The Flight: A Monthly Book Sampler (September 2020)

Board member Andrea Humphries’ book review column is back for 2020! Here’s her summary of what she read in September:

I packed a lot of books into September, so this month’s Flight is possibly the longest so far (for the most part, I only write about the books I enjoyed) and also pretty reflective of my eclectic taste in reading material.

I really wanted to love The Dream of You by Jo Saxton. I’ve followed her on social media, heard her speak at multiple conferences, and appreciated her perspective on lots of things. The book was endorsed by a bunch of my favourite authors and writers from across the Christian spectrum. She’s generously vulnerable throughout the book, sharing hard and painful experiences from her past when she desperately struggled with her identity and calling. I think if I had read it a couple years ago when it came out, it would have connected deeply. But although I was able to appreciate everything she wrote and didn’t have any major issues with anything, the book just didn’t land for me. That being said, I think that if you’re in a place where you’re struggling with your identity, your calling, and who God created you to be, this might just be the book for you.

I wanted to read Becoming Brave after listening to Rev. Dr. McNeil speak as part of a virtual panel with Lisa Sharon Harper, Jemar Tisby, and LaTasha Morrison. She was the panelist with whom I was least familiar, but whose contribution I found most impactful. The book is essentially an expansion of what she shared during that panel. Using the book of Esther as the framework, she describes her journey from fighting for diversity and inclusion in the church, to fighting against injustice and systemic racism. It's challenging and hopeful, without ignoring the very real obstacles that everyone doing anti-racism work faces. That we cannot have true reconciliation without justice and reparations may seem obvious to some and yet it is an idea that so many in the church deny both implicitly and explicitly. I appreciated Rev. Dr. McNeil's honesty and vulnerability as she confronted her own erroneous assumptions and modes of work as she calls the reader to do the same.

I picked up the audiobook of Robyn Maynard’s Policing Black Lives during Audible’s Canada Day sale. (For all you Americans, that’s Canada’s equivalent of Independence Day.) If I’d known how hard it would be to listen to, I might’ve hesitated. It wasn’t the writing or narration that made it so hard to listen to - those are both well done; it was the contents of the book. It’s an unflinching, sometimes brutal examination of the history of anti-black racism in Canada. As such, it’s also a scathing indictment of our schools’ history curriculum because I, a history nerd, had never heard the bulk of what Maynard describes. It was also hard to listen to because it forced me to confront how often I have bought the (white) party line on my country’s history and current attitudes. It left me sad and angry at the harms that continue to be perpetuated against Black people by the institutions that my taxes help to pay for and convinced that the majority of them need, at minimum, a complete overhaul.

I’m honestly not entirely sure what to say about Helen Oyeyemi’s latest novel, Gingerbread, except, “what a beautifully written, fascinatingly bizarre book”. My fellow board member, Erin, told me she’d be interested in my review because she’s a fan of Oyeyemi, but had seen a lot of conflicting reviews. This was my first foray into Oyeyemi’s work and so I sent Erin my initial thoughts, about 20% of the way through the book: “It’s weird, I think I like her writing style, I don’t entirely understand what’s happening, and it’s weird.” By the end of it, I’d decided that I do in fact like her writing style, I still wasn’t entirely sure what had happened in the novel, and that it’s a very weird story. The characters seem to only have a tangential relationship with reality and even linear time. There are lots of half-finished thoughts and non-sequiturs that strand the reader in a sea of odd. Overall, I think I liked it, but I’m not sure I’ll ever feel the need to pick it up again. 

I have always been a prose girl. I read the poetry that I was assigned in school and university, but beyond that I read very little and what I did read was mostly Elizabethan or 18th century. Over the last couple years, I’ve read a little more here and there, but this month, I read two whole books of poetry: nejma by Nayyirah Waheed and Coffee Days, Whiskey Nights by Cyrus Parker. Neither poet follows any kind of conventional structure or meter that I’m aware of, in some cases the poems are only a line or two. But I really enjoyed both collections and I think I’m going to endeavor to start including poetry a little more frequently in my reading rotation.

I thoroughly enjoyed this latest instalment in Andrea Penrose’s fantastic Wrexford & Sloane series. Murder at Queen’s Landing presents an intriguingly convoluted and deadly mystery that ensnares Wrexford and Lady Charlotte’s friends and requires all their efforts to resolve. Penrose continues to deliver wonderful character development and a delightful cast of secondary characters. I’m always torn when I finish one of her novels because while I love getting to the end of a good mystery, I hate that reaching the end means I have to wait another year for the next in the series.

I received a review copy of Suzanne M. Wolfe’s A Murder by Any Name about two years ago. This whole time, it just sat on my Kindle. And now I’m kicking myself for not picking it up sooner. I read the whole thing in an evening and I loved it. It’s a combination spy story/murder mystery set in 1585 in London. A substantial part of the novel takes place in Elizabeth I’s court and Gloriana Regina herself is a prominent character. As a Tudor history nerd, I loved Wolfe’s ability to so clearly evoke the period. Her descriptions of the city’s various areas and the differences between the City proper (on the north side of the Thames) and Southwark were fabulous. I’m always in favour of throwing Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare into historical fiction set in this period, so I was thrilled when they appeared as friends of the main character. Wolfe does a wonderful job of helping the reader to grasp how politically and religiously turbulent the period was and the consequent dangers for The Honourable Nicholas Holt and his friends and family. I’m very excited to read the next book in the series, The Course of All Treasons. 

I had previously read and very much appreciated Ruth Haley Barton's book, Sacred Rhythms, so I had fairly high expectations when I opened Invitation to Retreat. It did not disappoint. It's one of the aptly named books I've come across recently, as it really does read as an invitation from Barton to listen and learn from her decades of experience deliberately setting aside time for spiritual retreats. She offers suggestions, cautions, and challenges without ever coming across as prescriptive, abrupt, or condescending. If you feel like you need a permission slip to go on a retreat or need help figuring out what a retreat should involve, this is the book for you. It’s the sort of book that makes your shoulders come down from around your ears as you read. My only pushback is that while she constantly emphasizes the importance of retreat to our spiritual health, until the final chapter of the book, her descriptions of retreats are very much exclusive to those with some measure of disposable income and paid vacation. I wish she had spent some time discussing how those reliant on hourly wages or living below the poverty line or single parents could engage in some form of retreat that honoured those very real limitations.

It’s been a while since I read Being Christian and Being Disciples, but I finally read Being Human, the final book in the trilogy based on a series of lectures given by Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s a fascinating and extraordinarily thought-provoking little book. Looking at what it means to be human and how a human being might live well, Williams asks, 'What is consciousness?', 'What is a person?', and examines the connections between bodies, minds, and thoughts; between faith and human flourishing; and between silence and human maturity. 'Humanity transfigured', the sermon enclosed as epilogue is a rather lovely way of pulling it all together. Williams pulls on science, philosophy, and theology throughout to paint a picture of a more expansive path forward, a more sustainable way of being human. I’ll definitely be reading more of his books in the future.

I don’t know if I can adequately explain how I experience reading Ruth Reichl’s memoirs. Reichl spent decades as a food critic in LA and New York before stewarding Gourmet magazine through its final decade. Save Me the Plums is the story of that decade. I knew that there were several people behind me in the library hold list for the book and I’d been meaning to start it for a couple days, but hadn’t gotten to it. So lying in bed at 11:50 pm, I thought, “You know what, I’m just going to start it. I’ll read a few pages and then get some sleep.” Reader, the next thing I knew it was 1:30 am and I was nearly 100 pages in. There’s something extraordinary about the way Reichl tells the story of her life and the friends and colleagues she’s shared it with. She’s a raconteuse of the first order. Every time I read one of her books, I find myself simultaneously loath to put down the book and desperate to run to the kitchen and start making...something...anything...as long as it’s delicious. If you’re at all interested in cooking or baking, the closest comparison I can think of to the way Reichl writes about food is the way Nigella Lawson talks about it on her cooking shows. It’s straight-up sensual - somehow managing to invoke all the senses and convey taste and smell and feel, appearance and even sound. If you’re not interested in the magic of the kitchen, I wouldn’t be surprised if reading Reichl changed that.