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| I bought meself these roses to cheer meself up. |
My reading during July and August centered on lamentation, with a smattering of redemption. I was privileged to read some excellent writing on some difficult topics. Here are the first lines of books I finished.
Book 1
How lonely sits the city
that once was full
of people!
How like a widow she has become,
she that was great
among the nations!
She that was a princess among the provinces
has become a
vassal.
Book 2
Miss Jane Neal met her maker in the early morning mist of
Thanksgiving Sunday. It was pretty much
a surprise all round.
Book 3
Born in 1984: Masha
On the seventieth anniversary of the Great October Socialist
Revolution, Masha’s grandmother, a rocket scientist, took Masha to the Church
of St. John the Warrior in Central Moscow to be baptized.
Book 4
The winter had become a test of endurance and patience,
especially for those living in northern Wisconsin.
Book 5
Higher Ground
I wasn’t prepared to meet a condemned man. In 1983, I was a twenty-three-year-old
student at Harvard Law School working in Georgia on an internship, eager and
inexperienced and worried that I was in over my head. I had never seen the inside of a
maximum-security prison – and had certainly never been to death row. When I learned that I would be visiting this
prisoner alone, with no lawyer accompanying me, I tried not to let my panic
show.
* * * * * *
Titles and authors revealed:
Book 1
Lamentations, by
Jeremiah. ©586–520 BCE.
It is customary among some Jews to read the book of
Lamentations during the period between some fast I never heard of and the fast
of the 9th of Av (which memorializes the destruction of The
Temple). Lamentations seems appropriate
for us today, too.
Book 2
Still Life, by
Louise Penny © 2005. Read for the second
time, for book club. I still wonder if
the painting that is so central to the story would be actually possible to paint.
Book 3
The Future Is History:
How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, by Masha Gessen. © 2017. Very
well-written. Amazon says this is a 527-page
book, but I read it in 5 days, although that was partly because it was a kindle
version borrowed from the library, and it threatened to disappear from my
reader if I did not truck on through it.
The subject matter is unsettling and alarming. Anyone who thinks they admire Putin and his
Russia needs to read this book. It includes the stories of several people
living through the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of
Putin’s regime.
It also includes a Cliff-notes version of Hannah Arendt’s
explanation of how totalitarian regimes employ terror: It substitutes for the boundaries and channels of communication between
men a band of iron which holds them so tightly together that it is as though their
plurality had disappeared into One Man of gigantic dimensions.” Robbed of his
individuality and therefore the ability to interact meaningfully with others,
she wrote, man became profoundly lonely, which made him the perfect creature
and subject of the totalitarian state.
I wonder if Arendt’s notions about loneliness relate to Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. I have that on my list to read.
Book 4
On The River
(Bassville Stories Book 2) by Melissa Westemeier © 2018.
I loved escaping to the riverbanks of the Wissapaw River in
Wisconsin, to read about the lives of the fine people of the town of
Bassville. The machinations of Maw made
me laugh out loud. The novel includes a
just treatment of people’s reactions to a difficult life situation.
Book 5
Just Mercy: A Story of
Justice and Redemption, by Bryan Stevenson.
© 2014. What can I say? Every American should read this book. (I read it for book club. It was helpful to
discuss the book.) The stories here are gripping and important, and Stevenson
tells them well. He leads us through our
justice system, which is no more “color-blind” now than it was in 1980 or 1940 or
1880. Can we find “liberty and justice
for all” in our nation? And yet, in
spite of our brutal history, Stevenson offers a note of redemption. Mercy is
an undeserved offering of grace and forgiveness, and Stevenson finds mercy in the middle of terrorism and strife and injustice. Read This Book.
