Misplaced quotes and the work of words

summer reading recap

It’s been months and months since I’ve done a monthly reading post. That does not mean that I haven’t been reading! Those posts take a lot of time and I’ve used the time to read instead of write about reading (which is almost as fun).¹ A lot of my summer reading was done sweating sitting at the pool while my oldest was working at camp for a couple of hours two mornings a week. I drank some coffee, ate some breakfast, journaled, and then read for the rest of the time. I’m not even going to pretend that I’ll catch up on how I normally share my reading. Instead, I want to share some books that I’ve loved this summer. 

A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky

I bought this book about Octavia Butler at Vroman’s in Pasadena² without realizing that Butler was from Pasadena. But she was. She referred to the Pasadena Public Library as her “second home,” but eventually establishes a rhythm of riding the bus to the Central Library in LA where she reads and reads, sometimes by happenstance but most often in thorough research. This book is not a biography nor is it a literary review of her many books. Instead the author sets out to answer how Octavia became the Octavia Butler that so many people know. 

African American Readings of Paul

I read this on the plane to California and was surprised and enchanted. I thought it would be more exegetical work (and that was part of it), but it was also biographical of different people who had engaged with Paul’s work. The book began in the early 18^th century and went all the way through the mid-20^th century. Many of the featured theologians and preachers were women. A quote by Frederick Douglass captures why so many faithful Black believers interpreted Paul for themselves. 

They have declared that the Bible sanctions slavery. What do we do in such a case? What do you do when you are told by the slaveholders of American that the Bible sanctions slavery? Do you go and throw your Bible into the fire? Do you sing out, “No union with the Bible!” Do you declare that a thing is bad because it has been misused, abused, and made bad use of? Do you throw it away on that account? No! You press it to your bosom all the more closely; you read it all the more diligently; and prove from its pages that it is on the side of liberty—and not on the side of slavery.

A Gentleman in Moscow

I was taken by this one from the opening. It begins with a trial report where a man is confined to a hotel on the promise of death when he exits. The hotel is a tiny microcosm with a barbershop, multiple restaurants, ballrooms, and behind the scenes passageways. The unlovely thing about library books is that I had a quote I wanted to share and then, as I was writing this, I could not locate it in the book.³ It is a book I could start over today, enjoy just as much, and get so much more from the second time through. You can read an interview with the author here. 

The Editor

 I wanted a book that I could sit and read in long stretches and I suspected this biography of Judith Jones would satisfy me. Franklin’s writing reads like fiction as she brings Jones to life. Jones is the reason we have The Diary of Anne Frank, which I read and read and read again as a child; she was also the editor of Sylvia Plath, John Updike, Julia Child. I love stories of people who are great at their work and remain curious about the world. I’m starting to think that I’m looking for guides for the second half of life.

An Aside

Just this week, I finished reading An American Childhood by Annie Dillard. Permit me a few observations. I don’t think I could remember that many details about my childhood if I tried, but to pull together an intriguing and educational work from childhood memories is a masterpiece. The pace of the writing picked up speed and intensity as she traveled through her teenage years which feels appropriate for the experience of hurtling through puberty. There was one brief paragraph at the end referring to her life then, as an adult woman.

And I wake a little more and reason, No, it is the oak leaves in the sun, pale as a face. I am here now, with this my own dear family, up here at this high latitude, out here on the farthest exploratory tip of this my present bewildering age. And still I break up through the skin of awareness a thousand times a day, as dolphins burst through seas, and dive again, and rise, and dive.

What have you been reading this summer?

1. That’s been the reason this summer, at least. Earlier in the year, life tried to bury us.

2. I feel just like a travel blogger saying something like that and I rarely travel. Let me have my moment.

3. Of course, I could simply take better notes.