2022 Summer Reading

When Roger Angell died at the age of 101 and the New York Times wrote about his career, the headline caught me.  I read about him and realized I had already read some of his work - I taught the Foreword he wrote for his step father's Elements of Style and was immediately interested.  I read everything NYT had linked about him and searched Amazon for used copies of their recommendations.  Let Me Finish is him writing about his life.  Nothing so trite and expected as chronology but terribly interesting.  His way with words and his memories were unique and representative the generation all at the same time and his observations insightful without being dogmatic. 

*also ordered a collection of his baseball essays in hopes of teaching some better sports writing through better examples.  

What a gem of a book for any mother who has doubted herself.  With eloquence, humor and wisdom, Lamott validated my 20 year ago experiences as a new mother adrift and uncertain.

3 Favorite Lines <no spoilers>

• "I want him to grow up . . . to be militantly on his own side." (37) #same

• "My therapist, Rita has convinced me that every time I say yes when I mean no, I am abandoning myself, and I end up feeling used or resentful or frantic.  But when I say no when I mean no, it's so sane and healthy that it creates a little glad around me in which I can get the nourishment I need.  Then I help and serve people from a place of real abundance and health instead of from this martyred mentally ill person, this open space in a forest about mile north of Chernobyl." (48)  Wise therapist.  May we all learn this lesson sooner than later.

• "Forgiveness is having given up all hope of having a better past." (210)  This epiphany took me most of a lifetime to realize and I was never ever to state it so perfectly.  We can't do anything with the past but we have to move on and help those around us effected by that same past do the same.

Having read Lift and The Middle Place, when I saw this I had to have it.  When Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love that I devoured several years ago) says she loves the book, double have to have it.  No disappointment.  Her experiences, her reading of My, Antonia throughout, and her making peace with the force of nature that is her mom all resonated with me at every page I turned.

2 Favorite Lines <no spoilers>

• "Work is their (Antonia's family) answer to the grief that keeps pounding to get in.  No doubt that appealed to my mother, who considers action infinitely superior to analysis." (103)

• "All my life my mother was my mother, nothing more . . . But not I see there's no such things as a woman, one woman.  There are dozens inside every one of them.  I probably should've figured this out sooner, but what child can see the women inside her mom, what with all the Motherness blocking out everything else?" 

Mary Karr

Diana Friel McGowin

Ask me why I re-read this book so often and I'll tell you I don't know.  But I do.  Netflix!  When you (or Shondaland) are looking for the next great series - may I suggest this fan fiction that takes Pride & Prejudice beyond the wedding and into the lives of all things Bennet, Darcy, Bingley & Wickham?!  

Other people have comfort food.  I have comfort movies and comfort books.  This is a comfort book.  

Theron Humphrey

This book just makes me smile.  This time through, the introduction hit hard.  He was ready to change his life so he adopted a dog and drove a van across the US.  "I wasn't waking up creating something I'd be proud of, something beautiful."  This book is the story of discovering himself, his dog and photography along the way.  Great pictures that stand alone and stories too.  

How do people do this?  How do you quit your job, travel, find yourself, create, make meaning from previously mundane and . . . and afford it all?  I'm too practical.  Too worst case scenario.  Too traditional.  But I do very much enjoy the stories others tell of their adventures - living vicariously is the best I'll do.  Maddie On Things is that book.

Coble, Billerbeck, Hunt, & Hunter

Collection of 4 "Fiction/Christian/Romance" given to me by my mother currently provided a much need break from strangeness, deep thought, or school related content!

J.K. Rowling

After finishing Lit at the lake I needed - desperately - something else.  Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was perfect.  I was struck, as I always am, by the imagination and creativity that went into writing these books.  Who comes up with entire new worlds and then connect them so perfectly to our own world and makes us see ourselves?  J. K. Rowling.  This is what writers do.  This was the perfect length for the time I had and it was a joy to revisit these old friends and remember their adventures.  

Louis L'Amour

Taylor Jenkins Reid

Amanda Palmer

I knew nothing of Amanda Palmer or her band The Dresden Dolls or the TED Talk that put her on the map.  I only knew that asking for help is not something I do well.  The subtitle "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help" intrigued me, so when I needed an audiobook for a series of solo summer trips, this was the book.  

• "You're an artist when you say you are."

• Fraud Police

• Kickstarter.  Based on relationships.

• "You can fix almost anything by authentically communicating."

• "If you want to know what you believe, ask people you taught."

Matthew McConaughey

Cary Elwes

Tom Brokaw

Roger Angell