{Please forgive the delay in posting this–it is Emily’s fault not Liz’s}

This year is an encouraging year in the library. I do not think we have ever had so many member families who have continued to visit and plunder our shelves. There is always an initial enthusiasm each school year, but library visits generally dwindle as other activities take precedent. It is a joy to fill the lives of children with literature. Who can fathom the number of living thoughts that are filling their minds, much less guess at the countless possibilities those planted seeds will bear in fruitful future consequences?

Outside the library work, my own life is full to bursting, but the reading habit established in childhood and continued in adulthood means that reading books, like eating and sleeping, has carried on. Over the years, I have become more systematic and deliberate in selecting books from specific categories. The following list reflects this practice, but includes only books actually completed during the first two months of 2018. I generally am in the midst of at least ten books at a time, many of them read once a week, at least a couple of different books read at set times every day. My list of books recommended by family, friends, acquaintances, and by the authors I read is pages long. This reminds me of Charlotte Mason’s comment: “Not what we have learned, but what we are waiting to know is the delectable part of knowledge.” So it is that the books draw us on.

Passing On by Penelope Lively. This author’s name kept popping up. This is the first novel of hers I have read. The writing was good, but the truth that remains with me is a living warning. Mothers have a tremendous influence in the lives of their children, and the imposition of this power to stunt and stifle the personality and pursuits of our children is something to be vigorously guarded against.

My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok. I read this with my book club. My first time to read it was when my 32-year-old son was an infant, and it became a  landmark book in my mind. Reading it a generation later, it still remains one of the most profound novels I have read. Again, the influence of parents is a theme here too, but Asher’s God-given gift is irrepressible by family, religious community, worldly critique, or circumstances. A wise mentor warns Asher that his art will cause pain, the extent of which he cannot possibly foresee, but the unquenchable passion to express himself overcomes all obstacles. This is a book of deep human connection and evokes more sympathy for a character than perhaps any book I have read.

How to Think by Alan Jacobs. A long-time admirer of this man, I was drawn to this potent little book for the very reasons he wrote it. In a day of stark political antagonisms, anti-Christian worldviews, and the leviathan of social media, how can we think straight, form just opinions on issues, know who to believe or trust? In a simple and logical way, Jacobs guides us to see not what to think, but how. I can’t imagine a teen or adult who would not greatly benefit from spending time with Jacobs’s ideas on this subject.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling. My goal in 2017 was to reread the Harry Potter series ten years after the first time through. This was my evening relaxation reading, but I didn’t quite make it. I did not gobble them down as I did the first time around, nor make it through in one year. Harry is growing up and the real purpose for his life is coming into focus for him in this novel. We can always hope that a generation of Potter influenced children will find their own purpose as Harry has.

The River of Doubt by Candace Millard. Okay, I take back my frequent disparagement of modern biographers. Millard’s writing is so excellent I have her other books in my queue to read this year. This one zooms in on a year of Teddy Roosevelt’s life after his first political defeat. Middle-aged and at a loss for direction, he undertakes his biggest adventure yet in navigating an unexplored river in the Amazon jungle. The expedition is faithfully described, but its significance against the backdrop of Roosevelt’s life and personality gives a full color picture of the man.

Poems and Sketches of E. B. White. This was a light and easy reading of a variety of unpublished writings by the beloved children’s author. He is a funny guy, but his poetry reveals a deeply sensitive soul often covered up by his hilarious wit and banter. The scope of his talent and mental adventures is insightful—and fun.

Wings and the Child by E. Nesbit. This beloved children’s author has some words for their parents in this imaginative little book on imagination. She begins with an admonition to recall what it is to be a child, the wonder, the newness, the limitless believable impossibles of our childhood perceptions and thoughts. She discusses how to nurture this power of imagination in our children in considering the toys we buy, the occupations we allow, and spends several chapters displaying how the building of an imaginary city can occupy a child’s time with inventiveness and creativity. This book is probably more crucial reading for twenty-first century parents than it was 100 years ago in her day.

The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature by J. Drew Lanham. Though the title implies an earlier era, it is a recent publication (2016) by a wildlife biologist professor with deep roots in the native soil of South Carolina. Not only does he have a life-long preoccupation with and adoration of nature, but that passion has only intensified as an adult both in his career and leisure time. This beauty finds its way into his masterful and adept use of words to describe the beauty of the world he was born into and has come to know and wonder and wander in, for nature has colored his life. This book is his attempt to imitate The Sand County Almanac, another early influence that shaped his life.

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf. I was dumbfounded by this author’s power and skill to convey the consciousness of imaginary characters in the first book of hers I read (To the Lighthouse), and I have always thereafter had a fascination for the mind behind the minds she reveals in her novels. This is an essay written for an address she gave on the role of women in literature, and as in all her writing, pries beneath convention to question and speculate about the women who stepped outside or worked within the constrains of their social limitations and considers their place in the future. I think she would be surprised.

For the joy of reading,

Liz