Books I’m Not Recommending for Christmas

Once again, I’m not recommending books for Christmas. This goes back a long, long time, when I learned that, if people know you’re a reader, they will shower you with books as gifts for birthdays and Christmas. Unfortunately, it was usually books the giver liked, without thinking too much about the recipient.  

That’s not to say I don’t really like books. Or that certain books have made me wildly enthusiastic. I discovered that this blog (and my page at Dancing Priest) is a good way to describe books I like. If I read a book and don’t like it, I don’t review it.

 

What follows is a list of the books I truly enjoyed this year.

 

Classics

 

I surprised myself when I tallied up the classic books I read this year. Some of them surprised me; they weren’t what I remembered them to be. But it’s hard to go wrong with The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson; Hospital Sketches by Louisa May Alcott; The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway; The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde; Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson; John Brown’s Body by Stephen Vincent Benet; Andy Catlett: Early Travels by Wendell Berry; and The Wonderful Visit by H.G. Wells.

 

Fiction

 

Just when you think contemporary literary fiction is going down the drain, you read books like Small Things Like Theseby Claire Keegan and Eugene Vodolazkin’s Solovyuv and Larionov and A History of the Island. And Robert Hudson’s The Beautiful Madness of Martin Bonham is simply stunning.

 

History

 

I’m still reading a lot (A LOT) about the Civil War. If We Are Striking for Pennsylvania, Volume 1 and Volume 2 focus on the runup to the Battle of Gettysburg. Man of Fire by Derek Maxfield succinctly explains the personality of William Tecumseh Sherman. And Of Age: Boy Soldiers and Military Power in the Civil War Era by Frances Clark and Rebecca Jo Plant tell a fascinating story: how 10 percent of both the Union and Confederate armies were comprised of boys under the age of 15.

 

For non-Civil War history, my favorite was England in the Age of Dickens 1812-1870 by Jeremy Black. 

 

Poetry

 

I read some really fine poetry this year. When you start a year with The Family Book of Martyrs by Benjamin Myers and finish it with Under the Pearl Moon by Rick Maxson, you know it was a good year. In between were Meet Me at the Lighthouse by Dana Gioia; Stairwell by James Sale; Skyscrape by John Sibley Williams; and Mining the Bright Birds by Jody Collins.

 

Mysteries

 

When people wonder why I read mysteries (a lot of mysteries), I tell them that T.S. Eliot was a famous mystery reader, too. My favorites this year tended to cluster around authors: the Hillary Green series by Faith Martin; the Arnold Landon series by Roy Lewis; the Inishowen mysteries by Andrea Carter; the York mysteries of H.L. Marsay; the Louise Blackwell mysteries by Matt Brolly; the Munro & West mysteries by Pete Brassett; and the Lord Edgington mysteries by Benedict Brown.

 

Literary Criticism

 

Two titles were special standouts for me this year: Mythic Realms by Bradley Birzer and Belligerent Muse: Five Northern Writers and How They Shaped Our Understanding of the Civil War by Stephen Cushman. 

 

News Media

 

Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks: The Life and Times of Lucile Morris Upton by Susan Croce Kelly describes a journalism I recognize, even if it was the first half of the 20^th century (back when reporters used to report news). 

 

Faith

 

Luke Davis had two books aimed at younger (teen) readers – Reform: The Church at the Birth of Protestantism and Renewal: The Church That Expands Outward. Ben Palpant’s Letters from the Mountain, Letters to Doctors by Earle Carpenter, and Monastery Mornings by Michael Patrick O’Brien. Of special note is The Goodness of the Lord in the Land of the Living by Leslie Busatrd.

 

Memoir

 

High marks to Brian Miller for his Kayaking with Lambs. It's about farming, and a lot more.

 

Top photograph by Valentin Antonini via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Monday Readings

 

A Great Historian’s Inner History – Jeff Reimer at The Bulwark on Journeys of the Mind by Peter Brown.

 

Remembering with Christmas Cards – Brian Miller at A South Roane Agrarian.

 

The Legacy of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative. 

Every Day Poems: Community Mandalas + New Poetry Club Invitation -- Tweetspeak Poetry.

Forgotten Classics: “The Moon is Down” by John Steinbeck

One of my most vivid memories of middle school was carrying a paperback copy of The Red Pony by John Steinbeck. It was required reading in eighth grade, along with Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and several others. Our reading teacher also assigned our class to read The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, but parents objected. We did what all good 13-year-old boys would do in such a situation: we read it on our own. 

Steinbeck’s novella was popular. The four connected stories were easy to read, and they were about a boy growing up on a ranch. The teacher encouraged us to read more of Steinbeck on our own, and a few of us did, tackling Tortilla Flat and The Grapes of Wrath (which was not as easy to read as The Red Pony).

 

Steinbeck (1902-1968) published a series of fictional works considered American classics, including Cannery Row, Of Mice and Men, and East of Eden. He’s best remembered for The Grapes of Wrath, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the National Book Award in 1940.

 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Books I'm Not Recommending for Christmas

Each December, I publish my list of books I’m not recommending for Christmas. I could also call the list “the best books I read this year,” but I try not to press too hard on people as to what my ideas of what they should read. People can usually figure that out for themselves. Perhaps the real point of this is to look back at the year, and review the books that impressed me, challenged me, cheered me, and perhaps even changed me a little. 

Looking at this list, and comparing it to previous lists, I can see that I’m increasingly moving away from what’s popular or celebrated in the culture. You won’t find many bestsellers or national prizewinners here. You also won’t find much that is transiently popular – books that skyrocket to fame because they happened to be available when something notable happened – but soon disappear into the pile you keep in the basement because they’re no longer news.

 

Here it is, the 2020 edition of the books I’m not recommending for Christmas. I haven’t selected any as “No. 1” in their category; instead, I’ve grouped the handful of the best titles in each category in no particular order. Each are linked to my review either here at Faith, Fiction, Friends, at Dancing Priest, or at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Literary Criticism and Biography

 

You can find some really fine analyses and biographies of writers and poets. These are some of the best I read this year. I really, really liked Cross of Snow.

 

The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century by John Burnside.

 

The Making of Poetry: Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Their Year of Marvels by Adam Nicolson.

 

Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by Nicholas Basbanes.

 

The Poet and the Fly: Art, Nature, God, Mortality, and Other Elusive Mysteries by Robert Hudson.

 

The Soul is a Stranger in This World: Essays on Poets and Poetry by Micah Mattix.

 

Tolkien’s Lost Chaucer by John Bowers. 

 

Poetry

 

I’ve loved poetry since elementary school, when we were required to memorize and recite poems (usually something like “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” by Longfellow. I found T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets” in high school. It made such a profound impact that I can even remember the bookshop where I bought it. And then poetry stuck throughout my career as (among other things) a speechwriter. 

 

Saudade: Poems by Nigel Kent.

 

Left Waiting: Poems by River Dixon.

 

HellWard: The English Elegies Vol. 1 by James Sale.

 

The Best Poems of Jane Kenyon, edited by Donald Hall.

 

Federico Garcia Lorca Blues: Poems by Justin Hamm.

 

Things My Mother Left Behind: Poems by Susan Richardson.

 

Railsplitter: Poems by Maurice Manning.

 

Andalusian Hours: Poemsfrom the Porch of Flannery O’Connor by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell.

 

When Your Phone Dies: A Hurricane in My Head by Matt Abbott.

 

Non-fiction and Memoir

 

On the Shoulders of Hobbits: The Road to Virtue with Tolkien and Lewis by Louis Markos.

 

Wilber Wilberforce: A Hero for Humanity by Kevin Belmonte.

 

Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story by Wilfred McClay.

 

Between Two Millstones, Vol. 1 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

 

Borges and Me by Jay Parini.

 

The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry, edited by Norman Wirzba.

 

What We’re Teaching Our Sons by Owen Booth.

 

Tough Issues, True Hope by Luke Davis.

 

General Fiction

 

I likely read more general fiction than anything else, most likely because I write it. Writing it gives you an appreciation for what fiction writers can do, where they fall short, and where they soar.

 

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger.

 

The Old American Artist by Felipe Adan Lerma.

 

Stay by Catherine Ryan Hyde.

 

A Man by Keiichiro Hirano.

 

Waiting for Neruda’s Memoirs by Laura Boggess. 

 

Beautiful Sky Beautiful Sky by Stephen Parolini.

 

Mystery

 

I love mysteries; I loved reading them since I was a kid. This year, I read (or reread) all of the Philo Vance mysteries by S.S. Van Dine, which were wildly popular in the 1920s and gradually declined in popularity in the 1930s. The great Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins said Van Dine was the only author he never had to edit (unlike F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe). Rather than list individual titles, I’ve listed authors of whom I’ve several works this year. Everything they write is good. The links will take you to the most recent review which will include a list of all of their works I’ve read and written about.

 

Roy Lewis – The Eric Ward Mysteries.

 

William Brodrick – The Father Anselm Mysteries.

 

Simon Michael – the Charles Holborn Legal Thrillers.

 

Jonathan Dunsky – the Adam Lapid Mysteries.

 

Fire in the Barley by Roger Longrigg.

 

Romance

 

Most romance novels are generally written according to a formula: Woman (or man) returns to hometown and rekindles romance with first love. Here are four that break away from that formula.

 

That Hollister Man by Margaret Desmond.

 

Peace in the Valley by Ruth Logan Herne.

 

His Father’s Son by Autumn Macarthur.

 

Hoping for Hawthorne by Tara Grace Miller.

 

Classics

 

Classic books don’t have to be by big-name authors. What defines a classic is that its influence (and popularity) lasts, or that it broke ground when it was published and still hasn’t been equaled. Here are a few I read this year.

 

The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

 

Shakespeare of London by Marchette Chute.

 

The Crime Novels of Ruben Fonseca.

 

The Tell-Tale Heart: The Life and Works of Edgar Allen Poe by Julian Symon.

 

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

 

Top photo by Jarred Craig via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Forgotten Classics: “Shakespeare of London” by Marchette Chute

You’re reading an article on literary criticism, and you spot an almost easy-to-overlook aside: “For example, no one has really explained William Shakespeare like Marchette Chute did in 1947.” The reference is to a book she wrote, Shakespeare of London, and it was published in 1950, not 1947. But it was high praise indeed.

You ask yourself, “How is that possible? How is a biography of Shakespeare published 70 years ago better than anything more recent? We have so much more research, so many more historical and literary studies, so much more information. And we have the internet. How could someone make a statement like that?”

They were able to make the statement because it’s true. Shakespeare of London has been long out-of-print, but it is still a classic, and you can still find used copies via sources like Amazon and Alibris.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.