An Eclectic Rest of the Year (Books Part 3)
So here it is. The final set of books I read in 2017 from about mid-August through the end of the year. It's an eclectic mix of fifteen, heavy on the nonfiction. The connections between books and themes was probably a bit stronger earlier in the year with Part 1 and Part 2. My reading the rest of the year was, admittedly, a bit all over the map.
My reading included several books that had been on my Amazon Wish List for years, finishing a lengthy e-book that I'd put down over a year ago, and reading a few books from my own collection. The bulk of our personal books are in long-term storage back in Arizona. I was intentional about the books I did bring...choosing specific books I hoped to read while overseas. My version of "books I'm going to read before I die" but rather "books I'm going to read before returning to the States."
Inspirational Three
Anne Lamott is an author I was introduced to in college when I read her Bird by Bird book in a creative writing class. I have kept up with her and read many of her nonfiction books. Grace (Eventually) Thoughts on Faith and Plan B, which I haven't read yet, are among the books I brought to Italy. And speaking of Italian connections, I've read Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love several times and was interested in reading Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It, which is a collection of essays written by people who say that reading Eat Pray Love inspired them to do something to change the circumstances of their lives.
We were living in Saint Louis when Donald Miller's book Blue Like Jazz came out. I remember hearing a lot about it at the time but I haven't had a chance to read it yet. I did read Donald's more recent book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years this year. Here are some thoughts I took away from the book and copied in my journal:
"People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen."
"A general rule in creating stories is that characters don't want to change. They must be forced to change. ... Humans are designed to seek comfort and order, and so if they have comfort and order, they tend to plant themselves, even if their comfort isn't all that comfortable. And even if they secretly want something better."
Miller writes that it often takes an "inciting incident" to get a character, a person, moving. Something that disrupts their comfort and enters them into the story. An inciting incident led to this move to Italy and I'll probably write a blog post about it in the months to come.
Wonder and Music in the Mix
In the fall I watched a trailer for the movie Wonder, based on the book by R.J. Palacio. I thought it looked like a really good movie and decided to read the book before the movie came out. I didn't have any real expectations but ended up really enjoying the book. I got a lot of wisdom out of this young adult book. Here are some of my favorite gems: "
Courage. Kindness. Friendship. Character. These are the qualities that define us as human beings, and propel us, on occasion to greatness."
"He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own."
And finally, "It's not enough to be friendly. You have to be a friend."
Hamilton: The Revolution includes the full libretto of the musical phenomenon and includes chapters on the creative process and aspects of bringing the musical to the stage. As someone who has always been interested in the creative process, I really enjoyed this book. And there is actually a connection between these two books, Tony award winning actor Daveed Diggs, who originated the roles of Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton, stared in the movie-adaptation of Wonder. Just a little movie/book trivia for you.
Strong, Beautiful Women
It seemed fitting now that I'm living in Italy to read a book by Italy's own screen goddess, Sophia Loren. On the idea of the fountain of youth, she writes in Women & Beauty: "There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age."
Joan Dye Gussow, the author of This Organic Life, writes about Growing, Older and staying engaged in life and her garden. And what can I say about Cheryl Strayed's book tiny beautiful things but to read it. Immediately after finishing it, I passed it to someone else. The advice she offers through her Dear Sugar columns is honest, hard, funny, enlightening and inspiring. I re-read several letters more than once.
Blazing Trails
Having read Paula McLain's The Paris Wife earlier in the year, I made a point of reading her other book Circling the Sun, a biographical fiction book on the life of Beryl Markham. This is probably the book that stayed with me the longest after reading it. Extraordinary! I was recently watching Sleepless in Seattle and noticed Markham's book West with the Night on Meg Ryan's bedside table. See if you can find it the next time you watch the movie.
Diana Gabaldon's book Voyager, the third book in the Outlander series, is the e-book I was reading about a year ago and lost steam. I'm glad I picked it up and finished it. Turns out it had an unexpected connection with the nonfiction book Mountains Beyond Mountains, which I was reading at the same time. Mountains largely covers the work of Dr. Paul Farmer in Haiti, and the main characters in Voyager travel from Europe to the West Indies (i.e. the Caribbean) in the book.
And after seeing the movie Hidden Figures earlier in the year, the book went on my Must Read list.
Enemies Home and Abroad
Everyone Brave is Forgiven and Mudbound were both books on my Amazon Wish List and had been for years. It took me a while, about 100+ pages, to get into Chris Cleave's World War II book Everyone Brave is Forgiven. I didn't know if I was going to finish it but once I got settled into the voices and the style, I steamed through the rest of it. Reading a bulk of it during our 24-hour express bus trip to Salzburg.
There is some very powerful imagery in the book and it doesn't hold back on the punches. The characters go through hell, mirroring the hell being endured by the people of London during the blitz raids of World War II and British soldiers on the frontlines in Malta.
This might have been in the afterward but Chris Cleave wrote: "I hoped to highlight the insincerity of the wars we fight now - to which the commitment of most of us is impersonal, and which finish not with victory or defeat but with a calendar draw-down date and a presumption that we shall never be reconciled with the enemy. I wanted the reader to come away wondering whether forgiveness is possible at a national level or whether it is only achievable between courageous individuals."
A movie adaptation for Mudbound just came out. I haven't seen it yet but if it's anything like the book it's going to be powerful. I can't recommend Hillary Jordan's book Mudbound enough. Read it! As someone who spent junior high and high school in the south, living in Montgomery, Alabama, and reading Eudora Welty and William Faulkner in school, Hillary Jordan's writing reminds me of those literary greats.
In Altre Parole
Closing out the year is Jhumpa Lahiri's book In Other Words, which I finished in two days and on Christmas Eve. My co-worker recommended the book, which he and his wife had read in quick succession of each other. He'd read it in one day.
Jhumpa Lahiri is a Pulitzer Prize winning author whose fiction books are usually based in India. She is an American author, raised by Indian parents, spoke Bengali at home and was educated in English.
As a young adult she cultivated a life-long love of the Italian language. This is her first nonfiction book and she wrote the book in Italian. I can't even fathom the commitment and dedication it takes to learn a foreign language enough to write a book. The book explores her experience of studying and learning Italian over about 20 years and fully immersing herself for a couple years while living in Rome with her family.
This English edition features the original Italian text on the left-hand page and the English translation on the right. I plan on making Jhumpa my inspiration for studying and learning Italian. This is really my best shot at finally learning and using a foreign language. If it's not going to happen now...living here in Italy for 3-5 years, than it's not going to happen at all. Enough pretending that I want to learn Italian and start dedicating some time to actually doing it! You'll understand what I mean by 'pretending' if you start watching this recent discussion between authors Anne Patchett and Elizabeth Gilbert at minute 36. Link here.
So there they are. My books of 2017. Some of them challenged me, some inspired me, some entertained. Many took me to another time and place. On display in all of them is the power of the written language and the skills of talented artists.
To read. To have the gift of language and expression. To transcend your current life and circumstances and enter another world, another time; to see the world through other eyes, I think it's part of what helps humanize our differences. My reading list is already started for 2018. I'm currently reading three books. I'm looking forward to the worlds, places and people I'm going to meet in '18. Get reading everyone!
My reading included several books that had been on my Amazon Wish List for years, finishing a lengthy e-book that I'd put down over a year ago, and reading a few books from my own collection. The bulk of our personal books are in long-term storage back in Arizona. I was intentional about the books I did bring...choosing specific books I hoped to read while overseas. My version of "books I'm going to read before I die" but rather "books I'm going to read before returning to the States."
Inspirational Three
Anne Lamott is an author I was introduced to in college when I read her Bird by Bird book in a creative writing class. I have kept up with her and read many of her nonfiction books. Grace (Eventually) Thoughts on Faith and Plan B, which I haven't read yet, are among the books I brought to Italy. And speaking of Italian connections, I've read Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love several times and was interested in reading Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It, which is a collection of essays written by people who say that reading Eat Pray Love inspired them to do something to change the circumstances of their lives.
We were living in Saint Louis when Donald Miller's book Blue Like Jazz came out. I remember hearing a lot about it at the time but I haven't had a chance to read it yet. I did read Donald's more recent book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years this year. Here are some thoughts I took away from the book and copied in my journal:
"People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen."
"A general rule in creating stories is that characters don't want to change. They must be forced to change. ... Humans are designed to seek comfort and order, and so if they have comfort and order, they tend to plant themselves, even if their comfort isn't all that comfortable. And even if they secretly want something better."
Miller writes that it often takes an "inciting incident" to get a character, a person, moving. Something that disrupts their comfort and enters them into the story. An inciting incident led to this move to Italy and I'll probably write a blog post about it in the months to come.
Wonder and Music in the Mix
Courage. Kindness. Friendship. Character. These are the qualities that define us as human beings, and propel us, on occasion to greatness."
"He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own."
And finally, "It's not enough to be friendly. You have to be a friend."
Hamilton: The Revolution includes the full libretto of the musical phenomenon and includes chapters on the creative process and aspects of bringing the musical to the stage. As someone who has always been interested in the creative process, I really enjoyed this book. And there is actually a connection between these two books, Tony award winning actor Daveed Diggs, who originated the roles of Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton, stared in the movie-adaptation of Wonder. Just a little movie/book trivia for you.
Strong, Beautiful Women
Joan Dye Gussow, the author of This Organic Life, writes about Growing, Older and staying engaged in life and her garden. And what can I say about Cheryl Strayed's book tiny beautiful things but to read it. Immediately after finishing it, I passed it to someone else. The advice she offers through her Dear Sugar columns is honest, hard, funny, enlightening and inspiring. I re-read several letters more than once.
Blazing Trails
Diana Gabaldon's book Voyager, the third book in the Outlander series, is the e-book I was reading about a year ago and lost steam. I'm glad I picked it up and finished it. Turns out it had an unexpected connection with the nonfiction book Mountains Beyond Mountains, which I was reading at the same time. Mountains largely covers the work of Dr. Paul Farmer in Haiti, and the main characters in Voyager travel from Europe to the West Indies (i.e. the Caribbean) in the book.
And after seeing the movie Hidden Figures earlier in the year, the book went on my Must Read list.
Enemies Home and Abroad
There is some very powerful imagery in the book and it doesn't hold back on the punches. The characters go through hell, mirroring the hell being endured by the people of London during the blitz raids of World War II and British soldiers on the frontlines in Malta.
This might have been in the afterward but Chris Cleave wrote: "I hoped to highlight the insincerity of the wars we fight now - to which the commitment of most of us is impersonal, and which finish not with victory or defeat but with a calendar draw-down date and a presumption that we shall never be reconciled with the enemy. I wanted the reader to come away wondering whether forgiveness is possible at a national level or whether it is only achievable between courageous individuals."
A movie adaptation for Mudbound just came out. I haven't seen it yet but if it's anything like the book it's going to be powerful. I can't recommend Hillary Jordan's book Mudbound enough. Read it! As someone who spent junior high and high school in the south, living in Montgomery, Alabama, and reading Eudora Welty and William Faulkner in school, Hillary Jordan's writing reminds me of those literary greats.
In Altre Parole
Jhumpa Lahiri is a Pulitzer Prize winning author whose fiction books are usually based in India. She is an American author, raised by Indian parents, spoke Bengali at home and was educated in English.
As a young adult she cultivated a life-long love of the Italian language. This is her first nonfiction book and she wrote the book in Italian. I can't even fathom the commitment and dedication it takes to learn a foreign language enough to write a book. The book explores her experience of studying and learning Italian over about 20 years and fully immersing herself for a couple years while living in Rome with her family.
This English edition features the original Italian text on the left-hand page and the English translation on the right. I plan on making Jhumpa my inspiration for studying and learning Italian. This is really my best shot at finally learning and using a foreign language. If it's not going to happen now...living here in Italy for 3-5 years, than it's not going to happen at all. Enough pretending that I want to learn Italian and start dedicating some time to actually doing it! You'll understand what I mean by 'pretending' if you start watching this recent discussion between authors Anne Patchett and Elizabeth Gilbert at minute 36. Link here.
So there they are. My books of 2017. Some of them challenged me, some inspired me, some entertained. Many took me to another time and place. On display in all of them is the power of the written language and the skills of talented artists.
To read. To have the gift of language and expression. To transcend your current life and circumstances and enter another world, another time; to see the world through other eyes, I think it's part of what helps humanize our differences. My reading list is already started for 2018. I'm currently reading three books. I'm looking forward to the worlds, places and people I'm going to meet in '18. Get reading everyone!
Comments
Post a Comment