book reviews: what is more literary than a rainy day

Good news: I'm writing this while it's pouring rain - so there is an extra layer of Very Literary on top of this. Can you feel it?

Bad news: it's been about 18 months since I did a book review, and I'm overwhelmed by the thought of trying to tell you all the good books I've met! In the middle of that time, for a semester, I audited a "reading literature" book discussion group at my old grad school. I - and three others - were up on tv screens on a wall in Dallas, while the rest of the small group were in the classroom.

It was a unique vantage point - on a wall, watching what was happening, while discussing books as the audience watching what was happening... layer upon layer of detachment.

I am thankful I did it. On a side note, listening to people respond to literature is always a fascinating social experiment. I fear our generation is incapable of reading a story and seeing what is IN the story, rather than automatically putting ourselves into the scene. That, my friends, is a discussion for another day.

Here are the best books from the last year and a half of this life. And yes, I definitely read lighter books, but because I'm summarizing multiple months, this list might seem a bit heavier because the cream is rising to the top, so to speak.

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

“Basketball Rule #5 When you stop playing your game you've already lost.”

Twelve-year old twins, Josh and Jordan are great basketball players, coached on by their dad. The book is written in verse - and packs a ton of heart into the short lines dancing across the page. A book appropriate for middle school kids, I'd read this along with them, but I'd also definitely recommend it to adults as well. As the review says,"Josh and Jordan must come to grips with growing up on and off the court to realize breaking the rules comes at a terrible price, as their story's heart-stopping climax proves a game-changer for the entire family."

[The Crossover won both the 2015 Newberry and Coretta Scott King Awards for children's literature.]

Rating: Loved this book. Big fan. Sports and family. What more could a plotline want?

On Reading Well by Karen Swallow Prior

“Reading well adds to our life—not in the way a tool from the hardware store adds to our life, for a tool does us no good once lost or broken, but in the way a friendship adds to our life, altering us forever.”

Using classics, Prior moves through various virtues: The Cardinal Virtues (prudence, temperance, justice, courage), Theological Virtues (faith, hope, love) and Heavenly Virtues (chastity, diligence, patience, kindness, humility). She uses the classic novels to illustrate and define what the various virtues are. I appreciate that she takes the time to define terms - I hate an undefined term! - and then thoughtfully applies the books to the virtue. For instance, she uses "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy in her chapter on hope. Which, if you've read The Road... where is the hope? Prior answers this well. (She was also a guest at our book discussion group I was in where she discussed this book!)

Rating: If you are a classics reader, you will enjoy this book. I do think you have to have somewhat of a foundation of reading to more fully understand the point, but she is a very good writer and I liked the connections she made.

A Secret Place of Thunder: Trading Our Need to Be Noticed for a Hidden Life with Christ by John Starke

Recommended by one of the pastors in the reading group I was in, this book was the most sane, theologically astute assessment of the topic I have ever, ever read. Amen. Selah. I mention the pastor because while the book is written by a pastor and does lean toward those who are in ministry, it applies across the board - don't NOT read it because of that. Read it. Convicting, challenging, so appropriate for the times. Love. Have recommended many times already. I wish I was smarter so I could write this without sounding like a fangirl.

Rating: Read it. I don't know what else to say. Read it. My heart is better for having read this book.

the truth of this smacks you upside the head every time.

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

It was the old New York way...the way people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes", except those who gave rise to them.

For a couple winter months, I went into a rabbit hole of Gilded Age biographies and tv shows, and picked up Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1921) Winning book, The Age of Innocence and read it for about the fifth time.

I was once again blown away by Wharton's writing, her subtly layered sentences, her descriptions of Newland Archer, May and Countess Olenska and the city. But, Kelli! It's about an affair with the Countess! Listen to the literary raindrops falling and let's look deeper: The point is the social surroundings he was trapped in, the awareness of May - whom he thought too naive to figure out what was going on - and the strict rules of the society of the day and his "struggle between love and responsibility." Maybe someday we can have a discussion about my thoughts about social mores and expectations - whether that's family, church, online, etc. - and how my individualistic self has balked against these for years and years (still going). Which makes me love this novel (and the Nose Dive episode, from Black Mirror. Big language warning.) Read the quote above and apply it to the church - it works, right? This is my point.

Also, I saw this movie with Daniel Day Lewis and Winona Ryder back in the day with my now-husband and for once, the movie matched the book. It was true love forever after (for me and the book) (and for me and the husband).

A very good explanation of what's going on in this movie, and -by extension - the book.

(One more quote): During that time he had been living with his youthful memory of her...Perhaps she too had kept her memory of him as something apart; but if she had, it must have been like a relic in a small dim chapel, where there was not time to pray every day...

Currently Reading: Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader's Guide to a More Tranquil Mind by Alan Jacobs

Nothing’s over, ever.” And this is both a blessing and a curse. The past that ties us to people in ways that hurt us also ties us to people in ways that make healing possible. Sometimes we wish that the past could be over; sometimes we are grateful that it is not. It stands in the middle, “partially completed” but not over, poised between radical otherness and utter likeness. And that is why, as Weil says, “Our attachments and our passions do not so thickly obscure our discrimination of the eternal in the past.” We can see what really matters—“the eternal,” what always matters—because of that middle distance.

Have already recommended this, even though I'm not quite done yet. Will get back to you on it. Uses classics and history to explain why that is important to calming our minds today. Great writer. Making good points!

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