The discipline of the library browse
the books I've read in the first quarter
Twice this year, I’ve gone to the library and browsed the New Here shelf. It’s a spiritual discipline that I’m naming the library browse, an exercise in curiosity and humility, noticing and naming the things that I don’t know. I pick up a couple of books that I think are interesting before turning to things that I think I came to borrow. I like this practice because it exposes me to things not curated by an algorithm that is mining my information for things I might like.1 I pay attention to what I’m captivated by and let myself dabble in reading quite outside my field. This last month I picked up Deep Water, a chunky book about the ocean. Also about our climate crisis.
I would need to read extensively about the ocean before I could argue with this author or start to categorize different facts. In the meantime, I am amazed at the creatures and the rhythms of the ocean. I had no idea there was a nightly vertical migration, called the diel vertical migration, that is the single large movement of life on Earth.2 Or that of all the baleen whales, only the gray whales don’t sing.3 I did not know (but should have guessed) that the history of swimming is racialized4 or that Cemetery Beach on Home Island of the Cocos Islands is covered in plastic.5 The book tends toward being a little preachy, but the more I’ve read the more I’ve come to understand that.
It is a practice to read this far outside my field. When I pick up a theology book, even if it is about a topic I haven’t studied, I feel some degree of competency. The author and I are speaking the same language. I will know some of the works and scholars she mentions. I will be able to make connections to things I have read and studied and written about. I do not know enough about anything in this book to allow me to agree or disagree with the claims the author is making. I can’t add anything to it. I don’t recognize the landscape. I have to hold it all loosely, suspend judgment, read with curiosity, and marvel at how much I do not know.
I want to be able to freely say that I do not know enough to write even a short essay about many things: tariffs, the history of the Middle East, the ocean. However, I stand on unshakeable theological terms in all of these topics: we should have as much care for the poor as we do for making money, all people are made in God’s image and we should always be against genocide, the ocean is made by God and we are to care for it. I find my grounding in those beliefs and remember that I am finite, unable to know all that could be known. I need others and their expertise. The discipline of the library browse reminds me.
Here’s everything I’ve read in the first quarter of the year and a sentence or two about each one.
January
5/5 stars- loved this memoir of a woman living in the Arctic Circle in the 1930s. How on earth did she adjust back to life in Europe?? Save it for next winter. It won’t mean the same thing in July.
Full of pictures and a look at modern day life on Svalbard. I really got on a kick with this in the winter.
This was also a browsing-the-library find. It was the true story of a Palestinian family and it was heartbreaking. Stories matter. We need stories as we process how the world works.
I’ve followed Austin Kleon for years and every so often I reread his little trilogy on creative work.
I wrote a whole post on three chapters of this book.
Stories matter but so does our place in the world as we tell our stories. This book looks at how people from Latin America read the Bible.
February
The original of Kleon’s trilogy. I read them backwards this time.
This biography of Eugene Peterson is so well done. It’s complex and nuanced and I did, in fact, cry at the end when Eugene died.
I started listening to this book flying back from Universal. It’s my favorite one. When I got home, I finished reading it.
Perkins has written a great, introductory primer to Biblical racial conciliation. If you haven’t read much on it, this one is for you.
March
I reread this before bed. There’s an essay at the end about spiders that is so great. How does one make spiders riveting?
Torjensen’s more academic work walks through the Greco-Roman worldview about women and how that worldview affected theological development and women’s leadership in the church. Here’s a brief review of some of the main points.
This lengthy biography was also the result of a library browse. The part about the Freedom Rides blew my mind because I have done a bit of reading and somehow missed those. Jim Crow? Yes. Great Migration? Yes. Freedom Rides? Not until this book. Lewis’ life really showed how someone could care about something and work toward it with no guarantee of it producing anything.6
I made notes on this newer book of Newport’s. How can I adjust parts of my work according to some of these principles? It’s in a note on the phone so I can keep referring back to it. This is one of my favorite books of his, but definitely not worth your time if you aren’t in knowledge work of some kind.
This novel was captivating. A dystopian adventure story that constantly surprised me. I’ll go back and read his other stuff now.
If you don’t feel up for the academic work of Torjensen, pick up this instead. It is accessible work by a historian and focused on the modern day role of the pastor’s wife. It will broaden your view of church history.
This is the book mentioned in the introduction and it was beautiful and also very sad. I’ve read little about climate change and it is overwhelming to look at the damage we have caused our planet.
What have you been reading?
Now, is the library using an algorithm to determine its purchases? Maybe.
James Bradley, Deep Water (New York: Harper One, 2024), 67.
Ibid., 110.
54.
263.
His life did cause many things but the work could also be undone.
Currently reading The Anxious Generation. I Cheerfully Refuse is next up!
Okay, I’m going to start calling it the discipline of the library browse, too. My libraries have a new section I browse, but will also put books on a shelf every few weeks for different themes that include “staff picks.” I love perusing these human algorithms to find new non-Christian books to read.