Hello! This is my old blog. Feel free to check out my book recommendations over the years, below, or head over to my current Substack for an updated list of publications and intermittent posting.
Dec 7, 2022
Nov 30, 2016
Top Reads 2016
Business: An essay of mine that appeared on this blog last year is up at Art House America today: "Key of David." In many ways, I feel it's even truer now.
Pleasure: I'm putting in this year's Top Reads list early, because I got an enormous stack of new books for my (recent and milestone) birthday, and, if years past are an indication, December and January will probably carry their own weight in books read that I want to talk about. First, let me talk about these.
Racism 101 by Nikki Giovanni
and
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
As I mentioned in my essay on reading Nikki Giovanni, there's that wonderful benefit some books have of stockpiling a list of facts, people, and historical events to turn around and research and read more about, to understand more deeply, or maybe for the first time. Both of these books have done that for me, and it isn't just to satisfy my curious mind. It isn't okay that I, being white, have understood so little of the American experience of my neighbors, fellow citizens whose skin looks different from mine. Both of these books open up different worlds to me, setting in straighter font a history I've learned slantwise. They let me listen in on a life I haven't - and can't have - lived, and where I have ears to hear, they have taught me, and hopefully changed me.
In this House of Brede by Rumer Godden
and
Seven Women, Chapter 7: Mother Teresa by Eric Metaxas
In this House of Brede is not an intentionally religious book, which is fine; most of the books I read aren't. But it is notable because I have never before read a novel that has effectively made me want to obey God, live less for myself, and serve others more. This book is about the spiritual commitments and relational tensions (which Godden gets just right) of a group of Benedictine nuns living together in an enclosed monastery. It is fair to say that it changed me. Read in conjunction with the Mother Teresa biography in Metaxas's Seven Women (which is the final chapter of that book*), Brede hammered home the supreme calling of losing one's life. Read in conjunction with Giovanni's Racism 101, it revolutionized me. These three books together have started something inside of me that I can't stop, and wouldn't want to if I could. There is irony there, because other of Godden's novels come through with stilted, forced narratives, and even racist characterizations. Perhaps there was some special grace on Brede that made it something other than even the author intended. I don't know. But that is how it worked upon me. And I'm not the only one.
*If I hadn't been reading for a book club, Chapter 1, Joan of Arc, would have been (boring and unrelatable) enough to make me put the book down. I'm glad I kept going, mostly for the little-known story of Hannah More. And, of course, Mother Teresa.
"Disneyland" by Annie Dillard, collected in The Abundance
Isn't America a weird place? I mean. really bright and shiny and loud and money-stuffed and all the elements that should set off warning bells that ring of falsehood and cheap imitation, but we eat it up and drink it up and pay for more, more, more of plastic entertainment and brief happinesses. What could show forth such an odd Bait we've all hook-line-sinkered but an account of Chinese writers visiting Disneyland, written by Annie Dillard? I recommend this essay not only for its tellingness, but also for its humor. Classic Dillard.
Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt
This stay-up-late-reading young adult novel doesn't gloss over real pain or some of the terrible relational fallout of life in this world, and it develops a main character with very real emotional depth, but it also includes essays into the artwork of John James Audubon and baseball references I'd surely get if I were into baseball and a bizarre theatrical rendition of Jane Eyre. This book was troubling and fun and funny and moving. It left me at once rent and hopeful. Gary Schmidt knows what he's doing. Along similar lines, may I also recommend Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell?
Joy in the Morning by Betty Smith
Oh, Lord. This book is so much more than I expected it to be. More beautiful, more heartbreaking, more nerve-wracking, more funny, more identifiable. I confess I have tried A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by the same author, thinking I should like it, and could never get through it. I approached Joy thinking I probably wouldn't like it, and couldn't put it down. I wanted to reread it immediately and as often as possible afterward. Something about the real humanity, the real pulse of relationship, that Smith gets just right here. It's wonderful. And the main character, Annie, is more than wonderful.
Poverty Creek Journal by Thomas Gardner
Because I love this book of prose poems so much, I have been treating it with a mean neglect. I want to write the best review; I want to interview Tom Gardner and take a walk with him on the Blacksburg, Virginia, trail that is essentially a main character in this book. Both of those intentions keep staying on the horizon instead of coming closer, and so for now, I will say this much: I go to this thin volume in much the same way I go to Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. I hope I can say more on Poverty in the future. It deserves that much. It is beautiful.
*Last year's Top Reads list is here. I'm still thinking about those books all the time.
Pleasure: I'm putting in this year's Top Reads list early, because I got an enormous stack of new books for my (recent and milestone) birthday, and, if years past are an indication, December and January will probably carry their own weight in books read that I want to talk about. First, let me talk about these.
Racism 101 by Nikki Giovanni
and
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
As I mentioned in my essay on reading Nikki Giovanni, there's that wonderful benefit some books have of stockpiling a list of facts, people, and historical events to turn around and research and read more about, to understand more deeply, or maybe for the first time. Both of these books have done that for me, and it isn't just to satisfy my curious mind. It isn't okay that I, being white, have understood so little of the American experience of my neighbors, fellow citizens whose skin looks different from mine. Both of these books open up different worlds to me, setting in straighter font a history I've learned slantwise. They let me listen in on a life I haven't - and can't have - lived, and where I have ears to hear, they have taught me, and hopefully changed me.
In this House of Brede by Rumer Godden
and
Seven Women, Chapter 7: Mother Teresa by Eric Metaxas
In this House of Brede is not an intentionally religious book, which is fine; most of the books I read aren't. But it is notable because I have never before read a novel that has effectively made me want to obey God, live less for myself, and serve others more. This book is about the spiritual commitments and relational tensions (which Godden gets just right) of a group of Benedictine nuns living together in an enclosed monastery. It is fair to say that it changed me. Read in conjunction with the Mother Teresa biography in Metaxas's Seven Women (which is the final chapter of that book*), Brede hammered home the supreme calling of losing one's life. Read in conjunction with Giovanni's Racism 101, it revolutionized me. These three books together have started something inside of me that I can't stop, and wouldn't want to if I could. There is irony there, because other of Godden's novels come through with stilted, forced narratives, and even racist characterizations. Perhaps there was some special grace on Brede that made it something other than even the author intended. I don't know. But that is how it worked upon me. And I'm not the only one.
*If I hadn't been reading for a book club, Chapter 1, Joan of Arc, would have been (boring and unrelatable) enough to make me put the book down. I'm glad I kept going, mostly for the little-known story of Hannah More. And, of course, Mother Teresa.
"Disneyland" by Annie Dillard, collected in The Abundance
Isn't America a weird place? I mean. really bright and shiny and loud and money-stuffed and all the elements that should set off warning bells that ring of falsehood and cheap imitation, but we eat it up and drink it up and pay for more, more, more of plastic entertainment and brief happinesses. What could show forth such an odd Bait we've all hook-line-sinkered but an account of Chinese writers visiting Disneyland, written by Annie Dillard? I recommend this essay not only for its tellingness, but also for its humor. Classic Dillard.
Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt
This stay-up-late-reading young adult novel doesn't gloss over real pain or some of the terrible relational fallout of life in this world, and it develops a main character with very real emotional depth, but it also includes essays into the artwork of John James Audubon and baseball references I'd surely get if I were into baseball and a bizarre theatrical rendition of Jane Eyre. This book was troubling and fun and funny and moving. It left me at once rent and hopeful. Gary Schmidt knows what he's doing. Along similar lines, may I also recommend Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell?
Joy in the Morning by Betty Smith
Oh, Lord. This book is so much more than I expected it to be. More beautiful, more heartbreaking, more nerve-wracking, more funny, more identifiable. I confess I have tried A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by the same author, thinking I should like it, and could never get through it. I approached Joy thinking I probably wouldn't like it, and couldn't put it down. I wanted to reread it immediately and as often as possible afterward. Something about the real humanity, the real pulse of relationship, that Smith gets just right here. It's wonderful. And the main character, Annie, is more than wonderful.
Poverty Creek Journal by Thomas Gardner
Because I love this book of prose poems so much, I have been treating it with a mean neglect. I want to write the best review; I want to interview Tom Gardner and take a walk with him on the Blacksburg, Virginia, trail that is essentially a main character in this book. Both of those intentions keep staying on the horizon instead of coming closer, and so for now, I will say this much: I go to this thin volume in much the same way I go to Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. I hope I can say more on Poverty in the future. It deserves that much. It is beautiful.
*Last year's Top Reads list is here. I'm still thinking about those books all the time.
Jan 1, 2016
Top Reads 2015
The Wet Engine, by Brian Doyle
This little book (is it essays? vignettes? prose poetry? typical Brian Doyle) makes my heart soar and break, and more than a little bit. Doyle's son Liam, twin to his other son, born with a three-chambered heart, had open-heart surgeries twice as an infant. At the time of the book, Liam is nine and ten, and Doyle ruminates on hearts and heart patients, and he gets to know Liam's wonderful doctor and his wife, and even the doctor's mother (who was, interestingly, interned in one of the camps for Japanese American citizens in the 1940's), and other heart doctors, too, and he ponders so many, many beautiful and wrenching things. Read this book.
Greenwillow, by B.J. Chute
Laughing. Hard. Also, sometimes cringing. I loaned one of these books to a friend of mine, and she returned it unable to finish it, because it was so painfully close to her own wild life raising two young children that she couldn't find the humor. Set in the 1950's. Embellished memoir. (Eventually) four young children. A series of old New England houses. Kids running around playing, hither and yon. Cigarette-smoking mom! Many, many tales. In her darker fiction-writing life, Jackson wrote the story "The Lottery," which, in part, inspired The Hunger Games trilogy. These stories are nothing like so dark. They are very well-done. I had no trouble finding the humor.
"If You Want It To Last . . . " by Elizabeth Dark Wiley
If you can, get ahold of Ruminate Magazine's Issue 35, and read it all, of course, but pay special attention to this essay. Bonus: you'll get to read an essay by D.L. Mayfield, too, who thinks and writes about similarly worthwhile things, and who cares about refugees, and so her writings have my heart.
Not-Yets
Poverty Creek Journal, by Thomas Gardner
and
The Supper of the Lamb, by Robert Farrar Capon
I have spent the past year reading both of these books, but only slowly, very slowly, because they demand that kind of pace. So I haven't yet finished them. So I'll say more on them later. Oh, I will.
Honorable Mentions
All the Peter Wimsey stories by Dorothy Sayers, start to finish
Relegated to HonMen mostly because I read them so long ago, back last spring, that I can hardly remember them, but it was a fun project, and I especially liked The Nine Tailors (for having the best language and being most novel-like) and Murder Must Advertise (partly for being set in an ad agency, and I used to work in one).
The Ashtown Burials and The 100 Cupboards series by A.N. Wilson
Middle grades, fantasy, creepy, strange, sometimes gross, sometimes lovely. Crazy imaginative. Above all, the man knows how to write an ending. Wouldn't recommend for children easily freaked out. Couldn't stop reading, and so basically ignored my own children for the month of August. What does that say about me?
This little book (is it essays? vignettes? prose poetry? typical Brian Doyle) makes my heart soar and break, and more than a little bit. Doyle's son Liam, twin to his other son, born with a three-chambered heart, had open-heart surgeries twice as an infant. At the time of the book, Liam is nine and ten, and Doyle ruminates on hearts and heart patients, and he gets to know Liam's wonderful doctor and his wife, and even the doctor's mother (who was, interestingly, interned in one of the camps for Japanese American citizens in the 1940's), and other heart doctors, too, and he ponders so many, many beautiful and wrenching things. Read this book.
Greenwillow, by B.J. Chute
Strange little book. The language and the setting and the descriptions of various baked goods coming out of Dorrie's oven are lovely, and the characters (almost all of them) are a little bit silly, but not so much you can't take them seriously in important ways, and the calling to wander set upon the eldest men of the Briggs clan is odd, and the contrast between the two priests is telling, and the way it slowly turns into a love story is pleasant, and the final moments in which everything comes clear are exuberantly satisfying. It is, indeed, a fable. Well worth reading to the end, even if you find yourself a little uncertain round about the middle.
Surviving the Island of Grace, by Leslie Leyland Fields
Leslie Leyland Fields lives on a small island in Alaska. She moved out there in the late Seventies when she was first married. This is her story of that time, in which she learned to fish salmon with her new husband and his family, and to live on a tinier island for summers and also for one long winter, population only that family, and also of bits and pieces of her childhood - strange, interesting, poignant. I am not much like the author, and so I admire her strength and resolve. She opens up a world unknown to me and shows its beauties and dangers and unexpected commonalities with mine. Also, she responded to me when I sent her an email saying "thank you" for writing this book, very gracious and kind, and now I know there will be another memoir of her more recent years on the Alaskan island. I can't wait for it. (Sidenote: the recommendation for Surviving came to me by way of the blog of Christie Purifoy, whose book Roots and Sky will be out soon. I can't wait for that one, either.)
The Wingfeather Saga, by Andrew Peterson
And now I know it is possible for books - fiction books! - to expand my joy and willingness in this main job of mine, mothering. To show me how beautiful a thing it is I'm privileged to be doing, nourishing and supporting and helping these two small souls. That this comes by way of middle grades fantasy? Happy surprise. Mothering is really just a side theme in this series. It's mainly about three siblings and their adventures and journeys and discoveries and encounters with dragons and evil enemies from across the sea, and the like. The first two books I could have taken or left, but by the end of the second, and steady on through the third and fourth: beautiful, beautiful, well-crafted, well-thought story. There is so much love in these books. I love them so much.
Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons, by Shirley JacksonAnd now I know it is possible for books - fiction books! - to expand my joy and willingness in this main job of mine, mothering. To show me how beautiful a thing it is I'm privileged to be doing, nourishing and supporting and helping these two small souls. That this comes by way of middle grades fantasy? Happy surprise. Mothering is really just a side theme in this series. It's mainly about three siblings and their adventures and journeys and discoveries and encounters with dragons and evil enemies from across the sea, and the like. The first two books I could have taken or left, but by the end of the second, and steady on through the third and fourth: beautiful, beautiful, well-crafted, well-thought story. There is so much love in these books. I love them so much.
Laughing. Hard. Also, sometimes cringing. I loaned one of these books to a friend of mine, and she returned it unable to finish it, because it was so painfully close to her own wild life raising two young children that she couldn't find the humor. Set in the 1950's. Embellished memoir. (Eventually) four young children. A series of old New England houses. Kids running around playing, hither and yon. Cigarette-smoking mom! Many, many tales. In her darker fiction-writing life, Jackson wrote the story "The Lottery," which, in part, inspired The Hunger Games trilogy. These stories are nothing like so dark. They are very well-done. I had no trouble finding the humor.
"If You Want It To Last . . . " by Elizabeth Dark Wiley
If you can, get ahold of Ruminate Magazine's Issue 35, and read it all, of course, but pay special attention to this essay. Bonus: you'll get to read an essay by D.L. Mayfield, too, who thinks and writes about similarly worthwhile things, and who cares about refugees, and so her writings have my heart.
Poverty Creek Journal, by Thomas Gardner
and
The Supper of the Lamb, by Robert Farrar Capon
I have spent the past year reading both of these books, but only slowly, very slowly, because they demand that kind of pace. So I haven't yet finished them. So I'll say more on them later. Oh, I will.
Honorable Mentions
All the Peter Wimsey stories by Dorothy Sayers, start to finish
Relegated to HonMen mostly because I read them so long ago, back last spring, that I can hardly remember them, but it was a fun project, and I especially liked The Nine Tailors (for having the best language and being most novel-like) and Murder Must Advertise (partly for being set in an ad agency, and I used to work in one).
The Ashtown Burials and The 100 Cupboards series by A.N. Wilson
Middle grades, fantasy, creepy, strange, sometimes gross, sometimes lovely. Crazy imaginative. Above all, the man knows how to write an ending. Wouldn't recommend for children easily freaked out. Couldn't stop reading, and so basically ignored my own children for the month of August. What does that say about me?
Feb 5, 2015
Top Reads 2014
Item of business: I have a new essay up at the Curator this week, “Safe as Houses.”
More on books. I did a mid-year Top Reads list back in summer, and it was well-advised. Pregnancy wreaked havoc on my brain cells, and there were months at a time when I didn’t read a coherent word. It was actually freeing: more time with my (then) three-year-old, permission to slow down, take naps, gaze out the window and think thoughts, gaze out the window and think no thoughts, binge on Masterpiece Theatre. But it was also good to get back the capacity for reading books. A good finish to the year. These are them.
Leapings: Revelations and Epiphanies by Brian Doyle
Brian Doyle first crossed my reading path as judge for Ruminate Magazine’s nonfiction prize a few years ago. Then I started reading the Sun, and the best issues were the ones with his essays. Then (I mentioned this in my last Top Reads) his beautiful, beautiful essay “Yes” in 2003's Best American Essays. Recently, someone in my Facebook feed linked to his short piece “Shouldering” (on page three of the online magazine). Brothers, fathers, kitchens; I could picture my husband’s childhood. A great piece on writing – “Sensualiterature” – was in the most recent Creative Nonfiction issue. I decided to rely on serendipities no longer, and ordered his essay collection Leapings: Revelations and Epiphanies. Oh, yes. His topics (summer camp counseling; teaching the eight-year-olds in Catholic class; writing; 9/11, in the wrenching, riveting title piece), his prose (a playful, poetic word rhythm), his fearless (or fearful in the best way?) handling of oft-taboo CNF topics (children, Jesus, faith). He’s decidedly Roman Catholic, and I (Protestant that I am) have learned much, and am heartened by how often I nod an agreed affirmative – yes, yes! – to his expressions of faith and beauty in the world. Also, he is funny. Just go ahead and do it. Read Brian Doyle.
Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
I had this one on the night-side nursing table. It was perfect for a slow, meditative (and fragmented) read. I had given this book a try several times in years past, and am glad I pushed past the usual stopping point. Oh, the visions of love Berry develops, and of heaven, and of hopeful possibilities for beauty on earth. “Good, good, good,” the moonshine glugs in agreement as Jayber and other men of the town pass the jug around during their “little worter dranking party” in the woods. Here is Berry most eloquent on relationships and the importance of them; on caring for the land, yes, but for people above all; but most of all, on heaven. “This is a book about Heaven,” Jayber tells us toward the end of his life, though he has “wondered sometimes if it would not finally turn out to be a book about Hell - where we fail to love one another, . . . where we destroy the things we need the most, where we see no hope and have no faith, where we are needy and alone, where things that ought to stay together fall apart.” But it is, yes, finally a book about heaven, indeed. Since reading, every time I’m struck by some beauty around me or joy within, I hear that bottle’s pronouncement: “Good, good, good. Good. Good, good.”
Lila by Marilynne Robinson
More heaven, and visions thereof, and accompanying concerns (Who will end up there?), and moments pushing at the edges of the hell Jayber describes. More of the character Lila, who we never had much of (only tidbits in Gilead and Home) before now. Her experiences are wrenching (abandonment, wandering, and worse), her personality fascinating (despite all hand-to-mouth odds, she’s constantly compelled to think about “existence”), her drive to love thought-provoking and instructive. This is a book to unsettle you and leave you there, but the images of and propensities toward love (look for Doll - or is it Christ? - taking the child Lila up in her arms, as the adult Lila recalls it over and over) are as stunning as ever in any Robinson novel.
The Late Scholar by Jill Paton Walsh
I’d call this a guilty pleasure, but I don’t actually feel guilty. Paton Walsh has written several new detective novels about the characters Dorothy Sayers created in the 1920's and 30's: Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. After a summer-long Sayers binge (my fuzzy brain cells gave rereading a pass) – Gaudy Night, Strong Poison, Busman’s Honeymoon – I took the plunge. The first couple books had their moments, but The Late Scholar bears up really enjoyably, so much that I’ve read it twice in close succession. Admittedly, no one can be Sayers, and the prose loses some of the depth between her books and these new ones, but the characters are largely consistent and enjoyable, the mystery interesting enough, and the setting dead-on. It’s back to Oxford! Paton Walsh, who attended the university herself, gets Oxford. It’s wonderful to be back. And really, what Sayers devotee doesn’t wonder what Peter and Harriet might become in their mature years?
Onward into 2015 and all the good books waiting to be read – and read again.
More on books. I did a mid-year Top Reads list back in summer, and it was well-advised. Pregnancy wreaked havoc on my brain cells, and there were months at a time when I didn’t read a coherent word. It was actually freeing: more time with my (then) three-year-old, permission to slow down, take naps, gaze out the window and think thoughts, gaze out the window and think no thoughts, binge on Masterpiece Theatre. But it was also good to get back the capacity for reading books. A good finish to the year. These are them.
Leapings: Revelations and Epiphanies by Brian Doyle
Brian Doyle first crossed my reading path as judge for Ruminate Magazine’s nonfiction prize a few years ago. Then I started reading the Sun, and the best issues were the ones with his essays. Then (I mentioned this in my last Top Reads) his beautiful, beautiful essay “Yes” in 2003's Best American Essays. Recently, someone in my Facebook feed linked to his short piece “Shouldering” (on page three of the online magazine). Brothers, fathers, kitchens; I could picture my husband’s childhood. A great piece on writing – “Sensualiterature” – was in the most recent Creative Nonfiction issue. I decided to rely on serendipities no longer, and ordered his essay collection Leapings: Revelations and Epiphanies. Oh, yes. His topics (summer camp counseling; teaching the eight-year-olds in Catholic class; writing; 9/11, in the wrenching, riveting title piece), his prose (a playful, poetic word rhythm), his fearless (or fearful in the best way?) handling of oft-taboo CNF topics (children, Jesus, faith). He’s decidedly Roman Catholic, and I (Protestant that I am) have learned much, and am heartened by how often I nod an agreed affirmative – yes, yes! – to his expressions of faith and beauty in the world. Also, he is funny. Just go ahead and do it. Read Brian Doyle.
Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
I had this one on the night-side nursing table. It was perfect for a slow, meditative (and fragmented) read. I had given this book a try several times in years past, and am glad I pushed past the usual stopping point. Oh, the visions of love Berry develops, and of heaven, and of hopeful possibilities for beauty on earth. “Good, good, good,” the moonshine glugs in agreement as Jayber and other men of the town pass the jug around during their “little worter dranking party” in the woods. Here is Berry most eloquent on relationships and the importance of them; on caring for the land, yes, but for people above all; but most of all, on heaven. “This is a book about Heaven,” Jayber tells us toward the end of his life, though he has “wondered sometimes if it would not finally turn out to be a book about Hell - where we fail to love one another, . . . where we destroy the things we need the most, where we see no hope and have no faith, where we are needy and alone, where things that ought to stay together fall apart.” But it is, yes, finally a book about heaven, indeed. Since reading, every time I’m struck by some beauty around me or joy within, I hear that bottle’s pronouncement: “Good, good, good. Good. Good, good.”
Lila by Marilynne Robinson
More heaven, and visions thereof, and accompanying concerns (Who will end up there?), and moments pushing at the edges of the hell Jayber describes. More of the character Lila, who we never had much of (only tidbits in Gilead and Home) before now. Her experiences are wrenching (abandonment, wandering, and worse), her personality fascinating (despite all hand-to-mouth odds, she’s constantly compelled to think about “existence”), her drive to love thought-provoking and instructive. This is a book to unsettle you and leave you there, but the images of and propensities toward love (look for Doll - or is it Christ? - taking the child Lila up in her arms, as the adult Lila recalls it over and over) are as stunning as ever in any Robinson novel.
The Late Scholar by Jill Paton Walsh
I’d call this a guilty pleasure, but I don’t actually feel guilty. Paton Walsh has written several new detective novels about the characters Dorothy Sayers created in the 1920's and 30's: Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. After a summer-long Sayers binge (my fuzzy brain cells gave rereading a pass) – Gaudy Night, Strong Poison, Busman’s Honeymoon – I took the plunge. The first couple books had their moments, but The Late Scholar bears up really enjoyably, so much that I’ve read it twice in close succession. Admittedly, no one can be Sayers, and the prose loses some of the depth between her books and these new ones, but the characters are largely consistent and enjoyable, the mystery interesting enough, and the setting dead-on. It’s back to Oxford! Paton Walsh, who attended the university herself, gets Oxford. It’s wonderful to be back. And really, what Sayers devotee doesn’t wonder what Peter and Harriet might become in their mature years?
Onward into 2015 and all the good books waiting to be read – and read again.
Jun 27, 2014
Top Reads: Spring 2014
Who says "Best of" lists are only for the first of January? My spring was rife with good books, essays, and stories, and I want to share them:
Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman
This is a collection of essays about books. Never have I felt so bereft after finishing a work of nonfiction. Fadiman is funny and clever, her words go down easy (a lot like Noel Perrin's), and her obsession with books would only be uninteresting to folks who have never been bothered by a grocery store sign advertising a sale on "vinager." I enjoyed it so much, I was resolved to leave the final essay unread, saved for a rainy day like the last chocolate in a Valentine's box. But I could not help myself. I tucked myself into bed that night, tried to read some fiction whatnot, and finally leapt out from under the sheets and across the chilly house to whisk Ex Libris back under the covers with me.
(If you, also, love Ex Libris, proceed straight to At Large and At Small, more essays by Fadiman. And then don't miss her introduction to the Best American Essays 2003 collection.)
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Speaking of feeling bereft. I couldn't bear the morning after finishing this book. Where was Hazel? Where was Augustus? You're familiar with their story from the recent movie trailers. Teenagers at turns recovering from and dying of cancer, they pack all the humor, bad language, and bizarre circumstance possible into their short time together. Friendship is at the heart of the narrative, and that never fails to move me. Also, Green doesn't sidestep pain or death. I respect that.
"There's No Place Like Home" by Garrison Keillor
In this longform memoir essay, Keillor shows us how seventy-one years lived mostly in the same city can be anything but monotonous. His richness of detail leans more toward the poignant than the usual Lake Woebegone stories we're used to hearing from him, though there's humor, too. Additionally, he finds a way to mention three different drownings at three different points in the essay - speaking of not sidestepping death. Keillor on Death, as well as Home? I'm listening. This is a very worthwhile read. (It's also included in The Keillor Reader, just out in May.)
The Road Home by Eliza Thomas
House building, homemaking, Vermont. A dog. A friend who becomes more-than-a-friend. Eventually, a baby from China. Odd jobs and major life changes at middle age. Thomas finds herself in her early forties, owner of a small cabin in Vermont. The life she builds over the rest of the decade includes her beloved dog, her partner Julian who helps with the house additions, and eventually her adopted daughter. The chapters are short and sweet, mini essays that are sometimes moving, sometimes explanatory and descriptive, sometimes downright funny. I love Vermont, so I may be biased, but I think this is a very good book. I like it for the same reasons I so often enjoy Fadiman, Perrin, and Annie Dillard. I found it in the used book section of a local antique store (the "throw-away section" a friend of mine calls it). May you also be so lucky.
All Things Wise and Wonderful by James Herriot
Is it because he's a number of years into knowing the Yorkshire farmers that I like this book (third in the series) even better than the others? There's more depth of feeling as difficulties and death occur. And there are tales of training for the WWII RAF. Perhaps the backdrop of WWII lends its own weight to the otherwise light and pleasant tales. This one stays on my "favorites" bookshelf.
"Yes" by Brian Doyle
Speaking of the 2003 collection of Best American Essays, here's one of the best from that volume. It isn't available online, so you'll have to hope your library has a copy, or bite the bullet and order one. This essay alone is worth it (well, and also the Fadiman intro). I've never considered time spent reading a Brian Doyle essay to be wasted, and this is my favorite yet. I sink into its language like a hammock and smile as the swells of language rock me back and forth: "to horror and fear and jangled joys I say yes, to rich cheerful chaos that leads me sooner to the grave and happier along that muddy grave road I say yes, to my absolute surprise and with unbidden tears I say yes yes O yes." Raw, interesting, rambling, and hopeful. Yes.
Painting the Arena Red
Since I've jumped on the fanfiction train - tentatively, at least - I have not yet regretted reading any of E. Laine Sparrow's stories. If you're weary of The Hunger Games, leave off. But if you're unabashedly in love with Peeta, this account of his time in the first arena gets his voice just right and makes an even more admirable character of him than before. I've got the inside scoop that this writer has plans for her own original fiction, and I'll make sure not to miss it.
Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman
This is a collection of essays about books. Never have I felt so bereft after finishing a work of nonfiction. Fadiman is funny and clever, her words go down easy (a lot like Noel Perrin's), and her obsession with books would only be uninteresting to folks who have never been bothered by a grocery store sign advertising a sale on "vinager." I enjoyed it so much, I was resolved to leave the final essay unread, saved for a rainy day like the last chocolate in a Valentine's box. But I could not help myself. I tucked myself into bed that night, tried to read some fiction whatnot, and finally leapt out from under the sheets and across the chilly house to whisk Ex Libris back under the covers with me.
(If you, also, love Ex Libris, proceed straight to At Large and At Small, more essays by Fadiman. And then don't miss her introduction to the Best American Essays 2003 collection.)
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Speaking of feeling bereft. I couldn't bear the morning after finishing this book. Where was Hazel? Where was Augustus? You're familiar with their story from the recent movie trailers. Teenagers at turns recovering from and dying of cancer, they pack all the humor, bad language, and bizarre circumstance possible into their short time together. Friendship is at the heart of the narrative, and that never fails to move me. Also, Green doesn't sidestep pain or death. I respect that.
"There's No Place Like Home" by Garrison Keillor
In this longform memoir essay, Keillor shows us how seventy-one years lived mostly in the same city can be anything but monotonous. His richness of detail leans more toward the poignant than the usual Lake Woebegone stories we're used to hearing from him, though there's humor, too. Additionally, he finds a way to mention three different drownings at three different points in the essay - speaking of not sidestepping death. Keillor on Death, as well as Home? I'm listening. This is a very worthwhile read. (It's also included in The Keillor Reader, just out in May.)
The Road Home by Eliza Thomas
House building, homemaking, Vermont. A dog. A friend who becomes more-than-a-friend. Eventually, a baby from China. Odd jobs and major life changes at middle age. Thomas finds herself in her early forties, owner of a small cabin in Vermont. The life she builds over the rest of the decade includes her beloved dog, her partner Julian who helps with the house additions, and eventually her adopted daughter. The chapters are short and sweet, mini essays that are sometimes moving, sometimes explanatory and descriptive, sometimes downright funny. I love Vermont, so I may be biased, but I think this is a very good book. I like it for the same reasons I so often enjoy Fadiman, Perrin, and Annie Dillard. I found it in the used book section of a local antique store (the "throw-away section" a friend of mine calls it). May you also be so lucky.
All Things Wise and Wonderful by James Herriot
Is it because he's a number of years into knowing the Yorkshire farmers that I like this book (third in the series) even better than the others? There's more depth of feeling as difficulties and death occur. And there are tales of training for the WWII RAF. Perhaps the backdrop of WWII lends its own weight to the otherwise light and pleasant tales. This one stays on my "favorites" bookshelf.
"Yes" by Brian Doyle
Speaking of the 2003 collection of Best American Essays, here's one of the best from that volume. It isn't available online, so you'll have to hope your library has a copy, or bite the bullet and order one. This essay alone is worth it (well, and also the Fadiman intro). I've never considered time spent reading a Brian Doyle essay to be wasted, and this is my favorite yet. I sink into its language like a hammock and smile as the swells of language rock me back and forth: "to horror and fear and jangled joys I say yes, to rich cheerful chaos that leads me sooner to the grave and happier along that muddy grave road I say yes, to my absolute surprise and with unbidden tears I say yes yes O yes." Raw, interesting, rambling, and hopeful. Yes.
Painting the Arena Red
Since I've jumped on the fanfiction train - tentatively, at least - I have not yet regretted reading any of E. Laine Sparrow's stories. If you're weary of The Hunger Games, leave off. But if you're unabashedly in love with Peeta, this account of his time in the first arena gets his voice just right and makes an even more admirable character of him than before. I've got the inside scoop that this writer has plans for her own original fiction, and I'll make sure not to miss it.
Past Rabbit Hole Top Reads are here:
Jan 4, 2014
Top Reads 2013
Making a list of the year's top reads - or top anything - is not a unique endeavor. Still, I do it. Some year, I will make a list of the books I tried but couldn't get through. (Wouldn't that be telling?) But as usual, this isn't a list of books actually published in 2013. It's the five most moving volumes that I took off the shelf or out of the mailbox or from a friend's hand. (Actually, each of these five came as either personal recommendation or loan or gift. Isn't that interesting?)
Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
Some second books in series fly only by the seat of the first hit's pants; others are actually far better stories than the first installment. And some are better because they have an excellent initial narrative to build upon (in the way that Mary Doria Russell's Children of God is even better than The Sparrow, but is only able to be good because The Sparrow itself was well-done). I read Ender's Game last spring, and it (a futuristic military tale! with aliens! not my usual fare) surprised me by being so tight, empathetic, and engaging. On to Speaker for the Dead, which blew the seed story out of the water in a fantastic way. Resolutions, investigations of larger themes, crazy and weird creativity, and a continuity of deep empathy for characters both wise and unwise. I flew through both these novels before film hype and author controversy came to the media fore. I'm glad I read them in the dark, as it were.
First Person Rural: Essays of a Sometime Farmer by Noel Perrin
I've been reading Perrin off and on for six years, also the number of years since I first met my husband's family. But I had somehow never made it through one of his Person Rural essay collections. On a snowy week in Thetford, Vermont, last March, I made right with the town's "sometime farmer" by buying up more than half his collection at Left Bank Books (a block away from Dartmouth College, where Perrin was an English and Environmental Studies prof). I plowed straight through First, into Second, and simultaneously through A Reader's Delight. Why are Perrin's essays so good? Plain prose, funny stories, mountains, farms, maple syrup, and Vermont. I want to understand where it is my husband's family has put down roots: the Martins' bigger picture. This is a good place to start. It's fun and interesting, too.
"Sojourner" from Annie Dillard's Teaching a Stone to Talk
This essay is short and it's sweet and it's about floating mangrove trees and the whirling cosmos and where we as humanity (talk about the big picture!) fit in. About Earth:
The Sacred Journey by Frederick Buechner
Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear
Here's where I will try very hard not to apologize for myself or explain away my bad taste. I'm not going to pretend this WWI Detective Fiction series (which has many books already - ten, perhaps? - and maybe more coming) is anything literarily fine. But it is deeply-researched, and it's set in a particularly interesting time and place: late-1920's and early-30's London, with flashbacks to the end of the Great War. Winspear's prose may fall a little flat, but her details are interesting, and I can't stop reading about the world she places us in. Also, it's easy. Perfect for bedtime. Perfect for Winter Break. My favorites so far are the first, third, and fifth installments, the third (Pardonable Lies) standing out as most compelling.
Other Notable Reads from the Year
Dystopian Fiction:
The City of Ember (enjoyable tale with a satisfying kind of ending)
Allegiant (What did you think of that series ending? Bravery or total bunk?)
Convergent (a FanFic followup that rights most of Allegiant's wrongs)
Essays:
"Final Cut" by Atul Gawande (on autopsies!)
"The Price We Pay" by Adam Mayblum (a survivor's account of 9/11)
"You Owe Me" by Miah Arnold (heavy, on children dying)
Journals:
Dogwood Journal: Volume 12 (esp. the poetry and the essays)
The Sun Magazine Issue 454 (esp. "I Believed" and "And So On")
Spiritual Nonfiction:
Ordinary Losses by Elisa Stanford (Poetry in prose form. Moving and sweet.)
Past Rabbit Hole Top Reads are here.
Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
Some second books in series fly only by the seat of the first hit's pants; others are actually far better stories than the first installment. And some are better because they have an excellent initial narrative to build upon (in the way that Mary Doria Russell's Children of God is even better than The Sparrow, but is only able to be good because The Sparrow itself was well-done). I read Ender's Game last spring, and it (a futuristic military tale! with aliens! not my usual fare) surprised me by being so tight, empathetic, and engaging. On to Speaker for the Dead, which blew the seed story out of the water in a fantastic way. Resolutions, investigations of larger themes, crazy and weird creativity, and a continuity of deep empathy for characters both wise and unwise. I flew through both these novels before film hype and author controversy came to the media fore. I'm glad I read them in the dark, as it were.
First Person Rural: Essays of a Sometime Farmer by Noel Perrin
I've been reading Perrin off and on for six years, also the number of years since I first met my husband's family. But I had somehow never made it through one of his Person Rural essay collections. On a snowy week in Thetford, Vermont, last March, I made right with the town's "sometime farmer" by buying up more than half his collection at Left Bank Books (a block away from Dartmouth College, where Perrin was an English and Environmental Studies prof). I plowed straight through First, into Second, and simultaneously through A Reader's Delight. Why are Perrin's essays so good? Plain prose, funny stories, mountains, farms, maple syrup, and Vermont. I want to understand where it is my husband's family has put down roots: the Martins' bigger picture. This is a good place to start. It's fun and interesting, too.
"Sojourner" from Annie Dillard's Teaching a Stone to Talk
This essay is short and it's sweet and it's about floating mangrove trees and the whirling cosmos and where we as humanity (talk about the big picture!) fit in. About Earth:
"It is strange here, not quite warm enough, or too warm, too leafy, or inedible, or windy, or dead. It is not, frankly, the sort of home for people one would have thought of - though I lack the fancy to imagine another (151)."I could reread this essay just about every morning, not only for its meaning, but also for its construction, for the beauty and power packed into its seeming simplicity. I admire it as a reader and as a writer. How does Dillard do it?
The Sacred Journey by Frederick Buechner
The first Buechner I ever read was Telling the Truth, and that's another one it would probably do me good to read on a regular basis. Buechner says that the "sheltering word can be spoken only after the word that leaves us without a roof over our heads, the answering word only after the word it answers (35)." Painfully, relievedly, I agree. (So, it seems, does Annie Dillard.) The Sacred Journey is what I would call light memoir (as light as a memoir can be when the author's father commits suicide in act two), with Buechner's steady dose of mercifully unorthodox orthodox Christianity. Also the persistent theme of home, which resonates deeply with me, someone who, try as she desperately might to throw down roots, year after year keeps getting transplanted. I sat disbelievingly in yet another rental house this fall and thought, Home must mean something other than staying in one place for good and all. Perhaps, as Buechner suggests, Home - at least on this earth, in this lifetime - is actually "not a place," but it is people (21). Plus, Buechner's writing is beautiful. Just beautiful.
Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear
Here's where I will try very hard not to apologize for myself or explain away my bad taste. I'm not going to pretend this WWI Detective Fiction series (which has many books already - ten, perhaps? - and maybe more coming) is anything literarily fine. But it is deeply-researched, and it's set in a particularly interesting time and place: late-1920's and early-30's London, with flashbacks to the end of the Great War. Winspear's prose may fall a little flat, but her details are interesting, and I can't stop reading about the world she places us in. Also, it's easy. Perfect for bedtime. Perfect for Winter Break. My favorites so far are the first, third, and fifth installments, the third (Pardonable Lies) standing out as most compelling.
Other Notable Reads from the Year
Dystopian Fiction:
The City of Ember (enjoyable tale with a satisfying kind of ending)
Allegiant (What did you think of that series ending? Bravery or total bunk?)
Convergent (a FanFic followup that rights most of Allegiant's wrongs)
Essays:
"Final Cut" by Atul Gawande (on autopsies!)
"The Price We Pay" by Adam Mayblum (a survivor's account of 9/11)
"You Owe Me" by Miah Arnold (heavy, on children dying)
Journals:
Dogwood Journal: Volume 12 (esp. the poetry and the essays)
The Sun Magazine Issue 454 (esp. "I Believed" and "And So On")
Spiritual Nonfiction:
Ordinary Losses by Elisa Stanford (Poetry in prose form. Moving and sweet.)
Past Rabbit Hole Top Reads are here.
Jan 4, 2013
Top Books 2012
Every January, like lots of other folks, I make a list of my favorite books from the last year - not necessarily books published within the year, but any and all that I read and loved. A pattern always emerges. These aren't merely good books; these were the narratives of my thought, emotion, and memory in 2012:
When I Was a Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson (nonfiction/essay)
Robinson’s three novels are amongst the most moving I’ve
read. So when I heard this essay collection was being published in Spring
2012, I jumped on the chance to review it for The Other Journal. (That review is here.) My high expectations were exceeded. The prose is denser than in her fiction, and her weighty meanings require slow, attentive work to parse out, but it's worth the effort. As always, Robinson challenges many of my preconceived notions. This is a good kind of
unsettlement.
Run by Ann Patchett (fiction/novel)
“My word, that woman can write!” says a friend to whom I recommended Patchett. Indeed. Bel Canto and State of Wonder may be more gripping of plot; read Run for the
characters. Patchett’s M.O. is to
create the unlikeliest of scenarios, drop her characters in, and imagine what
they might do. In this novel, she works wonders in hearts and relationships in a
short matter of days, against the chill quiet of a traffic-stopping snowfall, within the difficult diversity and warm
potentiality of a family. Here is family in some of its most unlikely iterations: adopted, pretended, begrudging, forgiving. Here is encouragement to relate more empathetically.
Drowned Ammett by Diana Wynne Jones (fiction/middle grades)
I have the lurking
suspicion I’ve already read what will always be my favorite DWJ novels, the
Chrestomanci sextet. Drowned Ammett is the second in another series, Jones's Dalemark Quartet. And while the Chrestomanci books have charmed me with their barely-constrained whimsy, Drowned Ammett's young protagonist Mitt easily ranks amongst my favorite-ever book characters. His selfishness is never far behind his learning and growth. His kindness is complicated. He is real. And the
final scenes sailing through the Holy Isles? Jones renders the magic of coast
and sea in a heightened beauty that rivals
C.S. Lewis’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
I gave a full review here.
I’ll be rereading this one for sure.
Framed by Frank Cottrell Boyce (fiction/middle grades)
I've mentioned this unexpected read before. In his other books and screenplays, Boyce’s worldview tends to grate uncomfortably against my own; his
conclusions often suggest an individually-determined morality that leave his
young protagonists a little wanting in the Consider-Others department. But in this book, Boyce’s capacity to weave
humor with deeper life lessons makes for not only a thoroughly enjoyable, but
also a surprisingly moving read. Plus, there are Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - as well as fine art and a little WWII history and the Welsh countryside. I recommend it. (Interestingly,
Boyce helped author a characteristically playful and irreverent Olympics opening ceremonies last summer.)
Teaching a Stone to Talk by
Annie Dillard (nonfiction/essay)
This book was already on my to-read list when I discovered it in
our library sale corner for one dollar. One dollar! Each essay is
astounding, stunning, or simply a deep rumble of truth. Not surprising; this is
Dillard. She had me at the Author's Note, where she clarifies that “this is not a collection of occasional pieces, such as a writer brings out to supplement his real work; instead this is my real work, such as it is.” Amen to that. Her essay “An Expedition to the Pole,” alone, is worth getting your hands on this book. It's an intensely-felt mashup of polar exploration history and awkward church moments. Dillard comprehends the human experience on so many levels, and in these essays, she translates it perfectly, if not a little strangely and unexpectedly, to the page.
What did you read this year? Which books do you recommend?
Did they compel or discomfit or embarrass or please you? What's next on your list?
Past Rabbit Hole Top Reads
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