January reading report

I had hoped to bring you the next Soulful Home prompt today, but there’s one thing I still want to do before I show you my new and improved entryway.  So start thinking about how you can make your own foyer more welcoming and we’ll talk on Monday.  Instead, I bring to you the books I (mostly) enjoyed in January…

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Through the Narrow Gate, Revised: A Memoir of Spiritual Discovery by Karen Armstrong

I can’t remember who mentioned this book on her blog, but it sounded wonderful and I’m so glad I read this one.  It’s a memoir but it really could be a bestselling fiction novel, it’s written so well and is so fascinating.  I loved learning Karen’s reasons for entering the convent and about what happened for her there.  The adjustments she tried to make are simply astounding to me.  She writes with respect for the religious world, even though she faced vast internal conflicts with living a life of such denial and discipline.  Though she decided to leave the convent after 7 years, she admits that she’ll probably always be a nun in her heart.  I am currently reading her sequel to this book, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness.

My Education by Susan Choi

I really don’t know how I made it through this one.  It’s about an obsessed first-year grad student, in love with a professor’s wife.  The main character’s immaturity drove me nuts.  It’s a coming-of-age story with lots of strange outcomes.  The book is written well, but I could not identify with any of the characters.

A Guide for the Perplexed: A Novel by Dara Horn

I will probably read anything Dara Horn writes because of they way she incorporates Jewish texts and history with modern ethics.  This latest novel overlaps centuries of history and brings ancient stories to life.  By layering her modern-day story about a software executive (and her revolutionary program that records and organizes a person’s entire life) and her family with stories of Solomon Schechter and of Maimonides, Horn shows us how physical events are tied to our memories and our perceptions.  It’s a page-turner for sure once the heroine gets kidnapped during a trip to Egypt.  A large portion of the book is about her husband, her sister and her young daughter at home and how they react to her capture.  I highly recommend this one! (And how cool is this? I sent this review to Amazon and they posted it!)

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry: A Novel by Rachel Joyce

I think this one was recommended by Oprah in her magazine, and it did not disappoint.  It’s a sweet and poignant story of a retired man in England who receives a letter letting him know a former friend is in hospice.  He starts out to walk to the mailbox with a brief note to her, then keeps on walking, all 500 miles to deliver it in person, as if he could cure her by the walk alone.

“Harold thought of all the things in life he’d let go.  The small smiles.  The offers of a beer.  The people he had passed over and over again, in the brewery car park, or on the street, without lifting his head.  The neighbors whose forwarding addresses he had never kept.  Worse: the son who didn’t speak to him and the wife he had betrayed..  He remembered his father in the nursing home, and his mother’s suitcase by the door.  And now here was a woman who twenty years ago had proved herself a friend. Was this how it went? That just at the moment when he wanted to do something, it was too late That all the pieces of a life must eventually be surrendered, as if in truth they amounted to nothing? The knowledge of his helplessness pressed down on him so heavily he felt weak.  It wasn’t enough to send a letter.  There must be a way to make a difference.”

Along the way, we meet new characters, learn about Harold’s past and family, and follow along as he remembers his life.  I got the sense that wasn’t paying attention to it until now.  “He no longer saw distance in terms of miles.  He measured it with his remembering.”

“He had learned that it was the smallness of people that filled him with wonder and tenderness, and the loneliness of that too.  The world was made up of people putting one foot in front of the other; and a life might appear ordinary simply because the person living it had been doing so for a long time.  Harold could no longer pass a stranger without acknowledging the truth that everyone was the same, and also unique; and that this was the dilemma of being human.  He walked so surely it was as if all his life he had been waiting to get up from his chair.”

I am blown away that this is Joyce’s first novel.  It was absolutely amazing.  It’s full of lessons about forgiveness, compassion, and faith.  Highly recommend!

Moon Time: A guide to celebrating your menstrual cycle by Lucy H. Pearce.

Since participating in a blog hop for Lucy’s latest book, The Rainbow Way, I’ve connected with her in a Facebook group and on her website, The Happy Womb.  This book “connects the biological and spiritual aspects of the menstrual cycle.” Just the descriptions of how our monthly cycle influences our moods, sensitivity, and creativity was fascinating to me.  Lucy writes with humor and meaning of the sacred power within our body’s cycles.

Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

About a high school girl who is wonderfully different and how she touches the heart of a young boy who loves her.  Stargirl makes her own clothes, plays the ukulele, and takes an interest in the important dates and events in everyone’s life.  I remember how high school can be its own insular world, and Spinelli writes so well about what it feels like to be somewhere where sameness is key.  I never felt that I belonged, though I didn’t have the courage to confidently sing my own song either.  I wish I had.

Conversations With God : An Uncommon Dialogue (Book 2) by Neale Donald Walsch

This “exchange” is about our world’s 160 planets and the social and political problems we face and filled with potential solutions.  God is portrayed as unconditionally loving, just as a mother loves her own child no matter what he does, and similarly always guiding and protecting.   The “dialogue” between God and Walsch is fascinating and I found it compelling and greatly reassuring.  Since we are each a part of God, we are interconnected, and almost all our problems stem from seeing ourselves as separate from one another.  

I’ve always been deeply interested in bettering our planet through social change, but my goodness, the ideas presented here are amazing! A clear path toward a global shift for the benefit of meeting every single person’s basic socioeconomic needs, ending all violence, an end to poverty and mass exploitation of people and resources by the powerful, an end to environmental destruction, an equal opportunity to all people to rise to the highest expression of the self.  I plan to read Book 1 (about individual development) and Book 3 (about universal truth, who we are, and the evolution of the species), as well as other of Walsch’s books.  As I go about my everyday life, I come back to tenets from this book and I must say, I feel better! I feel there’s a path, a direction, a way to connect with my fellow people with compassion and hope.

Here are two of my favorite excerpts (I have more than several):

“[The world’s] economic, political, social, and religious systems are primitive.  I observe that you have the collective arrogance to think they are the best.  I see the largest number of you resisting any change or improvement which takes anything away from you – never mind who it might help.  What is needed on your planet is a massive shift in consciousness.  A change in your awareness.  A renewed respect for all of life, and a deepened understanding of the inter-relatedness of everything.”

and

“Is your soul as lonely as your mind? Is it even more neglected? And when was the last time you felt your soul being expressed? When was the last time you cried with joy? Wrote poetry? Made music? Danced in the rain? Baked a pie? Painted anything? Fixed something that was broken? Kissed a baby? Held a cat to your face? Hiked up a hill? Swam naked? Walked at sunrise? Played the harmonica? Talked ’til dawn? Made love for hours… on a beach, in the woods? Communed with nature? Searched for God?

“When was the last time you sat alone with the silence, traveling to the deepest part of your being? When was the last time you said hell0 to your soul?

“When you live as a single-faceted creature, you become deeply mired in matters of the body: Money.  Sex.  Power.  Possessions.  Physical stimulations and satisfactions.  Security. Fame. Financial gain.

“When you live as a dual-faceted creature, you broaden your concerns to include matters of the mind: Companionship; creativity; stimulation of new thoughts, new ideas; creation of new goals, new challenges; personal growth.

“When you life as a three-part being, you come at last into balance with yourself.  Your concerns include matters of the soul: spiritual identity; life purpose; relationship to God; path of evolution; spiritual growth; ultimate destiny.”

I hope to read Books 1 and 3 soon, and I’ve also signed up for a webcast from Walsch.

I am also reading an entry a day in The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have by Mark Nepo.  My favorite passage from January was this one:

“When we believe in what no one else can see, we find we are each other.  And all moments of living, no matter how difficult, come back into some central point where self and world are one, where light pours in and out at once.” 

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What have you been reading lately? And are you on Goodreads? I’d love to connect there.

Everything I’ve Ever Read (I think)

Currently Reading

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