Tag: books

Quiet Time

I am just back from a week in New Hampshire with family and now I enter the quieter portion of the summer. The weather was great, sunny days with the kind of humidity that seems mild since I grew up in Cincinnati. We baked make-your-own pizzas in the backyard, visited Klemm’s Bakery for pastries, Hayward’s Homemade Ice Cream twice, and drove up to Cape Elizabeth, Maine for seafood and a stop at a nearby lighthouse. Being together was the best part, and I shared photos with those who could not join us. The only hiccups were flight delays, supposedly caused by “fog” in Boston. When I checked with my family in the area and spoke with a woman waiting for her daughter, everyone said there was no fog on a sunny midafternoon that they could see, but I knew the plane would leave when they said it could, so I read while waiting. I’m currently reading “How Beautiful We Were” by Imbolo Mbue, a novel about how a village in Africa is affected by the American oil company that started production and left the people and their land ravaged by illness and neglect. They resist for years, fighting to restore their homeland. I have not finished it, but there are passages so beautifully written that at times I need to put the novel down and just absorb the language and message.

I meant to write about letter writing, which many of us don’t do as much because it has been replaced with the quick text or social media update. I love writing notes and often will send a card with a letter or an article to folks, just to let them know that I am thinking of them. I don’t always get a letter back, but that is not the point for me—I love the slowing down that letter writing requires.

Last week, I did get some sad news—a friend and mentor, Ellen Doyle, OSU, passed away after living with an illness that she had been dealing with for over two years. Ellen often updated her friends, letting us know of her travels, treatments options, and speaking candidly about the gravity of her illness. I was surprised when I got word of her passing, but she had been letting us walk with her all along, preparing us for what she knew could happen.

Ellen wrote a wonderful memoir, “Dear Uncle Stanley”, which shares letters her uncle wrote during her young adulthood; she also wrote to him over those years. She was discerning and coming to understand her call to spiritual life as a sister in a religious community, and he was an older priest, speaking honestly with her about life and its challenges. I appreciated her love of letter writing and how letters are not just welcome in the moment, they also serve as a record of a moment in time. Mbue’s novel also uses letters between those in the village and a friend in the States to move the story along. There are many epistolary novels and memoirs, and I love how a letter can give an intimate portrayal of a person’s mind and heart. Ellen lived a rich and full life, and I know her spirit is at rest. That doesn’t mean I won’t miss her, but I am grateful to have known her for over 50 years.

In this quieter season, I will make a point to send a card or a letter to more people. It is more permanent than a text, even if the recipient does not hold on to it for decades like Ellen did. It is a way of checking in, letting those we care about know we are thinking of them.

This morning in my Pilates session, my trainer asked me if I was retired. I said, “No, not really; I’ll always have a project here and there.” Last week I said yes to an offer to facilitate a panel discussion, and I am in the planning stages for a few other projects that I will share as they are more fully developed. I appreciate this quieter season. I can be still long enough to let the ideas settle, like a butterfly on the coneflowers outside my window. If you are able, carve out some quiet time for yourself, whether it is a few hours or a few weeks. If we get still enough, if we are comfortable with the quiet, we can hear. And if you can hear, you can dream.

Cape Elizabeth, Maine

2024 Book Favorites

Every year I set reading goals but it is not about how many books I read just so I can hit a certain number. My reading tends towards nonfiction, including memoir. I read dozens of books in a year, but these are a few books that stood out for me in 2024.

Nonfiction

The Mango Tree by Annabelle Tometich

Tometich’s memoir opens with her Filipina mother being arrested for shooting at a man who was stealing the mangoes from her beloved tree. This incident provides the starting point for the author’s examination of her own identity, her mother’s life, and what it means to be from two worlds and cultures. I met Tometich just before her debut novel was published, when she attended my panel at AWP, an annual writing conference that brings together thousands of writers, teachers, publishers, etc. She uses her humor and introspection to tell a moving story of growing up with loss and its effects on a family.

Praisesong for Kitchen Ghosts by Crystal Wilkinson

Every Christmas since I was child, my family has had my mother’s special black walnut cookies. She would make them Christmas Eve, we could have a few after midnight mass and before settling in to wait for Christmas morning to arrive. You might have a holiday memory like that too, a special dish that sends you right back to family. In Praisesong for Kitchen Ghosts by Crystal Wilkinson, the author melds stories of her family over five generations with her memories of time spent in kitchens, her grandmother’s and her own. She pieces together parts of her family history and their life in the hills of Kentucky, where they have lived since the 1800s. From the biscuits she has mastered after watching her grandmother, to the recipes using fresh vegetables and home-raised meats, she describes how food was a language in her family. I loved this book for the stories and the recipes, which she shares with detail.

Fiction

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Dubois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

This book, which is several hundred pages long, is a masterpiece. It chronicles the story of a Black family from the early period in U.S. history when Africans were forcibly removed from home and brought to the United States and Native Americans had their lands stolen, to current times. Although there are sections that are painful to read because of enslavement and family trauma, I came away with a sense of how the pain of enslavement has had generational impact on this entire country and increased respect and compassion for the resilience of people who had to endure it and still survived. In December 2023, I read Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward and I highly recommend reading them both. In some ways they seem like companion stories.

The Rich People Have Gone Away by Regina Porter

I am starting to see more novels that are set during the COVID pandemic. This book starts with a mystery because a woman goes missing, but the real story is in the lives and reactions of the people in her circle, including her husband, a friend, and their families. COVID is always there in the background, because of the isolation and fear it caused for so many, particularly those who were affected early on such as those living in New York. Just when you think you have an answer to this puzzle, Porter spills another secret and you cannot stop reading.

My goal has been set for this year – a blend of fiction and nonfiction, authors from various backgrounds, and some books where I study the author’s craft in telling the story. Here’s to more good books in 2025!

My Favorite Books from 2019

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ladywithbooks

Favorite Books from 2019

My list may not be the same as the New York Times bestseller list or another “best books of 2019” list, but here are some of my favorites reads from the past year. I read about twice as much nonfiction as fiction, but there are some great novels in this group.

Nonfiction

  • Becoming by Michelle Obama
  • Thick and Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom
  • The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
  • The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby
  • All the Colors We Will See by Patrice Gopo
  • Educated by Tara Westover
  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Fiction

  • Elinor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
  • Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
  • The Neapolitan Quartet (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, The Story of the Lost Child) by Elena Ferrante
  • In West Mills by De’Shawn Charles Winslow
  • Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
  • Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout

My goal for 2020 is to keep up the pace of about one book per week, although some take longer, others, less time to read. I typically stay with one book at a time and I look forward to settling in on a Sunday and starting new book. Many readers like to use audible and e-books, but I prefer the actual book, for the experience and feel of the book, so I can make my own notes (I know e-readers let you do this), because I want to take my time with the story, trying to figure out structure and pacing and how an author keeps me turning the page. I also found that I read more since I started setting an annual goal, because I make time to read rather than waiting to have time.

How do you decide what to read—booklists, recommendations from friends and other readers, reviews, book club? I’d love to hear how readers choose their books.