I read. I read a lot.
The past several years I’ve shared what I’ve been reading on Instagram with the hashtags #sshreads2023 #sshreads2022 #sshreads2021 But this year I finished book after book in January but never wrote a single post. I’ve haven’t been spending as much time on Instagram is one reason for sure. But I also struggled with fitting in what I wanted to say in a caption or putting an author on blast if I didn’t like their work.
Then, I realized my favorite post of most email newsletters is the long list of book recommendations and thought “Hey, I have an email list - I’ll fire that up again!”
(👋 to all of you who haven’t heard from me since 2018!)
So, that’s what I plan to do. Share what I’ve read at the end of the month (or more often … or less often who knows!) and I hope you enjoy it.
Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot
You are not here to verify, Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Last year, I joined Well-Read Mom with my friend Kate and have loved every. single. minute. of it! This was our selection for December and I realized (to my eternal shame) I had not read any T.S. Eliot. While The Waste Land is Eliot’s more famous poem, this poem in four parts is considered by many to be his masterpiece. It contains 'Burnt Norton', 'East Coker', 'The Dry Salvages', and 'Little Gidding' - each a reflection on place and memory. I’d be lying to you if I claimed to understand all of it but reading each several times and then listening to Jeremy Irons read these poems aloud was entrancing and challenging and rewarding.
Wigs on the Green by Nancy Mitford
‘The girl’s a lunatic but she’s not stupid,’
I read Nancy Mitford’s Pursuit of Love last year and loved it. (Do not waste your time on the Amazon series!) Mitford’s sharp-as-nails observations about post-WWI British society is funny and affecting and smart. I fell down a bit of an internet hole about Nancy and her famous sisters (including Unity a Nazi sympathizer who shot herself in the head after Britain declared war on Germany..she survived 😳) only to learn that Nancy had written a roman à clef about her sisters and their politics in 1936. Then, she refused to have it republished again in her lifetime. Nancy famously said, “Too much has happened for jokes about Nazis to be regarded as funny or as anything but the worst of taste.” Fair, Nancy. Fair.
It wasn’t printed again until 2010!
Obviously, I had to read it. The book is as obsessed with marriage and status and society as her others. Politics is often the punchline. Nancy felt politics was in poor taste and it comes through. But, knowing how it all ends adds a level of vulnerability and insight not only Nancy’s family but our own, as many of us struggle with our own loved ones and values that seem very far from our own.
A Time to Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh Fermor
“In the seclusion of a cell—an existence whose quietness is only varied by the silent meals, the solemnity of ritual, and long solitary walks in the woods—the troubled waters of the mind grow still and clear, and much that is hidden away and all that clouds it floats to the surface and can be skimmed away; and after a time one reaches a state of peace that is unthought of in the ordinary world.”
While in London over the summer, I spent one very special morning in Hatchards and picked up a special edition of this book. I had no idea what it was about but the title was appealing after several weeks in small Airbnbs with my children. It is in fact a travel book the author wrote after spending time in several monasteries across Europe. The different monastic orders have always been a bit confused in my head so it was fascinating to feel like you were really experiencing the differences along with the author. It felt like the best combination of travel writing, memoir, and history education and it definitely renewed my desire to take my own retreat to the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky.
True Grit by Charles Portis
“But I had not the strength nor the inclination to bandy words with a drunkard. What have you done when you have bested a fool?”
Here’s something I bet you didn’t expect to her me say…I love a western!
I do. It makes absolutely no sense but it’s true. I read Lonesome Dove two years ago (all thanks to Erin Moon!) and loved it. This was the January Well-Read Mom pick and I read it in four days flat. I love the complicated heroes (so often sanitized and shrunk by the popular John Wayne conception of the genre) and I love the journeying which so often ends without a happy ending. And this is one of the best of the genre so if you’re going to start anywhere start with Maddie and Rooster Cogburn (the name alone!).
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
“Out of the way! We are in the throes of an exceptional emergency! This is no occassion for sport- there is lace at stake!"
Another classic I picked up in London - this time at the British Library. I bought a beautiful clothbound edition with the original illustrations. Written in 1853, this episodic novel is English country society at its finest. There are snobs and romances and lost (then found!) fortunes. If you love Austen, you’ll love Cranford.
I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This: But I’m Going to Anyway by Chelsea Devantez
“I have told you a lot of terrible things about myself, so I don’t mind telling you that I have a nearly perfect head of hair.”
Chelsea is a friend of mine and I have followed her book journey closely. I couldn’t get my hands on her memoir fast enough. It comes out in June and preorder now because Chelsea is raw and funny and vulnerable and phenomenal. She has lived enough life for ten people and there were so many points where I was like, “Wait WHAT happened!?!” That’s why I love memoirs so much, often they leave you dumbstruck by how truth really is stranger than fiction. Chelsea loves the genre even more than me and she has done it so, so proud.
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
“Be worthy love, and love will come.”
No, I hadn’t read it. 🫣
I was more than a little ashamed by this oversight. When we got tickets to the musical, I decided it was time. It feels so silly to say but guys…Little Women is so good.
It was interesting reading it after being so familiar with the story. We all know the high points from the many adaptations but even the best of them doesn’t do the story justice. Amy isn’t a snob … she’s a little girl. Mr. Lawrence isn’t a meany … he’s broken-hearted. Jo is an author … but her story is so much more than just finding her voice. The quiet complexity of the family ties and the emphasis on duty and self-awareness and forgiveness is the real reason this book remains such a classic.
(However, I do not recommend reading or revisiting it before the musical…which I kind of hated. The emphasis is in all the wrong places and also there was NOT that much kissing in the 1800s, y’all!)
Books I didn’t finish
Speaking of things I didn’t like, I picked up Remarkably Bright Creatures after a feature in the New York Times. I stopped about 30% in. I hated it. 😬 I really disliked the anthropomorphizing of the octopus. Octopuses are endless fascinating. I would argue they are in fact more fascinating than humans. Not because they are super-smart in a way we can comprehend, but because they are super-smart in a way we don’t! That’s worth exploring in fiction. Has anyone read Children of Ruin?! That’s what I should have read instead.
I’m excited you’re doing this! You always introduce me to interesting books, authors, and ideas.
I recently finished Absolution by Alice McDermott, and I think you’d really dig it if you want to add something else to your TBR list. (I loved it, but it’s not one I’d recommend to everyone. I specifically think you’d enjoy it!)
Sarah, I want to thank you for introducing me to Well-Read Mom. I probably never would have joined a group whose website says they " strive to be faithful to the teachings of the Magisterium" (even though I am Catholic) and that has a large number of homeschooling moms with big families writing for them if it wasn't for your mention. But thank goodness you did mention it because I have been loving it so far. I loved True Grit and had no idea that the main characeter was a hilarious and tough 14 year old girl. I am looking forward to the books to come.