An Annotated List of the Books I Read on Sabbatical

When people asked me what I planned to do on my sabbatical, I often replied by saying: baking, biking, and books. You may know by now that the baking apprenticeship didn’t work out. But I did go on some epic bike rides, and I did read 16 books. For those who are interested, here’s a list of the books I read this summer:

God’s Kingdom, Howard Frank Mosher
Points North: Stories, Howard Frank Mosher
Where the Rivers Flow North, Howard Frank Mosher
These three books are by one of Vermont’s best known authors, and they describe life in the remote and wild regions of northern Vermont, along the border with Canada. Whenever I travel I try to read books about the place or written by authors native to that place. It helps me better understand the geography and the culture of the place. Sarah and I stayed in Vermont for about a week while Raynie was at a camp in the Adirondacks. These stories were reminiscent of Wendell Berry and Elizabeth Stroud, just set in a different part of America. 

Something to Do with Paying Attention, David Foster Wallace
This novella (just over 100 pages) was published as an excerpt from The Pale King, Wallace’s posthumously published final novel. The novella follows a self-described “waste-oid” who finds his calling as an accountant. Of everything I read this summer, it may have left the most indelible mark. I’m still thinking about this short book, more than two months since I finished it. The theme is about how everyday, mundane work—even accounting!—can be heroic. As he writes, “To give oneself to the care of others’ money—this is effacement, perdurance, sacrifice, honor, doughtiness, valor.” 

Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains, Jon Krakauer
The White Spider: The Classic Account of the Ascent of the Eiger, Heinrich Harrer
The Swiss Summer, Stella Gibbons
I read these three books because they all are set in the area of Switzerland where our family stayed for two weeks in July: namely the Jungfrau Region. The Jungfrau (German for Maiden) is a 14,000 foot Swiss alp, known as the top of Europe, because there’s a train station and overlook at the highest elevation within Europe (although the mountain peak itself is not the highest). We stayed at a chalet in a little town called Wengen and the view from the front yard was of the Jungfrau. It was stunning. There are two other peaks next to the Jungfrau: the Monch (Monk) and the Eiger (Ogre). The Eiger’s north face is a sheer cliff of rock and ice and one of the world’s most challenging mountains to climb. (I did not attempt it.)

The Boys in the Boat, Daniel James Brown
My father-in-law (who grew up in Washington state in the 1950s) has mentioned this book to me for years. This summer I finally read it. I’m a sucker for a good sports story. This book is at times a bit overwritten, but it’s still fun. I mostly listened to this one on Audible (first during our long drive to New England and then on our flight to Europe). I watched the movie on the flight back from Europe. The book is better than the movie, but the movie isn’t bad.

Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story, Leslie Jamison
You may know that Jamison is one of my favorite authors, ever since her essay collection The Empathy Exams. This is her latest book which is really a story about motherhood. Jamison is primarily a memoirist and this book tells the story of the breakdown of her marriage soon after her daughter was born. Jamison is a fantastic writer, particularly at the level of the sentence. But I also read her because she’s “Christ-haunted”. She writes vulnerably and honestly. It ends with this: “My notion of divinity was gradually turning its gaze away from the appraising, tally-keeping pseudo-father in the sky who would give me gold stars if I did enough good things and toward the mother who’d been here all along with less patience for my performances and more patience for everything else. I was living toward joy that was less about earning and more about ambush. A joy you might call grace.”

Middlemarch, George Eliot
It’s a classic that I had never read before, maybe partly because it’s like a billion pages long. I “read” this via a combination of Audible and Kindle. That’s not something I’ve done a lot of in the past, but it worked while traveling and enduring flights and layovers. Eliot is an incredible writer and turns beautiful phrases. Middlemarch gets bogged down at times in early 19th-century British politics, but the novel overall is an insightful portrait of human longing, posturing, and jealousy.

I Cheerfully Refuse, Leif Enger
Enger’s Peace Like a River is in my top 10 books ever. I’ve read everything he’s written since that and he’s never quite been able to recapture the magic. But this is a book with some memorable and engaging characters. The first half of the plot is compelling, but then, for me, it lost its way and lost my attention. 

Journeys of the Mind, Peter Brown
I took a class with Peter Brown as an undergrad. Because I was young and dumb I didn’t realize at the time what a stud scholar he is. Brown literally created the field of Late Antiquity and also wrote the definitive biography of St. Augustine. This book traces his intellectual development from birth to age about 65. It is a bit of a slog through way more detail on academic experts in late antiquity than I ever cared to know. But Brown is an impressive intellect. I was counting the number of languages he is fluent in, but lost track after 10 (Irish, English, French, German, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Italian, Russian, etc.). Reading this will make you question what you’ve done with your life.

Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times, Elizabeth Oldfield
I don’t always write Goodreads reviews of the books I’ve finished. But I did for this one. And a few days later, Oldfield liked my review. So there’s that. I couldn’t remember what I wrote and I was a little worried I’d said something unfavorable. So I went back and checked. Here’s the review: “Oldfield is one of my new writer crushes. She evokes Spufford and Lewis, writing in that intelligent and witty (and a little bit cheeky) British style. She calls her project “theology for everyone else” and comes at truth subversively and practically. I don’t agree with everything (the chapter on lust/sex was less compelling, for instance) but her honesty and rawness as a writer is refreshing.”

Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People, Tiya Miles
I read a review of this in The New Yorker early in the summer and put it on hold at the library. (I love the library, by the way.) By late summer (after I’d forgotten about it) it became available. I love that about library holds. They’re like little Christmas surprises. Harriet Tubman was an amazing woman (and a woman of deep Christian faith) that we don’t talk enough about. Did you know she was born into slavery on the Eastern shore of Maryland? Yeah, neither did I.

The Berry Pickers, Amanda Peters
Sarah got this from a little free library (at Hermitage High school of all places). It’s set in Maine and it’s about blueberries, so she thought it was right up my alley. It was a fine story; a bit predictable, but still emotionally well-told.

The Book of Pastoral Rule, Pope Gregory the Great
I spent a fair amount of the summer thinking about “care.” Specifically I was thinking about what it looks like for a church to provide good care. To be honest I’ve been thinking about this topic for the last couple of years, partly spurred by some tragic failures of care within the larger church. In Gregory the Great (who wrote in the 6th Century) we discover that the idea of care isn’t new to the church; rather it’s fundamental to the pastoral role. Essentially this book is a guidebook for both those considering the role of pastor and those who are in a place of authority and service within a congregation.

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