reserve; how they deal with breakouts and standoffs, and how, against all odds, Anthony forms a bond with the herd.

The elephants, however, are not easy guests.

They turn over Land Rovers.

Occupied Land Rovers.

Brought into the house for care, a newborn elephant with health challenges has free range, including in the kitchen, where a succession of new sets of dishes are purchased due to the baby’s errant trunk.

As it learns to walk, the baby is escorted around the grounds by the gardener, who protects the creature’s sensitive skin by holding an umbrella to shade it.

Elephant-obsessed or not, most animal lovers will enjoy this read.

In 2007, Anthony published another book, Babylon’s Ark. In it he recounts attempts to save creatures in the Baghdad Zoo during the U.S. led invasion of Iraq. Baghdad? Animal rescue?

On it.

Happy reading.