Books I’ve been reading – September 2018

Since I’ve not shared an update since January this year, this list captures some of my reading over the last eight months.

A Writing Life: Helen Garner and Her Work by Bernadette Brennan – for anyone who loves Helen Garner’s writing, this book is a valuable companion. Brennan is clear that this is a “literary portrait” rather than a biography. Even with that distinction, it’s a terrific and insightful book that explores Garner’s work and her complexity as a writer. I read it in one sitting.

Island Home by Tim Winton – I read this by the sea in Adelaide and it felt like a homecoming. The connection to land, and to a way of understanding self, culture, identity and expression is so strong. 

This book is the whole package, coming from one of the most gifted writers of our generation. It’s a geographic and a metaphysical journey in search and celebration of home and what it means to be Australian today. 

It’s also (rightly and) inherently political in its advocacy for environment and justice.

The Storm by Arif Anwar – is a stunning debut that reminds me of Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace in its storytelling ability.  Its epic story traverses four countries: Burma, 1942; India, 1946; Bangladesh, 1970; the United States, 2004 and involves a diverse cast of characters. This includes Claire, a British doctor stationed in Burma is in the middle of World War II, Rahim, a wealthy Indian Muslim who, together with his wife Zahira, flees to Bangladesh after partition, at the height of the religious riots. There is Jamir, a fisherman barely subsisting in Bangladesh, together with his wife, Honufa, their young son and who are facing a major cyclone. And then there is Shahryar, the main character who is from Bangladesh and living in America, who is facing expulsion with his visa about to expire, and the prospect of leaving behind his young daughter, Anna. It’s a compelling and magical read. A modern-day hero’s journey.

When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice by Terry Tempest Williams – a re-read because I gain from  this book each time I read it.  A month after her mother dies, Williams discovers her mother’s journals in her family home and, settling down to read them, finds them all to be blank. This book is Williams’ journey in coming to understand and accept this and, in so doing, it becomes her exploration of voice and expression by others famous and not-so-famous. This includes the famous silent piano piece “4’33” by John Cage and the voice of her late friend and mentor Wangari Maathai, leader of the Green Belt Movement. Williams also evokes her own acts of remembering such as this: ‘And each night the smell of orange blossoms and sea salt ignited sunsets into flames slowly doused by the sea. Not a year of my life has missed a baptism by ocean. Not one.’

River Notes: The Dance of Herons by Barry Lopez is a poetic and mystical book about the life of a river and part of a trilogy that begins with Desert Notes. I first read this book more than two decades ago and its message and beauty have stayed with me all these years. If you’ve never read Barry Lopez, this book is a great introduction to his fine writing on nature and humanity.

What Are We Doing Here by Marilynne Robinson is an intellectual journey as much as anything.  The Guardian got it right in calling the pieces in this book, ‘uncompromising essays.’  And a ‘call to seriousness’. They were originally composed as visiting lectures during the Barack era, before the Age of Trump, delivered before Donald Trump’s election. One of the essays that most captivated me is one on Hope which Robinson defines as loyalty. She invokes this quality as one that informs our human-ness and humanity by being “creative, knowing, efficacious, deeply capable of loyalty”. It requires serious attention to read these pieces and the rewards are persuasive arguments on important issues while also illuminating an author who writes such magical and strange fiction.

The Hour of the Land: A personal topography of America’s National Parks by Terry Tempest Williams:  I’ll read anything new by Terry Tempest Williams. In this book, she traverses 12 American national parks – from Grand Tetons in Wyoming to Acadia in Maine to Big Bend in Texas – in a literary and physical exploration of place that I found both centering and lyrical.

Life in the Garden by Penelope Lively – a gorgeous book for lovers of gardening and Lively’s writing. She lives up to her name – settle in with a cup of tea and shortbread for this book which is informed by the two central activities Lively says have informed her life, alongside writing – reading and gardening.  And so Lively’s sharing of horticulture and gardening is spliced with vibrant snippets  from a range of nonfiction and fiction writers and poets writing about gardens and gardening. This includes evocative gardens from the Egyptian oases of Moon Tiger to those of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West and theAmerican prairie of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Willa Cather.  As someone who spent many childhood days reading in the garden, and who returns to visit my favorite tree (the Bottle Tree) in the Adelaide Botanic Garden each year, this book is both remembrance and a delight.

The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magunsson – for anyone committed to creating physical and mental space — living on a boat, it’s a necessity – this is spare, clean writing reflective of the topic. Not a death wish, or even a death task, more a constant practice for living well.

Reporter by Seymour Hersh – A riveting read by a journalist who has covered a lot of ground, broke a lot of stories and writes extremely well.  It’s as much a deep dive into the practice of investigative reporting as it is the stories themselves. The New York Times has referred to Hersh as ‘perhaps the most notable lone wolf of his generation.’ That seems right from reading this book. Equally evident from this reading is that Hersh has a huge ego and temper and maybe they were needed to achieve what he has managed to do in a lifetime of reporting. This includes some of the most important stories of the last 50 years — from the My Lai massacre in 1968 to the inhumane treatment of detainees in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2003.

Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions by Luiselli Valeria – this is such an important read at this time by a writer who is Mexican, gifted and compelling in her telling of a tale of migration and dislocation.  It’s a slim book that packs a mighty punch.  The book is based on Valeria’s experiences working as an interpreter for many child migrants who risked their lives crossing Mexico to the US and now must be vetted by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, a vast, impersonal bureaucracy. These children must answer 40 official questions that will determine their fate. This heartbreaking experience is told with Valeria’s own story of her journey to secure a green card and to stay in the US. For this reason, it’s a personal journey of hope as much as it is a polemic against the sustained injustices experienced by so many children. I wish everyone could read this book.

Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton – I typed in swimming in my library index to find books about swimming and this popped up! It’s a book drawn and written by Shapton where she shares her swim journey to the Canadian Olympic trials while recalling the pleasures of swimming.  Her writing is poetic and an invocation to all of us who love to swim to find ways to do so regularly. For instance, here’s Shapton’s description of being underwater: the “loud then quiet, loud then quiet” of one’s head rising above the waterline, how “a chorus of warbled pops and splashings bursts against the sides of your cap.”

Swim: Why We Love the Water by Lynn Sherr – another book on swimming!  This one is an enchanting exploration that navigates history, myth, adventure and personal experience with swimming coupled with gorgeous maps and images. Sherr also includes vibrant accounts of open-water swimming and phrases like these: “Swimming is the chance to float free, as close to flying as I’ll ever get . . . a time of quiet contemplation…The silence is stunning.”

No Time to Spare:  Thinking About What Matters by Ursula Le Guinn – here is an immensely gifted writer whose short stories are arresting.  One of my favorites is a chapter on the art of eating soft boiled eggs. As someone who grew up loving the ritual of eating soft boiled eggs, and the equally compelling ritual of making a proper pot of tea, I so related to Le Guinn’s description. The whole collection is a joy.

Rabble-Rouser for Peace: The Authorized Biography of Desmond Tutu – For any fan of Desmond Tutu, this is a great book to understand his personal journey and the many sacrifices and challenges Tutu faced along the way, together with his wife and family, to become the great peace maker and peace broker he’s renowned for today.  My favorite book featuring Tutu remains the Book of Joy – conversations between Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama.

An Elephant in My Kitchen: What the Herd Taught Me About Love, Courage and Survival by Francoise Malby-Anthony and Katja Willemsen – for anyone who read the earlier The Elephant Whisperer, by Francoise’s late husband, conservationist, Lawrence Anthony, who passed away in 2012, this book is the sequel. For any lover of elephants, and for anyone committed to protecting elephants from the ivory trade, this book is a love story to the elephants whom we’re introduced to in this book as much as a reality check on what’s happening and what’s required to keep them alive. Francoise Malby Anthony is managing director of Thula Thula, the Empangeni game reserve and safari lodge in South Africa and which recently launched a conservation drive involving volunteers from across the globe.

From Elfland to Poughkeepsie by Ursula Le Guin – suitably elflike size for this jewel of a book that tells would-be writers how to stay real in the writing and validates the right of readers to demand authenticity in storytelling.

Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself by Mark Epstein:  I was drawn to the subtitle of this book. It reminded me of a cartoon pinned up on my wall of a woman in a crowd with a thought bubble coming out of her ‘What if it’s not all about me?’  This book is like Buddhist mindfulness meeting M Scott Peck’s book, Road Less Travelled. I found Epstein’s book immensely helpful, for its application of the essential Buddhist precepts for ‘right living’ with the stories of people in therapy and how they navigated the issues they faced. 

Joyce Rupp: Essential Writings by Michael Leach (editor) I came to Joyce Rupp’s writings late, and in the form of the pilgrimage Rupp undertook with her beloved friend and priest, Tom Pfeffer, in her beautiful book, Walk in a Relaxed Manner: Life Lessons on the Camino. It’s a walk I plan to do in the next few years and I hope I can do it with Rupp’s grace and grit. In the meantime, this  book gathers some of Rupp’s best prose and poetry in a journey of body, mind and spirit.