The Quiet Zone by Stephen Kurczy 📚

Liz and I are starting to host occasional white elephant-style book swaps, where we get a group of friends together, each share about why we like the book we brought, and then trade. Our most recent book swap, a few weeks ago, yielded me this book! Which I immediately devoured over the course of several days. Thanks to my friend Oliver for the recommendation! And for your copy of the book 😉.

This book is about the National Radio Quiet Zone in west Virginia. The author is careful to disclaim that much has already been written about the NRQZ, but I for one had never heard of it. It makes for a fun read because the NRQZ is populated by -- and attracts -- several different kinds of people: local west Virginians, obviously, as well as scientists who work at the fancy government radio telescope, hippies who want to unplug & reconnect with nature, and a group of literal neo-Nazis in search large tracts of unsurvielled, cheap land, on which to build their compound.

The author is a good writer, writing on an interesting subject. It was an engaging read. The book's written in the first person, and I found the author's personality a bit annoying, but that I read the book so quickly in spite of that really does speak to the strength of the writing.

The thing that has stuck with me most since closing the book was a comment the author made about the RELATIVE nature of quiet. He writes that, several days after moving from noisy Brooklyn to the NRQZ, something as simple as a car driving by was enough to pull him out of his concentration. It reminds me of something Thomas Merton said - that he had for years dreamed of the solitude he would experience once he entered the monastery... but that as soon as he got to the monastery, he started daydreaming about a hermitage where he could truly he alone.

I guess that means we need to make our own quiet, from the inside out! 🙂