Just a reminder that, for the most part, the monthly reading posts are now available for all readers.1 I’d love to hear what you are reading and enjoying this fall!
My best reading this month happened at the beach. I sped through the first two books mentioned and congratulated myself for curating such a great stack for vacation. Then I opened Demon Copperhead and realized I had made a mistake. The book is not the problem, per se. Kingsolver is a great writer. The premise is intriguing. It’s just too dang close to my actual life. Copperhead is a retelling of David Copperfield and the story is set in the tiny corner of Appalachia where I grew up. I know the places. I’m from the places. The people could be people I know and recognize and love. I made it through half the book—gritting my teeth the whole way because it was so incredibly painful—and brought it home to taunt me from the ottoman in my study.
When I made a weekend beach trip with some women a few weeks later, I brought along Gilead. I had started Gilead about a year ago and felt sad and disinterested. I tucked it back on a shelf and ignored it until this trip. Turns out, it’s a beautiful story. I am underlining my favorite sentences and I do not typically write in novels. When I got home from that trip, I put a bookmark in Demon Copperhead, put the jacket back on it, and stuck it on the shelf in the living room. It will be waiting for me when I’m ready.
I cracked open James when we arrived in Hilton Head around dinner time and I finished it before I went to sleep that night. The novel is a retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the enslaved Jim’s point of view. I would have happily read it cover to cover without interruption but I was on vacation with my family. The prose was gorgeous and this book is easily within my top ten (maybe five) of the year.
I did ask someone if they had read James and their response was “from the Bible?” so beware how you talk about it!
The Mother Artist by Catherine Ricketts
I cracked James open but this book might have cracked me open. Motherhood is one of the dearest pieces of my life and one that I’m the most hesitant to talk about in public. In the book, she discusses the desire for privacy after giving birth—something that I definitely experienced each time—and she wrote, “Our apartment becomes a world unto itself.” Motherhood feels like an entirely foreign world: alien, yet familiar. We climb our mothering selves out of our privacy back into the world we knew before and everything is different.
Each chapter of this book addresses a different part of mothering: pregnancy, loss, labor, vision, ambition. Each chapter and its topic is paired with an artist and how their work was shaped by their mothering. Toward the end she writes, “all of my life with my child will be a severance.” As my third son is approaching double digits, I feel that deeply. They are slowly walking away from me, anchored in our love.
Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara
I ordered this book after a colleague taught from it in a meeting. I read it at the beach and promptly passed it off to someone else at work. It’s the riveting story of fine dining revolutionized by hospitality. Give people more than they expected and they’ll be back. It was full of advice (in the best form of stories) about how to learn new things and introduce new people and places. It also made me curious about the experience of a Michelin three star restaurant.
Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg
I also got this book because of a colleague taught some of the material. Duhigg argues that we are always participating in one of three conversations when we’re speaking: practical (what’s this really about?), emotional (how do we feel?), or social (who are we?). You have to know which one you are having in order to connect with the other person. This is a book I’m going to pull off the shelf over and over. I’ll review how to form deep questions and not shallow ones, how to navigate difficult conversations, and how to match people’s energy and mood. Reading this book has changed my conversations. A few weeks ago, I was greeting people in the church lobby before a women’s event and I asked a woman how she was doing. She started to cry and said the one year anniversary of her husband’s death had been the previous week. I leaned in a little and asked her to share her favorite thing about her husband. We had a beautiful conversation because reading the book made me confident enough to ask a more intimate question.
Two friends read this one and one left it on my desk. I typically enjoy fantasy so I was surprised when I struggled to get into it. I read it and read it and realized one night that I felt no connection to any of the characters. It’s a plot based book, which some people, like my friend Sarah, really love. I, however, prefer character based books and this was harder for me to stick with. It’s a good, interesting story and you really might love it. You know, if plot based books are your thing.
Pandita Ramabai in Her Own Words by…Pandita Ramabai
In this very slim book (booklet?), Pandita outlines some parts of her life. Born in 1855, she was a Hindi scholar who overcame poverty and eventually found Jesus while studying in England. She eventually went back to India and founded a mission that educated orphan girls and widows. I was introduced to Pandita in a seminary class; reading this just fueled my desire to learn more and more about her.
What have you been reading?
If I read a fairly controversial book, I might add it at the bottom and put it behind a paywall.
Hi Lisa - I loved these reviews, mostly new to me, and your thoughtful reflections on each one. I was fascinated by 'underlining my favorite sentences and I do not typically write in novels.' I don't believe I've ever highlighted a thing in a novel. And your words make me wonder why. Thanks for that invitation.
Here's my October Bookbag -
https://lindastoll.substack.com/p/porch-154-october-bookbag
Thanks for making these available! I love reading about other people's reading.
Loved your line about underlining in Gilead not being something you normally do given that it's a novel. I LOVE underlining beautiful passages in novels and it's one of my favorite things about using a Kindle, it stores them for me and I can reference them again easily when the moment strikes. Keep on!
I read James for my neighborhood book club and did not anticipate as dark of a story as we got. Also did not expect that it would not line up with Huck Finn as that's the story it was supposed to retell. I think I would have been more satisfied if it delivered what it promised, but nonetheless it was a good read and I gave it 4 stars.
Intrigued by some of your other reads; I added Unreasonable Hospitality to my (ever-growing) TBR.
Can't wait to read more!