Books I read June 2023

As I get closer to finishing the 2023 PopSugar Reading Challenge, I get down to the prompts where it is harder to find books I am interested in reading. One in particular I don’t care for in this year’s challenge is “a book about divorce.” Divorce happens, all too often, but why would I want to read a book about it. Browsing in the college library for my next lunchtime reading material, however, I did happen upon one that fit the prompt. Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey is the story of a woman trying to cope with life after she and her husband separated. Unfortunately she is so immature in her behavior (it’s not hard to see why her marriage didn’t last) that it’s hard to have much sympathy for her, or interest in how she is getting along. It was a relief to be done with the book.

A much easier prompt was “a book with a color in the title,” but I figured it was so easy that I wasn’t going to even go looking for one, as I was sure I’d end up reading one without even trying. In fact, I had read three books that fit this prompt already this year, but each time they were intended for a different prompt, one that wasn’t as easy to find a book for. But I finally happened upon Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell. I had heard of it when I was growing up, and knew that it was sometimes assigned in school, but it was never assigned in any of my classes, so I had never read it. I’ve no idea what I would have thought of it when I was growing up, but reading it now, I found it moderately interesting but far from engrossing. I was interested at the end to learn that it was – very loosely – based on a real person, but since almost all the detail was made up by O’Dell, not nearly as interesting as if he had more facts to base it on.

“A book that takes place entirely in one day” isn’t exactly a difficult prompt to find books for, but the list of books that fit is rather limited. One I had thought of reading was One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, which seemed like the type of book I ought to have read but never had. When it was listed as suggested reading in a Bible study I was leading, saying that “Solzhenitsyn integrates his faith into the warp and woof” of the novel, I decided it was time to read it. It is a quick read, and it is remarkable how full a view of life in a Soviet gulag the author puts into such a short book. What I’m still not clear on is quite where Solzhenitsyn’s faith is to be found in the book. The main character is exemplary for his gratitude for the smallest blessings in his life, and looking for ways to help his fellow prisoners, but it’s not clear what kind of God he believes in, since he says he doesn’t believe in heaven or hell, and outside of the conversation where he says that, there is virtually no mention of faith. Is the implication that it is only by faith that he could display the virtues that he does, so there is no need to talk about it?

One prompt I really struggled with was “a book you wish you could read for the first time again.” I don’t remember ever thinking, “I wish I could read that book for the first time again.” I suppose in the case of a mystery one might think it would be nice to reread if you didn’t know what was going to happen. But books whose appeal is largely in not knowing what is going to happen are not the kind I’m interested in rereading anyway. I finally settled on At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon, because I remember being so happy to have found such a wonderful book, one that presented a life of faith as a normal part of life, without any sense of looking down on either people of faith or those without faith, as so many novels do. It certainly would be nice to read something and feel again that it was one of the best books I’d found in a long time (back then I read the whole series – at least all the ones written up to that point – and then bought them all so I could reread them).

Reading it again now, I have to admit I didn’t find it as wonderful as I did thirty years ago. I still like it – Father Tim has nuggets of wisdom to offer but he also struggles with his own problems, and the book doesn’t feel (to me) like it’s a sermon disguised as a novel, as some “Christian novels” do. I saw other reader reviews that criticize it as going too far in trying to give a comfortable view of life and faith, and there is probably some truth to that. The last books in the series did seem to have things work out too neatly, though I didn’t get that impression early in the series. At the time I first read them, I was in need of comfort and encouragement and this was what I needed. Perhaps I didn’t enjoy it as much this time because I’m at a much different place in my life, three decades later. But I’ll still reread them.

I came up with a list of books for “a book published the year you were born,” but so far I haven’t read any of the ones on my list. I did discover, however, that a book I was already reading, To Light A Candle by Welthy Honsinger Fisher, was published in 1962. It was in the box of books from my sister, and my mother had written her name in the front. I don’t remember her ever mentioning it when I was growing up, but I can see why she would have liked it. Welthy was a missionary, but her passion was education, not converting people to Christianity. I had never heard of her before, which surprises me somewhat now that I have read her memoir and seen what she achieved. She was the founder of World Education, and was chairman of the World Day of Prayer in 1948. I don’t know how many famous people she knew personally, but on her eightieth birthday she received birthday wishes from the Prime Minister of India, the Dalai Lama, Richard Nixon, and John F. Kennedy, among others. Yet she comes across as very down-to-earth, genuinely more interested in helping people, no matter who they were, rather than possessions or power or even just a comfortable life.

Every year, one prompt is “a book that fulfills your favorite prompt from a past challenge,” and for the past several years I have always chosen “a book about time travel.” Usually I read a book by Jodi Taylor, but her next book won’t come out until the fall, so I decided to try something different. First I thought I would be reading about time travel when I got Making History by Stephen Fry from the library. I had seen from a description of it that the main characters changed the past – wouldn’t that mean time travel? Well, it is if making an object travel back in time counts, and it certain deals with the paradoxes inherent in time travel. But “travel” usually is used of people (objects are shipped, they don’t “travel”), and no people move around in time. It’s a fascinating story, though, as it explores the question of whether certain historical ideas and movements will develop even without the person who was central to them.

Since I still wanted to read a genuine time travel book, I next tried The Adventures of John Blake: Mystery of the Ghost Ship by Philip Pullman (and illustrated by Fred Fordham). I had read his trilogy His Dark Materials, and was curious how he would handle time travel. Plus I was curious how time travel would work in a graphic novel (not a format I normally read but it is also part of a summer reading challenge at the college). I don’t know if it’s because it’s a graphic novel, where ideas can’t be explored fully, or just Pullman’s take on things, but I didn’t find the time travel aspect of the book to be all that interesting. Mostly it’s just another adventure story, that happens to have a time travel twist to it.

That being the case, I decided to find yet another time travel book, and I chose David Gerrold’s The Man Who Folded Himself. This novel is not only centered on the idea of time travel, that’s really all there is to the book – what it would mean to go back in time and try to change the future, and what is the identity of the person who had both acted in the past to change the future and been acted on in the future by that person in the past. There are some interesting twists to it, but not really all that much in terms of plot or character development. If you’re a fan of time travel, though, it’s one you should read.

I also read several books that weren’t for the PopSugar Reading Challenge, but could have been if I hadn’t already read a book for those prompts. The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks by Shauna Robinson is “a book where the main character’s name is in the title,” and might even count for “a book with alliteration in the title” (especially if you consider that M and B are both voiced bilabials). I like books about books and bookstores, but I had some trouble enjoying it as much as I would have liked because Maggie was so clearly making foolish decisions that were going to cause problems, not just for herself but her friends also. But it all ended well, as I knew it would – and in much the form I expected it to.

I followed that one with OCDaniel by Wesley King, which is also a book where the main character’s name is in the title. It’s considered a middle grade book, and is one of those that is well worth reading at any age. Lots of people throw around the term OCD but don’t really know what it means; Daniel hasn’t heard of OCD until later in the book but he knows from painful experience what it’s like. He just doesn’t know it’s a known disorder, or that it can be treated, and he’s afraid to admit to anyone what is going on. I think it’s great there are books today that deal with mental illness in young people, and perhaps can encourage them to seek out help instead of feeling so desperately alone. The book is also a great story, even if someone confusing in terms of what kind of school Daniel attends. (He’s thirteen and plays football that the town is fanatical about, and he also has recess, I think more than once a day. Since Wesley King is Canadian, I figure maybe that reflects ways that their schools are different.)

When I picked up The Circus Train by Amita Parikh, I thought it would work for “a book about a forbidden romance” because the cover mentions “forbidden love.” But I really couldn’t see what was so forbidden about it. Miscommunication and circumstances got in the way of Lena and Alexandre’s relationship more than the fact that he was Jewish. It also happens to be the fourth historical fiction book I’ve read this year – it’s a genre I generally seek out even when it’s not a prompt in the Reading Challenge. This is a somewhat different view of WWII, from the point of view of people who are part of a circus traveling around Europe. It’s interesting, but doesn’t have the emotional depth I would have expected from a novel that deals with issues of war, family, identity, disability, and women pursuing their dreams.

The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis could be considered “a book set in the decade you were born” – at least a large part of it is, though I couldn’t pin down quite what years despite some mentions of Kennedy. Like many readers, I was curious as to whether the novel was based on a true story. I read in this article that the character Beth Harmon is entirely fictional, but Tevis wrote about both drug addiction and chess based on personal experience. For a while I had trouble getting myself to pick the book up to continue reading each day, because I hated seeing Beth in the processing of destroying herself with drugs and alcohol. But she gets help – in fact, I think that’s one of the big themes in the book, how, as individualistic as chess is and as brilliant as Beth is, she needs help even with chess in order to reach her goals.

When I had picked out Pullman’s graphic novel at the library, I also decided to read Frankenstein by Junji Ito, which I thought could work for “a modern retelling of a classic.” Usually that means a very similar plot and characters, such as West Side Story as a retelling of Romeo and Juliet. Since I haven’t read Mary Shelley’s book, I can’t say just how closely Ito sticks to the original, but my impression was that it was a “retelling” more in format than in content. I hadn’t known that “horror manga” was a genre, and I suppose Ito is a good choice to do a graphic novel adaptation of the novel, but I really don’t care for horror in any of its forms, and if Ito did follow the original closely, it doesn’t much make me want to tackle Shelley’s book.

I am interested in history in general, and particularly history related to the beginning of the Christian church, so I bought Retrieving History: Memory and Identity Formation in the Early Church by Stefana Dan Laing when I found it on clearance at christianbook.com. It was somewhat more academic than I might have cared for, but it made several interesting points regarding how history was viewed and written in ancient times. Laing offers a fair amount of evidence to refute the idea that ancient history writers did not have standards of accuracy, even if their standards were not the ones we have today, as well as providing numerous examples of how history was used to provide examples for people to follow in living a virtuous life. I was not especially interested in the details examples used to illustrate these principles, but on the whole it was a fairly interesting book.