What I Read July - December [From the Book Pile 2021]
File this post under the “better late than never” category! As a reminder, here’s what I read during the first half of 2021.
If you enjoy hearing what I’ve been reading and reviewing, you might also enjoy listening to the Englewood Review of Books podcast episode: On Writing Book Reviews (John Wilson & Tamara Hill Murphy)
Now on to what I read the final half of a wild and wooly 2021…
You can see all my reading lists since 2006 here.
The second half of 2021 was full of almost everything except for reading! Good things, hard things, and work-related things filled up my days and, while I still found some time to read good, true, and beautiful things my TBR pile didn’t dwindle quite as much as I’d expected. Here’s what I did manage to complete and (for the most part) enjoy the second half of the year.
How was your reading in 2021? What've you been reading lately? Any suggestions you want to send my way?
I want to hear what you think about this list and what you’d add to it!
Drop me a comment below!
Spiritual Nonfiction / Theology / Spiritual Practices
See more titles in this category listed below under the Apostles Reads heading.
34. The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives
by Brennan Manning (HarperOne, 2004. 179 pages)
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A Sacramental Life categories: Spiritual Practices | Wholeness & Healing | Church
My review in 3 or more words: inviting | challenging | almost too-good-to-be-true yet Really Real
During the late summer, in a particularly tough week in the middle of a particularly tough year, I reached for the first Manning book I found on the lowest level of my bookshelves and I’m so glad it was this title. It’s long past time for me to re-read Brennan Manning. I first discovered his writing during a time of great spiritual re-awakening and felt almost attacked by the force of Good News that Manning preaches. Manning is both a catholic priest and a self-proclaimed “ragamuffin” (aka, a “notorious sinner”), and I’d never heard anyone, let alone someone with his credentials, proclaim a Gospel of tenderness as the pathway to repentance and transformaton. On this read, I found Manning’s prophetic call to the post-9/11 American church of 2004 as timely as ever. To consider that call within the Gospel of Tenderness is the best possible way to stay close to the heart of Christ when everything else feels mean and vindictive.
Quoted on Goodreads
One of my favorites:
“The immense tenderness of the heart of Jesus is touchingly expressed when he visits the town of Nain (Luke 7:11-17). The only son of a widow has died and is being carried by relatives past the town gate for burial. Seeing the mother’s grief-stricken face, Jesus feels sorry for her (JB); he is move with pity (NAB); he has compassion for her (NRSV); his heart goes out to her (NIV). Jesus takes her face in his hands and whispers, ‘Shhh, I know,’ He wipes the tears from her eyes with his thumbs, and then he says, ‘Don’t cry.’ Jesus is the human face of God, and at the moment (and at every moment), you and I are being seen with the same gaze of infinite tenderness.”
35. Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers
by Dane C. Ortlund (Crossway Books, 2020. 224 pages)
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A Sacramental Life categories: Spiritual Practices | Wholeness & Healing | Church
My review in 3 or more words: reflective | heartfelt | layered
Brian and I read this book out loud to each other - a chapter or two at a time - over the course of the final, especially difficult months of 2021. Almost every chapter included an idea or Scriptural reference we wanted to linger with, pray about, and consider for our own context. I also appreciated and found fascinating Ortlund’s deep work unearthing the gentler writings of the Puritan writers. Even though we needed to hear Ortlund’s message this year, I’m not sure we’re his primary audience. He is speaking passionately and pointedly to what I assume to be those in his particular denominational expression of Christianity - those who might have profound knowledge of Scripture but a truncated understanding of how that shapes our emotional and relational lives. In particular, I‘d have to guess that he is writing to men because every single of the many illustrations throughout the book reference only male figures and relationships - even once or twice when referencing the nurturing side of God which the Bible depicts as a nursing mother, Ortlund describes as a nursing father (!?!?).
This book was a gamechanger in 2021. We’d heard it recommended from several folks including my brother and one of my spiritual directees, and, in God’s kindness, began reading it the same week we experienced one of our heaviest ministry disappointments this year. The kind of disappointment that tempts me to retreat into a shriveled up, self-protecting heart. Instead, I hope for these kinds of disappointments and feelings of betrayal to help me grow a heart more like the gentle and lowly heart of Jesus.
Quoted on Goodreads.
One of my (many!) favorites:
“Christ was sent not to mend wounded people or wake sleepy people or advise confused people or inspire bored people or spur on lazy people or educate ignorant people, but to raise dead people.
... we can vent our fleshly passions by breaking all the rules, or we can vent our fleshly passions by keeping all the rules, but both ways of venting the flesh still need resurrection. We can be immoral dead people, or we can be moral dead people. Either way, we’re dead.
The mercy of God reaches down and rinses clean not only obviously bad people but fraudulently good people, both of whom equally stand in need of resurrection.
God is rich in mercy. He doesn’t withhold mercy from some kinds of sinners while extending it to others. because mercy is who he is - “being rich in mercy” - his heart gushes forth mercy to sinners one and all. His mercy overcomes even the deadness of our souls and the hollowed-out, zombie-like existence that we are all naturally born into.
The mercy of Ephesians 2:4 does not seem far off and abstract when we feel the weight of our sin.”
36. Tongue-Tied: Learning the Lost Art of Talking about Faith
by Sara Wenger Shenk (Herald Press, 2021. 256 pages)
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A Sacramental Life categories: Book Reviews | Spiritual Practices | Church | Neighbors
Reviewed for Englewood Review of Books, September 2021: https://englewoodreview.org/sara-wenger-shenk-tongue-tied-learning-the-lost-art-of-talking-about-faith-review/
The opening paragraphs of my review:
Sara Wenger Shenk’s new book enlivened my somewhat-dormant evangelistic impulse. The title, Tongue-Tied: Learning the Lost Art of Talking about Faith, uses all the right words to evoke a meaningful practice in my spiritual background while promising a new and better way to speak the language.
I spent my formative years following my father into our neighbors’ homes offering stories about faith as naturally as the extra produce from our garden. My dad was also my pastor and he had the gift many folks in the church of my childhood said they wanted and most of us in the church of my adulthood have long since forgotten – the ability to talk about Jesus with people who don’t normally talk about Jesus.
You don’t have to be a former preacher’s kid or even consider yourself an evangelical to be drawn to the premise of Tongue-Tied. If you’ve found yourself wondering how to share what’s meaningful to you about your faith with those who don’t share your faith and you feel like your only two options are to sound like a judgemental jerk or to sound more spiritual than Jesus, Shenk’s book offers a third way to speak humanly about the gospel.
Quoted on Goodreads.
One of my favorites:
“When we dare to learn how to pray and how to talk about the ways in which God has shown up in our lives, there’s a kind of grace that infuses the most ordinary moments of our lives – both personal and familial, and in our circle of friends or church. We don’t get there quickly – without a lot of stumbling, awkward moments, and regrets – but that’s what learning the art of talking about faith requires. Practice. It takes practice to learn how to be genuine and natural; to speak about when we’ve sensed the Spirit’s prompting, or felt convicted of dishonesty, or encouraged to be more courageous, or experienced something that defied explanation – something miraculous. We can learn to be truth-tellers – testifying in honest, authentic ways about what we’ve observed of God’s activity in the mundane and in the more spectacular events of our lives.”
Peace & Justice / Social Critique
See additional excellent titles for this category listed below under the Apostles Reads heading.
Nonfiction
37. A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century
by Witold Rybczynski (Scribner Book Company, 2000. 480 pages)
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A Sacramental Life category: Creators & Cultivators
My review in 3 or more words: slow-paced | bits of fascinating details mixed into somewhat tedious biographical details | important history for those who value urban planning
I picked up this book because I’ve been intrigued by the works of Hartford, CT native Frederick Law Olmsted, ever since we moved to Bridgeport. Even though our new city is blighted by white flight and corrupt local government, it is also home to several beautiful parks planned by the same man who helped design Manhattan’s Central Park. I got a little bit bogged down in some of the tedious details about Olmsted’s life outside his work as an urban planner, but that is part of the fascinating history for this man obsessed with adventure and career change (everything from working on a merchant trip to China to co-founding The Nation magazine as an early voice against slavery in the South to managing California's largest gold mine and, during the Civil War, serving as the executive secretary to the United States Sanitary Commission, the precursor of the Red Cross.) Once I gave myself permission to skim the parts I was less curious to know and to dig into the parts that most sparked my curiosity, I really enjoyed this book.
Essays / Short Stories / Poetry
See additional excellent titles for this category listed below under the Apostles Reads heading.
38. The Essential Emily Dickinson: Poems
selected and with an introduction by Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco Press, 2016. 112 pages)
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A Sacramental Life category: Creators & Cultivators
My review in 3 or more words: beautiful selection in a little, accessible collection with a beautifully illustrated cover
Brian and I often build day trips around independent bookstores and I wish I could remember which trip we picked up this sweet little poetry collection. (I think maybe it was the from wonderful Longfellow Books in Portland, ME.) We wanted to read it out loud together in 2021. Please don’t get the wrong idea about us. If you were to drop by our house on a regular old evening you’d be more likely to find us watching West Wing or Bob’s Burgers than reading poetry, but it’s something we’ve wanted to cultivate a bit more as we head into the second half of our lives. Bonus if the book is lovely to look at on our shelves. Next up?
The first title (and one of my favorites!)
“ Valentine week
Awake ye muses nine, sing me a strain divine,
Unwind the solemn twine, and tie my Valentine!
Oh the Earth was made for lovers, for damsel, and hopeless swain,
For sighing, and gentle whispering, and unity made of twain.
All things do go a courting, in earth, or sea, or air,
God hath made nothing single but thee in His world so fair!
The bride, and then the bridegroom, the two, and then the one,
Adam, and Eve, his consort, the moon, and then the sun;
The life doth prove the precept, who obey shall happy be,
Who will not serve the sovereign, be hanged on fatal tree.
The high do seek the lowly, the great do seek the small,
None cannot find who seeketh, on this terrestrial ball;
The bee doth court the flower, the flower his suit receives,
And they make merry wedding, whose guests are hundred leaves;
The wind doth woo the branches, the branches they are won,
And the father fond demandeth the maiden for his son.
The storm doth walk the seashore humming a mournful tune,
The wave with eye so pensive, looketh to see the moon,
Their spirits meet together, they make their solemn vows,
No more he singeth mournful, her sadness she doth lose.
The worm doth woo the mortal, death claims a living bride,
Night unto day is married, morn unto eventide;
Earth is a merry damsel, and heaven a knight so true,
And Earth is quite coquettish, and beseemeth in vain to sue.
Now to the application, to the reading of the roll,
To bringing thee to justice, and marshalling thy soul:
Thou art a human solo, a being cold, and lone,
Wilt have no kind companion, thou reap’st what thou hast sown.
Hast never silent hours, and minutes all too long,
And a deal of sad reflection, and wailing instead of song?
There’s Sarah, and Eliza, and Emeline so fair,
And Harriet, and Susan, and she with curling hair!
Thine eyes are sadly blinded, but yet thou mayest see
Six true, and comely maidens sitting upon the tree;
Approach that tree with caution, then up it boldly climb,
And seize the one thou lovest, nor care for space, or time!
Then bear her to the greenwood, and build for her a bower,
And give her what she asketh, jewel, or bird, or flower –
And bring the fife, and trumpet, and beat upon the drum –
And bid the world Goodmorrow, and go to glory home!”
Novels
See additional novels listed below under the Apostles Reads heading and the Audio Books heading.
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Anchor Books, 2014. 588 pages)
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A Sacramental Life category: Peace & Justice | Friends | Neighbors
My review in 3 or more words: literary | romantic | insightful
Adichie’s bestselling novel turned out to be a page-turner for me on my second attempt to read it. I think I tried to read it a couple of years ago expecting it to be a social critique. Once I settled into the larger theme of the story as first of all a love story I couldn't stop reading. I also needed to better understand the point of view of Adichie's fully-developed characters in order to more fully admire Ifemelu and Obinze’s choices. In hindsight, I’ve realized about myself that I struggle reading about contemporary African people and places on their own terms. The social critique is there and much more complex than my Western, first-world perspective easily grasps. I ended up really enjoying this story and found the ending satisfying.
Quoted on Goodreads:
One of my favorites:
“He was always thinking of what else to do and she told him that it was rare for her, because she had grown up not doing, but being.”
40. Hum If You Don’t Know the Words: A Novel
by Bianca Marais (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2018. 464 pages)
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A Sacramental Life category: Neighbors | Peace & Justice | Friends
My review in 3 or more words: mysterious | heartfelt | drama
An unexpectedly sweet story of an orphaned white girl from working-class 1970’s South Africa who finds security and truth in the love of a Xhosa woman. When her parents are killed, Robin is taken in by her partying aunt but it’s Beauty Mbali who saves her - the woman in hiding as she leaves her own family behind in their rural village while she searches for her daughter who’s been living on the run since helping to organize the Soweto Student Uprising.
Bianca Marais’ debut novel tells a fictional story set in the historical setting of apartheid South Africa. She tells the story through alternation perspectives of her loveable characters (who aren’t always what they first appear). Even though I got occasionally distracted by uneven plotting and characters’ voices (especially for Robin) I found these minor flaws totally forgivable because Robin is now one of my all-time favorite fictionary child characters.
Quoted on Goodreads:
One of my favorites:
“I do not think it is brave to pick up a gun or to carry a bomb, but it is brave to open yourself up to the potential for loss and disappointment when you have already felt too much of its sting.”
41. Before We Visit the Goddess
by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (Simon & Schuster, 2017. 240 pages)
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A Sacramental Life category: Family | Peace & Justice
My review in 3 or more words: slow-paced | emotional | cross-generational storytelling
I enjoyed this story even though I felt frustrated by the motif of irreconcilable differences across generations. Divakaruni definitely wrote a story that made me want to discover India’s beloved baked goods!
Quoted on Goodreads
One of my favorites:
“I long to stretch out on the sofa, wrapping myself in the red quilt that’s lying there. Then, with a stab, I recognize the quilt. My father had brought it back from a business trip he took to New England long ago. Ironic, how objects remain in your life long after people have exited.”
by Matt Haig (Viking, 2010. 304 pages)
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My review in 3 or more words: mindbending | fast-paced | emotional
A Sacramental Life category: Daily Work & Callings
My daughter passed this book to me after she’d finished reading it. I dove in and then, about halfway through, I put it down because I couldn’t tell if I liked the direction Haig was taking in the magical realism of the plotline. I picked it up again in the last week of December with a few other titles I wanted to complete in 2021 and I’m so glad I did! Even when the frequent plot twists confused me, I could enjoy each chapter as I watched the main character live out possible versions of her life. By the end, I cared about what happened to her and found the closing pages satisfying.
If Groundhog Day and It’s A Wonderful Life had a baby, she might look like The Midnight Library.
Quoted on Goodreads:
One of my favorites:
“‘Look at that chessboard we put back in place,’ said Mrs Elm softly. ‘Look at how ordered and safe and peaceful it looks now, before a game starts. It’s a beautiful thing. But it is boring. It is dead. And yet the moment you make a move on that board, things change. Things begin to get more chaotic. And that chaos builds with every single move you make.’
‘It’s an easy game to play,’ she told Nora. ‘But a hard one to master. Every move you make opens a whole new world of possibilities...In chess, as in life, possibility is the basis of everything. Every hope, every dream, every regret, every moment of living...never underestimate the big importance of small things.’”
Mysteries
43. The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag: A Flavia de Luce Novel
by Alan Bradley (Bantam, 2011. 400 pages)
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A Sacramental Life category: Neighbors
My review in 3 or more words: witty & precocious | adventurous | period piece
My dear friend bought me the first three books of this series for my birthday and they’ve been such a fun diversion whenever the world feels too heavy or dark. (Weirdly, murder mysteries are comfort for me during those time? Maybe it’s the satisfaction of justice being served?)
Flavia de Luce is delightfully precocious thinking and saying and doing all the things I still wish I could think and say and do (especially helping the village detective solve tricky murder mysteries)! Her British neighbors are as quirky as one would hope in a post-war English village. Her family is completely unkind - not unlike the Dursleys. Let’s hope she finds some Hogwart-type friends in the coming volumes!
This is my favorite of all three Flavia de Luce adventures I’ve read so far!
Quoted on Goodreads:
One of my favorites:
“There’s a lot to be said for being alone. But you and I know, don’t we, Flavia, that being alone and being lonely are not at all the same thing?”
44. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
by Agatha Christie (William Morrow and Company, 2011. 288 pages)
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A Sacramental Life category: Favorite Creators & Cultivators
My review in 3 or more words: Christmas read | mysterious | period piece
Picked up this cozy mystery on our Christmastide visit to R.J. Julia’s in Madison, CT. A perfect read for that slow week and, love and respect to David Suchet notwithstanding, much better than the television episode of the same title.
Quoted on Goodreads:
One of my favorites:
“And families now, families who have been separated throughout the year, assemble once more together. Now under these conditions, my friend, you must admit that there will occur a great amount of strain. People who do not feel amiable are putting great pressure on themselves to appear amiable! There is at Christmas time a great deal of hypocrisy, honourable hypocrisy, hypocrisy undertaken pour le bon motif, c’est entendu, but nevertheless hypocrisy.”
Audio Books
45 - 47. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Unabridged by J.R.R. Tolkien narrated on Audible, narrated by Rob Inglis
Book One: The Fellowship of the Ring
Book Two: The Two Towers
Book Three: The Return of the King
A Sacramental Life categories: Creators and Cultivators | Friends
Listening to favorite classics on audiobooks has been one of the most soothing practices we’ve adopted during the stressful 2020 and 2021 (especially in the middle of the night when we can’t sleep). Someday I’ll actually read these stories on the printed page, but for now, listening was a perfect alternative.
Apostles Reads Selections
You can read more about what our church’s reading group, Apostles Reads, enjoyed together in 2020 and the types of books we select here.
48. Half the Church: Recapturing God’s Global Vision for Women
By Carolyn Custis James (Zondervan, 2015. 208 pages)
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Apostles Reads season: Pentecost
A Sacramental Life Category: Apostles Reads | Church | Peace & Justice
My review in 3 or more words: challenging | important | motivating
We'd been planning to read this recommendation from one of our deacons, Rev. Jan Buchanan, for the last couple of years and had to postpone for one reason or another. Finally, the time arrived we were glad to add Carolyn Custis James’ writing to the conversation we began two autumns ago when we read Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn. Indeed, James wrote Half the Church in response to her own reading of Kristof and Wudunn’s stirring book.
In a blog post James wrote after reading Half the Sky, she says “We need to be honest about the grim realities in this fallen world. At the same time, we must not lose sight of the hope we have that God is at work, and He is working through us.
Concurrent with this tidal wave of suffering is a hopeful surge of women God is raising up to serve Him in ministry. One of the biggest success stories of the modern church is the fact that so many of God’s daughters are sensing His call, training in theological seminaries, graduate schools and internships, and moving into a wide variety of ministries, including ministries to combat the rampant evils that are devastating the lives of countless women and girls.”
During our discussion, the men in the room generously admitted their discomfort with owning the metaphor of the Bride of Christ for themselves. I felt their awkwardness and leaned toward them in empathy. At some point, though, I caught myself: Why should it be harder for men to code-switch to the rare female personification in Scripture than for the continual linguistic gymnastics women do with male pronouns and examples? I don’t know, but it is.
I continue to cherish our little reading group for jumping into reading together with curiosity and hospitality. We were also grateful to Jan for not only introducing this book to us, but for offering such excellent insight, and modeling leadership for us at Church of the Apostles.
Discussion Guide included with the book.
Quoted on Goodreads.
To close our discussion, we returned to Carolyn Custis James’s compelling (commanding, even) call to women of the Church. Awake, o sleeping giantess. Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
“Every morning, as the light of dawn breaks over the planet, countless ezers — women and girls — are waking up all over the world. . . . the potential force for kingdom good and the storehouse of gifts and ability that reside in the church’s ezer population is simply staggering. God’s global vision for women unlocks that potency, unleashing an unparalleled message of hope and an endless array of kingdom possibilities that ripple out from home, family, and community to reach untouched places where human suffering and female oppression sink to unimagined lows. . . . One hundred years from now may it never be said of this generation of ezers that we folded our hands and left God’s kingdom work to others. May it never be said that we ignored the cries of the helpless and focused on ourselves. Let it instead be said that God used those cries to awaken a sleeping giantess and filled her with a terrible resolve — half the church, angered and outraged at the unchecked forces of evil in God’s world. That we made up our minds to do something, that our efforts forced the darkness to recede, and that we left the world better off than we found it. May we be remembered as a generation who caught God’s vision, faced our fears, and rose up to serve his cause.”
49. At the Still Point: A Literary Guide to Prayer in Ordinary Time
By Sarah Arthur (Paraclete Press, 2011. 254 pages)
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Apostles Reads season: Ordinary Time
A Sacramental Life Category: Apostles Reads | Spiritual Practices
My review in 3 or more words: rich compilation | diverse voices | liturgically insightful
As part of my secret plan to get our group to read poetry we read all three of Sarah Arthur's anthologies for the liturgical year.
One of my (many) favorite selections:
“It is a hard art to learn,
catching quiet
by palms raised
cupped in
air shifting location
here and there like
trying to guess the pattern of falling leaves,
and hoping to feel
the soft descent of moments
when silence slips
between sounds.
This ordinary time is
gifted with days,
weeks of mundane grace
routinely following the liturgy
of hours anticipating creation
tuning its prayer and praise to the
rhythms of incarnate love.
I am used to the uproar,
the Holy drama,
the appetite’s gnarled discord
of fasting and feasting on borrowed time,
the knocking of angels,
the blubbering piety of waiting,
appointed seasons for guilt and grief,
tears of joy and disbelief,
the birth of miracles, the passion of virgins,
the mourning of a love so divine.
This ordinary time is
gifted in its quiet, marked passing
Christ slips about
calling and baptizing,
sending and affirming,
pouring his Spirit like water
into broken cisterns,
sealing cracks and filtering our senses,
that we may savor the foolish
simplicity of his grace.”
50. Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling
by Andy Crouch (IVP, 2013. 284 pages)
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Apostles Reads liturgical season: Ordinary Time
A Sacramental Life categories: Apostles Reads | Church
My review in 3 or more words: reflective | informative analysis | inspiring
This book is one of my essential reads from the past 15 years, and one of my top recommendations for books on art and faith so I was excited to share it with my church family. You can find the brief review I wrote after my first read here.
On this reading, I still find Andy Crouch’s winsome analysis one of the most helpful I’ve ever read to bridge the divide in the current Christian understanding of what it means that culture is God’s gift to humanity. Some of the framework for the book felt more arduous this time. A decade or so after its release, I feel like the essential message of the book would be even more effective with some of the illustrations and sidenotes thinned out. During our discussion, I felt our reading group didn’t receive the book quite as well as I’d hoped. What is still most evident to me, though, is how much we truncate our understanding of culture to “entertainment and media”. For this reason, I’ll keep recommending Culture Making among to those who wish to live deeply into the intersection of art and faith.
Quoted on Goodreads.
One of my (many) favorites:
“So do you want to make culture? Find a community, a small group who can lovingly fuel your dreams and puncture your illusions. Find friends and form a family who are willing to see grace at work in one another’s lives, who can discern together which gifts and which crosses each has been called to bear. Find people who have a holy respect for power and a holy willingness to spend their power alongside the powerless. Find some partners in the wild and wonderful world beyond church doors. And then, together, make something of the world.”
51. The Gift of the Magi
By O. Henry
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Apostles Reads liturgical season: Christmastide
A Sacramental Life categories: Apostles Reads | Christmastide
My review in 3 or more words: heartfelt | surprising | Christmas short story
What a fun story to read together during our church’s Twelfth Night Party (which was postponed to mid-way through Epiphany because of the variant peak). My friend Walter and I took turns reading through the story and I’m so glad because I tend to get a little bit spoofy as I read the parts of the story describing Della and Jim that feel outdated. Walter, however, read the story from the most sincere (even teary) perspective of naive, sacrificial love these young lovers offer each other. As O. Henry reminds us, this kind of giving and these kinds of givers are “the wisest”. May we all become a bit more like Della and Jim in 2022.
Quoted on Goodreads
One of my favorites:
“The magi, as you know, were wise men—wonderfully wise men—who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.”
A note about affiliate links and booksellers
This post includes affiliate links in this post because I'm trying to be a good steward, and when you buy something through one of these links you don't pay more money, but in some magical twist of capitalism, we get a little pocket change. Thanks!
A couple of years ago I began using Amazon affiliate links as a way to bring in some pocket change from the books I share on the blog. I was challenged by an independent bookseller to reconsider this strategy as Amazon has a horrible reputation in its dealings with authors and other members of the book industry. I want to champion local business and humane working relationships and so I've highlighted Bookshop for you to purchase books from an independent bookseller. I've also included the order link for one of my favorite booksellers, Hearts and Minds Books. Using the link I've provided you can order any book through heartsandmindsbooks.com, a full-service, independent bookstore, and receive prompt and personal service. They even offer the option to receive the order with an invoice and a return envelope so you can send them a check! Brian and I've been delighted with the generous attention we've received from owners Byron and Beth Borger. We feel like we've made new friends! (I also highly recommend subscribing to Byron's passionately instructive and prolific Booknotes posts.)
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What are you reading these days?
Go to my reading lists page to see my reading lists from 2020 and previous years.
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