some books you might like
by my friends, and about the forest floor, the beatitudes, and mothers who make art
For a while I had a practice of writing on Monday mornings (Monday is my day off). But for the last month or so, I've been dropping the kids at school and then hiking instead of going home to write.
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When the heat and/or the tourists descend, or maybe when my rector’s sabbatical ends and I am no longer the “priest in charge,” I’ll be back.
But in the meantime, I do want to tell you about three new books.
The Understory is Lore’s third book, and far and away her best. It’s a small book, as if made to be slipped in your sling bag with your journal while you hike, and it’s written like that, too — like a scrapbook of observations from walks in the Adirondacks, pressed flowers and sketches, and favorite quotations from poets and scientists jotted down in a commonplace book. But it’s also somehow a moving meditation on grief, loss, and resilience. (It many ways it reminds me of the small book we’ve been reading in women’s Bible study this month, The White Stone: The Art of Letting Go by British contemplative Esther de Waal — but it’s better.) If Where Goodness Still Grows was a book for you, I feel pretty sure this one will be too. And it releases today — buy it!
This is Micha’s second book, and I haven’t finished it yet, but the chapters I’ve read are full of hard-won wisdom and beauty. I’ve know Micha for a while now — maybe a decade? —a couple of years ago, we workshopped some of these chapters in Durham, and before that, I remember sitting at a Waffle House (was it a Waffle House?) in Chattanooga with her eating breakfast before our friend Rachel’s funeral, and before that, it was probably Grand Rapids, and over these years, what I’ve seen is a person who is silly when it’s time to be silly and serious when it’s time to be serious, a solidity of character that has stayed as many things have shifted.
One of those unexpected shifts in her life was the birth of a son born with Down Syndrome and later diagnosed with autism, and this book is the fruit of her relationship with him and her study of the Beatitudes. Buy it!
The Mother Artist: Portraits of Ambition, Limitation, and Creativity is Cat’s first published book. Cat and I were MFA classmates, and I was always jealous of her sensual descriptions and images. I can make a strong argument; she can really make you feel things. In this book (which I’ve only read a couple chapters of so far), she “explores the fraught yet generative ties between caregiving and creative practice,” combining meditations on her own motherhood with biographical depictions of other mother-artists and their creative work. Cat’s been working in the arts for much of her adult career, writing about music, working with museum collections, and so she is a knowledgeable guide. You can read an excerpt at Electric Lit (“Why persevere in making art? Because our communities need art made by those who can’t take their eyes off of the vulnerable ones of this world.” —this is part of why we need mother-preachers, too, I think.) Buy it here.
Have you read anything good lately?
Dangerous Territory is now available in an updated second edition and as an audiobook! Buy it in paperback or ebook at Bookshop, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble.
Where Goodness Still Grows is available wherever books are sold.
OH my goodness, Amy, thank you! And yes, I think Where Goodness Still Grows and The Understory are good companions of one another too =)
Such a good list. 🤩