Reading rambles

After a slow reading month in May, I've been devouring books. Several are worth recommending - in fact, many of the books that I have read this summer have been worth recommending. 

First, I finished a couple of books that were written by people I know or know of. The first was written by a deacon from our former parish in Coronado, All Things New by Bobby Ehnow. Bobby is a great guy. You'd never guess that he spent 3 years in prison when you meet him, especially now that he's a deacon and works for the Archdiocese of San Diego. He served jail time for white collar crimes that he inadvertently got drawn into while working as a government contractor. This book is the story of his redemption, as well as an argument for restorative justice, which is the field in which he works now for the diocese, after getting a PhD in leadership studies. His book describes problems in the justice system, but it also explains how his prison experience was transformative.  While I particularly enjoyed this book because I recognized many familiar names and places, the book is worth reading as a reminder of the need for ministry to prisons and prisoners and for alternative ways to restore justice. 

The other local book I read also focused on a tragedy, but this time it was the story by a friend of a friend, Stephanie Meeker, called When the Unthinkable Happens. This book centers around the tragic death of the author's best friend, who was murdered by her angry ex-husband. The author takes in the four children of her friend, first as a temporary solution, then as a foster parent, and later as an adoptive parent. The book describes challenges in the court system, as well as difficulties at home with the kids, who struggle with their mother's death.  One of the children does not want to be adopted and runs away at one point. Because the case has to be tried in both criminal and civil court, the investigation and court appearances go on for years.  The father is in and out of jail during this time before his final sentencing. In the midst of all of these difficulties, the author describes how faith gave her and her husband strength to face both the big and small challenges. While the book is written in a way that sometimes simplifies or avoids revealing too many details because of the sensitive nature of sharing a story about children, the virtues displayed by the people in the story - the perseverance of the Stephanie and her husband, the support of the community, and the resilience of the children - inspire readers to do more for others. Nonetheless, it is clear how superhuman grace is needed to carry on and to love when exhausted.

Another book I finished recently also described acting with generosity and love towards others iout of a missionary spirit. For book club, I finished Christy by Catherine Marshall. This book is so familiar to me - I either read the book or watched the movie sometime in the past. Or maybe I just saw the cover at the book store or my grandparent's house. At any rate, I knew the premise  - a young, naive woman, Christy, leaves home in Asheville, NC, to be a missionary and teach school in the mountains of North Carolina. She devotes herself to helping the children learn and to befriending the women of the hills and teaching them as well. Christy seems preternaturally optimistic, but she faces challenges and learns from her mistakes as the story develops. Part of what I liked most about this book were the descriptions of the hills and mountains which seemed somewhat familiar from our recent trip to the Smokies. I also liked reading about Christy's teaching methods in the one room school and the solid advice from her mentor, Miss Alice Henderson, the Quaker missionary who was a single mother and teacher herself. She has some of the best lines of the book, and her unflappable and charitable demeanor are admirable in the face of hostility, illness, poverty, and physical exhaustion. 

While those three books are not necessary exemplars of literary artistry, Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter and The End of the Affair do offer more in terms of style and content, although both are rather bleak tales that capture the darkness of the human heart and the need for redemption.  The End of the Affair was a Well Read Mom book club pick, but I missed the meeting for the discussion. When I read these books back in my late teens - I can't remember now if I was still in high school or early college, I was enamored by Greene's slow reveal of how a skeptical character's encounter with faith caused them to revisit their previous misconceptions. The End of the Affair has a much more hopeful and almost mystical ending, while The Heart of the Matter ends with a character's suicide because he believes he is beyond redemption.  The characters are all rather self-absorbed and pitiable, and reading them again later in life is not as stunning. I am less sympathetic to the characters. But I appreciate Greene's perspective on the seriousness of faith. It is something that should be taken as seriously as these characters treat it.  I was sorry to miss the discussion about Bendrix because at the end of the novel we learn a little more about acts of kindness he performs that aren't evident from his narration.  The novel leaves open whether he follows in the path to conversion that his lover Sarah began. 

Two other books that I finished were bestsellers. Theo of Golden by Allen Levi and The Correspondent by Virginia Evans have been making people's lists for their favorite books of the last two years. I think they both came out in 2025. My sister-in-law recommended them because her book club read them. I am sometimes skeptical of bestsellers because they can lack the literary merit of books that require more thought. Nonetheless, I enjoyed both of these, particularly The Correspondent.  You know when you feel like praying for a character in a book at Mass that the character is particularly vivid. I started this book at my in-laws' house and could barely put it down, even on the way to church. And then I sat there frustrated with the main character, Sybil, wishing *** spoiler alert **** she had gone where she said she was going to go and that she would make up with her daughter.  I think it took about 6 hours to read. Told through the letters of law clerk Sybil to her best friend, to the young son of a lawyer friend, to her children, and other characters with whom she has relationships, the novel conveys the develop of a character already aged, but still learning and forming new relationships and repairing old ones. I appreciated the subtle development of the story line - not a thrilling plot, but a slow development of character that proves satisfying, even if not surprising. 

Theo of Golden was also a bit predictable, although the final couple chapters tied some loose ends together in a way I didn't quite expect. I expected unexpected coincidences, though. The story follows a strange visitor to the small town of Golden who begins to make friends by buying portraits at the local coffee shop and giving them to the person in the picture. People open up to Theo and tell them about their hopes and struggles. He seems to see through their masks and to recognize their worth, which he shares with them. In return they grow in confidence and become attached to Theo.  While the story is a little saccharine, it touches a chord. The town of Golden seems charmed, and full of people who just need a friend to open up their hearts to, someone who will give them the love and encouragement they have been craving.  In the end the book won me over despite my skepticism. I see why everyone is recommending it. 

Two books I finished had theological themes: Bright Evening Star by Madeleine L'Engle is a memoir of her charmed childhood with her journalist/artistic parents who often went to the theater or parties, leaving her at home presumably with a nannie. Because she was frequently alone she developed an active imagination, but she also developed a love for Christ and faith in him. This is a short book, but an interesting and inspiring description of how and why she is a faithful Christian.  In Lore Wilbert's Understory, we also meet Christian theology combined with memoir and natural history text with an ecopoetic lyric added in. It was informative, descriptive and meditative. It made me want to head to the woods for a long time.

Part of the reason I didn't read much in May is because I spent a long time trying to finish The Way We Live Now a long Victorian novel by Anthony Trollope. Less caricature than Dickens, but more urban than Austen, Trollope's novels often feature both marriage plots and political maneuvering. This story features a newly rich family who come to London and soon feature prominently in the social scene despite everyone's snobbery. Meanwhile, the rich young lads seem to be dissipated and unreliable, and the marriageable young women want both reliability and romance and can't seem to find them both in the same young man. At nearly 800 pages, Trollope's book carries this on a long time. 

I've also read a few journals - a couple issues of Plough and Notre Magazine and the movie and film reviews of one of the CSC priests here, who shares his thoughts on the cultural offerings of the last six months. His public, spiral bound journals predate blogs. In between that, I've started reading up on film for my course and finishing the Life and Times of Wendall Berry. After that flurry of reading activity, I have to turn my mind to course planning. How to manage a 105 minute class of seniors? Time to get serious with planning my literature of redemption class. It will be a busy fall. 

Reading Revived!

 All of this winter weather has been good for my reading life.  After a lackluster reading year in 2025, I'm off to a quick start in 2026.  In the beginning of the January, I finished Provocations of Virtue, a book on teaching writing and rhetoric with a focus on ethical discourse by a professor at Notre Dame, John Duffy.  He provides some thoughtful approaches to encouraging the careful composition of words and ideas. I appreciated his focus on an ethical approach to writing - not just that students to persuade their readers to make ethical decisions, but that writers make ethical decisions about the way they treat their audience. By envisioning their audience as readers/listeners who deserves respect and whose trust must be earned, writers and speakers write with more precision and consideration. As a teaching text but also a researched text, Duffy's book was practical and interesting, challenging and motivating. I intend to return to it regularly for guidance on moderating difficult discussions, steering students towards reliable sources, and providing suggestions for addressing different points of view.  

After exercising my brain by reading Duffy's book, I gave my brain some junk food by reading the prequels to the Hunger Games trilogy, Ballad of the Songbirds and Snakes and Sunrise on the Reaping.  I have mixed feelings about the Hunger Games books, as do many readers.  I didn't encourage my kids to read them, but some of them did as high schoolers. I see middle schoolers reading them, but unless you have a really mature 8th grader, I wouldn't recommend them for preteens. The themes are dark and the violence is too much, even sometimes for me, but maybe I'm more squeamish than some (I really had to steel myself to remove dead mice - the last two days I've caught mice under the sink in snap traps. After seeing one scurry under the dishwasher the other night, I had to take action. Glue traps weren't working, and I'm afraid of poisoned mice smelling bad. Snap traps may not be humane, but they work. Where there are two, there are probably more - I'll be setting the trap again tonight, to the peril of my fingers! Rodents creeping indoors is a drawback to winter not mentioned in my friend's reel...) A debate could be held about whether Suzanne Collins perhaps could tell her story without descriptions of decapitation and animal attacks.  People make an argument for the value of the books in highlighting injustice and depravity, but even though I tear through these books in a matter of hours, I don't really recommend them. Perhaps they fall into the category of books described by Stephen King in this essay. 

What I would recommend is any book by Wendell Berry. Like many other Berry fans, I love stepping into his world for a few hours. Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story is a slim book. It's not so much about Marce, grandfather of Andy Catlett who lost his hand, (although that episode doesn't figure in this text, something that I thought might be included) as it is about the story of a day he failed to sell his crop for what it was worth and about how the story of that day became a mythic part of the communal memory and a driving force in the family history.  Many critics are opining that this is Berry's last novel. However, in some ways, it is not quite a novel. It is a reflection on the power of story telling. It is an elegy for a lost way of life. It is a call to community and to advocate for the land that shapes communities.  It is a recollection of an education in the land and a love story to it. It is not my favorite of Berry's books; it seems slight, although it does have some evocative descriptions - descriptions that might do more to preserve a way of life than an essay calling for just compensation for agricultural products and for people to stand by the land. I'll try to share some excerpts later. I read somewhere that someone thought this book seems to be Berry's concession he has lost his battle to preserve family farms, even though he himself has managed to continue to stand by the land and stand by words. But I'm not so sure the battle has been lost. More people than ever are reading Berry, and in communities like the one where my parents live, people are still farming, helping each other out, coming together for meals, and preserving a small town way of life.  No doubt the creep of suburban and industrial development keeps coming closer, especially as data centers erupt overnight in rural communities, like the one not too far from us.  (I might be a fan of sending data centers to space, as has been proposed.) But if Berry's work continues to circulate and be discovered by new readers, it may yet call more people to return to the land.

But back to reading: a couple other short synopses: The Chosen by Chaim Potok. I LOVED this book when I first read it back in high school. It seemed so foreign and yet so American; it helped formed my imagination of ethnic communities in New York City. Potok's book is full of faith but also maintains a detached tone. It's the story of two young Jewish boys living in 1940's post-War II Brooklyn who become unlikely friends because they are the sons of very different fathers. One father is a Zionist Talmud scholar, and the other is a Hasidic rabbi who is against establishing a Jewish state. The two boys become friends despite their fathers' differing views and their own friend groups who don't overlap. It is a welcome description of the necessity of friendship, and how deep friendships can overcome difficulties. Despite the connection between the two boys, they go their separate ways at the end of the novel.  Readers can hope their friendship endures (and read the sequel, The Promise, which I have on my list).

The  most recent book I finished was The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams. This is a different book than Robert MacFarlane's The Lost Words: A Spell Book illustrated by Jackie Morris, which has been in my wish list for a long time. Williams' book was recommended by my sister-in-law. It is another one of those books that are hard to put down, but that for one reason or another won't make my favorites list. This one falls in the genre of "Stories about women in the past who react against their limitations to become unrecognized heroes in their sphere of influence." One of these I just finished at the end of last year - Rachel Kadish's The Weight of Ink about a Jewish girl in 17th c England who becomes an amanuensis for an old rabbi and then starts writing her own letters of philosophic inquiry to characters like Spinoza. I enjoy the historical settings and the development of the possible lives for intelligent women unrecognized by history, although sometimes the plots seem a little forced and there is always some romance shoehorned in. Williams's book is set during the construction of the Oxford English Dictionary. The main character, Esme, grows up in the Scriptorium where her father is one of the editors for the dictionary, which takes decades to complete. We see her grow up amongst words and become an editor herself eventually. Details about the dictionary and the history of the women's suffrage movement and the advent of WWI are fascinating, and the book seems well-researched. Esme begins collecting definitions of women's words for her own dictionary, some too coarse and some too domestic to be included in the OED.  The developments of friendships and love affairs move the book along. Esme becomes pregnant, even though she is not in love with the father, but the book provides a positive depiction of adoption. Even with these difficult topics and the love affair with words in both of these books, they read like popular rather than literary fiction and don't have the heft of Potok's or Berry's books, despite being much longer. 

Now on to the next thing! I've got several different books going now, but need to take a momentary break from "fast fiction" because it keeps me too late!

Reading in Review

 This was a low reading year for me. I'm embarrassed to admit that a lot of that is because I spent time scrolling when I could have been reading - waiting rooms, bathrooms, lines, after dinner check ins. We also watched more TV this year - or I did. I used to skip out on tv time but this year I sat down more with the fam because movie nights are more limited. Unfortunately, very little of what we watched is worth mentioning. "All Creatures Great and Small" is definitely our favorite worthwhile series. "Only Murders in the Building" was entertaining last winter. We watched a little "Abbott Elementary," which I found funnier than the rest of my family.  Some Fr. Brown mysteries, "The Bear." We rewatched some Marvel movies and Star Wars and ET and some other classics like "Return to Me" and "Shawshank Redemption" - both a little too old -  with the youngest for the first time.  I'd rather watch something more redemptive, but working on classics of a sort. 

Why else didn't I read as much? Can I claim I read a lot of the newspaper?- the WSJ, of course. I spend about an hour at least every Sunday reading the weekend Journal and catching up on features from daily editions that I didn't have time to get to. 

I also spent more time rereading books for school - The Hobbit and The Giver, Fever 1793 and The Witch of Blackbird Pond.  I previewed The Outsiders and skimmed The of Anne Frank. But did I waste time looking for reading selections online? I did, yes I did. 

And did time I spent grading and looking for resources also eat away at my reading time? But of course.

So the sad news is that I only read 48 books this year. Fewer by 20 than what I read last year, although I'm pretty sure I forgot to write some books down on my list. I appreciate this list for that very reason. In fact, I know I read something to and from my mom and dad's house at Christmas - but what was it? My November and December reads are missing, and though they are the most recent, I can't remember for the life of me what I read. It's really bothering me. I did spend a lot of our travel time catching up with grading, but I also know I did some reading on the road trip. 

I also started some books I didn't finish. This is the case with a couple of spiritual books I started to read. I subscribe to and read Plough, the magazine published by the Bruderhof. I really enjoy its mix of culture, faith, and commentary, but this is my second year of subscribing, so I might move on to a new magazine next year. 

Most of the books I wrote down were children's classics: Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Little Women, The Anne of Green Gables books.  All of these were young adult books, but thoroughly enjoyed by this adult. They were probably my favorite reads of the year.

I did not accomplish a read of a long and thick classic. No Dickens, no Trollope, no Tolstoy. And really we only read part one of Little Women. 

But now a review. Of the 48 books: 

• 38 were novels
• 5 were read alouds - a habit that has slowed down, sadly
• 15 were children's chapter books
• 6 were advice books
• 0 spiritual books. I started but did not finish a couple spiritual books this year. A poverty
• 1 book of poetry, although I did skim some books of poetry from the library
• 1 Collection of essays
• 16 were rereads, mostly the children's books
• No local authors, unless you count S. E. Hinton, who was from Tulsa.
• 6 were by BIPOC authors 
• 10 were nonfiction. 

Of the 38 books of fiction.

• Few count as classics - mostly children's books: Where the Red Fern Grows and The Hobbit. The Witch of Blackbird Pond, A Little Princess, The Anne books, the Twain books

My favorite nonfiction book: The Anxious Generation, although the Vanderbilt book was fascinating.

Favorite novels of the year: Huckleberry Finn and James by Percival Everett, although I found Absolution absorbing. 

Least favorite:  Why did I read so many self help books on aging?

Goals for next year: 

Less media, more books, more reading aloud, more reading widely. 

And now to read before falling asleep. 

Summer Reading

 The eight year old and I entered the summer reading club at our library. It just ended - which seems early to me, but here we are at the end of July and all of the summer activities are winding down, even though we have three weeks of vacation left. Only!

Neither of us won a prize. Instead of cheap plastic toys and coupons for ice cream cones, the prizes were gift cards and educational sets. I earned something like 17 tickets and entered almost all of them in the drawing for the HEB $100 gift card, but didn't win. The 8 year old spread her tickets around, but mostly wanted to win a little robot that draws. She was pretty disappointed not to get a call from the library yesterday. She was sure she was going to win. She was motivated to log hours and write book reviews to earn more tickets, so the incentive worked, but we'll see if the crushing diappointment of winning nothing deters her from participating next year. She can be a bit dramatic in her responses to even very minor tragedies.

Despite winning nothing, we have done a bit of reading over the summer. I have spent much too much time pouring over the Wall Street Journal in the mornings. since we aren't rushing anywhere. Too much bad news about economic downturns and inflation. On our recent road trip, I read Joseph Bruchac's Rez Dogs, a young reader book about a young girl named Malian who is visiting her grandparents on a reservation and gets stuck with them when the world shuts down for Covid. A stray dog provides companionship and protection for her as she struggles with loneliness and internet connectivity and missing her parents. Bruchac is a writer I discovered when doing my research for the nature writing class. He has a number of young adult books out that primarily feature main characters who are Native Americans.  This is my first, and I give it two thumbs up. It may be a bit lacking in drama, but it provided a peak into a strong grandparent- grandchild relationship, a look at life on a reservation, and a small peek into some of the hardships experienced by young people growing up on a reservation 60 years ago. Both of Malian's grandparents were taken as children and sent to boarding schools. The book is written as narrative poetry, so it reads quickly. Despite the backdrop of suffering, the book had a hopeful tone - Malian's grandparents don't dwell on bitterness, and Malian is unusually appreciative of her circumstances. 

I also just finished a book for the lit class I'll be teaching next year: Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie. The department chooses a novel for the intro to lit courses, and this one is paired with Antigone, of which it is a retelling. I wasn't familiar with Shamsie, although she has a large number of novels to her name. Home Fire follows the plot of Sophocles' classic loosely, but places the two sisters in contemporary London, where their family immigrated from Pakistan. In this case, the two sisters are Muslim and must confront the actions of their brother and father, who both joined extremist organizations. Somehow the family survived the death of their father, but when their mother dies, the siblings struggle to stay unified. The oldest sister raises her two siblings, but eventually leaves to study in America, while the two younger siblings, twins, start to make their way separately after they graduate from high school. The sister pursues a degree, while the brother picks up a job, but falls into the grip of jihadist recruiters. Add in a love interest who happens to be the son of the home secretary who is monitoring the movements of the brother, and tragedy is sure to follow - and of course, knowing the source story, tragedy is expected.  An interesting and engaging read, with lots of themes overlapping, which is good for an assigned book. For a book I have to assign to first year students, it has an overly descriptive passage with a love scene that I probably won't discuss in class, but it's in there, and will probably keep students reading. 

I can't remember if I mentioned that I went on an Ann Patchett spree - This is the Story of a Happy Marriage and Commonwealth and some articles in between. Enjoyed both the memoir/book of essays, This is the Story, which I listened to as a book on tape on the trip to California in June, and the novel, which is a riff on Patchett's early life. Had I not just read Patchett's memoir, I might not have caught that. Commonwealth is the story of a broken marriage, the secrets children keep, family connections, and the possibility of reconciliation. A bit melancholy but a redemptive ending. Maybe kids whose parents are messed up end up closer because of their neglect.

After many weeks, I finished Peter Wohlleben's The Heartbeat of Trees, a companion to The Language of Trees.  I enjoyed them both, a mix of popular science, environmental writing, and personal memoir. Not fast reading, though. I'd read a chapter and then set the book down for several days before reading another. Wohllenben was a German forester who now devotes his time to writing and promoting good forestry practices, among other environmental pursuits. His writing voice is friendly, encouraging, and even hopeful, despite the degradation he sees of the natural world, For instance, one of the oldest trees in the world is threatened because of tourists hiking to its remote location to view it. On the one hand, it would be terrible if this tree died from people stamping around it to view the oldest tree. On the other hand, the reverence showed to this little alpine tree is encouraging. Wohlleben's own story of shifting  practices in German foresting is hopeful for future conservation efforts that allow commerce and conservation to complement each other to an extent. 

I also finished a book for my book club reading challenge called Tomorrow Will Be Different by Sarah MacBride. MacBride's memoir tells of her transition from male to female late in her college career, early in her political career. She is now a delegate to the Delaware state government, one of the first openly trans politicians to serve in that governing body, if not the first. The tone is upbeat, despite a section describing the death of Sarah's husband, who was also trans, from cancer not long after they married.  The reading challenge has several categories that are outside my normal reading trends, and this one was interesting, but not one I'd normally choose, partly because I don't really read political books, and this one read a bit like promotional material for the next election. 

I've also been reading my Bible study book, Encountering God by Kelly Minter, which describes different spiritual practices all familiar to Catholics - prayer, fasting, confession, adoration, meditation. I appreciate the immense number of Biblical references to these ancient practices, but the book is written for a reader who is unfamiliar or unused to these practices, so it's geared toward beginners and those who need convincing that fasting or confessing to others is worthwhile for spiritual growth.  The conversations have been enriching with my group, an ecumenical bunch I was introduced to by one of my Navy spouse friends. 

I've also been catching up with the newest Norton anthology of literature, shorter version. I'll be teaching an intro to lit class this fall. New school, new textbook, new syllabus. Thought I would be further along with developing that than I am, but classes don't start until the end of August - which will come all too quickly.

Reading with the 8 year old: My Father's Dragon, Dragons of Blueland, Pippi Longstocking, and various picture books from the library. This suburban library doesn't have the quaint appeal, the quantity of books, or the familiar librarians from our old library, but we are getting used to it. It's not a four block walk, either, but this month we have been going about once a week, since our schedule is more open. 

In the meantime, I've got a stack of books to read that are waiting for me. I thought I would get more reading done on our recent trip to OKC, but instead shopped upholstery fabric, chairs, flights, and hotels for upcoming travels. More to come!

Take and read

I just finished what is sure to be my favorite book of the year - Amor Towles' A Gentleman in Moscow. So, so, so good! It was a delight to read from beginning to end.  Maybe I did wonder at the beginning, "Where is this going to go?" but only because I have avoided reading many reviews. I keep seeing it highly recommended (along Towles' other book Rules of Civility, which I am going to head to the library to checkout first thing tomorrow, even though I have three other library books and three books of ecocriticism essays I am intending to read for class...) but I never paid much attention to the reviews out of a shortage of time for reading about books I don't have time to read. But just before we left on our Christmas travels, I stopped in at the library for some fun books to read, and this one happened to be sitting out on the library's "to be reshelved" cart, so I picked it up. I neglected to take it with me because I needed to finish a book I had borrowed (River of Gold, by a local author, Victor Villasenor - a fine book full of interesting historical details about the lives of Mexican immigrants in the 1920s) and then I read Maryanne Wolfe's Come Home, Reader, which is also really good because of its subject matter and the way Wolfe combines details from studies by neuroscientists, education specialists, literary critics, and technology gurus into a very readable cautionary tale about what is lost when reading digitally. It's a book I want to write about more because the subject matter is so pertinent.

But right now, I urge you to do yourself a favor and escape to the world of the Metropol Hotel in Moscow where Count Alexander Rostov has been exiled to the end of his days beginning in 1922.  Towles creates a vivid and delightful world by combining interesting details about Russian politics and history with engaging character studies and insights into human nature and what gives life meaning. It's a world the reader doesn't want to leave.  I was willingly drawn into a self-imposed exile into the life of the Metropol with Count Rostov and his friends - and an enemy or two.  Towles creates the very enchantment with an imaginary world that Maryanne Wolfe writes is so necessary to our identity as people who read, people who need escape as well as enrichment and engagement and delight. 

The cynic in me is a little hesitant still to read any reviews.  Perhaps some critic has accused Towles of creating a main character who is a little too much of the perfect gentleman. Are his observations and insights ones that have been made better by other writers? Does it matter? I was happily absorbed by getting to know the characters and listening in on their witty dialogue, the philosophizing, and the observations of character and history.  And so wholeheartedly I recommend setting aside a few hours of respite from regular life to retreat to the Metropol and enter into life in Moscow in the first half of the twentieth century.

Skimming and diving

Since the class I'm teaching is something of a survey course, I have told my students that they can skim some essays, but then dive into others. Billy Collins uses a similar metaphor in his poem, "Introduction to Poetry" (I  think I have shared this before):

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46712/introduction-to-poetry

Most of my students aren't beating anything with hoses. The second quad started a few weeks ago, and my class size tripled from 14 to 44.  I thought with more students in the class, I might hear more opinions, more connections, but instead of more conversation in a large class, we have decidedly less. Fourteen is preferable not just for making it easier for me to learn names and grade papers, but also for making it easier for students to talk out in class. But despite their silence in class (We read an essay by Meriweather Lewis, so I asked about the purpose of Lewis and Clark's journey ... crickets....), I think they are thinking about some of the readings, at least based on their journal posts. I've had several really good submissions. I think what I need to do is call on these students by name. It's intimidating to speak up in front of a group.

The content of this class is not everyone's favorite genre. I recognize that some of these essays and poems are going to be boring for a good number of people, especially since none of them are literature majors, so whether they learn to love Wordsworth or Wendell Berry is not really a goal of the course, although that would be a nice outcome. I just hope I am helping them appreciate literature, which perhaps is harder than teaching about Wordsworth. Most of the students signed up for this course because it is a general education course that fits their schedule.

What can I do to make these readings more interesting to students who don't really like to read?  Sing and dance?  I've started to present videos of the bobolink singing (the chorister in Emily Dickinson's "Some keep the Sabbath"), images of Walden Pond now and then (and a story about how it is being polluted by swimmers peeing in it), and photos of my parents' farm in the fall, of our own trip to the desert, etc. I'm hoping that the visual imagery will capture their imagination, help them connect to what they read. Maybe by the end of the term, the students will not only recognize the names of some authors and be able to identify some of the different trends or tropes in nature writing, but also find a handful of authors they really like.

I probably am assigning too much to read, but it is a survey course. Since I recognize they won't read all of the essays, I give them permission to skim and dive - to pick a couple essays to browse and one or two to spend more time with - skim some, dive into some.

This term I am trying to be a little more systematic in the way I present information: I start class with reminders and announcements about assignments and upcoming events (Exciting news here: One of the design professors is redesigning Pope Francis's Laudato Si to make it more appealing and visually meaningful.  See a prototype here: https://issuu.com/seabrightstudio/docs/now-more-than-ever_prototype-draft07218 )

I've also started having them write down the answer to a question relating to their lives - for instance, last week I asked if anyone knew what ballot measures are coming up that relate to the environment. (I tried to use polleverywhere - an online survey program - with mixed results.)  The class before I asked them to write a short description of their favorite place and then share.  The day we discussed Walden, I had them add up all the costs of owning a car (like the cost chart Thoreau creates for building his house), and figure up how many hours they had to work a year to pay for it if they made $20/hour. (The average cost was about $4000 a year, by the way, 200 hours of work.) But then I lecture for an hour, and I see the phones being checked surreptitiously under the desk. I figure they are young adults, so I'm not confiscating phones, but perhaps I need a stricter policy on that because it seems to be a contagious activity. In the smaller class, this didn't happen quite so much.

At any rate, I enjoy what I'm reading. I get bogged down in finding interesting side notes sometimes, prepping for class, so it takes too much time, but I do recommend rereading Walden and skimming and diving through the Norton Anthology of Nature Writing. Which reminds me that now it is time to go outside.

Indiana farm in early November

Joshua tree late October

2017 Reading in Review

Half way through January, and I have only finished two books. I am almost done with a third, but after spending 40 hours in the car for our Christmas trip, I haven't sat down to read as much. Having the kids home from school has also slowed my reading because we spend more time talking or watching Dr. Blake or The Great British Baking Show, our newest Netflix series.  I'm also trying to read the Gospel of the day and a reflection at night, but I find myself skimming. Not exactly lectio divina.

Time for the annual reading round-up, the grand analysis of reading trends of 2017.  I read more this past year, but as I look through my list, I am having trouble identifying a "Don't Miss This!" book.  I read a lot of interesting and worthwhile books, books that I would recommend, but there's not one that outshines the rest. Here is the summary:

Number of books: 64.  More than the last couple of years, but I counted literary journals - of which I have also read more since I have a Paris Review subscription and my sister is sharing Lapham's Quarterly.  Although I read more, I posted much less.

• 6 of those 64 were journals of short stories, essays, and poetry.
• 7 were rereads
• 26 were nonfiction. 
• Of those, 9 were memoir type books
• 4 were books for spiritual growth
• 3 were collections of essays
• The other 11 could be categorized as how to or history I think. Now that I think of it, I did not include the three travel guides to Ireland that I read pretty thoroughly and included a lot of historical and cultural information.

Of the 43 books of fiction:

• Only 6 were children's chapter books. And only 1 was a read aloud. I did not count the countless picture books the preschooler and I have read.
• 4 poetry collections. I read more than usual amounts of poetry this year including the journals.
• No big classics per se, although the Montgomery books and the Laura Ingalls Wilder book are children's classics, and the Elizabeth Bowen book, Death of the Heart, might count as a lesser classic in a stretch.

The evaluation:

• Books I read even though I didn't love them and wish I didn't spend the time: Never Unfriended, A Table in the Wilderness  - both of these were books that addressed faith written by young bloggers and both had a similar feel - a bit repetitive, a bit hyperbolic.  Other books I was disappointed in: I couldn't bring myself to love either Gibbons' Recipe for the Charmed Life or the Diaz book. Other people love the acclaimed The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, but I never felt drawn in. Oscar reminded me a bit of Ignatius Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces, a book I disliked intensely. Because he was large or because he was critical? I'm not sure, but neither book gets a thumbs up from me. Station Eleven also got great reviews, but I couldn't bring myself to accept that people would still be living in tents in an airport twenty years after a catastrophic flu epidemic - WHEN PERFECTLY GOOD HOUSES ARE EVERYWHERE! And libraries full of books about how to set up electric currents, among many other valuable skills. What else did people have to do all day. They don't even seem to be gardening!! I couldn't suspend my disbelief enough. 
• My favorite novels this year were Reading Turgenev, Silence, The Course of Love, and for fun, Finding Bernadette. Silence I've read before, but the William Trevor is new to me. I was charmed by Alain de Botton's The Course of Love, an analysis of a marriage. It was a book I couldn't wait to sit down with - Charming and interesting point of view, likable characters. The Bernadette book was light and fluffy, but one that was fun to read. My fifteen year old read it first and loved it.  It's sometimes hard to find books she likes to read that don't seem too adult - so I'm always excited when I find a winner for her.
• I did love Melissa Sweet's Some Writer! about E. B. White and rereading Emily of New Moon - those two win for best children's book, and maybe favorites of the year.
• Other books I would recommend: of course, The Joy of Love by Pope Francis, and also Houselander's Reed of God, Barron's Vibrant Paradoxes, Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, and George Weigel's Letters to a Young Catholic.  Books that stayed with me several weeks after I read them: Tattoos on the Heart by Father Greg Boyle, Irish Saints, and the Warnick book This is Where You Belong. Neil Gaiman's big book of collected essays The View from the Cheap Seats may be the book I read with the most relish.  I don't love all the science fiction that Gaiman loves, but I love his frank delight in literature. 

In 2018, I'd like to recommit to reading something from a "Best of" list - maybe Dickens, maybe Willa Cather again, a Chekhov book I have in a pile, or maybe a writer I never really got to know? - I want to read a writer who never disappoints. I've got a few books on my bedside table from The Little Free Library - those aren't always promising, but one is The Very Long Engagement. I again want to get back in the habit of reading aloud to the two youngest girls at night - but the allure of netflix is strong... Usually we save it for weekends, but our weeknights, in between homework and practices are usually pretty full. Bedtime comes too soon.

Back Home Again

The annual summer vacation is now over, including both our trek back to the midwest and the summer off from school. The kids head back to class this morning - 5th, 7th, 9th and 11th. The two college students are now checked in and reading diligently, I hope.

Below are some photos from our trip. I thought I took a lot, but I did not take as many as I imagined, and they are mostly of the cousins rather than my own kids. We went to visit both sets of grandparents in OK and IN, and saw lots of kids. The two year old was in heaven. She loves other children.  I really need to find some friends for her because she still is talking about the two little kids I babysat for a couple times, but whom we haven't seen in months. I think they are her imaginary friends.

We need an oil change now on the car - several thousand miles logged. We started the vacation with a trip up to our old community for a friend's retirement ceremony. Then we hightailed it across eastern California, through New Mexico, to a cheap hotel, where we stayed long enough to watch the Olympic opening ceremonies and get some sleep. The Olympics was timed just right; since we don't have tv access, we were able to gorge at the grandparents' house on sports and drama. We got in lots of swimming with the cousins in OKC, as well. In IN/KY, we saw all the cousins for a day at my aunt's long planned family reunion, a day of much merriment and mayhem.  Everyone gorged on sugar and cream there, in addition to good pork BBQ.

The rest of the vacation slipped by quickly but quietly.  The two older boys organized the rest of their college stuff. I drove them to school, while my husband took on the heroic duty of driving the 5 youngest home - 32 some hours of driving over 3 days. I've done a couple 12 hour days by myself with the kids, but I've never done 3 days in a row. He earned a ribbon for that one.

I did get some reading done - and maybe I'll post about it. Glennon Doyle Melton's Carry On, Warrior.  And Amy Andrews and Jessica Messman Griffith's Love and Salt: A Spiritual Friendship in Letters. Can you guess which one I liked best and which one my book club will like best?  With the 10 year old I read Sing Down the Moon and The Secret of Smuggler's Cove, her summer reading assignments. And I read lots of research papers because my courses were just ending halfway through the vacation. There were a couple good ones, like one on happiness and one that was some original research on learning online. And there was the obligatory marijuana paper. Next time someone writes about this topic, I'm going to ask a few more pointed questions.  Finished that class, now on to the next thing!

Summer sparkle

Coneflowers in bloom.

19 going on 9.

Good things hidden among the weeds

Sweetness hiding behind the sting

A fungus among us

The family museum. Baby clothes of my aunt and father. Wedding vest of my great-grandfather and great-great grandfather.

Grandma's wedding shoes and other family mementos.

A little knit outfit my grandmother made that I wore a few times. A great great aunt's fan and shawl. The hymn of my grandmother's wedding gown. Her aunt's school marm dress with the checks. And a graduation dress that my great aunt made and wore, and I wore also.

No joke when you are at a family reunion with at least 60 kids under 20. 

Where the teens were: party barn, badminton, and, hiding in the background, full of bacteria and viruses, was the pirate jumpy.

My grandfather's garden children.

A little friend.

Reading notes and other news

Spring! So lovely and yet so busy!  Our town had its annual flower show a few weekends ago. It was a lovely event, well attended, but not crowded. The highlight for me was the book sale by the Friends of the Library. I really intended to buy nothing, but walked away with a few of the little green Beatrix Potter books we didn't have, the first five of the Children of Green Knowe series, an Anthony Trollope book, and a Kate Greenaway nursery rhymes book.  I almost, almost bought an old copy of Henry Greene's Loving, a book I have seen recommended several places, but I haven't read. If I knew that I actually liked Henry Greene, then I might have splurged on the $12 book, but I restrained myself, knowing that books that come into our house rarely leave, and I really don't have room for them.
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I was in a reading drought for a time while I have been busy teaching online, but got a spurt of reading done last weekend.  Finished Jason Evert's John Paul the Great: His Five Loves, which had some interesting history bits about St. JPII's near death encounters and his awareness of God's providence, something I am trying to be more aware of - because I struggle with the awareness of how little control over our lives we have, despite having so many decisions to make that seem life-altering.  Also, the perspective of the Cross as a door, and of suffering as an opportunity to both offer up and offer comfort and to become an opportunity for joy, is one that I hope, but fail, to use as my own outlook on life. Bring on the suffering!

Also finished Mr. Blue by Myles Connolly, an odd little book about an odd, saintly person. Meditations on the need for laughter, for living an "amiable, good life," for a new vibrant art alert to the world and the times, on embracing the cross (God's gift to his friends, as he quotes the Cure of Ars), on the beauty of poverty fill the pages.  The introduction, by Fr. John Breslin, compares Blue to Jay Gatsby and his story which was published three years before Mr. Blue. They definitely represent opposite personalities with contrasting hopes and longings.  But Connolly's little book never became as famous as Fitzgerald's, probably because it lacks much plot and has little romance - and what romance it has is spiritual.  It was a fascinating read because it is unusual and unsettling, but it is not a page turner.

Notably, Blue does not like books: "Books are for people who can not make up their minds or have no minds to make up."

I folded a lot of corners in Jacques Philippe's Interior Freedom.  I am meaning to copy down some of his advice, like "Often we may journey in darkness, but we sense that our lives are unfolding in a rhythm we do not control but to which we are happy to abandon ourselves and by which all events are arranged with infinite wisdom."  More soon.
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Good news of the week:  My husband was selected to be a captain in the US Navy! This promotion won't actually take place until September of next year, but it is a welcome relief to know that it will, in fact, take place. After twenty years of service, we are all happy his hard work has paid off. Of course, this means we may have to move earlier than expected - or stay here longer than expected.  Or we may actually get to finish the next two years of this tour. Yet another reminder that our lives are in God's - and the Navy's - hands.
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I just shared a picture on Facebook for Military Child Appreciation month. I'm not usually a frequent Facebook "sharer," but this image of a little boy hugging his mom's leg almost made me cry.  The caption was "Military children say goodbye to more significant people in their lives by age 18 than most people do in a lifetime."  Maybe I'm hormonal, or getting sentimental as I age, but as I think about all the wonderful people who have loved my children over the years, I overflow in gratitude and nostalgia.  I wish my kids didn't have to say goodbye to people they love, or to live far away from the extended family members who love them and form their identity, but I am so grateful that they have met people who have opened their homes and hearts to them. From the friends who watched them in the middle of the night as we were having other babies, the friends who let us stay for weeks while we were househunting, the friends who drove them around to activities, the friends who made them feel like they belonged even though they were outsiders, to the people who taught them in school, at church, on the playing field, in the art room, etc., we've certainly been blessed by the willingness of these people to take us in. I didn't share the Facebook post as a cry for pity, although it it is supposed to raise awareness about the challenges of military life,  but instead to recognize that they have had these significant people care about them.  I know I've said this before but, it doesn't get any easier to say goodbye, but knowing that we'll meet more significant people at the next duty station does offer some consolation.
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Meanwhile, although I am feeling flush with gratitude just now, I've also had a couple run-ins lately that make me titchy. I just want to carp for a minute, so that I can let go of my irritation. One was with a lady who, mentioning she was a newcomer, wrote a letter to the newspaper wondering why some people have signs in their yards that say "A Naval Aviator Lives Here." Why, she wonders, don't we recognize all heroes - the hospice workers, the school teachers, the firemen, etc.?  Well, I want to reply, she is completely free to do so - make signs for everyone! There's no limit to how many signs you can place in your yard! My husband deserves recognition, too, for doing such a great job as a public works officer that everyone's plumbing and HVAC systems are humming along grandly! But why begrudge recognition to the people who actually risk their lives for the safety of our country? These aviators may not be flying combat missions right this minute, but they are preparing for them all the time, and deterring our nation's enemies by being prepared.  But beyond that (there are also a lot of SEALS here, who don't want their homes pointed out), the signs exist here, not because they deserve a sign more than anyone else, but because Naval Aviation has a long and storied history in this particular community.  This place was a military aviation training station before World War I, long before it was a beach community, and many famous fighter pilots, including Admiral Stockdale, whose autobiography of his eight years as a prisoner of war graphically depicts why these guys are honored, trained here.  Anyway, it bugged me that she had to rain on someone else's parade.  Here is a moving article that tells about why the signs were originally posted during the 100th anniversary of military aviation.
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I hope someone writes back to her to share the history of the signs and naval aviation here, but it won't be me because I'm already becoming a nosy busybody myself.  At the most recent middle school track meet, I confronted first a high school girl, and then her pole vault coach about their language.  Some of the middle schoolers, whom I'm helping to coach as a volunteer assistant, were sitting on the edge of the pole vault mat. Apparently they've been asked before not to sit there, but the high school girl felt compelled to use a volley of f-words to ask them to get off the mats.  I went up to her to ask her to please use respectful language to ask them to move or ask one of the coaches to talk to them.  Meanwhile, her coach, a thin, sun baked, hard looking woman, went up to a couple of the 7th grade boys and called them "stupid retards" for not remembering that they've been told not to sit there.  My fourth grader reported this.  Normally, I do not like to act on a child's tattling on an adult.  Usually a kid who is complaining about an adult has done something wrong and doesn't like getting in trouble for it. Now I know those kids shouldn't be on the mats, but I couldn't believe that an adult in a position of leading kids would talk this way, so I asked her. Her reply was "Well, they've got to be either deaf or stupid not to know they aren't supposed to be there. They've been told a hundred times, year after year. It's the same kids..." Her tirade went on for a minute, before I said, "Well, the language you used was really offensive. You've really upset them."  Her response was a hardlipped, "Fine."

The truth is, she didn't really upset them. She really upset ME. I feel like the use of the word "retard," even though I know that when I was growing up, unfortunately, we regularly used it as a derogatory name, has gathered enough negative usage that it is now on par with calling someone the N word.  I wish I had said that to her. Or I wish I had said, "Are you either deaf or stupid because you don't remember your mom telling you a hundred times not to call names?" Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
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Anyway, now I've got that off my chest.  My last gadfly moment was when I wrote a letter to city council about the need for a safe pedestrian crossing at the intersection in front of our house.  The street that runs on the side of our house is a three lane, one-way street that is the main exit off the peninsula for all the employees of the Naval base. And 90% of them leave between 2-4, right when kids are getting out of school. The school is a couple blocks down our street.  A crossing guard is there most days. Some months back the council voted to reject an independent consulting firm's recommendation that stoplights be installed here because a loud portion of the community didn't want stoplights.

But about a month ago, an eighth grade girl was hit on her bike as she crossed the intersection on her way home from school.  I was sitting at home grading papers on the computer when I heard a noise that sounded like a cat dying.  It took a minute for me to register that it was an odd sort of noise, so I went outside. By the time I got out, the police had just pulled up and were leaning over a girl lying still and prostrate in the street.  Her mangled bike was on the sidewalk. Her friend was screeching.  A  young guy was standing next to his big pick up truck parked in the middle of the intersection.  It was obvious what had happened.  I couldn't tell if the girl was alive at first.  The ambulance came wailing up, and as the crew surrounded the girl, she regained consciousness and was responding to them.  Multiple police personnel were questioning witnesses, including the girl's friend who finally switched from wailing to just crying.  I was asked if I saw anything.  The little I saw left me shaking the rest of the afternoon.

The guy in the pick up hadn't seen the girl, and the girl wasn't using the crosswalk to cross, although I have had a crossing guard tell me bikes aren't supposed to use the crosswalk. The ideal is for bikers to dismount and walk their bikes in the crosswalk, but the reality is that even if she had done that, it is hard for the third lane to see pedestrians.

The end of the story is that the girl missed school for almost a month with debilitating headaches and blurry vision.  She didn't break any bones. Her helmet saved her life. I bought two new bike helmets that week for my older kids who don't wear properly fitting helmets. And I've become paranoid about the crossing. The city now has a large sign warning of pedestrians and has placed big orange pylons along the lane lines to slow people down.  I should write a note to thank city council, but it's still a dangerous spot.  Though we live in a small community that likes to call itself a village, this road is a highway.  On the advice of a friend, I've taken to giving each of the kids a blessing as they leave the house. The baby blesses them, too. They are in His hands!

An apologia for keeping books

Enjoyed this article about keeping books in the Autumn Notre Dame Magazine.  I'll latch on to any excuse, but Kerry Temple makes a great argument for books as friends and companions. They bring comfort just by being in the room, reminding you of what they contain and the feelings they evoked. My ongoing struggle with limiting the number of books in the house is mostly controlled by refusing to buy new books.  Temple's comments on books as friends, and the difficulty of friendship with an ebook, along with his reflection that perhaps books are sacred objects, lessens the inner conflict about holding onto books. Those ideas also lead me to wonder if whether part of the loneliness and isolation that teens - and others - often feel isn't because they are comparing their life to someone else's or feeling left out of something fun while reading Facebook or Snapchat or whatever, but because they don't have any books for friends. I know I'm not the only one who carries a book around as a security object - not only does it give you something to do if you are stuck waiting, but it also is like holding the author's hand, a confidence boost. 

Are there any therapies that prescribe reading physical books as a cure for loneliness and isolation?

My favorite excerpts from the article: 

I have a friend who is much more comfortable with the thought of dying than I am. A few years older, he cares for the elderly, stands watch with them, then ushers them through that eerie portal. He told me recently that death will be a buoyant moment because “all your spiritual guides will be there to welcome you into their company.”

“I know so,” he said, nodding, smiling and saying yes, even when I asked about a writer or two I knew only through books I had read.“You really think so?” I asked, incredulous.

The thought that Steinbeck and Merton, Kazantzakis, Twain and Flannery O’Connor would greet me in the Great Beyond made that dreaded moment — and the unnerving strangeness of eternity — a bit more palatable. It was comforting to think that those whom I had read as pilots and pathfinders to help me navigate the human condition would be on hand as personal escorts into the afterlife. Rascally adventure guides.
....
I had a recent conversation with a retiring law professor who was not only moving out of his office but also leaving his home for an apartment in a retirement community. What bothered him most was boxing his books, putting them away. “They are my friends, part of my personality,” he said, looking at the floor, paused in thought.
...

I have a good many friends of all ages who happily embrace buying and reading books on screen: convenient, adaptable, easy on the eyes, such ready access to a universe of texts. I also have a friend who says it is like watching your children out the window; she misses the touching, the holding, the heft, the personal intimacy of a book in her hands. I like the weight and feel, the tactile quality of books. They fit right and good in my hands, both paperback and hardcover. Size and shape and thickness matter. Whether Moby-Dick or the slender reeds of Thích Nhất Hạnh, to carry a book is to walk with a gift box full of river stones and gems. Its tangible, meaty presence gives it character, and long-familiar page designs and type fonts — with underlines and scribbles — welcome me home. I think it significant, not sad, that books draw their lifeblood from trees. And when you lift a book from the nightstand or slip it from a shelf, it opens itself like a doorway, vaulting the imagination into other places, away from yourself and the tedium of days — quietly — and away from the ubiquitous screens, pop-up distractions and info-chatter of our existence.

I have also known comfort and pleasure from the books standing unopened on my shelves. I know them by their spines. Some I returned to often, pulling them down for work, as references and sources, or to revisit for simple reading pleasure. Some I have hardly opened, but discarding them seems an insult to those who gave them to me. I know what was poured into each one, why someone said, “You should read this.” A good many are by writers I have known — perhaps not household names or major leaguers but fine, insightful, dedicated writers whose work deserves respect, even admiration, and a place in my collection. Some of them offer inspiration, motivation for the indolent writer in me; they all, collectively, speak of the literary life, the value and nobility of the written word, the human quest to speak and share, to connect, and announce that Kilroy was here, and had something to say, wanted to leave a mark, did not go without first singing out the window.

And my being physically situated in their midst, flanked by such evidence, such testimony, elevated the labor of my little days. I had a book or two of mine on the shelves as well, a small but earnest voice in the chorus.

Almost every book has two stories to tell — the one found on its pages and another that’s largely secret between me and it. And that relationship has its own significance. I read The Magus and David Attenborough’s Life on Earth when traveling in the Canadian High Arctic, and happened upon A Prayer for Owen Meany when looking for rhyming lines in crazy life. I read A Gathering of Old Men because of an African-American friend who grew up on the other side of the levee from me in Louisiana, and Giovanni’s Room because a gay friend once wanted me to know what he was going through. I read Lonesome Dove at the persistent urging of an older friend with whom I backpacked in the West each year for a decade. Its themes of honor and male friendship guide me still, as Parkinson’s disease has slowed the steps of my gentle hiking partner.

...

The books that have surrounded me all these years have also kept me in close proximity to myself, reminded me who I am and where I come from. There’s much value in that — to listen to The Little Prince again just when you’re feeling trapped by adult “matters of consequence,” or to recall Siddartha when consumed by the world’s phantom lures. I need not reread the books to hear their meanings and messages. I know them by what they instilled in me long ago, by resonant feelings, truths imparted, keen, insightful perceptions bestowed. A glance at each title evoked intangible realities that asked only for imagination, memory and faith to be rekindled.

A scan of their spines reminded me of the enduring truths that writers go after, the goods to hold fast to. A good, good book carries the writer’s vision and presence and spirit. It is a holy conveyance from one to another, and it bears more than pages and print. There is not just writing between the lines; I am touched — sometimes deeply — by the power of language arranged just so. In a book you carry that around with you like a treasure box, bearing the virtues and hauntings the author sought to approximate.

So I cannot help but think of these books as not only companions and friends but also as religious objects, holy relics that have acquired some ineffable quality — a presence, a character, a soul — because of what we have had together, what’s been shared, the interchange that has taken place between us. I do believe in the spirits of inanimate objects and how things may take on a life of their own. I know that is an old-school thought, perhaps more elementary than that — like some primitive superstition, a belief in numina, totems, blessings and grace and pieces of God invisible to the eye. I also think that, like other mysteries, faith is required for it to be true.

I do not know if others someday will feel similarly about books stored and hidden in digital devices, words and paragraphs scrolling across backlit screens. But I do know my life has been diminished, has become poorer since those many books got boxed and stacked away in my basement at home. My friends are gone, their spirits absent; I miss the daily communion. My glass and metal work station feels two-dimensional, bright and barren. I miss the wood grain and friendly clutter, the old chairs and the fierce reality of books staring me in the face.

I do not know if poets and scribes await me on the other side, or if there is another side. But I like to picture it. And I hold to the élan vital found in books as a happy clue to the divinity of things and an arrow pointing toward an afterlife — with Stegner, Styron and twinkling Sam Clemens grinning back at me.

Illustration by Kyle Stecker