Book review

Book Report: The Reading List

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October 20, 2022

Recently I read The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams (2021). I am attracted to books about books, bookstores, booksellers, and libraries –both fiction and nonfiction–and this one is a delightful example of that genre. Another example is The Sentence by Louise Erdrich (2021), which is set in a bookstore and is one of my recent favorites. I also remember reading years ago a memoir by the mystery writer Susan Hill, Howard’s End is on the Landing (2009) about the year she read only books she already owned. I could do that, but then I better hurry up and buy the new Maggie O’Farrell and Barbara Kingsolver and…

Back to The Reading List. I loved each of the characters, especially the two main characters. Mukesh is an elderly man who is grieving the death of his wife and Aleisha is a young woman who has a complicated family. They meet at the library where Aleisha has a summer job. A list of books labeled “In case you need it:” appears to both Mukesh and Aleisha as well as other characters and thus begins a reading adventure, but more than that, support and even transformation.

And what a great list this is! I have read each of these books; some, more than once. I love how the lessons and the insights gleaned from these books are woven into the narrative–once again suggesting the power of books and reading.

Thinking about my own “In case you need it list,” I remember a charming illustrated book, My Ideal Bookshelf, Art by Jane Mount, Edited by Thessaly La Force. (2012). Over 100 cultural figures share the books that matter the most to them and why. Here, for example is librarian Nancy Pearl’s bookshelf as depicted by Jane Mount.

I am not familiar with most of Pearl’s choices, and that, of course, could lead to an even longer TBR list.

Here’s doctor and writer Atul Gawande’s shelf. I’ve read more of these books, but this isn’t a contest. Rather, an insight into a person’s life and development.

Naturally, this makes me think about what would be on my shelf. These are a few of the possibilities–novels I have read more than one time and that have impacted my life.

  • Giants in the Earth by Ole Rolvaag
  • All of Jane Austen’s books
  • The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  • The Color Purple by Alice Walker
  • Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
  • Persuasion by A.S. Byatt
  • A sampling of Nancy Drew books
  • Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
  • Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
  • Fresh Water for Flowers by Valerie Perrin
  • A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
  • The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson
  • Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

I need to stop or I will need a very long and sturdy book shelf.

An Invitation:

What is on your “ideal bookshelf”? I would love to know.

Book Report: September Round-Up

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October 6, 2022

Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway mysteries dominated my September reading time. I read the last four in the series of fourteen books, but the last line in the most recent book certainly indicates there will be a fifteenth book to come.

Along with the Ruth Galloway books, I read other mysteries this month.

  1. The second Richard Osman, The Man Who Died Twice (2021). His third in the series featuring old and retired characters solving mysteries was recently released and is, of course, on my list–The Bullet That Missed.
  2. Fox Creek by William Kent Krueger (2022). I enjoyed it and swallowed it almost whole in a couple chunks of reading time, but I didn’t think it was his best. But, that being said, his best is better than good.

The novel I want to highlight from this month’s reading, however, is The Midcoast by Adam White. (2022) I wish I knew who recommended this or where I learned about it. Sometimes I note in my TBR list the source of a recommendation, but I didn’t in this case. The title refers to a section in Maine where the story takes place. The narrator, Andrew, grew up in the area and returns there with his family. He is a teacher and a writer and becomes an observer of another family: Ed, a lobsterman, his wife Steph and two children, Alli who is a lacrosse star and son EJ, a police officer. How is it that this family seems to have unlimited funds and money is no object? Thus, the story unfolds.

I also recommend a nonfiction title, Windswept, Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women by Annabel Abby (2022). I’ve always been attracted to books about walking; for example, Wanderlust, A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit. I do like to walk, but I am not a long-distance walker or major hiker, so I laugh at myself when I read a book about walking. Am I like the woman I once knew who collected a pile of books about running, but never put on her running shoes and headed out the door? Oh well.

This book features women for whom walking, and often walking solo, was a major part of their lives–Georgia O’Keefe, Simone de Beauvoir, and others unfamiliar to me. The author then decides to walk some of those same paths, musing that the women walkers she admires, “walked to become,” and also how walking often leads to new thoughts. That is certainly true for me–even my short walks in the neighborhood.

The author also writes that silence is an element–like water and fire–and I keep thinking about that.

September was an incredibly busy month, and I was grateful, as always for my book companions, which allowed me to pause and take a deep breath. As much as I enjoyed the mysteries I tended to reach for in recent months, I now feel a desire to read fiction with a bit more substance. I’ll keep you posted.

An Invitation

What did you read in September? I would love to know.

NOTE:

For two other nonfiction books I read in September and highly recommend see my September 15th post.

Book Report: The 14th Book

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September 29, 2022

Recently blogger Melanie (http://comfy house.blogspot.com) posted a series of fun book topics (“Best sequel,” “Currently Reading,” “Drink Choice While Reading,” etc.). The one that captured my attention was “Start at the top left of your shelf and pick the 27th book.”

I modified that somewhat and decided to pick the 14th book on several of my bookshelves housing fiction. Why the 14th? Well some of the shelves don’t hold 27, and I just chose #14 at random.

Here are the 14th books from seven different shelves–four shelves with only hardcovers and three with paperbacks.

  • The Tomcat’s Wife and Other Stories by Carol Bly (1991). Carol Bly was a Minnesota writer who died in 2007. She was married to (and divorced) the writer Robert Bly, who is probably better known than Carol, but she was known and respected not only for her writing, but also her teaching and speaking gifts. I heard her speak on a number of occasions and always appreciated her wit and wisdom. My favorite book of hers was a collection of essays, Letters from the Country (1981), originally published in Minnesota Monthly. Do I still own that book? I will check. Anyway, the copy I have of The Tomcat’s Wife is autographed, but frankly, I am not sure I actually read it. Yet.
  • The Excellent Lombards by Jane Hamilton (2016).I loved her previous books, The Book of Ruth and A Map of the World. I only have a vague memory of this book, a coming-of-age story set on her family farm, an apple farm, the main character “Frankie” loves dearly and worries about its future.
  • Green Earth by Frederick Manfred (1977).Manfred was another Minnesota author (1912-1994) perhaps best known for his book Lord Grizzly, but he wrote many books, many in the “western” genre. Green Earth is a big book, over 700 pages, and Manfred was a big man with a big presence. I remember noticing his big hands when I met him at a book signing event at the independent bookstore where I worked many decades ago, Odegard Books. I don’t think I ever got around to reading this book, but I am attracted to it now because it is a family saga set in what he called Siouxland (northwest Iowa, southwest Minnesota, southeast South Dakota), an area that intrigues me for its prairie landscape. At one time he lived in a house that eventually became the interpretive center of Blue Mounds State Park in Rock County, Minnesota.
  • Moo by Jane Smiley (1995). Another autographed book, this book brings back memories. I won this book in a raffle at a library event in Cleveland, OH. This is not my favorite book by Smiley, but I love how she has written books in a variety of styles. My favorite book of hers is A Thousand Acres for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992. More recently, I throughly enjoyed the quirky novel Perestroika in Paris.
  • The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich (2008). Just holding this book makes me want to read/re-read all of Erdrich’s books, first to most current. I know there are book groups who are doing just that, and I admire their devotion, as she has written 28 books–fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and children’s books and has won the National Book Award for Fiction and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A Plague of Doves, which is the story of the unsolved murder of a farm family that continues to haunt a community, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. And I would be remiss not to mention that Erdrich is the owner of one of my favorite bookstores, Birchbark Books, Minneapolis.
  • How It All Began by Penelope Lively (2011). Lively is a prolific and celebrated English writer, whose works often explore the power of memory, which perhaps is why I am attracted to her books. I loved The Photograph (2003) and Moon Tiger (1987), and I recall thoroughly enjoying the disparate cast of characters in How It All Began. I can imagine re-reading it.
  • A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (1943). This is one of my all-time favorite books, and if you haven’t read it, do not delay. If you haven’t re-read it since your youth, re-read it now. If you decide to pick one book from this eclectic list of books, let it be this one. Enough said.

In plucking these books off some of my shelves, I thought I might discover some I could donate to a Little Free Library, but that is not the case. I was surprised by how many of the authors are Midwestern–Bly, Hamilton, Manfred, Smiley, Erdrich–and I wonder if that would be the case if I focused on a different number or other shelves. Also, I am pleased that I have only NOT read two of the five, and I am more inclined to read them soon. All in all, I am delighted to become reacquainted with these books.

Happy reading!

An Invitation

What are the the titles of your #14 books? I would love to know.

NOTE:

Next week’s Book Report Thursday will be a summary of what I read in September.

Book Report: Fall Wish List

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September 22, 2022

Recently Acquired Books

Even though I have MANY books on my shelves I have not yet read, including those recently acquired, and even though my list of books I intend to request from the library is long, I still covet many new books–yet to be released this fall or recently released. Here’s my list:

Fiction

  • Lucy By The Sea by Elizabeth Strout
  • A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny (Nov 29)
  • Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Rayburn
  • The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell
  • The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman
  • The Ski Jumpers by Peter Geye
  • The Evening Hero by Marie Myung-Ok Lee
  • Lessons by Ian McEwan

Oh, and I am attracted to the British Library Women Writers Series–forgotten works by mid-century women writers. I think there are 18 in the series.

Nonfiction

  • Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World by Karen Armstrong
  • A Place in the World, Finding the Meaning of Home by Frances Mayes
  • Hagitude, Reimagine the Second Half of Life by Sharon Blackie
  • How We Live Is How We Die by Pema Chodron

The scary thing is that I know I will be enticed by many other titles along the way–and every time I enter a bookstore. I guess as addictions go this problem isn’t too bad.

An Invitation

What new books are tempting you? I would love to know.

Book Report: Reflecting on Home

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September 15, 2022

Sometimes a book does everything but jump into your hands. That was the case with two books I read recently.

I must have read a review of The Green Hour, A Natural History of Home by Alison Townsend (2021), for I added it to my TBR list, but when I saw it in Arcadia Books on our recent trip to Spring Green, WI, I knew I could not wait for it to come out in paperback or for the library to add it to their shelves.

First of all, look at that cover. So beautiful, and it is the kind of book that simply feels good to hold. But more than that is the topic, the themes. The author grew up in Pennsylvania and as a young adult lived in Oregon and California, but later in adulthood moved to the Madison, Wisconsin area. She writes beautifully, richly about each landscape–the kind of multi-layered, descriptive writing I love–but having lived in Madison, those are the sections I loved the most.

Her essay, “Strange Angels: Encounters with Sandhill Cranes,” is perhaps the best nature essay I’ve ever read.

Like a group of pilgrims or spiritual seekers collecting before their journey begins and uttering preliminary prayers, the cranes seem to be readying themselves, preparing for the long flight they must make, some of them for the first time.

p. 159

Like the author I love the sound of the cranes and always feel blessed hearing them. “Perhaps that is why their call is so evocative, why it seems to float across the millennia as it does, immutable and enduring.” p. 160. Cranes are not part of my life here in St Paul, and I miss them.

I also loved the essay “An Alphabet of Here, A Prairie Sampler” as well. C is for Canada Geese. G is for Great-Horned Owl. Q id for Queen Anne’s Lace and Queen of the Prairie.

Z is for zigzags, zaps, and zings of summer lightning, the zed-shaped folds of the aurora opening its luminescent green curtains on a winter’s night when it’s twenty degrees below zero, and the z-z-z-z-z-ing as we sleep–cat on the bed, collies on the floor beside us–the zodiac swirling around us like the well of life that is here, now, the only one we are given.

p. 187

Some books beg to be read aloud, and I am grateful my husband was willing to listen as I read select essays to him while driving through the countryside on our way to Cleveland recently. This books was our perfect companion.

I discovered The White Stone, The Art of Letting Go by Esther de Waal (2021) when we toured the gardens at St John’s University, Collegeville, MN this summer. Because I can never resist a bookstore, we browsed the Liturgical Press bookstore on campus, and I found this little treasure. Years ago I read her book Seeking God, her book on Benedictine spirituality, but it is no longer in my library–I may need to get another copy. This book was written during the pandemic and at a time when she is moving from one home to another, and she employs what has sustained her through the years–the Rule of St. Benedict, the gifts of Celtic spirituality, the teachings of Thomas Merton, and the Psalms–to guide her through a time of transition.

I hold on to stability but I must not be static. Here is the paradox…I must be prepared for the continual transformation in which God is bringing the new out of the old…It is just a matter of somehow keeping on keeping on, a continual bending one’s life back to God whatever happens.

p. 64

I was especially moved by the chapter titled “Diminishment,” in which she reflects on how time seems different as we age, but also that “Life now brings a greater opportunity to pay attention to look consciously at the ordinary minutiae of daily life in the things around…”

She also underscores the key question of Benedictine life: “Am I becoming a more loving person?” When we were driving through Indiana, I noticed a small sign on the edge of a cornfield, “Fear God,” it said, and I thought to myself, “How does fearing God make me a more loving person?” Instead, I suspect adhering to that idea would make me a more fearful person. I want to be a more loving person. Thanks for the reminder, Esther de Waal.

Ok, that’s it. I am so happy these two books will live on our bookshelves.

An Invitation

Have any books found their way into your hands, your heart recently? I would love to know.

Book Report: Two Nonfiction Books By Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot

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August 25, 2022

I was 61 when I read Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot’s book The Third Chapter, Passion, Risk and Adventure in the 25 Years After 50, published in 2009. I am now 74 and almost at the end of the time of life Lawrence-Lightfoot writes about in the book.

This book was pivotal in my aging evolution.

We were living in Madison, WI, at the time, and I had not found my place in that community. I had trained as a spiritual director when we lived in Ohio and had a private practice there. I had led spirituality groups in an organization for those touched by cancer and also facilitated retreats and taught T’ai Chi in a variety of places, but in my current life I simply had not found a foothold. That was for a variety of reasons, I realize now, but at the time I had no idea how to adjust to this unexpected loss of role, let alone what might be next.

The Third Chapter helped me acknowledge the sadness and grief I felt, but also opened me to imagine new possibilities; new ways of viewing myself and who I might become as I aged. When we moved back to St Paul, after almost 20 years away, I was thrilled to discover ways I could live with purpose and meaning. The time described in The Third Chapter has been and continues to be a time of thriving for me.

The book also gave me a name for this stage of life. “The Third Chapter.” The other day a writer friend, who was feeling certain life changes swirling around her, said she felt as if she was experiencing a midlife crisis again, but of course, we are well beyond our midlife years. How important it is, I think, to give voice to these elder years.

In the inside cover of the book I wrote two questions: What are the words you use to describe this stage of life? What words do you find yourself using frequently when you talk about yourself? I didn’t know when I wrote those words how those would not only be key questions for my own reflection, but they would become questions as I helped develop Third Chapter programs at my church.

So back to the book. By telling others’ stories, Lawrence-Lightfoot focuses on the creative and purposeful learning that goes on in this stage of life and explores the ways men and women at this stage

find ways of changing, adapting, exploring, mastering, and channeling their energies, skills, and passions into new domains of learning. I believe that successful aging requires that people continue–across their lifetime–to express a curiosity about their changing world, an ability to adapt to shifts in their developmental and physical capacities, and an eagerness to engage new perspectives, skills, and appetites. This requires the willingness to take risks, experience vulnerability and uncertainty, learn from experimentation and failure, seek guidance and counsel from younger generations, and develop new relationships of support and intimacy.

p. 7

No small task. That should keep us engaged!

This book was the first of what is now my extensive collection of books and aging and spirituality. I am still in my “third chapter,” but I would welcome a new book from Lawrence-Lightfoot about the years after 75. Hint, hint.

In the meantime I found another book by her, Exit, The Endings That Set Us Free (2012). Once again deftly telling others’ stories, she explores the variety of endings in our lives and how to navigate them. She notes that our culture values beginnings, launchings. We hold entrepreneurs in high regard. But exits are ignored and often viewed as failures.

We often slink our way out the door, becoming invisible as we do so. One of the women she interviews says, “I don’t want the exit to be about closed doors. Where is the open door! Where is the new life?” (p. 68)

How do we open a door when we end a relationship, a job or career, a role, a major project? And how do we purposefully and meaningful approach the final exit, our own death or the death of a loved one? This book, like The Third Chapter, tells illustrative stories so well, encouraging readers to reflect on our own lives and the endings we have experienced or will experience.

I thought about the acknowledged ending to a job I loved–how I felt celebrated and honored and how that helped me let go. But I also remember another time when my last day in a role I had also loved was totally ignored. No “Thank you.” No “We’ll miss you.” I am sorry I didn’t take it upon myself to create an exit ritual.

A note about Lawrence-Lightfoot: She is a MacArthur prize-winning sociologist, the author of ten books, and is the first African-American woman in Harvard’s history to have an endowed professorship named in her honor. She is someone worth reading, for sure.

An Invitation

Have any books been a guide for you in this aging evolution? I would love to know.

Note:

On another topic, for those of you in the St Paul, MN area, my husband Bruce is having his second garage sale of the season this weekend, Friday and Saturday, August 26-27, at our house, 2025 Wellesley Ave. As many of you know, he paints discarded furniture and accessories and the proceeds from his sales go to support the work of Lutheran Social Service’s Rezik House, a residence for homeless youth. Access to the sale is through the alley only.

Book Report: Summer of Mysteries

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July 14, 2022

Note: I’m taking a break next week. The next post will be Tuesday, July 26, 2022.

I’ve always loved reading mysteries, beginning with Nancy Drew, of course. Later, I worked my way through Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers and more recently, I’ve indulged my Louise Penny and Jacqueline Winspear addictions. (The next Louise Penny, by the way, won’t be released until November.)

I’ve always balanced reading mysteries with reading nonfiction and literary fiction, but this month? Not so much.

At the beginning of the month I read one of Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey books, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. My only regret was that I wasn’t on vacation at a lake resort where the only diversion was the occasional putt-putt of a motor boat or the haunting call of a loon. It is that kind of book –witty and subtle and oh, so upperclass English.

Then I got sucked into the Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths. I recall reading at some point the first book in the series, The Crossing Places and enjoyed it, but I did not feel compelled to grab the next in the series–and there is a total of 14 of them with a new one planned for 2023. This month, however, that changed, and not only am I reading them, but so is my husband and our daughter.

I am currently reading #5, A Dying Fall, and will more than likely finish that today.

Ruth Galloway is an English forensic archaeologist who often helps the police, developing a close relationship with copper Harry Nelson. The unfolding of the plot is always interesting, but as is usually the case for me, the characters interest me more. I just discovered when I looked up the author website that she has also written other mystery series and stand-alone books as well. Oh no!!!

I know I don’t need to justify, nor should you, why I choose to read a particular book or series of books or genres, but I admit I am curious why I am so enamored of mysteries right now. I seem to need lighter reading, a quick read, or what is often called “summer reading,” or “beach reading.”

Yesterday I received the weekly online newsletter from one of my favorite bookstores, Arcadia Books in Spring Green, WI, and the opening column referenced a bumper sticker, “It’s brutal out here.” How true that is. Often, the crimes committed in the mysteries I read are brutal, too, but in 300 or so pages, the mystery is solved and good people have worked to make that so. The known is made known. The uncertainty is resolved. And life goes on.

if only the real world was that simple.

So…to balance watching the January 6 hearings and listening to the news on NPR and reading the NYTImes and Washington Post, as well as informed and thoughtful online newsletters, I am reading mysteries, and Elly Griffiths is a good choice.

An Invitation

Has your reading changed in recent months? I would love to know.

Note:

Arcadia Books : https://readinutopia.com

Book Report: Joan Chittister’s Books

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I am a Joan Chittister fan. One of her groupies.

Joan Chittister, O.S.B., is a Benedictine nun, theologian, speaker, and prolific author. As a visionary voice in church and society, she has served in a variety of leadership roles, including co-chair of the UN sponsored Global Peace Initiative of Women.

Occasionally, actually more than occasionally, Chittister is the object of controversy and criticism–for her stances on contraception, abortion, women’s ordination as contradicting Roman Catholic teaching. Several years ago she was prohibited by the Catholic patriarchy from attending the first Women’s Ordination Worldwide Conference, and –no surprise–she not only attended, but gave the opening address.

Even though I have never met her I consider her one of my spiritual directors. I have heard her speak many times, most often at the Chautauqua Institution in New York, where she is a frequent and popular speaker at the afternoon theology forums, and, of course, I have read many of her books.

We Are All One, Reflections on Unity, Community, and Commitment to Each Other (2018)

This small book is my current “before I make the bed” book.

One of the chapters, “Holy Accountability” begins with this quote:

It is not God’s fault that things are as they are at present, but our own.

Etty Hillesum

Not the Republicans’ fault. Not the former President’s fault (or the current one). Not the superintendent of schools or the mayor or police department or the neighbor who doesn’t mow his lawn or the parent who doesn’t discipline his child or…..

No, the fault is our own. My own.

As if that weren’t enough, Chittister asks,

Here’s a quiz: What do the Adam and Eve story and the presidential election of 2016 in the United States have in common? Give up? It’s easy: free will, accountability–and oh, yes, a snake in the tree.

p. 41

Does that grab you? Chittister goes on to remind us that Adam and Eve lost “paradise” because they ignored their responsibilities. Ouch.

One of her attributes as a writer and a speaker is her ability to target the heart of a matter in a few words and to challenge the reader/listener to examine beliefs and perspectives and then to respond.

The great human task is to make life better for everyone. To be satisfied with anything less marks us as less than fully developed human beings.

p. 45

The Gift of Years, Growing Older Gracefully (2008)

I own sixteen Joan Chittister books; many I have read more than once. The Gift of Years has become sacred text for me, and I consult it frequently, trusting its wisdom and its ability to challenge my fears and enlarge my vision.

Again, in a few words, Chittister tackles big topics, such as regret, letting go, loneliness, transformation, forgiveness, faith. With each topic she opens me to both burden and the blessing. For example:

The burden of regret is that, unless we come to understand the value of the choices we made in the past, we may fail to see the gifts they have brought us.

The blessing of regret is clear–it brings us, if we are willing to face it head on, to the point of being present to this new time of life in an entirely new way. It urges us on to continue becoming.

p. 5

Chittister does not have her head in the sand about the challenges of becoming older, of being old, (She wrote this at age 72 and is now 86 and still writing and speaking and influencing.) but, instead, she reminds us that even in this stage of life there is life to live. I am still becoming.

Other Chittister Books

I think it may be time to re-read The Time is Now, A Call to Uncommon Courage (2019) and Between the Dark and the Daylight, Embracing the Contradictions of Life (2015). I am also tempted to add The Monastic Heart: 50 Simple Practices for a Contemplative and Fulfilling Life to my library.

As I said, Joan Chittister is one of my spiritual guides, and I need more time with her.

NOTE:

You can subscribe to weekly and monthly Joan Chittister newsletters. https://www.joanchittister.org

You can also listen to and see Chittister on You Tube.

An Invitation

Who are your spiritual guides? I would love to know.

Book Report: Favorite Reading Places

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June 16, 2022

I can read and am happy to read in any location, but on these June days I most enjoy sitting on our patio with a full view of the garden; a garden developed and tended by my husband. I receive its beauty every day.

The only setting better for my reading pleasure is a view of water, preferably big water. Water where I can hear the sound of waves, gentle or with more energy. The first COVID summer my husband and I packed up outdoor chairs, cold drinks and snacks and our books and headed to nearby lakes where we could sit at a distance from anyone else and enjoy a “vacation day.”

When we lived at Sweetwater Farm, I stretched out on the sectional in the area at the front of the house we called “the nest.” When the windows were open, I often heard the clop-clop of Amish buggies passing by or I might hear our donkey, Festus, signaling that it was dinner time NOW.

As a child, I remember reading on a blanket spread out on the beach of the resort where my family spent one or two weeks each summer. It was one of those old-fashioned kind of resorts with individual cabins and not much, if any, in the way of amenities, but we loved it there. At night or if it rained, my book and I moved onto the screen porch, and I was just as content.

In one house we lived in for only a short time when I was in the 7th grade, there was a window seat in the closet of my room. Guess where I read? When our kids were young, we sat on the front porch swing, and I read aloud the next chapters in the current family book. Our house in Madison, WI, had one of those large, livable porches, too, and I often spent the whole day there reading or writing, only stopping to make dinner, which we would eat on the porch and then read there until bugs interfered with our comfort.

One of my favorite reading memories is reading in the adult pool at a country club. We lived in Dallas, TX, for two years when I was in junior high school, and we often spent hot summers weekend days at the club. My father and brother sometimes played golf, and my mother sat near the kiddie pool, watching my younger sister. Nobody, and I mean nobody, used the pool designated as the adult pool. That pool had wide steps leading into the water, and I sat on the top step, the water lapping against my legs and waist.

Once a lifeguard told me to get out of the pool because it was just for adults, and a man I didn’t know told him to leave me alone. “She’s not bothering anyone.” I suppose I thanked him and just kept reading.

More important, of course, than place, however, is the book. Right now I am reading a long and absorbing novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honoree Fannonne Jeffers, and I will need many more hours of reading in favorite locations before I write about this book.

Looking Back: Favorite Books of June, 2021

I will list my favorite June books in a couple weeks, but in the meantime here are a few of the books I read a year ago.

  • I re-read two favorites and loved them even more the second time around. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver.
  • The Other Black Girl by Zakiyu Davila Harris, a debut novel, was a summer sensation. OBG stands for “other black girl,” and is used when there is more than one black woman in an office. Now think about that! In this case the office is a publishing house. I can imagine this book being the basis for a television series.
  • What Could Be Saved by Liese O’Halloran Schwartz is set in Bangkok in 1972. That interested me since I spent a semester in Thailand the fall of 1968, and I recognized many of the place names. The dysfunction of the American family whose son disappears reminded me of Ann Patchett’s themes at times. An engrossing read.
  • I only read two nonfiction books last June. (I think that will be true this June, too.) One was The Seeker and the Monk by Sophfronia Scott, in which the author explored her own spirituality by studying Thomas Merton. The other nonfiction title was Morningstar, Growing Up With Books by Ann Hood. I am a sucker for books about books, and this was a good one.

An Invitation

Where do you like to read? I would love to know.

Book Report: Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

/ nagneberg48 / 2 Comments

June 9, 2022

I always read in bed before turning out the light, but only occasionally do I begin the day reading in bed. Last Friday, however, I woke up a bit earlier than usual and decided to treat myself to what I call “Edith Wharton Time.”

Now I have no idea if the American writer Edith Wharton actually started her day by reading in bed, but when I toured her gorgeous home, The Mount, in Massachusetts and saw her spacious bedroom looking out over the gardens she had carefully planned, I imagined her enjoying the morning reading or writing in bed before attending to her agenda for the day. She had servants, of course, and perhaps even was served breakfast in bed. That was not the case for me, but I don’t usually eat breakfast anyway.

I only had 50 pages left to read in Great Circle (2021) by Maggie Shipstead, and reading them in the early hours when I felt refreshed from a good night’s sleep seemed like a perfect way to start the day.

I loved this book.

The plot summary on the back of the book is accurate and enticing:

After being rescued from a sinking ocean liner in 1914, Marian and Jamie Graves are raised by their dissolute uncle in Montana. There–after encountering a pair of barnstorming pilots passing through in beat-up biplanes–Marian commences a lifelong love affair with flight. At fourteen, she drops out of school and finds an unexpected patron in a wealthy bootlegger, an arrangement that will haunt her for the rest of her life, even as it allows her to fulfill her destiny: circumnavigating the globe by flying over the North and South Poles.

A century later, movie star Hadley Baxter is cast to play Marian in a film centered on her disappearance in Antartica. Scandal-plagued and trapped in her role as a Hollywood wild child, Hadley is eager to redefine herself after getting fired from a romantic film franchise. Her immersion into the character of Marian unfolds alongside Marian’s own story, as the two women’s destinies–and their hunger for self-determination in vastly different places and times–collide.

Does this tempt you?

At 651 pages, reading this book is a commitment, but I enjoy sinking into a book with rich descriptions of place and engaging with complicated characters and twists of plots and staying with a story that spans lifetimes. And the circle theme–circles as endless and wondrous, but as Marian points out in the book she writes about undertaking the North-South Pole journey, “Endlessness is torture, too.”

I now have added Shipstead’s two previous novels to my TBR list: Astonish Me (2014) and Seating Arrangements (2012). My library hold list continues to grow!

Starting my day by finishing the book must have been a good omen, for the delights of the day continued. My husband, who was busy with his garage sale selling the discarded furniture he has painted, pointed out it was National Donut Day. That required a trip to a favorite bakery, The Baker’s Wife. And later I enjoyed time with a friend sitting in the sunshine on her patio. A good day, indeed.

An Invitation

Do you enjoy reading in bed? I would love to know.