What are you reading this summer?
Voracious: A Hungry Reader Cooks Her Way through Great Books by Cara Nicoletti - This is a marvelously fun book that combines two of my great loves - food and classic literature. It's part memoir, part cookbook, part literary guide. Cara's a light and lovely writer and includes one dish from multiple famous works - from the chocolate walnut sundaes in Nancy Drew to the oysters and cucumber mignonette in Anna Karenina - while reflecting on the beauty in each book.
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell - I'm still not quite sure what to make of this fascinating and perplexing study of success. Whatever you think about it, you can't argue that it's not interesting. It is, very. Here's an excerpt:
"The lesson here is very simple. But it is striking how often it is overlooked. We are so caught in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth. We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that thirteen-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur. But that's the wrong lesson. Our world only allowed one thirteen-year-old unlimited access to a time sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today?"
The Joy Project: A True Story of Inescapable Happiness by Tony Reinke - A fresh and delightful reminder of what happiness is and where it comes from. It's not a long read, but it's a very good one. We need books like this to remind us of the old, old story again and again. Quote: "True happiness is not found. It finds you."
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson - If you haven't read this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, you should consider reading it this summer. It generated so much buzz, I was compelled to pick it up, and it is truly something remarkable. It's the story of fathers and sons in a little town, but it's about so much more than that. It's difficult to describe. Read it, and you'll understand what I mean.
Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Gary Schmidt - This is one of my all-time favorite novels. It's a YA work, but it's a deeply moving, deeply disturbing, deeply sad, deeply happy story. It's about a boy, a pastor's son, in the early 20th century, who moves to a new place and befriends someone who is a different color than him. And it's about all the things that happen because of that. It will leave you thinking and hoping.
The Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards - Summer is a good time to pick up a big book, a book that may require more mental energy and more concentrated time and effort. Look no further than Jonathan Edwards. Religious Affections is a thick book (with small print), but it is a great theological work. You will be edified and blessed by reading it. Here's an excerpt:
"A truly Christian love, either to God or men, is a humble broken-hearted love. The desires of the saints, however earnest, are humble desires. Their hope is a humble hope; and their joy, even when it is unspeakable and full of glory, is a humble broken-hearted joy, and leaves the Christian more poor in spirit, and more like a little child, and more disposed to a universal lowliness of behaviour."