I'm delighted to announce that we have created a delightful little package of extra book lists and printable, illustrated quotes for those who have pre-ordered Book Girl… AND, I wrote a poem, kind of. About Book Girls.
Read MoreI prove this quotation true at the start of just about every season. I simply cannot enter a fresh spate of months without a stack of doughty books to march down the road of those vast and undiscovered days beside me. I'm a happy woman today because I've found my companions. My summer list is set. Glory be.
This summer, I feel that I am walking with a faerie host. There is such richness in the books pictured below. I must admit, I always feel a little like one of those clever heroes in a folk tale who manages to win the favor (and the secrets) of some fantastic faerie personage. It is so vastly satisfying to hunt down and corral all the books I want to read, stack them high, and know that they will soon yield their comradeship and courage to my hungry mind. The hunt for the out-of-print books I want, the scouting of just the right titles, it feels like a contest and a game to me. A pile like this means I've won something rich.
Now, as soon as I posted this picture, I realized that I needed a bit more fiction and poetry. So I begged the advice of my friends and they fleshed out my list. The new books aren't pictured yet, but here are the suggested titles, for those who want to know. For fiction, The Trunk by Elizabeth Coatsworth, The Faraway Tree Stories by Enid Blyton, Descent into Hell by Charles Williams, The Invisible Bridge, Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, and Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. For poetry (I always go to my expert friend Ruth), I was pointed toward the Collected Poems by R.S. Thomas, and the poetry of A.E. Stallings.
And NOW, I want to know what's on your summer reading list. One, two, three... go!
In the midst of my muddle, O God,sneak up, come alongside, break an egg over my head, by your annoying goodness make a royal mess of my cynicism provoke praise, and melody, and the laughter, of self-pity ribbed by grace. Bring it on for this would be salvation to me, tired as I am of the cult of earnestness. Give me the bread of gladness and the land will know of it, the rocks and fields will hear of it from my mouth. Though none join me, I will not be silent. With or without stringed instrumentation: a song, a psalm of joy among the peoples weary of earth.
- an excerpt from Psalm 67, by Brad Davis (I met this poet at a C.S. Lewis conference four years ago, bought a slim book of his meditations on each of the Psalms. I love his work. )
A day of serendipity snuck up and grabbed me this week.
Don't you love how God knows to pin-point precision what will set your particular soul to soaring? It was two days after a late night return from the Dallas conference, and I hied me out to a coffee shop in search of a stilled brain and a bit of soulish food. I took music for the car, more notebooks than any one person could possibly need, and my coupon for a free mocha cappuccino at a favorite cafe.
First, I wrote. I was high on words. I sat at a big corner table, spread my papers all out before me, one notebook for story, one for journal, one for study, and went through them in rounds until I had an essay, three paragraphs of fiction, and a few scraps of poetry scratched out on various pages. Then, I read. I opened to an essay by Orhan Pamuk on the essential inner world of novelists. And then, when the last dregs of mocha had been drained and my pen had run dry, I shopped... for books.
Cooking, long dappled-day walks, and used-book shopping are my particular brands of catharsis. I started with Goodwill. One glance at their shelves convinced me that some blessedly oblivious soul had recently dumped a treasure of a children's library. I know I must seem an incorrigible book worm, but finding books like this fills me brimful with a Pollyannish joy. The beauty of the pictures, the stories to spark a soul to life right in those glossy, compact covers, and the thought of all the people I hope to share these stories with. I can't help myself. The books themselves...
Five hard-to-find works of children's literature from the Dial Children's Classics collection. If you don't collect these, you should. I do. Leather bound, acid-free paper, big, easy font, unabridged editions of the children's classics, with glossy page illustrations by mostly golden-age artists. This is my for-all-time, to be read by great-grandchildren set of classics.
Richard Scarry's word books, and Eloise Wilkin's bedtime story: I grew up on these! When my family lived in Austria, we had the darling Richard Scarry books with German and English side by side, and as a child, I spent hours poring over the pictures of bunnies, cats, bears, pigs, all going about their business in the small town of the book. And Wilkin's book- hers is the picture on the left. It's no wonder I got this strange idea that reading aloud is good.
A Michael Hague prayer book for kids. Do you all know Michael Hague? He is one of my favorite illustrators... ever. There is this fairy-tale, yet earthy tang to his drawings, and every picture is chock full of detail and interest. To look at them still gives me that sense of being taken to a land entirely strange.
And then... Charlotte's Web, and The Penderwicks, and an illustrated treasury of children's stories. Plus, a leatherbound, specially illustrated edition of my second-favorite Dickens: David Copperfield. Two pictures books new to me, but mesmerizing, one in its humor, For I Will Consider My Cat, Jeoffrey, and one for its luminous illustrations and poignant story, Waiting for the Evening Star.
And that summed up my spate of serendipity. Thanks for humoring this book euphoria, I'm just assuming you want to rejoice with me. But its so lovely to have your soul filled up with joy. These books represent beauty, mystery, deep souls, all of them. Finding them, writing, thinking, were the jolt of grace I needed to re-enter home life after a weekend of exhaustion. I dreamed the whole half hour home in five o'clock traffic down the busiest street in the city of the library I'll someday have. Of the books I want to write and add to this lovely number. Of the people I want to share these books with, the kids who might just find a bookish surprise in the mail.
Ah. I hope a day of serendipity strikes you with unexpected force this week. If it does, you should definitely let me know what delights it brought you. And if you stumble upon book treasures as I have... do share.
