Wednesday, January 12, 2022

What I Read on My Winter Break

A week from now, my seminary classes start again, and I will once again have very little free time.  But what I will really miss is the week at Marco Island, which gave me lots of time to read:  no chores, no big projects, no home repair, no meetings.  Bliss!

I was also lucky to have great books to read.  At some point in the fall, I saw a Twitter thread about the best sci fi books that included some sort of spiritual thread.  My mind immediately went to Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow, which many Twitter commenters mentioned.  Someone else suggested Connie Willis' Doomsday Book, which I had idly thought about reading again, since it involves both a modern outbreak of a new flu strain and the first arrival of bubonic plague in England in the 1300s.  The Twitter commenter mentioned that it was a great book for Advent.

So, the first book I read was that one, since we were midway through Advent.  I had read it before, but it was over 10 years ago, so it read as a new book to me, although I did remember the ending.  I remember having trouble getting into the story during my first read, but I was traveling and didn't have another book with me, so I slogged through and then was consumed by the plot.  For my second read, the plot consumed me right away.  

I was aware of my reading experience on some meta level, as a woman entering year 3 of a highly contagious pandemic that's not wiping out 50% of the population like the bubonic plague of the 1300's but is still quite lethal for many of us and disruptive in so many other ways that I didn't realize a pandemic would be back in my innocent days.

I finished that book before we left on vacation, and I decided to tackle The Love Songs of W. E. B Dubois by Honoree Fannone Jeffers.  When I read the reviews at the end of summer, I wanted to read it right away, but seminary classes had started, and I knew I wouldn't have time.  An 800 page book isn't exactly beach reading, but it was perfect.  The main story set in our modern time was deeply compelling, but so were the historical plotlines.  If I hadn't already known that Jeffers writes poetry, the lyrical nature of the work would have made me wonder.  I can't always read books that deal with such heavy topics, but her work managed to maintain a tone of hope, even when delving into deeply depressing material.

I also found the book inspiring because it was written by a woman who is my age, who teaches for a living.  I am even more astonished that she was able to write this kind of important work of art while holding down a full-time teaching job at the University of Oklahoma, which is not the usual teaching setting for people who write this kind of book.  It made me wonder about my own writing career and what might be possible.

I finished my Winter Break reading with Matrix by Lauren Groff, another book I wanted to read the minute I heard the reviews.  I found the story of a 12th century young woman who rises as an abbess and transforms her nunnery into a stunning success both compelling and oddly chilly/detached.  I didn't find myself as engaged with the main character as I had been with the previous two books, even as I found the trajectory of the plot interesting enough to keep me reading.

As I look back over my reading, I'm realizing that I chose, unintentionally, books set in different historical time periods.  I'm also seeing spiritual themes:  what does it mean to have a spiritual vocation and still live in the world?  How do we reconcile ourselves to the misery around us?  How can our faith sustain us?  And all three books look at gender in interesting ways.

It's the kind of reading that I cherish:  books with a compelling plot and lyrical writing, books that make me feel happy to be alive and reading such good books, books that give me nourishment for the nonfiction days ahead of me.  I know that a lot of us are wrestling with diminished attention spans for all sorts of reasons, and I'm always relieved to find that I can still lose myself in a good book.

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