Summer Reading

You would think that now that I'm finished with graduate school I wouldn't want to see another book again for a long time, perhaps decades. But no, I'm a geek. Immediately upon turning in my thesis I wolfed down the first five novels in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, by Alexander McCall Smith. Then, upon arriving in our new digs in southeast Lansing, MI (Holt, to be precise), I attempted to establish a normal morning routine by reading a chapter per day from A Syllable of Water: Twenty Writers of Faith Reflect on Their Art, edited by Emilie Griffin. It has been fabulous. Whenever the hot air balloon of locational vertigo threatens to displace me, each chapter is another sandbag added to the basket—especially John Leax’s “Within Infinite Purposes: On Writing and Place.”

"...it is story that reveals the meaningful relationships in the square of human habitation and discourse" (16).

"We might think of [our geographical] center as home. We might also think of it as the place where we are known" (17).

"One cannot long disrespect one's neighbors and continue to live in the neighborhood" (18).

"To be placeless is to be silenced" (21).

The book reminds me why I am a writer. Many thanks to the folks at Paraclete Press for such a gem.