The Weekly Wrap: June 15-21

Long and Short Reads

One of the joys of summer is losing oneself in a big, fat, long book. Of course, the one condition is that it must be well-written.

I’ll be candid with you that one of my challenges as a reviewer is taking on long books to review. One of my goals (compulsions?) is to post reviews daily, Monday through Friday. In order to do that, most of the books I read need to be under 300 pages.

In addition to enjoying them, one of the reasons I mix in shorter mysteries like those of Georges Simenon is that they afford me the space to read longer works. I can finish these in a few days and most books in a week. Then there are some books that I just devour. Anything by William Kent Krueger is like that for me.

Then there are the longer ones. Right now I am working my way through a theological book, Kingdom Through Covenant that comes in at over 800 pages. It will take me three weeks to finish.

I usually have five books going at a time. Only one can be long. For the rest of summer, I will read two more long books. One is Ron Chernow’s Mark Twain and the other is Abraham Verghese Cutting for Stone. I enjoyed The Covenant of Water immensely, and some friends tell me this one is even better. I have a sense that if I read nothing else this summer, these two would make for immensely rich reading.

Five Articles Worth Reading

If you have not read anything by ecologist and Indigenous writer Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Blue Line Medicine” is a great place to sample her writing. This pull quote from the article caught my attention: “If we value the medicine the land offers us so generously, we must become medicine for the land.”

Claire McCardell is probably not a household name for many of us. But she believed women’s fashions could be “practical, comfortable, stylish and affordable. And have pockets.” Kate Bollick reviews CLAIRE MCCARDELL: The Designer Who Set Women Free by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson in “The Design Genius Who Gave American Women Pockets.”

James Joyces Ulysses and Marcel Proust’s in Search of Lost Time are two long works I will probably not read in the remainder of my lifetime. But what about a review of a new book on the first biographer of James Joyce? I think I can handle that. The article is “Yes I Will Read Ulysses Yes” appearing in The Atlantic.

Did you know that semicolon usage was once more common than it is today? Sara Hashemi explains why in “Could the Semicolon Die Out? Recent Analysis Finds a Decline in Its Usage in British Literature and Confusion Among U.K. Students.”

Finally, most of us already know that reading can be therapeutic. Now, bibliotherapy has been approved in Canada to treat depression and anxiety. “A book prescription for mental health?” confirms what we’ve known all along.

Quote of the Week

Philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal was born on June 19, 1623. This quote by him received quite a bit of comment:

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”

Perhaps coming on the heels of the news of the religious views of the alleged murderer of a Minnesota state politician and her husband and the non-fatal shooting of two others, this quote struck home. My only observation, echoing a follower, was that Pascal wrote before atheist communism (and fascism). I believe these may also be defined as religious, and sadly have accounted for far more deaths than the traditional religions. But it points to our capacity for self-deception, that we are capable of using the noblest justifications for the most unspeakable evils.

Miscellaneous Musings

Jeff Deutsch, in In Praise of Good Bookstores speaks of the importance of bookstores as places to browse. That’s certainly one of the things I love as well. But some online friends observed the opportunities to electronically browse books, including the chance to read free excerpts before buying. I’m still not sure the two experiences are alike, but I recognize for some in “book deserts” or otherwise not able to get to bookstores, this is a viable alternative.

I celebrated Juneteenth, our national celebration of Black Emancipation, by starting in on Walter Strickland II’s Swing Low: A History of Black Christianity in the United States. I was surprised to learn that some of those brought to America were already Christians, presenting a question of whether Christians should be enslaved. Sadly, the justification was to define Blacks as an inferior race of humans, the origin both of race theories and racism.

I do believe that a key motivation of why we acquire more books than we can read is our hunger to know. Our bookshelves reflect our aspirations. It is dangerous to ask if this can get out of hand. “Hoarding” is a dirty word among bibliophiles. But I wonder if there is a healthy acceptance of our limits (and the limits of our shelf space!) that is the mark of a healthy mind and emotional life.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday. William Kent Krueger, Trickster’s Point

Tuesday. John D. Roth, Footsteps of Faith: A Global Anabaptist Devotional

Wednesday. Jeff Deutsch, In Praise of Good Bookstores

Thursday. Agatha Christie, Curtain

Friday. Steven Felix-Jager, The Problem and Promise of Freedom

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for June 15-21!

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