may reads

whoops! i'm obviously a bit behind on blogging, mostly because i've been busy doing some freelance transcription work! it's just entry-level and doesn't pay very much, but i'm enjoying it. the specifics are confidential, but so far i've transcribed the audio from court hearings, research studies, focus groups, business meetings, IEP meetings, and lots of interviews (with musicians, scientists, researchers, and physicians). the very best job was a sermon because the pastor spoke so clearly and slowly, and of course, the subject matter was familiar! ha.

but anyway, back to the books!

1) The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotton Books #1), by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. when i began searching for books set in Spain to read before our trip in April, this was near the top of every list i found. the story takes place in post-World War II Barcelona. it's a mystery, a romance, and a coming-of-age story that couldn't take place anywhere but Barcelona. the street names, the neighborhoods, the mountain of Montjuïc and the slopes of Park Güell all play such an integral role in the plot. having just walked all of those same streets myself, i could more accurately visualize Zafon's world, but his writing is so forceful that i think i'd have been swept up in it even without having visited Barcelona. the book reminds me a bit of Les Miserables -- peppered with details about the place and the culture, rich in character development, and propelled by a plot that meanders along for the first part of the book and then suddenly accelerates to the end. 5 stars! 

2) Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson. (#cathLIT2019: A Book by a Non-Catholic That All the Catholics Are Reading) the book is written as the memoir of a retired pastor addressing his thoughts to his grandson. Robinson's writing, just as in her book Housekeeping, is precise, evocative, and trim. it's the kind of book you want to read while sitting on a porch swing and sipping sweet tea. 

Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.

3) Need to Know, by Karen Cleveland. now this was a page-turner. the protagonist is a CIA analyst who discovers that her own husband is an undercover Russian operative who, to all appearances, has been targeting her just as she has been targeting him (without knowing it). that's not a spoiler because it's revealed in the first chapter. she spends the rest of the book deciding what to do about it -- whether she can trust him when he says he's no longer feeding information to the Russians, how to protect herself and her children without losing her job. just when you think it's all sorted out, you read the ending and the bottom drops out all over again.

4) Standard Deviation, by Katherine Heiny. a lighthearted read with some serious themes. Heiny paints her characters so well -- the protagonist's first and second wives (who have completely different personalities), and his son on the autism spectrum. on almost every page, there's a vivid description of someone's behavior, or a specific conversation, that rings so true to human nature. Heiny's characters could actually be real, and many of them remind me of some of my own friends.

Here they were grocery shopping in Fairway on a Saturday morning, a normal married thing to do together— although, Graham could not help noticing, they were not doing it together. His wife, Audra, spent almost the whole time talking to people she knew—it was like accompanying a visiting dignitary of some sort, or maybe a presidential hopeful—while he did the normal shopping. 

5) The Seven Storey Mountain, by Thomas Merton (#cathLIT2019: A Spiritual Memoir) i've been meaning to read this book for years, and in fact, i started reading it in March and didn't finish until May. it's just the kind of book that is actually fairly easy to put down. but it is so good. and funny! i didn't expect it to be so funny. it's the memoir of a Trappist monk who spent the first twenty years of his life running hard away from God or anything that smelled of religion. he converted to Catholicism in his early twenties, and then gradually found himself drawn to the priesthood. i found it a moving, interesting, and beautiful description of God's quiet but persistent pursuit of our souls. here's the moment he receives his First Holy Communion. it gives me goosebumps each time i read it.

And my First Communion began to come towards me, down the steps. I was the only one at the altar rail. Heaven was entirely mine -- that Heaven in which sharing makes no division or dimunition. But this solitariness was a kind of reminder of the singleness with which this Christ, hidden in the small Host, was giving Himself for me, and to me, and, with Himself, the entire Godhead and Trinity -- a great new increase of the power and grasp of theri indwelling that had begun only a few minutes before at the font.

I left the altar rail and went back to the pew where the others were kneeling like four shadows, four unrealities, and I hid my face in my hands.

In the Temple of God that I had just become, the One Eternal and Pure Sacrifice was offered up to the God dwelling in me: the sacrifice of God to God, and me sacrificed together with God, incorporated in His Incarnation. Christ born in me, a new Bethlehem, and sacrificed in me, His new Calvary, and risen in me: offering me to the Father, in Himself, asking the Father, my Father and His, to receive me into His infinite and special love -- not the love he has for all things that exist -- for mere existence is a token of God’s love, but the love of those creatures who are drawn to Him in and with the power of His own love for Himself. (p. 224)

and another quote, because it so perfectly encapsulates how i feel whenever i walk into a church in Rome:

 I was unconsciously and unintentionally visiting all the great shrines of Rome, and seeking out their sanctuaries with some of the eagerness and avidity and desire of a true pilgrim, though not quite for the right reason. And yet it was not for a wrong reason either. For these mosaics and frescoes and all the ancient altars and thrones and sanctuaries were designed and built for the instruction of people who were not capable of immediately understanding anything higher. … The saints of those forgotten days had left upon the walls of their churches words which by the peculiar grace of God I was able in some measure to apprehend, although I could not decode them all. But above all, the realest and most immediate source of this grace was Christ Himself, present in those churches, in all His power, and in His Humanity, in His Human Flesh and His material, physical, corporeal Presence. (p. 109)

6) Divine Inspiration (Homer Kelly #10), by Jane Langton. Mom gave this book to me after she'd finished it. it's a mystery in which most of the key characters are organists living in Boston, so those two points alone make it fun. i gave it 4 out of 5 stars on Goodreads, though, because it had soooo many different subplots and some of the twists seemed a little far-fetched. but still, a fun read!

7) Farmer Boy, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Greta and i read this aloud at bedtime and i was actually a bit surprised she stayed with the story, for all its pages and pages of descriptive prose. but she did! she continued to refer to it as "the Laura and Mary book" even though it's solely about Almanzo and the rest of the Wilder family, which was pretty cute. the scene that stood out the most to me as an adult is towards the end, and i don't have any recollection of reading it as a kid. it's the scene where Almanzo is helping his father haul timber from the woods. Almanzo is driving his own calves when they turn off the road and upset the wagon and all the timber into the snow drifts. Almanzo's father watches this happen, and he just drives his own oxen on towards home, without stopping to help Almanzo or even offer advice on how to dig the wagon out of the snow. Almanzo feels overwhelmed and wants to swear at the calves, but he controls himself and gently encourages them to climb out of the snow and get back on the road. then he and his friends load the wagon up with wood all over again. i couldn't help but think how this scenario would play out today. certainly not with a ten-year-old boy learning how to solve his own problems! even if Greta will never be in that specific situation, at least she (and i!) can read about it.

up next:

Oscar Romero: Love Must Win Out, by Kevin Clarke
The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie, by Wendy McClure
The Traitor's Wife: The Woman Behind Benedict Arnold, by Allison Pataki
On Dying: A Memoir, by Cory Taylor
A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman
Love Walked In, by Melissa de los Santos

and to read-aloud:
All-of-a-Kind Family, by Sydney Taylor
Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder