Aging

The Weekly Wrap: August 2-8

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The Weekly Wrap: August 2-8

The Neuroscience of Unread Books

The joke is that we will finish reading the books on our TBR piles in 329 years. Except that for many of us, it is no joke. I celebrated another birthday this past week. It’s also a reminder that the years I have left for reading the books on that TBR pile are ever diminishing. But the piles aren’t (notice the plural?).

Is it a kind of insanity? Maybe, but “The Neuroscience of Why You Can’t Stop Buying Books You Don’t Have Time to Read” suggests another possibility for this illogical behavior. It comes down to the human ability to take pleasure in the anticipation of future pleasurable events. The author notes that this is why planning vacations is as pleasurable as going on them.

The author summarizes it like this “The brain experts have spoken: your book-buying obsession is rooted in long evolved processes and helps spot good opportunities and add a steady drip of joy to your life.” I like that last phrase, “a steady drip of joy”! It rings true and explains why we booklovers describe buying books and reading books as two distinct pleasures.

Perhaps there is a third and a fourth. Winston Churchill urged us not to feel guilty about unread books but to “fondle” them. Between the initial pleasure and the reading, there is looking at the pile and thinking about the reading delights ahead. There is also the afterglow, as you look at books read, and recall the pleasure they gave you. And now you understand why booklovers love reading so much–it comes down to pleasure start to finish.

Just don’t break your budget, your marriage or your floor joists!

Five Articles Worth Reading

People seem to either love or hate the author of A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn. Adam Hochschild considers the controversial life of Zinn in his review of The People’s Historian by David Zirin. The review appears in The New York Times under the title “America’s Most Divisive Historian Gets a New Biography.” This is on my list.

JSTOR excels in collecting articles into incredible online posts. “The Many Lives of Libraries” is just the latest example. It features libraries, famous librarians, articles on libraries and social change, and even an op-ed from Bernie Sanders.

Then, “In Search of the Consolations of Age” by Theodore Dalrymple is an extended and poignant reflection on Malcom Arnold’s poem Growing Old. Can you tell I just celebrated a birthday?

However, it is never too late as long as we are living to take on a new reading challenge. Seth Kaplan writes of one example of this in “Why My 85-Year-Old Friend Has Devoted the Last Years of Her Life to Reading the Ancient Classics.”

Finally, if you still wonder about the arguments of left and right about reading the Great Books, ancient or modern, Nadya Williams summarizes those arguments and her own case for reading these books in “The Great Books for You and for Me.” It also just so happens that I will be reviewing her Christians Reading Classics on Monday. Let’s put it this way, when I see something written by her, I try to read it as soon as I can.

Quote of the Week

Garrison Keillor, the humorist, was born August 7, 1942. He hit the nail on the head for me when he said,

“I think the most un-American thing you can say is, ‘You can’t say that.’ “

What I particularly fear in the age we are in is self-censorship. How many good and important things have been suppressed by the threats, often implied, of the powerful?

Miscellaneous Musings

I just renewed the domain name of bobonbooks.com for another year. So, Lord willing you will have to endure me talking about books for another year!

Because I also have a dedicated email account for the blog, I have had a first hand exposure to what appear to be literary scammers, perhaps bots. People will write me about my book (often one I’ve reviewed!) or by an author with a similar website. What strikes me is how stupid and lazy these attempts are. Five minutes on my website would tell them I am not their audience. Publishers have been warning their authors about these scammers. Yet another way people too lazy to do real work try to scam the rest of us!

Finally, while on the subject of the blog, one of the things people have tried to sell me on is monetizing the blog. I have no objection to those who do so. But I feel I’ve been tremendously blessed in life and love sharing the blessing of books I’ve loved and think important. It is a joy to give with no strings attached. However, it does bother me when I come across evidence my copyrighted material is used by AI agents without my permission. This speaks to my fundamental contention that AI in the publishing world is founded on theft of intellectual property.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Nadya Williams, Christians Reading Classics

Tuesday: Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, ed. The Black Agenda

Wednesday: Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

Thursday: John B. Hatch, Oh What A Day!

Friday: Jarvis J. Williams, Paul’s Gospel in Romans

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for August 2-8.

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page.

Review: Falling Into a Good Life

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Cover image of "Falling Into a Good Life" by Laurel Richardson

Falling Into a Good Life

Falling Into a Good Life (Literary Scholar), Laurel Richardson. Paper Stars Press (ISBN: 9781737862451) 2026.

Summary: Laurel Richardson miraculously recovered from a serious fall leading to a reinventing of her life in a new place.

One night, while ill with COVID, Laurel Richardson attempted to walk down her steps when she suffered COVID paralysis and fell down thirteen steps. She suffered a broken neck, back, arm, ribs, eye socket. She had a severe concussion. Her aide, Fatu called for help the next afternoon when Laurel didn’t answer her phone. The EMTs brought her to Ohio State’s Trauma Center. Her very life was on the line.

Family gathered around her. Even Suzanne, her son Josh’s ex-wife was there, massaging her feet. She would stay with Laurel and do this often. Suzanne asks Laurel to stay with them until her birthday, six weeks off. Laurel promises. She writes, “My sons know I have never ever broken a promise to them.” And she promises.

In this memoir, Laurel describes how she not only survived to celebrate her 87th birthday in 2023 but went through a hard fought but miraculous recovery with the support of family and friends and the skilled and compassionate help of medical and rehab specialists at Ohio State’s Brain and Spine Hospital. And as amazing as this was, considering many don’t survive such injuries or are seriously disabled, she went on to transition into a new and rich life situation, reinventing her life as she did so.

The first several chapters are prefaced with “Here’s what happened. Or didn’t. I don’t know.” It captures the experience of someone heavily medicated who finds herself in a strange place with all these injuries. She hallucinates. Her son Josh challenges her pain management and they reduce her medication to Tylenol. She slowly recovers. takes her first steps. Then she transitions to a re-hab facility, followed by an assisted living facility. As she feels better, she enters into the community. She also thinks about survival, the meaning of her life, and talks with a trusted rabbi about prayer. Friends visit including her writing group. Then the time comes when she can go home.

However, this comes with mixed feelings. Her family sets up the house for her to live on the first floor while grandson Akiva lives upstairs and helps her out. But she misses the people at her assisted living community. She sets up a group with friend to read Jewish texts on Sabbath. She’s doing well. Akiva is in a deepening relationship. But she doesn’t want to live alone in her home.

Through a friend, she learns of The Hartford, an over-55 community. She likes what she sees, and so do her family and friends. But the decision involves downsizing. She describes working with downsizing consultants who help with the process and manage the move–tremendously exhausting but they worked through the house determining what to keep, sell, give to family.

The last part of the memoir describes life in the new community. An emeritus sociology professor, Richardson recognizes all the things the facility does to make this a welcoming community–places for residents to talk any time of the day, groups, celebrations. She describes celebrating New Years Eve for the first time in twelve years. She walks us through her days and the changing seasons. The memoir concludes with a show of Richardson’s quilts in the entrance foyer, an expression of her life and a gift to her new-found community.

She sums up her fall and the new life it led to like this:

“The fall awakened my life source, kindled a resilience I didn’t know I had, and led me to accept both my gifts and my shadow side–I have found the right place for the embodied me to be me.”

Richardson narrates a journey of not only physical rehabilitation but also of spiritual transformation. Her narrative offers vivid descriptions of the healing process, transitioning out of and downsizing from a home, and the dynamics of a community that honors the uniqueness of seniors. Her narrative offers an example of the powerful influence of a loving circle of family and friends. and the gift of sensitive spiritual advisors, both Jewish and Christian in her case.

As a younger senior, I find myself wondering how I will navigate the final part of my life’s journey. The memoir was a tremendous encouragement that growth is possible through all the transitions, even health challenges. A good life needn’t be simply what I had in the past. Richardson describes a life of growing generosity, deepening community, and richer spirituality on the other side of her fall. Her story is one of hope and meaning from which we all may learn.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author for review.

Review: Growing Old Gracefully

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Cover image for "Growing Old Gracefully" by David J. Claassen

Growing Old Gracefully, David J. Claassen. Elk Lake Publishing (ISBN: 9798891341890), 2024.

Summary: Navigating the transitions of our senior years with grace and joy.

This book could not have arrived at a better time. I turn 70 in the next couple weeks. And I conclude my employment with the collegiate ministry for which I’ve worked for 48 years in just 37 days. This is a book about the transitions of which I’m in the midst. An aging milestone. The end (so far as I know) of my paid employment.

A word about the author. David J. Claassen is a friend. After visiting several congregations, my fiancé and I joined the church of which Dave was pastor in 1978. We were getting married back in our home town but Dave did our marriage counseling, offering tons of practical wisdom for beginning our marriage well. We are still married after 46 years. Though only in his church for a few years, we have remained friends with him and his wife Diann.

I admired the way he loved and cared for his people over the course of his and their lifetimes. He knew the wait staff of restaurants and coffee shops all around his church and was a pastor to many who never entered his church building. I was most impressed by his decision to step down, preparing younger leaders to take his place And since then he and his wife split each year living near and helping their two children and many grandchildren, in Florida, and in rural Mexico. No scandals. Just good care for the people entrusted to him by God.

This book is about growing old gracefully. Claassen believes we needn’t stop growing as we age. He uses the term “older” because we are in the midst of a process, not a static state. And he speaks of aging “gracefully,” as people who extend the favor of God to others, rather than as old “grumps”!

The book is organized into thirty-one short chapters, each just a few pages in length. And the text is in a large enough font size to make for easy reading. In addition, each reading focuses on one idea, illustrated with everyday stories, anchored in biblical truth.

Among the ideas addressed are the transitions and losses of age, the feeling of being a burden upon others, and our declining energy and changes in health. Contrary to what we might think, these changes bring new opportunities. For example, our need for rest opens us to receive the gift of rest and permits others to slow down. In addition, the freedom from work responsibilities free us to be a blessing to children and grandchildren as well as have the time for study and reflection. Because we’ve reached the point of no longer having anything to prove, we are able to be self forgetful and focus on others.

An important concern of the book is finishing well. One of the ways we finish well as to persevere, to keep growing to the end. While we grow spiritually, we let go of many things, including possessions as we simplify and friendships, as some we love die. In all this, we lean into our hope of eternal life. For example, Claassen shares how the hope of eternal life that he preached at over 350 funerals has become dearer as his own days become shorter.

To sum up, what makes this collection so rich is the combination of its clear-sighted awareness of the challenges of aging coupled with its celebration of the opportunities of growing in grace as we age. Unlike the Old Grump of the opening reading, we have the opportunity to spend our days in rest, reflection, wonder and gratitude, and self-forgetful service to others. We have the chance, like many plants, to bear fruit in the last stages of our growth. In a way, this book is a kind of bookend for me. Pastor Dave, as many of us know him, offered us wisdom at the beginning of our marriage journey. And now he has returned to share this gift as my wife and I transition toward finishing our journey.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author for review.

Review: Aging Faithfully

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Aging Faithfully, Alice Fryling. Colorado Springs, NavPress, 2021.

Summary: An exploration of the questions that come with the changes of growing older and the invitations of God in those changes.

It seems that the mantra among those of my age group is “growing old ain’t for sissies.” You might think that those of us who have been at this game of life for awhile might have it figured out. What some may not realize is this is a new game, and we are rank beginners at it. Our bodies are changing, we are retiring from work, and maybe other pursuits of earlier years, our relationships with family, church, and others may be changing, and even our relationship with God may be changing as we let go of old patterns and open up to new ones. There are fears: about finances, about our relationship with our children, about losses of mental and physical abilities, and what the process of dying will be like for us.

Alice Fryling has written a beautiful book that engages all of these matters, some of which may even be hard to talk about and yet they may not be far from our thoughts. She writes as one in the midst of this process, seeing changes in her life situation, her body, and even in the things she wants to do and believes are God’s invitations. She shares her own journey even as she helps us to explore the contours of ours.

She begins by acknowledging that we are on a journey into the unknown, but that like the ancient explorers, it may lead to new places we did not know were there. She discusses retirement, not only from work but also some of the former activities that came with our working lives. Successive images of blossoms blooming and fallen, sap running, fruitfulness, and the best wine and new wineskins offer hope for what is fermenting, growing anew in our lives. She explores aging as a time of new birth, shedding the lies of the false self, even good, spiritual lies that no longer have a hold on us as we embrace what Christ is forming in us.

She acknowledges the losses of past work, of body, the importance of listening to the body’s messages and not denying the losses, but bringing them to God and opening ourselves to how we might be renewed inwardly when our bodies begin failing us. She talks about how we may struggle with the loss of control that sleep represents, and observes that insomnia, an accompaniment of aging, is also a loss of control, and another opportunity to surrender to the care of God. She considers letting go and our resistance to it. She observes how letting go may be a gift, as we acknowledge the changing desires in our hearts. We give up on “shoulding” and give ourselves to the “discipline of irresponsibility” that may be the first steps to responding to the Spirit’s invitations.

She confronts our fears and where we find peace as God leads us a step at a time. She deals with feelings of uselessness, loneliness, brokenness, and the concerns of the last season of our lives. Then in the epilogue, there is a wonderful summary by the decades of the sixties, seventies, and eighties of the questions that we may ask ourselves, and the sound counsel at any age that what we need are people who listen, not to solve us, but to draw us out. Appendices offer help with relevant scripture passages, an interview with her husband Bob, and a discussion what different groups–parents and children–would have the others know.

Alice Fryling’s honesty about questions, losses, letting go, and how she has found hope and peace is helpful. If you’ve reached our age, you are asking the questions and it helps to know one isn’t alone. Reflection questions and spiritual practices concluding the chapters offer opportunities to begin to listen for the invitations of God of which she speaks. As she proposes, the coming years are undiscovered country for all of us. I long not so much to know what they hold as to be found faithful in Christ to the end. Fryling offers the encouragement that the Lord desires this for us even more than we do, and will guide us safe home.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Reading as We Age

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My reading glasses and e-reader with larger font size

For many of us, it starts in our forties. We start noticing that our arms aren’t long enough to hold books where we can properly focus on them.

Sometimes it seems harder to focus on the small print. E-readers are a blessing for being able to enlarge the font size.

Drug store reading glasses work for some and suddenly these glasses spring up everywhere in the house where we read–the easy chair, the bedside, the kitchen.

Then you start noticing that the light you used to read by somehow seems dimmer. You change the bulb but it is still dim. It’s not the light. It is your eyes, as cataracts start to form and reduce the amount of light that can get through the lens of your eye.

The irony is that by the time we have more time for reading, we do not read as easily. Does that sound familiar? First we saw it with our parents. Now it is us. We do not read as effortlessly, and sometimes, it seems we have to work harder at attending to what we are reading.

One of the things I’ve discovered is that as we age, a reader’s best friend is his or her eye doctor! Sometimes it is as simple as telling you what power of those readers are right for your eyes. At one time, I had a single prescription for my near-sightedness. Then I adjusted to progressive lenses for different distances. You read through the bottom part of the lens.

At my last visit, I happened to mention my book blog and how many books I read a year. My doctor recommended a separate reader. It was a good move. The whole lens is a reading prescription, which means I don’t have to look only through the lower part of the lens, raising and lowering either the book or my head as I read down the page. I’ve noticed that I read more easily as a result.

I likely have cataract surgery in my future as do many older readers. Everyone I know who has had it talks about how things seem brighter, and sometimes, their visual acuity is improved.

Eye doctors watch for other problems that rob us of vision. My mother had macular degeneration, as does one of my siblings. It is a result of a deterioration of the center of our field of vision through changes in the retina. My doctor recommended taking an AREDS formula that prevents progression of macular degeneration. Whether it prevents or delays onset is an open question, but with my family history, I’m willing to try it. Glaucoma, a build up of pressures in the eye fluids can also damage our sight. Catching these things early can prevent or limit vision loss. The yearly eye check up is more important than ever.

My mother was a reader (probably where I get it from). She adjusted to vision loss, but as it progressed, she gave up reading. She never liked audio books. I think of the losses of vision loss, reading would be one of the greatest for me. The saying, “so many books; so little time” is especially significant given my family’s history. It both makes me selective, and contributes to a “read while you can” mentality.

Hopefully my eye doctor’s ministrations will avert or delay vision loss. At very least, his prescriptions and better lighting make reading easier. It is a risk to rush through books, a kind of FOMO (fear of missing out), abetted by reviewing. Perhaps a better approach is to take a breath and allow myself to engage a book at its own pace–some pondered, some studied, some drunk up quickly with satisfaction while others savored. I have to remember that you don’t want to finish a great book too quickly or finish books not worth one’s time.

Perhaps my engagement with books will end as it began with having books read to me, either from a recording or a person. And maybe I will remember the power of words, of fitly written sentences and gripping stories, the very things that taught me to love books and reading as a child. And maybe that won’t be so bad.

Review: On the Brink of Everything

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On the Brink of Everything

On the Brink of Everything, Parker J. Palmer. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2018.

Summary: A series of reflections on aging, living with grace and vitality as we age, and facing our deaths.

Perhaps one of the greatest unknowns that shape our lives either by denial, or conscious reflection is our own deaths. Like so much else, we have no clue what to expect until we get there. For some of us, our religious beliefs offer the hope of life beyond taking our last breath, or perhaps a return in another incarnation, or a oneness with the universe. We believe, perhaps with good reasons, but none of us knows. We wonder if death is going over the brink of nothingness. For Parker J. Palmer, at the end of his eighth decade, death is the “brink of everything.” This work consists of collected reflections around the question both of “how shall we die?” and how consequently we live, particularly in the autumn years of our lives, a season he believes has its own beauty.

Palmer had me from the “Prelude” where he writes: “Age brings diminishments, but more than a few come with benefits. I’ve lost the capacity for multitasking, but I’ve discovered the joy of doing one thing at a time.” In seven chapters, Palmer organizes his reflections and poetry around several topics. In “The View from the Brink: What I Can See From Here” he proposes that instead of asking “What do I want to let go of, and what do I want to hang on to?” that we ask “What do I want to let go of, and what do I want to give myself to?” Like Erikson, he sees that living generatively and giving ourselves to rising generations is essential to our vitality. That leads into a chapter on “Young and Old” A highlight in this chapter was a letter to a collaborator in the “On Being” program, Courtney Martin, and his observations about gender relationships. The chapter also includes one of the pithier and substantive commencement addresses I’ve heard or read.

“Getting Real” recounts the influence of Thomas Merton on his life and the journey from illusion to reality in his own life, from false self to true self. He describes an epiphany when a therapist observed about his perception of his struggle with depression (qualifying this as applying only to his own experience):

“You seem to image what’s happening to you as the hand of an enemy trying to crush you. Would it be possible to image it instead as a hand of a friend pressing you down to ground on which it is safe to stand?”

The chapter concludes with journal reflections from a winter retreat week, which includes more Merton.

His chapter on “Work and Vocation” centers on his life as a writer. He confesses, “I became a writer because I was born baffled.” It was helpful to find someone else who thinks this. I often find myself writing to find words to express an “inchoate something” that is rumbling around inside. “Keep Reaching Out” speaks to the necessity of remaining engaged with our world, which he models in how he wrestles what that means in a country led by a president whose character and values are at utter odds with his. As a Quaker, he wrestles through the question of how to be angry and yet live one’s commitments to non-violence. A short essay in this section on “The Soul of a Patriot” included a succinct statement from William Sloan Coffin that expressed with precision something I’ve been groping for:

“There are three kinds of patriots, two bad and one good. The bad ones are the uncritical lovers, and the loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover’s quarrel with their country, a reflection of God’s lover’s quarrel with the world.”

We also need to “Keep Reaching In,” His insights on the connection between pain and violence were thought-provoking to me, reminding me of Henri Nouwen and how wounds can become toxic or sacred to us, depending on the inner work we do:

“What can we do with our pain? How might we hold it and work with it? How do we turn the power of suffering toward new life? The way we answer those questions is critical because violence is what happens when we don’t know what else to do with our suffering.” 

This relates to his final chapter “Over the Edge,” in which he calls out the great challenge of wholeness, which is to live with and embrace all the contradictions of our lives–our noble and petty qualities–saying “I am all of the above.” He reminds us that we are never other than beautiful and broken persons and to face the truth about ourselves allows us both to live and die well. As for what is “beyond,” the most he will cautiously advance is that he believes that somehow body and spirit are intertwined and indivisible, whether in simply making new life possible or something more.

In this last, it is clear that this is not a book that presents an orthodox Christian view of death and future hope (although the resurrection is a marvelous expression, I think, of his intuitions of the indivisibility of body and spirit). Rather his reflections, the questions he explores in his writing, as well as the bonus downloadable music by retreat collaborator and musician Carrie Newcomer, explore how we might grow old with grace and generativity, rather than crankiness and frustration and sadness. His insights about anger and pain, and the temptations to violence seem very relevant whether we are old or young in this angry and violent culture.

I live in a place of seasons and I love the approach of each one and think each has its own beauty. Palmer helps me to see this in life, that the approach of autumn, and the winter to follow have their own beauty. Contrary to Dylan Thomas, Palmer suggests that we can go gently into the good night. He proposes that this is a season that has its own richness, that he invites us to join with him in exploring as we all approach the brink of everything.