Summer Reading (JC)

I came to reading relatively late in life. It wasn’t until I was in my last years of high school that I began to immerse myself in books. I remember well the first book that really hooked me: Howard Fast’s April Morning, followed by Citizen Tom Paine.It’s not that we didn’t have books in my family; my mother was - and still is - a ferocious reader. I know that my parents must have read to me as a child - I’ve passed on to my children books that have my best elementary pencil printed name on the first page. But I found it hard to sit and absorb.

It probably didn’t help that we lived across the street from a playground where I spent after school hours, weekends and long summer days. I much preferred the organized activities of the park to reading. And of course what happened was I never learned - through practice - to be a good reader not to say anything about becoming a lover of books.

As I said, my interest grew in high school, but reading never clicked for me until the second semester of my first year of college. Then something happened and reading became a passion, which is where it has remained. I love to read and I am in the right profession to let my passion lead. It’s a blessing to make the time to be shaped by the discipline of reading, a discipline that provides depth and breath, reason and spirit, laughter, tears, anger and reflection.

I’m often asked what I am reading or plan to read. Summertime has always been an important time in my year because it’s when I hope to have a sustained period of time to read, think and plan. Books that I acquire during the church year often get shelved until the summer months. So, here is where I am this early August, here’s what I’ve read since returning from the General Assembly in Phoenix and what I plan to finish before we get back to two services. I can’t guarantee you’ll hear about each one of these books by name, but be assured that each has shaped some aspect of my thinking and planning.

If Life is a Game, These are the Rules - Cherie Carter-Scott

Three books by Marilynne Robinson: Gilead, Home, When I was a Child I Read Books

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal - Christopher Moore

Wild - Cheryl Strayed

The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes

The Obama Question: A Progressive Perspective - Gary Dorrien

Collected Poems - Robert Hardy

Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life - Karen Armstrong

A Year to Live - Stephen Levine

Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics - Ross Douthat

Black Nature: Four Centuries of African-American Nature Poetry

The End of Illness - David B. Agus

Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age - Susan Jacoby

I hope you are having a restful, relaxing and reading-filled summer. See you soon,

Fred