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The new year invites reflection on the old year. One way I do that is through the books I read. I keep a list of books I read during the year, and take a moment at the end of each year to recommend some of my favorites.
Some of my favorite books this year have been books that treat hard times with humor or even farce. Zone One, a post-apocalyptic zombie novel by Colson Whitehead, was one favorite. It turns out that even in extremity, America holds on to the worst of its culture and lets the best go, which is funnier than you'd think. Whitehead won the National Book Award for his new novel Underground Railroad, which is on my list for 2017.
Another farcical favorite from 2016 was The Good Lord Bird by James McBride. The story stays light (hour-long prayers over a fast-cooling squirrel dinner in the woods of Kansas; cross-dressing in a whorehouse; farcical conversations that confuse the Underground Railroad with an actual train) but then dives deep into the moral choices people make to get free, and the mistakes made even by great leaders and heroes. This novel won the National Book Award in 2013.
Both of those novels were written by African American men. I seek out writing by people of color and by women. Some favorites I read this year by women were The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter (feminist retellings of fairy tales), Pioneer Girl by Laura Ingalls Wilder (an annotated edition of her memoir, on which her Little House books were based), and Still Life by A. S. Byatt (a story about one English family's complicated life, set against the backdrop of the writing they love). I also loved To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Woolf persists as one of my all-time favorite authors for the depth of relationship and feeling she packs into spare and perfect prose.
While I almost always have a book of fiction going, I enjoy reading history, theology, and books about church life as well. I have two very different favorites in these areas. First, I recommend Atul Gawande's Being Mortal to anyone who is facing their own aging or the aging of a parent. Gawande, a surgeon and beautiful writer, challenges many of our modern assumptions about how to keep people dignified and whole as they near the end of life. (I'm preaching on this topic, with a discussion after led by experts in our own church, on February 19.)
My Bright Abyss by Christian Wiman is a book of theology and poetry-and also, like Gawande's book, about the nearness of death. Wiman is a poet who, when faced with an uncertain and very difficult cancer diagnosis, began his own path to faith. The book is part memoir, part poems of his, and part poems of other poets. Some of Wiman's thoughts on what it takes to face death and to long for life will make their way into my Easter sermon this spring.
In the coming year I'm looking to books of history and resistance. What do authors like Hannah Arendt and Czeslaw Milosz have to teach us about totalitarianism in the 20th century, and what could that mean for us today? I'll be reading fiction, including science fiction and fantasy, to expand my imagination and sense of possibility. I'll be reading poetry to deepen my soul. I would love to know what you are reading this year, and what books and art are challenging you and bringing you comfort.
In faith,
Rev. Sarah Stewart
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