Summer Reads 2017

I FEEL LIKE I'M ALWAYS READING with plenty more to read, but I don't think I would ever describe myself as a well-read person. I have a feeling I'm not the only one too. I like reading and learning, plain and simple.
So as summer nears its end for me as a teacher, I thought I'd share bits of my summer stack. My stack is incomplete without my Kindle reads, but it's a fair representation. Here are my categories:
FAVORITE LIGHT READS.  

• John Grisham's Sycamore Row. This is a reread for me from its debut in 2013 but I still love the mystery and thrill of what will happen in a greed-filled and race-charged plot. The racial roots go deep, and Grisham is not afraid of prejudice, vengeance, or reconciliation.
• John Muir's Stickeen (1909). Nonfiction. Muir's poignant and lush descriptions capture the grandeur of Alaska once again, but this account also adds the adventures and companionship of a small mutt who joins the expedition regardless of foul weather and hardship. You can easily find this story for free.

DEEP READS. I thought my summer choices were dependent on the sales table at Barnes and Noble. Not so. I landed on an unanticipated theme.

• Leo Tolstoy's "Family Happiness" (1859). Ever ironic, it is a longer short story of how a young girl falls in love with an older family friend and as easily falls out of love as time passes. Not a happy tale by any means, it remains a fascinating psychological account—think selfish ideals versus the dulled reality of time.
• Sue Monk Kidd's Secret Life of Bees was originally a short story. Set in the deep South as the Civil Rights Act is being implemented, it explores the story of young Lily Owens who has not only run away from her abusive father but has rescued her family's black housekeeper from prison. They hitchhike to South Carolina and find a true home in the heart and house of black beekeeper August Boatwright. This is not a light coming-of-age novel, though there are plenty of the typical earmarks. Spiritually, the book is both meaningful and disturbing to me, but I'll let you decide that for yourself.
• Harper Lee's recent Go Set a Watchman reminds me of Tolstoy's "Family Happiness." Young adult Scout is home from New York City for a summer break and must decide who she really is. She can now see how rigid her Maycomb, AL, hometown has always been, which includes her longtime boyfriend and her father. Scout's flashbacks to her teenage years are poignant and delightful but stand as a harsh contrast to her twenty-something perspective. I'm not sure what the critics expected of Lee, but I happen to like the harsh reality she portrays. It feels real.

POETRY.

• The Everyman's Library Pocket Poet edition of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Okay. Most anyone who has read a little poetry is familiar with "God's Grandeur," but Hopkins only wrote about 50 complete poems. It truly doesn't take much time to read through his works. I am naturally drawn to his religious themes like "Peace" but also find the observational bits from his notebooks most intriguing. Where else can you see a poet's mind at work as he thinks through the adjectives to describe the color of early wheat against long beige grasses?

WORK.

• How do you counter the destructive aspects of culture that surround us? You read Dr. Anthony Esolen of course! He is my favorite Dante translator and now my favorite clarion to mindfulness. As an intensely Christian writer, Esolen reminds me of a most passionate statesmen of old or a true revivalist like George Whitfield or Jonathan Edwards in Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture. His chapters speak of truth and beauty, right and wrong within our American government and society. He touches on every divisive issue there is to stir us to action but more importantly to wake us to see that our choices as Christians do affect where and how we live.

---