This has been quite a year. I started a graduate program, I got married, I moved, I started a new job, and I now live in the same town as my grandparents, parents, two sisters (and brother-in-law), and 2-year-old niece. I have had very little free time to do anything, but I have still managed to squeeze some books in (thanks in large part to audiobooks). Below are the ones I liked best, listed in the order I read them. There are some honorable mentions at the end, simply because I read so many books that are worth sharing that others might find interesting but that just didn’t make the cut for ‘the best’ (in my very biased opinion). So here they all are, for your reading enjoyment.
For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio by W. H. Auden
This is a long poem about the birth of Christ, told with many voices and perspectives. It is so profound and relevant to our age, challenging our mindset (materialism, science, distraction, etc.) and always bringing it back to what matters: Christ. I love poetry for what it can say without explaining or qualifying it, and this poem says so much. It has lines I could meditate on for days— I will need to re-read them to let them sink in. Beautiful.
“If we were never alone or always too busy,
Perhaps we might even believe what we know is not true:
But no one is taken in, at least not all of the time;
In our bath, or on the subway, or the middle of the night,
We know very well we are not unlucky but evil,
That the dream of a Perfect State or No State at all,
To which we fly for refuge, is a part of our punishment.
Let us therefore be contrite but without anxiety,
For Powers and Times are not gods but mortal gifts from God;
Let us acknowledge our defeats but without despair,
For all societies and epochs are transient details,
Transmitting an everlasting opportunity
That the Kingdom of Heaven may come, not in our present
And not in our future, but in the Fullness of Time.
Let us pray.”
My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth that Led to an American Tragedy by Nora Titone
This was a powerful, well-researched, well-written book on history, a genre I don’t typically gravitate towards. But the Booth family is fascinating—from the elder Junius Brutus, the brilliant polymathic actor who succumbed to debilitating alcoholism, to his ten illegitimate children of Mary Ann Holmes, the young flower-seller he took with him from England to America to escape the knowledge of his wife and child he left behind. Edwin, the only of Junius’s children who inherited his intelligence and unrivaled acting ability, grew the Booth name above the shame of its origins (and that of the acting vocation at the time) to meteoric wealth and fame while his brothers struggled to get by in acting, despite their lack of talent or ability. The resentment caused by the difference in personal life histories and subsequent incomes led to differing political stances and, eventually, the assassination of President Lincoln. I learned so much about the Civil War from this book and saw so many parallels to our own time– the extents to which people will go in the name of a ‘righteous’ ideology; the Draft Riots in New York City that became less about the draft and more about looting local businesses; the slant of journalism and the power of mob mentality– that it is shocking. This was an amazing book; I can’t believe I didn’t know so much of what was in it before now.
“The elder Booth had invested his villainous characters, one reviewer claimed, with appealing qualities like ‘heroic courage, sublime defiance and strong affection.’ It was the Booth genius to present Shakespeare’s evil protagonists as ‘fallen angels,’ men who were admirable and gifted in some ways, yet fatally misguided and flawed.”
“In his conclusion, John’s anger at the political situation seems to merge with his feelings of being disregarded by his family. The dishonorable conduct of Northern men, John cried, ‘makes me hate my brothers in the north. It severs all our bonds of friendship. It induces our brothers in the north to deny us our rights, to plunder us, to rob us! . . . It misrepresents me to the whole world.’”
“The truth, an anonymous reviewer explained in the Boston Daily Advertiser on May 19, 1862, was that John Wilkes Booth was no actor. Aside from good looks and an athletic ability, he had little to recommend him to audiences. It was evident this Booth had never been trained to breathe, to project his voice, or to speak in a way that conveyed emotion. Shakespeare was a foreign language to him.”
The Queen of Air and Darkness and The Ill-Made Knight by T. H. White
These two are the middle of the four books that comprise The Once and Future King, White’s chronicle of King Arthur and his knights. They are my favorite because they are the most psychological. The Queen of Air and Darkness introduces Queen Morgause– Arthur’s half-sister who is also half-witch– and her four boys, particularly their relationship to their narcissistic mother. They are so lost and so long for her love, and, as a result, they can be so cruel as an outlet for their confusion. In perhaps the most terrible and heartbreaking scene, the boys kill a unicorn to impress Morgause, but she does not notice when they try to show her and then has them whipped.
The Ill-Made Knight follows Sir Lancelot and his adventures, sadnesses, love triangle with Guenever and Arthur, and final miracle. Lancelot, who is described as ugly, is so lovable and good, yet he believes himself to be so bad and carries so much shame. This book is also the story of the ups and downs of King Arthur’s Round Table of knights. It was well-written and emotionally complex. I was honestly surprised by how involved in this entire series of books I got.
“Indeed, they did love her. Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically—to those who hardly think about us in return.”
“In the secret parts of his peculiar brain, those unhappy and inextricable tangles which he felt at the roots, the boy was disabled by something which we cannot explain. He could not have explained either, and for us it is all too long ago. He loved Arthur and he loved Guenever and he hated himself. The best knight of the world: everybody envied the self-esteem which must surely be his. But Lancelot never believed he was good or nice. Under the grotesque, magnificent shell with a face like Quasimodo’s, there was shame and self-loathing which had been planted there when he was tiny, by something which it is now too late to trace. It is so fatally easy to make young children believe they are horrible.”
A Swim in the Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
Bringing his graduate class to book form, Saunders goes through seven 19th-century Russian stories by Chekhov, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Gogol to discuss the art of the short story: what it does, how to do it, variations of it, and the uniqueness/shortcomings of each of the writers (and how those only enhance their stories and their meanings). I loved that the stories were included in full so that I could read them all, and I loved Saunders’s openness and enthusiasm for writing, for fiction, for these stories in particular, and for short stories in general. This was such a fun book to read (even though I don’t aspire to write short stories!).
“To write a story that works, that moves the reader, is difficult, and most of us can’t do it. Even among those who have done it, it mostly can’t be done. And it can’t be done from a position of total control, of flawless mastery, of simply having an intention and then knowingly executing it. There’s intuition involved, and stretching—trying things that are at the limit of our abilities, that may cause mistakes. Like Yashka, the writer has to risk a cracking voice and surrender to his actual power, his doubts notwithstanding.
[…]
It’s hard to get any beauty at all into a story. If and when we do, it might not be the type of beauty we’ve always dreamed of making. But we have to take whatever beauty we can get, however we can get it.
I teach ‘The Singers’ to suggest to my students how little choice we have about what kind of writer we’ll turn out to be. . . . (‘The writer can choose what he writes about,’ said Flannery O’Connor, ‘but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.’)”
Dusk, Night, Dawn by Anne Lamott
What would a best-of list be without Anne Lamott? This is another of her books that touches on themes of grace, repentance, forgiveness, and faith (and, of course, love). It includes stories of her marriage (she got married in 2019 in her mid-60s), of her friends and Sunday school class (as usual), and of her parents. While she repeats lines and themes, and I feel like I know so much about her life, her books are always somehow refreshing, as if I didn’t know I could use a reminder to be less judgmental and more open.
“What is nature sharing with us? If something is allowed to grow the way it was designed to, it works. When we try to get it to conform to the supposedly more efficient image we have of it, we get grotesqueries, imbalances. When we try to get difficulties to conform to our way of thinking, we often push them toward being fancier, and thus absurd. We strip away the grace of what is real, and true, and maybe even lovely.”
Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris
Norris is a copyeditor at The New Yorker and wrote this book as part grammar manual/part memoir. I loved it. I am fascinated by both grammar/words and people’s personal stories, so this book was right up my alley. I loved learning more than I knew, re-learning what I already know, and getting different perspectives on things I think about (like the role of profanity in publications). I am glad I stumbled upon this one.
“But good writers have a reason for doing things the way they do them, and if you tinker with their work, taking it upon yourself to neutralize a slightly eccentric usage or zap a comma or sharpen the emphasis of something that the writer was deliberately keeping obscure, you are not helping. In my experience, the really great writers enjoy the editorial process. They weigh queries, and they accept or reject them for good reasons. They are not defensive. The whole point of having things read before publication is to test their effect on a general reader. You want to make sure when you go out there that the tag on the back of your collar isn’t poking up—unless, of course, you are deliberately wearing your clothes inside out.”
A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris
Ok, what would a best-of list be without David Sedaris? This is his collection of diary entries from 2002-2020, picking up where Theft by Finding left off, and it was so fun and easy to read. It made me wish I had kept a diary of bizarre things people say and do over the years because people are so weird. And Sedaris finds them. I also love how honest his thoughts are when people annoy or frustrate him– it makes me feel less bad for having those thoughts, too. I just want to read his books forever.
“After an hour at the leisure center, I went to the butcher shop and confused the guy behind the counter. ‘No one understands me when I talk,’ I said to Hugh when I returned home. ‘It’s really no different here than it was in France.’
‘That’s because you speak in non sequiturs,’ he said. And of course he’s right. Yesterday afternoon, when the butcher asked how my day had been so far, I held up my hands, which were scratched and bleeding from reaching into blackberry bushes for stray bits of trash, and said, ‘Don’t I look like I own a cheetah?’
I later said the same thing to my cashier at the grocery store but changed it to tiger. Not that it altered the reaction any. I just can’t for the life of me figure out what to say to people. I never have been able to, no matter what the language.”
The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher
I realize that not everyone will like or appreciate this book, but I found so much to think about and digest in this. I was really drawn to Dreher’s ideas about practicing asceticism, of reclaiming the Western civilization through literature and reading the early church fathers and great thinkers, of pulling our children out of public schools, of practicing liturgy and orthodoxy, of preparing for the downfall of the West and even of Christianity– I agreed with so much of it and was challenged by so much of it. It has me wondering (even more than I already do) about the best way to live, especially as a Christian in a world that is becoming increasingly hostile to true Christianity.
“In the Benedict Option, we are not trying to repeal seven hundred years of history, as if that were possible. Nor are we trying to save the West. We are only trying to build a Christian way of life that stands as an island of sanctity and stability amid the high tide of liquid modernity. We are not looking to create heaven on earth; we are simply looking for a way to be strong in faith through a time of great testing. The Rule, with its vision of an ordered life centered around Christ and the practices it prescribes to deepen our conversion, can help us achieve that goal.”
“In other words, ordering one’s actions is really about training one’s heart to love and to desire the right things, the things that are real, without having to think about it. It is acquiring virtue as a habit.”
“Rather, they must keep their balance and stay focused on, in Havel’s words, ‘the everyday, thankless, and never-ending struggle of human beings to live more freely, truthfully, and in quiet dignity.’”
Honorable Mentions:
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson
Human Diversity by Charles Murray
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again by Andy Warhol by Andy Warhol
words not made with lungs 