I’ve compiled a summer reading list based on books I’ve
found lying around my living room—you know, the ones that you just can’t get
rid of, that stick in your craw, that you think you might read later, or that
you love to come back to, again and again. Here they are:
So first—Coffee table
books about dreams that are unlikely to
come to pass. For me, this is a large pile of books about houses. I can
remember designing houses, over and over again, ruler and eraser in hand, as a
grade school child. Even now, I sometimes wonder if I missed my calling. I
would love to design and build that one, perfect house of my dreams.
Unfortunately, living in Toronto, there simply are no lots
close enough to transit to make building such a house from scratch a real
possibility. But still, I imagine. My favorite house book is Susan Susanka’s The Not So Big House: A Blueprint for the
Way We Really Live (Newton, CT: The Tauton House, 1998). Susanka suggests
that many of us have houses full of space we don’t really need (a two-story
entrance way, perhaps; or a fourth bedroom) and missing spaces we could really
use (a cozy away room, perhaps, or a boot room). She urges us to consider how
to make space do double duty, and then suggests the use of beautiful materials
and design features that make this possible. A slew of follow up books by
Susanka on themes like renovations are also very good.
My second book about house dreams that are unlikely to come
to pass is entitled, More Straw Bale
Building: A Complete Guide to Designing and Building with Straw (Gabriola
Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2005). I love the idea of building with straw,
especially since it is a completely renewable building material that goes very
easy on Mother Earth. It is also long-lasting, safe, relatively inexpensive,
and can be molded into all sorts of interesting shapes, finishes, and interior
nooks and crannies. I wouldn’t be surprised if straw bales are an essential
part of home-building in the near future.
Second—books about
dreams that still have a chance. I’d love to sail all over (if not around)
the world. I really started thinking about this as a life goal years ago when
our family read, aloud and together, Tom Neale’s All in the Same Boat: Living Aboard and Cruising (Toronto: McGraw-Hill,
1997). The book told the story of a
Canadian family that built their own boat, and then sailed it around the world.
Next, a few years ago, my son signed up as crew on a 30-foot sailboat that
crossed the Atlantic. He loved the experience—the stars at night, the dolphins
racing along beside, the solitude of taking the night watch and the camaraderie
of a small crew that gets along. And then there were the places he went: Îles-de-la-Madeleine, the Azores, and Portugal.
So I bought a stack of books about sailing. I’ve spent many
hours reading, daydreaming, and putting numbers to the back of a napkin
imagining how Irene and I could spend five or ten years sailing as an early
retirement lifestyle. My favorite among these books is Evans, Manley and
Smith’s The Sailing Bible (Buffalo:
Firefly Books, 2009). The ideal scenario is Irene and I spending six months in
the Mediterranean Sea with our grandson Taps as assistant to the assistant
captain.
Third—books by
authors I’ve loved in the past, but can’t get into now. I read Les Miserables once a year for over
twenty years after first reading it in college. I still dip into it from time
to time. It was my one literary compulsion. My unabridged version, probably the
third that I’ve owned, is held together by duct tape, all 1400 pages of it. In
view of my delight in Les Miz, I though I’d love Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame too. I bought it years and years ago, but
it sits on the shelf in my living room, mostly unread. I’ve tried. I’ve made it
a hundred or so pages in. But somehow, it just doesn’t grab me. Not sure why.
But it isn’t Jean Valjean.
I’ve also reread—albeit only twice—Barry Unsworth’s Morality Play. I loved the novel, in
part, because I’ve always been interested in how illiterate people learned
about Christianity, and these morality plays are part of the story. But Morality Play is also a mystery, and a
good one at that. Lots of medieval color and a surprising number of plot turns make
it a page-turner. I picked up Unsworth’s The
Ruby in Her Navel a few years later, expecting much the same. It is also
set in medieval times, although in far more exotic Sicily. It is also full of
mystery and plot turns. I did actually get through this novel—but I had to work
at it. Again, I’m not sure why it didn’t sing. Maybe, it just isn’t as good a
novel as Morality Play. Or it might
be because it was just too complicated.
Four—novels about
ministers. In particular, I have a thing for novels about ministers either
finding their faith or losing their faith, and have a shelf-full of them at
work. My favorite in the former category is Grace Irwin’s Andrew Connington (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966). It’s a
mid-century “Christian” novel, of no great literary merit. It is however, a
good story simply written. Set just after WWI, Irwin tells the story of a
gifted man who is drawn to the United Church ministry because of the
opportunity it affords him to do social work. At seminary, even though he
doesn’t believe, students drawn to Liberal Christianity repulse him. The
problem appears to be that they are not as intellectually rigorous as the old
conservative scholars Connington is strangely drawn to. Connington’s lack of
faith is ultimately challenged by the work he does in a large Toronto
congregation. The communion service during which it all comes together for him is
perfect melodrama—and maybe something more. This hard-to-find novel is also a
fascinating portrait of the upper-middle-class Toronto church scene when Toronto
was still Hog Town.
As for ministers who lose their faith, my favorite is Harold
Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware (Cambridge:
Belknap Press, Harvard, 1960). Originally published in 1896, the novel
chronicles the sometimes hilarious and at other times tragic life of a
Methodist Minister. He begins his ministry as a gifted speaker without much by
way of formal theological training. Among other things, he soon encounters
Catholics, historical criticism, beautiful women, and lousy trustees. I won’t
say, exactly, what happens to his faith, but it makes for a great read that
resonated with me. While I hope I am never as naive as Theron Ware always is,
his personal struggle to “get it right,” in a world full of contrary opinions
is actually quite moving.
One non-novel about finding and losing faith deserves
mention here. It’s a dense but insightful theology book by Richard Kearney, Anatheism: Returning to God After God (New
York: Columbia U Press, 2009). Kearney asks, “What might the faith of someone
who comes back, look like?” Richard Kearney tries his hand at describing such a
faith, especially perhaps for Christians who have struggled with questions of
theodicy. I was challenged by every chapter, and am still mulling over what his
take might have to do with my faith.
Five, two of the best
books I’ve read since last summer. I’ll pick both a fiction and non-fiction
book. On the fiction side, the best book I’ve read—a page-turner with
substance—is probably Joseph Boyden’s The
Orenda (London: Oneworld Pub, 2013). This novel won the CBC’s Canada Reads
contest (irritatingly hosted by faux-culture-critic Jian Ghomeshi) this year, but
only by a whisker over the Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood, book two in the Maddaddam trilogy (which I also loved). The Orenda is a heart-wrenching novel about the Jesuit mission to
the Huron Indians in the early 17th century. None of the
players—Hurons, French, Iroquois, come out of this looking very good. I wonder
a lot about the historical accuracy of some of the religious, cultural, and war
episodes. But overall, this is a novel that looks hard truths about human
nature and Canadian history straight in the eye. I’m going to read The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King
as a corrective to some of The Orenda’s
excesses, this summer.
The best non-fiction book I’ve read this past year has to be
Inside Scientology: The Story of
America’s Most Secretive Religion (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt,
2011) by Janet Reitman. I was at turns shocked, dismayed, and angry as I read
this account of what makes Scientology click. The book also serves to remind us
that most people join faith communities not because they are convinced by the
truth of that religion’s claims, but because they find community among its
adherents. This is a critical reality that people of all faiths need to fit
into their thinking about church or temple if they are to live with spiritual
wisdom in today’s world.
So that’s it. Maybe there’s something for you in this list?
Or a book I ought to add to my reading list? Let me know!
