2022 Reading

Real life begins tomorrow, when we drive Ben back to Taylor, and send my brother back to California the next day, and resume school. Time for contemplation has been in short supply this year, and I'm grateful for a few minutes to look back at the year through the books I read.

Dante was the theme for academic year 2021-22 and as a result I finished up with three related titles in early 2022.

Purgatorio and Paradiso by Dante Aligheri--Dante had a profound influence on my thinking about sin and salvation, and gave me insights into holiness and God's orientation toward me.  The Divine Comedy was meant to be read as a whole and it is a travesty that most readers don't make it past Inferno. I cannot recommend 100 Days of Dante enough for anyone wanting to read and learn more about this great work that inspired the works of so many others. (Big fan of Anthony Esolen's translations.)

My interest led me to Rod Dreher, who wrote How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History's Greatest Poem. I read this with high hopes and came away a little disillusioned with Dreher, who seemed self-focused for much of this book, without a lot of thought to the people in his world he writes about.

Dreher redeemed himself a lot with Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents which was the impetus for small actions to disassociate myself from the overarching cultural move towards spiritual annihilation of humanity. Focusing primarily on dissidents in 20th century communist regimes, Dreher shines a light on the similarities of those not-so-distant times and the current state of the West. The small act of refusing to participate in the lie can be costly, but so very powerful. 

Also, this year, read 1984 by George Orwell for the first time. It was as depressing and relevant as I expected it to be. 

Helpful after trying to understand why people participate in the march toward totalitarianism, was Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions, which my husband sums up best: "Two archetypal assumptions about humanity explain major differences in political and policy preferences.... A constrained vision says humans are imperfect, self-interested creatures and that we must govern knowing that people respond to incentives. An unconstrained vision says humanity can be perfected and made altruistic; government then becomes a tool to shape us."

My son introduced me to Leo Tolstoy's novella (your only chance to read anything short by Tolstoy), The Death of Ivan Ilyich, a deep dive into living, dying, suffering, and the meaning of life. Ben calls it his favorite book; it was impactful for me. 

I couldn't have known when I read Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep by Tish Harrison Warren that our family would experience the deep and wrenching grief of losing two family friends to suicide and a third to a fentanyl overdose in 2022. I have walked through dark seasons before, but watching your child experience its plunging depths was something new and painful. Warren's book is a short poignant reminder that we are not alone in the night. 

Everleigh is my most prolific reader as of yet, often torn between working with her hands, and reading. She solves that conundrum by having me read while she knits, paints, or sews in the evenings. I pivoted from my usual 7th grade academic plan to fuel her love for U.S. History (thank you Lin Manuel Miranda). Along with an outside class on the Revolutionary War, tickets to Hamilton, and jumping in on her sister's U.S. History class, we read Jeff Shaara's Road to Rebellion (and anxiously await its sequel The Glorious Cause to make its slow way through interlibrary loan to our local library). Shaara's historical fiction brings to life the names and dates of history. Contrasting in style to Shaara, we read Kenneth Roberts' Northwest Passage and Rabble in Arms. Shaara's vision is optimistic (even Ben Franklin is nearly perfect), while Roberts is intent on his readers understanding that history is made by common, rather than heroic, characters who are deceived, deluded, and often despicable. Politically correct by no one's standards, Roberts finds Congress a completely useless low-life body of ingrates, and makes the case for Benedict Arnold as used and misunderstood by his peers. Both books are riveting works of historical fiction full of colorful characters. 

I was excited to read Andrew Klavan's The Truth and Beauty: How the Lives and Works of England's Greatest Poets Point the Way to a Deeper Understanding of the Words of Jesus. The first two thirds of the book is devoted to the Romantic poets and stories about them. Then, in the last third of the book, Klavan gets to his interpretations of the stories of Jesus.  I think Klavan is sincere, but I wondered why his editors didn't land on a better title for this book that is his take on the Romantics followed by some spiritual memoir. The two didn't feel woven together in any coherency.

After listening to National Review writer Michael Brendan Dougherty on a podcast, I picked up his My Father Left Me Ireland: An American Son's Search for Home. It took me until the last chapter to really come full circle with Dougherty. There the book took on its fullest meaning, going beyond the story of the emptiness of a boy without his father and seeing the losses Dougherty can only understand when he becomes a father himself: the brokenhearted bitterness of a mother and a man deprived of living life with his son. A book for our times.

In December, my aunt sent me a little book The All of It by Jeannette Haien. As Irish as it gets, it is a remarkable testament to the human spirit to overcome brokenness and survive, even thrive. The telling of a life story in a semi-confessional setting, I was stunned by the beauty of a protagonist who chooses to do right in a setting of many wrongs.

A year of reading is not complete without Dorothy Sayers. I listened to her speech The Lost Tools of Learning, a speech given in 1947 at Oxford that started a revival in classical education and is a parent of the modern classical Christian model of education. I was grateful to be reminded that middle school age children ("Logic" stage) are difficult and argumentative anyway; best give them a framework for arguing and thinking well. 

Part of reading for a summer book group, I also read and listened to the BBC audio plays by Sayers, The Man Born to Be King: A Play Cycle on the Life of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Sayers waded into deep waters bringing her interpretation to the Gospels in dramatic form. Controversial when written and performed on BBC radio during World War II, C.S. Lewis read them every year during Lent. Thought-provoking, I came away defending St. Andrew from her interpretation, but with a renewed appreciation for each of the persons of the Gospel story, and a deeper love for our Lord and His early followers who took the Gospel to the ends of the Earth.