Mary Ellen Humphrey

Mary Ellen Humphrey invites us to come along as she recounts her thousand or more hikes to the summit of New Hampshire's Mount Major, which overlooks Lake Winnepesaukee. Indeed, the experience of reading this book feels as if we've joined her for a discursive ramble that jumps from rock families, trauma, daddy longlegs (and why she doesn't fear these, as she does spiders), abuse, and the tyranny of to-do lists.
These may sound like disparate topics, but the collection mirrors how my mind works as I hike a familiar path. And I understand why Mary Ellen's mantra as she starts her ascent each time is "connect the dots." The long-term effect of her free-association thoughts is the healing of post-traumatic stress disorder. A bent tree that she unexpectedly strikes with her head before noticing its odd shape assumes totemic significance; it correlates to the person who inflicted the most severe trauma in her life. Her act of embracing the tree is rising above the hurt.
I couldn't help but admire the author's resilience as I read. Her story is a testament to the power of the human spirit.
For this book, I'm inventing a new rating. I usually use three stars as my default to indicate a good book. In this way, I have four and five stars available to indicate outstanding books. After all, as Samuel Johnson said—long before everything was amazing—to praise everything is to praise nothing.
This has left me with a dilemma in reviewing books by personal friends (not surprising that anyone who writes has many writer friends). First of all, I'm not objective about friends' books (nor do I want to be). Whoever writes and publishes can't help but admire anyone who achieves that. It's not easy. Secondly, I'm often the first to review a friend's book. If I say it's good and give it my "good read" rating of three stars, it takes many other higher ratings to average up to four or more stars. With big sellers by authors I don't know, my rating doesn't matter that much. How much effect did the two stars I gave Midnight Library have on that book's average? But with friends, it's different.
So, introducing my new rating: a friendship five.… (meer)