Summer Reading Summed Up

So already, about ten days ago, I noticed that the well-watered world--it's been a very rainy July in New England--was awash in the pinks, purples, blues, and whites of blooming Rose of Sharon. Midsummer was here, July was fast passing, and no blog yet. Years ago, I promised myself to blog at least once a month.

What had I been doing instead of blogging? Mostly reading and rereading. That realization gave me an idea. So before July is in the books, here's a blog post about the books I've been reading and am still hoping to read while summer lasts.

In the rereading category are Charles Dickens' David Copperfield and Alan Lew's This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation. 

I chose Dickens' novel because Barbara Kingsolver's Pulitzer Prize-winning Demon Copperhead, which I'm anticipating reading later this summer, alludes to it. Given the vagueness of my junior high school memories of David and the whole Dickensian crew, I decided a reread was in order--and it's been great to read the novel as an adult: like so many adolescent readers, I didn't trust myself to know when writers were being mocking or satirical.

Then there was the practical aspect of choosing David Copperfield, since I didn't anticipate wanting to underline passages or write notes in the margins: I could put it on my glow-screen Nook and read it late at night or early in the morning without putting on a light--an especially good thing when you're sleeping in a small cabin in the shadows of the eaves or trying to keep a low profile while being a guest in someone else's house.

As far as the Alan Lew book is concerned, let's just say that I'm one of the people to whom Norman Fischer refers in his foreward to the paperback version of the book: "For many, reading This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared on an annual basis during the Yomim Noraim (Days of Awe) constitutes the cornerstone of spiritual practice" (xi).* Tisha B'Av was last Wednesday. I didn't fast, but I reread the chapter of the book entitled "I Turned, the Walls Came Down, and There I Was: Tisha B'Av."

In the "new reading" department have been three mysterious books of poetry: Carl Phillips' Pulitzer Prize-winning Then the War (I hadn't known of Phillips before his prize was announced), Eruv by Eryn Green (which I've owned for several years but had never read), and On the Surface of Silence: The Last Poems of Lea Goldberg, translated by Rachel Tzvia Back. I first encountered Goldberg's poetry in the margin of the Jewish memorial service printed in my Siddur Lev Shalem prayerbook earlier this year.

I have a lot more reading of the poems in these books to do before I can say more about them to other people, but I do find them mesmerizing--or is it arresting? I can't tell if I'm more consoled or disturbed by them, but I also feel they're speaking true.

Interestingly, Carl Phillips wrote the forward to Eryn Green's collection, and it reads like a whole separate and worthy work of literature to me, even though its purpose is primarily to provide an important way in to Green's poems on the first reading of them. Likewise, Back's essay entitled "Toward the 'Whole Fragment': An Introduction to Lea Goldberg's Last Poems" is thought-provoking in a door-opening way that both makes Goldberg's poems more meaningful and moves beyond them. Fragments, borders, margins, mergings, separations, things that fall apart--so much love and yearning in the poems of all three books, all filtered through the sensibilities and shaped by the particular life experiences of these poets and their champions.

Finally, for the "rest of summer" reading. Robert Cormier's Fade will be up next: I learned about it from good friends in Orono, Maine during a discussion about French-Canadian and Acadian history and culture, and about the family history of one of those friends in particular. Next up will be the assigned reading for my book group's August meeting, Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World by Christian Cooper. Then, before I forget too much about David Copperfield  again, I'll turn to Demon Copperhead. 

 

As for Kathe Mueller Slonim's Escape from Dachau, it will probably have to wait until fall since I plan to lend it to friends who visited Dachau just recently. 

 

I have roughly a hundred pages left of David Copperfield, so Fade is coming up fast. But so too are slightly lower temperatures and easing humidity--perfect weather for walking, checking out neighborhood flowers, and reading outdoors. Or not reading outdoors. I'm glad only one of the books I'm planning to read in August has to be read by a certain date.

 

So already, what are you reading?

* Fischer, N. (2018). Foreward. In Lew, A. This is real and you are completely unprepared: The days of awe as a journey of transformation (xi-xiv), Little, Brown and Company.