I have had a good reading year to the midpoint – 40 books! (43 counting July, so far). A few thoughts in the rearview mirror —
Back in January, I read Counting the Cost by Jill Duggar…..I would not normally have picked this up, but I have a weird little sliding doors sort of connection to the Duggars, which I discovered when my high school boyfriend’s name appeared in national news during the Josh Duggar trials. And also, last fall my family of origin sat together and watched through the Shiny Happy People documentary, recalling some of our memories of long ago church experiences which took us into the outer edges of Bill Gothard’s misuse of Christianity. (I even attended a Basic Life Institutes Seminar with the aforementioned boyfriend!) Jill Duggar’s memoir was particularly interesting to me for these reasons.
Speaking of Sliding Doors, Sophie Cousen’s The Good Part showed up in several of my bookish feeds, teasing me with the kind of description that intrigues me: a woman in her early 20s wishes to escape the hard, getting-started parts of adulthood – economics, relationships, etc. and through a time travel mechanism, the story skips her ahead to “the good parts” where these things have all been sorted out. I requested the book from the library and soon found myself caught up in this easy-to-read romance sort of a book. I am always a sucker for stories about how one choice instead of another changes the course of things – And what is the goal, anyway? This story did a good job of presenting the questions and making me think. A few months later I read it again when I used it as my pick for book club. It made for good discussion.
And speaking of – what is the goal, anyway?? In February I read Sara Hendren’s book, What Can A Body Do?:How We Meet the Built World. I’d seen Austin Kleon reference this book as one of his favorite reads in 2023 and then I heard Sara Hendren in conversations with a couple of my favorite podcasters — this with Amy Julia Becker and this with Krista Tippet. Making sense of our lives as we inhabit our particular bodies is the work not only for ourselves but indeed for the ways we can create communities of belonging in relation to others. (Side trail – I feel this fits squarely into Richard Dahlstrom’s recent post on Shalom vs Domination.)
In February, I read Eileen Garvin’s book The Music of Bees and in the book club discussion, I of course made my opinion clear about what I felt were “too tidy” elements of the story, but I generally enjoyed the book and its thoughtful explorations of disappointment, loss, and grief. My audible version of the book did not have the author’s note at the end so when someone in book group read this part out loud at the end of our discussion and I heard threads of gratitude and grace regarding the realities of the author’s life experiences, I announced, “well! I’d read her nonfiction!!” To which, someone quickly replied, she has one! True to my word, the next day I checked out How to Be A Sister and found it was quite easy to see themes in Garvin’s fiction drawn from her experience with real life. In June I read her brand new release, Crow Talk. Her books may not land on a short list of favorites for me, but her stories are engaging, and the themes resonate with me. And it’s fun to see all the Oregon references she includes.
February into March I read several books of theological exploration. Richard Rohr’s exploration of the Sermon on the Mount in Jesus’ Alternative Plan, Walter Brueggeman’s classic, reissued in 40th anniversary, The Prophetic Imagination, and Brian Zahnd’s latest, The Wood Between the Worlds. All good reading, thoughtful, and add layers of understanding in the ways I seek to move through this world. Also in March, I listened again to Dorothy Sayers’ The Man Born to Be King – I discovered this through the BBC full drama broadcast version last year and I believe it will easily be an annual Easter time listen for me for years to come. My dad gave me the annotated edition last fall and it offered interesting insight as I listened this year.
April included a re-read of YellowFace. I read again only to jog my memory for book club discussion. I didn’t really care for it much when I read it last year and felt the same this time around. (Apart from the point of obvious satirical commentary, I think a good story comparison might be the book I listened to last summer – Who Is Maud Dixon, which I did enjoy.)
In April, I read the middle grade book Olivetti, and while I thought it wrapped to tidily (maybe it needed to for the audience?), the explorations of grief were resonate. I really enjoyed the story structure that used a typewriter as a main character. (Speaking of typewriter books – this reminded me of Notes from a Public Typewriter which I pulled off the library shelf at random last year, and really enjoyed.)
(Speaking of pulling off the shelf at random, I usually go to the library simply to pick up the books I have put on hold, rather than to browse the stacks. When I chose The Good Part for my turn at book club discussion, it was not a typical read for me – and that led me to ask the group of women, how do you find the books you read? I was surprised at how many of these ladies browse the stacks and take things home! I decided to try it myself more often. But that’s a whole other story.)
Also in April, I read Travelers to Unimaginable Lands, which was a good read on the mental health of a caregiver in relation to dementia. For a quick dip into that content – see this article by the author published in Scientific American.
Also in April – Under the Henfluence by Portland based author Tove Danovich. Which was a delightful read, in spite of having just lost 6 of my chickens in a backyard massacre. Reading this book, I felt seen in my love for the girls. I miss them a lot. Still.
The other day my sister pulled out her phone and played a YouTube clip for my boys of what it sounded like back when we had to connect to the internet with Dial Up. They were humored. In May I read Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation and felt anxious all the way through. I don’t bother to recommend this book to my peers. We already know this stuff. We got caught raising kids during this technological revolution and we did our best against the swirling tide. We grieve the losses.
Speaking of grieving the losses – my re-read of Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle was good as the first time around (more than 15 years ago) and I kept thinking about how many things have not changed over all this time, the systems we are embedded in have continued on down a path of consumption rather than care for the good of creation – plants, animals, people. All. How might the world be different if we would take this stuff to heart? I was planting my garden as I listened this time. On we go. Still planting into the future as a practice of hope.
I thought Jim Stump’s book The Sacred Chain was an excellent, accessible exploration of what it means to be human. I will read it again.
In May I also really liked Skin & Bones by Renee Watson. She is the author of Piecing Me Together which won a Newbery Honor. This is Watson’s first novel for adults and I recommend it. I enjoy the many Portland references in her work. Long after I read this book, I found myself thinking through its explorations of motherhood – both in the being and the having.
I do a lot of/most of my reading audibly – I take it with me as I work in the yard and June was full of yardwork and gardening, which made it a very heavy reading month!
I really enjoyed Sipsworth – a sweet story of an old woman without much left to live for until she befriends a mouse in the process of trapping it to get it out of her house. As the story unfolds, a community forms around the care of this mouse. This happened to be resonant timing as I was also re-reading Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal in which Gawande shines light on the importance of people needing purpose if they are to continue having reason to live. (I also came across Gawande – in this interview replay with Krista Tippet last month and their discussion of the question: What Makes a Good Day? left me thinking….which I may investigate in a future post.)
Reading Sipsworth made me think of Ralph S. Mouse and so I revisted The Mouse & The Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary and pulled that Beverly Cleary thread a little further along my lifelong reading journey.
Other June highlights – Patrick Bringley’s memoir All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me was an unexpected whim of a reading choice for me. I saw it reviewed somewhere and so downloaded from the library and listened straight through – I enjoyed it thoroughly, and recommend it. When Bringley’s brother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Bringley quit his job as writer for The New Yorker and took a job as a museum guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His journey through grief, as he shares observations and insights from a decade spent in this place are a gift.
In June I finally picked up Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner. It’s been on my “to read” list for a very long time and for good reason, it turns out. I really liked it. In July I went on to read his Angle of Repose and expect I will continue to work my way through his books. I think I’m in the right season of life to read his stories, reflecting on the stuff that makes a life. In a bit of googling after reading, I discovered that. Wendell Berry was a student of Stegner.
And speaking of reflections on the stuff that makes a life – I enjoyed Catherine Newman’s book Sandwich in which she tells a tale from the perspective of a menopausal mother on annual vacation with her husband and young adult children+partner and also her own parents. I found it a witty exploration of true things. And toward the end of the book – this: “And this may be the only reason we were put on this earth. To say to each other, I know how you feel. To say, Same. To say, I understand how hard it is to be a parent, a kid.”
(I’ve tried a couple times to read Newman’s We all Want Impossible Things and haven’t got traction, in spite of glowing reviews by many. )
And finally, I’ll end this meandering trail with this –One recent Friday afternoon I stopped by the library to get my holds, and paused at the new book shelf to browse, as is my practice now thanks to aforementioned book club discussion. That day I pulled a book titled Mostly What God Does by Savannah Guthrie off the shelf and started flipping through. This book was not previously on my radar at all — the author (tv morning news anchor) on this topic would not normally be. I put it back on the shelf. And then picked it right back up and took it to the counter and checked it out. I took it home and read straight through. It was the right book at the right time :::: Mostly What God Does……Is Love You. Keep a life with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that (Ephesians 5:1-2, MSG).
Anchors Hold