2010
Sold, Patricia McCormick
The story of a young Nepali girl named Lakshmi, sold by her step-father to a brothel in India. Told in short vignettes, the book is poetic, descriptive, sparse, beautiful, tragic, and breaks the heart. It’s almost impossible to put down. We need more stories like it, read by more and more people, so that there will be less and less stories like it.
Surprised by Hope, NT Wright.
Wright examines what the Christian hope is (the Redemption of all things, including matter and the human body, foreshadowed in the real space-time resurrection of Christ), what the Resurrection promises (God is surely making all things new), how the Kingdom comes (perpetually, violently, until, well, Kingdom come…) and what all of the above implies for the current life of the believer (a life of meaning, pursuing beauty, justice, and announcing the good news).
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson.
The second time I’ve read the book, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. A perfect novel. If you have not read it, why are you still sitting here reading from my screen – Go! You’ll thank me later.
Art & Soul: Signposts for Christians in the Arts, Hilary Brand & Adrienne Chaplin
One of my 30 for 30 books, what I liked most about it was being introduced to a vast array of artists, many Christian, with whom I was unfamiliar. Much of the book was “Yep, I Agree” material, with some passages worth reflecting upon.
The Bread of Truth, R.S. Thomas
A good read, my first experience of the Welsh poet’s work. Read my review here.
The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
A page-turning, midnight-oil kind of read. The story of a young girl orphaned in Nazi Germany and taken in by a foster family. Her soft-hearted foster father teaches her to read with the first book she stole, the grave-digger’s hand guide she nabbed from the snowy ground where her brother was buried. Narrated by Death, the story of the Book Thief as she lives through four years of the war, is filled with impossibly delightful metaphors, tenderness and irreverence. The book left me with a revelation of humanity that, as Death experiences himself, is haunting.
The Maytrees, Annie Dillard
A troubling and wonderfully written book. Read my review here.
Song at the Year’s Turning, R.S. Thomas
Thomas’ writing, what I’ve read of it, brushes up against the anguish and ocassionally the glory of the here and now. It reminds me of Wisdom literature: Solomon languishing before the Lord, David madly grabbing the horn of the altar; the narrator is a man caught up in the meaninglessness of life but knows, believes, and hopes this isn’t it only. “When I returned… someone had broken a window/ During my absence and let a bird in./ I found it dead, starved, on the warm sill./ There is always a thin pane of glass set up between us / And our desires. We stare and stare and stare, until the night comes” (from “The Minister”).
The Seesaw Log, William Gibson
I found The Seesaw Log, William Gibson‘s journal from his experience of bringing his first Broadway production to life on the stage, a successful play that starred Henry Fonda and Anne Bancroft (in her first role on stage), a fascinating and insightful read. In the intro of the book, which also includes a post-staged version of the 2 hander (Two for the Seesaw), Gibson writes, “only in fiction can one tell the truth.” A loaded statement that resounds, especially when entering the realm of auto/biography. Equally fascinating to me is Gibson’s perspective of collaboration and the stage, his budgets and notations, and the thorough and exhausting account of re-writes.
A History of Strategic Bombing, Lee Kennett.
A fascinating and thorough examination of the advent of the aerial bomber, with its foundation in hot air ballooning to the devastating power of the WW II death machines of the sky. A helpful resource as I prepare and gear up to write my WW II drama.
The Occupied Garden, Kristen den Hartog and Tracy Kasaboski.
I’ve been reading The Occupied Garden, pulled from the stack of books I’m using to understand and get a sense of the feeling of Holland during World War II. The authors, sisters, write a memoir of their father’s family during the war and weave a greater narrative of the historical events of the military campaign, with a very unique examination of the Dutch Royal Family during the war years, experience which parallels and intersects with the family’s history.
A rich and compelling narrative of one family caught up in the war. It causes me to imagine what stories are lost to my family with the passing of my Oma and Opa, and how similar the stories, not known to me, are of survivors of the occupation, and immigration to Canada. The book is not sentimental: it’s a thorough and engaging account.
