The literary post.

                Everything lately has been busy, but I have loved gnawing away (I'm not sure if gnawing is the correct term here…) at books this summer. Reading is such a love of mine, and it can be hard to find time, but the last few years I’ve been super pushing hard at it, and I’ve been proud to read 30-35ish books per year. I love fiction, but in the last four to five years I’ve had a huge interest and have loved the benefits of reading non-fiction. Often I do need to push myself through non-fiction books, but even when the subject matter has been dry or the book long, I’ve gained such an appreciation for the research going into the subject matter, and how much I've taken away, especially regarding topics that I feel strongly about, or know little about. The added knowledge and awareness non-fiction brings is so worthwhile. 

                As for this summer, in between working, moving between houses, packing, and traveling around, I’ve loved what I’ve been reading. I think Half the Sky by Nicolas Kristof and Cheryl WuDunn, Catfish Alley by Lynne Bryant, Mandela by a collection of authors, and Freedom Summer by Barry Watson might be in a four way tie for best books I've read in the last four months. They are all so different, but so, so wonderful. Three of which deal with a central theme of race and discrimination, but in such different ways. Currently, I’m working towards finishing up the Grapes of Wrath, (another challenge, but it’s wonderful writing, and I'm so happy I started it)  and the novel I was just mailed by St. Andrews, A Long, long Way by Sebastian Barry. I’m not far into it, but the writing is so rolling and vivid, and as I was finishing up the end of the first paragraph, I knew I would love the book, it’s not even that it’s gripping, it just rolls along and his use of words and descriptions are lovely! I'm also enjoying the use of 'bloody' as a semi-frequent adjective. Other books I’ve enjoyed in the last couple of months would be Black Like Me by John Howard Griffith (a classic from the 1950s, before the Civil Rights Movement even began, but still a great read! Investigative journalism at its best, too!), A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf (thanks to my brother, Matt for this one!), it was haunting but so true and explored why women of earlier times could not become writers. She explores the thought if Shakespeare had had a sister, and what her life may have been…I tried reading a bit of Milton and Wuthering Heights too, but both were pretty challenging. Maybe I’ll try back in a year or two.

Below are some of my favorite quotes from a few of the titles listed above. J 

Invictus, a poem written by W.E. Henry, found within Mandela, a large book of photos and pieces or poems written by authors and friends of Nelson Mandela:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
I have not winced nor cried aloud
Under the bludgeonings of choice
My head is bloody but unbow’d,
Beyond this place of wrath and tears,
Looms but the horror of the shade.
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how straight the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my own fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

                “If we don’t talk openly about faith and bring people from different traditions together, we forfeit the conversation to people who are happy to build boundaries.”

-Eboo Patel, Acts of Faith

And, in conclusion, a couple from Virginia Woolf’s, A Room of One’s Own (thanks again, Matt!) which I love:

                “I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream. For I am by no means confining you to fiction. If you would please me – and there are thousands like me – you would write books of travel and adventure, and research and scholarship, and history and biography, and criticism and philosophy and science. By doing so, you will certainly profit the art of fiction. For books have a way of influencing each other.”

                “I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister ; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee’s life of the poet. She died young – alas, she never wrote a word. She lies buried where the omnibushes now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle. Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the crossroads still lives. She lives in you and me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes, or putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. This opportunity, as I think, it is now coming within your power to give her.”