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.
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