Executive Times
		2007 Book Reviews
		Leap Days: Chronicles of a Midlife Move by Katherine Lanpher
Rating:			***
		(Recommended)
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	Surprising Katherine Lanpher’s new book, Leap Days: Chronicles of a Midlife Move, is a delight to read. A collection of essays combine to become a memoir. There are times when the book is laugh-out-loud witty, and at other times it presents a page turning emotional tautness that can take your breath away. Trained as a journalist, and most recently a talk show personality, Lanpher left Minnesota on leap day in 2004 to co-host Al Franken’s radio show on Air America. The book is that and more. We watch her reflect on her marriage, childlessness, her Midwestern upbringing, and trying to make a home in Manhattan. With each essay, there’s a richness in revelation and expression that keeps readers engaged. Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning of the essay titled, “Heaven,” pp. 109-111: This is what heaven looks like: You are surrounded by beauty. When you look up, you see puffy clouds tinged with rose and coral. You’re not alone but you’re still by yourself. You are perfectly content. It’s Heaven, after all, so you can have practically any book you want. And laptops are banned from the last three reading tables. The main reading room at the New York Public Library is my version of a holy place. I sit in the back of the south end, so the room stretches in front of me, rows upon rows of tables with shaded lamps, three-tiered chandeliers dropping down from the ceiling, color blocks of reference books lining the walls. In the middle of this grand salon of literature is an arched wooden divider that lends the room an ecclesiastical air, heightened by the ornate moldings on the ceiling, which surround the murals of those pastel-touched clouds. People sit in pewlike benches near the front of the room, looking at a digital screen that displays the numbers assigned to book requests. They study the screen with such purposeful intensity that they could be looking at a train schedule, waiting for the express, or waiting, perhaps, for their celestial assignment. From my perch in the back, I observe the people around me. The woman next to me is diligently copying sentences from Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800. At the table across from mine, a woman is holding a sheaf of handwritten pages, her mouth held in a wide stretch as she reads. A few tables up, a clutch of schoolboys in navy blazers whisper fiercely to one another and clap their hands over their mouths to muffle laughter. A man with his hair in short dreadlocks shuffles around, a turquoise-and-blue blanket underneath his backpack. His face is slightly confused, you get the feeling that he is living on a slightly different planet from the one the rest of us wake up to — yet he alarms no one. People see him and study him for a minute and then let him be. That, I decide, is the music of this room — the sound of letting things be. You hear the occasional scrape of a chair, the paper-on-paper slide of turning pages, the small metallic clicks produced by fingers on keyboards. Pens scratch on paper, books thump into return bins. When people talk, it is sotto voce, the way you would in a house of worship. Reading is akin to worship, an intensely private act of focused meditation that can be achieved in a communal setting. These days, sitting in a library and reading is the closest I get to flirting with the eternal questions and verities, although I talk to God all the time, in conversations that range from panicky entreaties of “ohpleaseohpleaseohplease” to whispers of gratitude for more peaceful moments such as, say, walking along the Hudson. I talk to God even though I’m not sure God exists: one of us has a commitment problem. I was raised in the Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod (if the title confuses you, don’t worry; I didn’t know what a “synod” was for years myself) and confirmed by a pastor named Eldor Haake. He was a man of staunch faith; all you had to do was look at him to know it. With his silver-and-black hair, dark brows, and grim visage, and with his pastoral robes, he was, literally, a man of black and white. Either you were saved by the one true church or you were damned. Women were subservient to men; homosexuality was a sin. When I was a teenager, a visiting vicar climbed up to the pulpit one day and began his sermon with a joke — a joke! — which right there put him out as different. The joke went like this: A man dies and goes to Heaven, where St. Peter is giving him a tour. He notices a large red-velvet curtain that hangs over one section of Heaven, obscuring it from the rest. “What’s that for?” he asks. “Shhhh,” the angel replies, “that’s for the Missouri Synod Lutherans. They think they’re the only ones up here.” That vicar didn’t last long, as I recall. I was continually surprised by Lanpher’s essays. In Leap Days she reveals her life with an honesty, humility and wit that make each new page a pleasure to read. Steve Hopkins, January 25, 2007
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	2007 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for this book appeared in the February 2007 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Leap Days.htm For Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 Phone: 708-466-4650 • Fax: 708-386-8687 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com www.hopkinsandcompany.com