Steve Himmer

A strange little book about meditation and appreciating the quiet, small things in life.

Finch begins the story as an office drone who has a boring job and a boring, unsatisfying life. He eventually falls into the opportunity to become an estate hermit for an eccentric millionaire and over time he becomes a grizzled, skinny, nearly blind hermit who lives off the land in his bee-loud glade and finds that his spartan life is more valuable that money.

A book that highlights the beauty of meditation, nature, silence, and connections (however brief) with other people.

It's not a book for everybody, but if you've ever daydreamed about wandering around in the backcountry of our National Parks or retreating to Walden Pond, I think you'll enjoy it very much.

(I TOALLY want to be somebody's hermit now!)

… (mais)

While I think this was a well written book, it's the subject matter of the story that's made me not rate it higher. I don't really like reading books or watching movies that try to teach me moral or political lessons, call me shallow, but that's just the way I am.
This is the story of Finch, a casper milquetoast of a man, who agrees to live his life at the whim of a very wealthy man, Mr. Crane for 5,000,000 bucks. Finch's new position?, Mute Hermit.
Reminiscent of the movie 'Cast Away', our story revolves around Finch's adjustment to his new environment, but because of the written word we are able to follow his thoughts as he goes through this experience and finds peace in the world of nature that surrounds him.
The problem with the narrative for me was the lack of conflict. Finch doesn't care about money, he doesn't even seek out the Hermit gig, he is pretty much just a drone who waits for someone, anyone, to steer him in the next direction and so Crane is just the next person to take him by the arm and lead him down the garden path, literally.
… (mais)

Fram by Steve Himmer
Available January 13, 2015
I received an ARC from the publisher.
A fantastic romp with an ending that couldn’t make sense any other way. Oscar, a bureaucrat made dry and brittle by a life of paperwork and duplicate copies, lives in his imagination. He nurtures a childhood dream of being an arctic explorer, something he vicariously fulfills by working at the U.S. Bureau of Ice Prognostication, an agency created to counter the Soviet’s Cold War threat. The agency never died, nor did Oscar’s dreams.
He spends his days living those dreams by imagining what might be discovered in the Arctic then generating the reams of paperwork to prove that these “discoveries” are real. Towns, schools, mining companies and paper mills, even hot springs are all drawn onto the vast emptiness of the ice. At home, he communes with decades of old National Geographic magazines that trumpeted the original polar explorers’ journeys.
When Oscar is sent on an actual mission to this place he has only ever dreamed about, he becomes entangled in a snarl of espionage and rival agencies. As he digs deeper into the secrets and strangeness, he discovers that the arctic expanse of his marriage has been as important an element in his life as the actual region. At the end, readers will know that there could have been no other resolution to the bizarre journey that is Oscar’s life.
… (mais)