Blog Post
A Fresh Look at the Spiritual Disciplines
by mansii
If you have ever been curious about what the spiritual disciplines of the Christian faith are, or how to begin them, Out of the House of Bread by Preston Yancey provides a fresh and accessible approach to these time-honored practices. As the title suggests, each chapter discusses both a spiritual discipline and an aspect of baking bread, drawing analogy between the two.
This book is especially helpful as an introduction because it is extremely practical. Yancey reflects on the meaning and theory behind each practice, but then gives step by step instructions on how to implement one for that week. Similarly with baking, Yancey uses the theory of bread-making to illustrate the meaning of a discipline, but then assigns you to literally bake a loaf each week, with instructions that build upon one another in making each loaf better.
For those practiced in the spiritual disciplines already, Yancey's discussion leads away from the rote application of them by habit, and instead presses in to deepening the "why" and understanding the beauty of them. Yancey draws from the Benedictine model, with several chapters addressing disciplines that might first come to mind: confession, scripture reading, intercessory prayer, and fasting. Yet the other chapters may surprise you, contemplating feasting, wonder, remembrance, and rootedness. These all tie together under the perspective of seeing the world as a sacred place where God draws near. The spiritual disciplines seek to attune us to recognizing this sacredness.
These practices unite theological strains from Quakers to Catholics and monks, from Anglicans to the Emerging Church. Click here for a list of books related to the spiritual disciplines from all of these perspectives.
Blog Post
Grief Is the Thing With Feathers
by eapearce
Described by the NPR Book Review as “as resonant, elliptical and distilled as a poem,” Grief Is the Thing With Feathers, by debut author Max Porter, is an incredibly moving portrait of the loss of a love. Clocking in at a slim 114 pages, Porter nonetheless manages to evoke the deep weariness and desperation of grief in sharp imagery and universally understood emotions. The mourning protagonist of the book conjures up a crow who visits grieving humans and stays with them until they no longer “need” him. The crow even narrates a bit of the story, standing by as the protagonist alternates remembering fondly the early years of his lost romance and missing even the little things that he and his love will never do again: argue over petty matters, drink a little too much wine on the balcony; as NPR’s review says, the book “reminds us beautifully that life and memory are in the details.”
“Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project,” writes Porter. It is “the fabric of selfhood, and beautifully chaotic.” Describing grief as beautiful is a stretch for many, but Porter makes it so in this lovely little book. It’s not necessarily an uplifting read, but it’s a stunning and worthwhile tribute to the great losses that we all experience.
Those who enjoyed A Grief Observed and The Year of Magical Thinking will find solace as well in Grief Is the Thing With Feathers.
Blog Post
Mad Madge
by Lucy S
Danielle Dutton has created a short but riveting novel detailing the life and works of Margaret Cavendish, a 17th century duchess and the first woman to write for publication in England. We meet Margaret as a dreamy, yet observant child, aware of the small changes in the world around her, capable of finding an entire universe in the bubbles on a stream. “Indeed it was then that I first formed the opinion - if childishly, idly - that a person should trust to her own good sense and nature’s impenetrable wisdom.” She began to record what she saw and what she imagined, and thus this other universe became the basis for most of the poems, plays, philosophy and science fiction that Margaret created in her lifetime.
Danielle Dutton presents Margaret Cavendish’s story through two different points of view. The first half of the book is narrated by Margaret herself, almost like a diary. This allows Dutton to proffer Margaret as a sympathetic character, to show us what pushes her and what causes her to feel conflicted. We are introduced to the childlike imaginings that inform Margaret’s later work. The second half of the book is told by an omniscient narrator, demonstrating to us how Margaret is perceived by the public and how she earns the sobriquet “Mad Madge.” Dutton’s use of dual narrators allows her to create a complete picture of this fascinating woman in a very short book. As Katherine Grant says in her review in The New York Times “Dutton expertly captures the pathos of a woman whose happiness is furrowed with the anxiety of under acknowledgment.”
While Margaret was responsible for much groundbreaking work, like her plays for and about women or her early science fiction, she wasn’t necessarily trying to gain equality for women or propel them to the forefront. She did have a deep understanding of the different gender roles at the time and she certainly questioned them, but readers should beware of thinking of Margaret as a proto-feminist. Dutton helps us to see that Margaret’s true aim was more to see herself in the spotlight. Once recognition was given to her, Margaret found she craved it. Her innovation lay in creating her own, new identity. “Hadn’t I thoughts, after all? A mind of my own? It cannot be infamy, I reasoned, to run or seek after glory, to love perfection, desire praise.”
As Margaret fell deeper into writing the more she disconnected from the real world. “At dinner parties now, I was sometimes asked to account for myself, to speak of my ideas. I very rarely could. Bold on the page, in life I was only Margaret.” Her husband, continuously supportive, tried to draw her out, but her imagined world always prevailed. She did attempt to remain current by following fashion closely, observing, “dressing is the poetry of women,” but she seemed to slightly miss the mark, taking her style just a bit too far, so that in the end she offended those whom she meant to impress. Margaret was remembered for some of her more outlandish style choices, and for her most enduring piece of prose, The Blazing World, a detailed portrayal of her utopia.
Danielle Dutton has also created something rare in her amazingly detailed and inventive narrative. Dutton succeeds in presenting to us a captivating and conflicted woman. In just 167 pages we are shown an imagined and a real world that will not soon be forgotten.
Blog Post
Heart-tugging Fantasy Book from Newberry Winning Author
by mansii
Fans of Karen Cushman--Newberry winner for The Midwife’s Apprentice, and author of a lifetime of other beloved historical fiction novels--will be absolutely enthralled by her latest novel, Grayling’s Song. Without leaving behind her usual depth and heart-tugging characters, Cushman brings a new world to life with a pinch of magic.
Confronted with a task far larger than she feels capable of managing, Grayling—an ordinary girl with a magical mother—grows in maturity and compassion through the choices she must make. Despite her sense of inadequacy, when an unknown evil steals the Grimoire (their book of spells) and roots her mother to the ground, Grayling must go out alone to rescue her mother and the book. With each new magical friend she meets along the way, Grayling’s hopes rise that they will be the one to conquer the evil. She meets a weather witch, a complaining helpless ward, an enchantress, and a diviner of cheese. But though each have “bits and pieces” of usefulness, making a team of unlikely heroes, only Grayling can lead the way. Only she can sing a song that beckons an answering tune from the Grimoire which they must find.
Through a series of circumstances that stretch her heart till she almost has nothing left to give, Grayling gradually becomes the hero she never imagined she could be. Rather than leaving us with the wish to escape to another reality where magic makes hardship better, Grayling’s world reminds us that in winning our battles what we need is not the extra talent of another that we so easily envy. Instead, what triumphs in our trials is the strength of character that builds itself by small choices in the right direction. This precious story inspires an overflowing heart, and hope in the journey that’s it’s adding up to something worth every scab.
Crafts
Brown Bear, Brown Bear Animal Masks
Sunday February 5, 2017: 2:00pm to
3:00pm
Traverwood Branch: Program Room
Preschoolers.
Blog Post
Lost in the Sun
by manz
Even in baseball, when a fly ball gets lost in the sun, you have to remember to shift your position to find it.
Lost in the Sun is a fabulous youth fiction book by Lisa Graff. It is a great read-alike if you’re into realistic fiction by Gary Schmidt and Louis Sachar. I really felt the same mood and similar theme to The Wednesday Wars, with family drama and helpful teachers doing some guiding.
Twelve year old Trent hears that middle school is the worst, but he knows that nothing can be worse than 5th grade. For that’s the year that during a pick-up hockey game Trent hits a puck that accidentally hits another player in the chest and the boy ends up dying. (No spoiler, you find that out right away.) The book then spends time with Trent and how he is handing the guilt of what happened. On top of the guilt, he’s sure that everyone hates him, including his dad, his step-mom, his mom, the sister of the boy who died, the gym teacher, and his homeroom teacher – basically everyone.
His guilt transforms into anger and he takes it out on his family and the girl who wants to be his friend. The girl is Fallon, and she is chatty, a bit strange, has a large scar across her face, and Trent doesn’t understand why she keeps wanting to hang out with him. He with his anger and guilt, and then she with her mysterious scar… their friendship ends up saving them both.
It’s a genuine read with characters full of heart.
Blog Post
Modern Lovers: not your typical summer read
by eapearce
Emma Straub gifted readers with the perfect summer novel two years ago, with The Vacationers, a beach read that was made so much more by the insight and wit with which Straub captured her characters. This summer, she’s done it again with Modern Lovers, a less beachy (it takes place in Brooklyn rather than the Mallorca setting of The Vacationers) but equally riveting story.
Former college bandmates Elizabeth, Andrew and Zoe have remained friends and neighbors since graduating thirty years ago. They’ve all clung on to their youth, some more successfully than others, but as their own children grow up and begin the fledging steps of adulthood themselves, the three friends must cope with the abrupt realization that they are no longer the young, sexy musicians they once were. It seems at first glance that Elizabeth, Andrew and Zoe have all come to an easy form of success in their adulthood; they have good jobs, families, partners, homes and each other. But it is the summer when their own children reach maturity that this all begins to unravel, and long kept secrets, truths, and loves come to the light. Re-enter the legacy of a fourth band member who actually went on to become famous without the trio but died a tragic death before reaching thirty, and it’s a complicated summer indeed.
“Straub packs wisdom and insight and humor together in a satisfying book about neighbors and nosiness, ambition and pleasure, the excitement of youth, the shock of middle age, and the fact that our passions never go away, they just evolve and grow along with us,” concludes the book jacket. The New York Times Book Review cautions readers from dismissing the book as light vacation reading, despite its sunny cover: “It’s just too deftly and thoughtfully written to be relegated merely to the beach.”
Blog Post
The comfort of food shared with friends
by Lucy S
Dinner With Edward: a Story of an Unexpected Friendship
“There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.” M.F.K Fisher
Isabel Vincent is a writer and a journalist for the New York Post who is approaching a divorce and single parenthood when an old friend asks her a favor. This friend’s 93 year-old father is newly widowed, lonely, and living in the same neighborhood as Isabel. He is an excellent and exacting cook and could use an occasional dinner companion. This is the genesis of Isabel Vincent's delightful book, Dinner With Edward. What comes out of these dinners is a profound connection between two people who are both in need of buoying.
Edward is a perfectionist in the kitchen, and a self-taught cook. He cultivated his craft to relieve his wife of her 52 years of providing meals. He learned to cook out of love and so his cooking is imbued with it. This book speaks strongly to the importance of a human connection, and one that can be facilitated by shared food and meals. Isabel and Edward’s relationship also exemplifies a loving, platonic attachment, something that is rarely found in the stories we read today.
This slim volume will fill you with descriptions of simple, yet precise meals, and tales of an unusual and unexpected bond that comes to the rescue of these two very different people. The meals are used as a framework to unfold the story of this deep friendship, reminding us that food can sustain us, and save us in many ways. As Isabel tells us, “That night, I sat down to write my own letter to Edward. I told him that I had never been incapacitated like this, and how I was suddenly feeling middle-aged and alone. I told him that he had saved my life and that he would be with me forever. The response was swift. Edward called me right after he read my letter. ‘You saved your own life,’ he said. ‘You think about this in time and you will come to see the truth of what I’m saying. You were giving as well as receiving.’ And then his voice caught, and he said he needed to go. ‘You touched an old man’s heart.’”
This book will touch your heart, and teach you the trick to mastering a perfect roast chicken.
Dinner With Edward will appeal to fans of The Intern, Julie and Julia, The End of Your Life Book Club and anything by Laurie Colwin.
Blog Post
The Big Book of Things to Make
by manz
This amazing, stupendous, fun-filled book is jam packed with oodles of fun things to keep the kiddos busy this time of year!
The Big Book of Things to Make is divided into sections titled Make It, Do It, Know It and includes things to make, such as slime, alien masks, soap monsters, board games, and musical instruments. You can make things to eat like a pizza party, cookies, and glow-in-the-dark Jello. Or you can do things like magic tricks, write a story, spot deadly snakes, miniature golf, or host outdoor Olympic. Plus MANY, MANY more fun things!
The books is wonderfully laid out with pictures and simple directions that will lead to mass quantities of fun and games for elementary school age kids.
Blog Post
You Know Me Well
by manz
You Know Me Well is a new teen book by acclaimed YA fiction authors Nina LaCour and David Levithan.
The story revolves around two characters, Mark and Kate, and the chapters of the book alternate between the two as narrators as the story unfolds.
Both are yearning for something bigger than what their lives are as the last week of high school hangs over their head.
We begin on a wild and fateful night at a club during Pride Week in San Francisco when Kate and Mark see each other and realize they know each other from school. In fact they sit next to each other in a class. “Why is he here,” she wonders. “Why is she here,” he wonders. Kate happened to be there hiding from meeting the girl of her dreams named Violet. And Mark was there with his best friend (and secret love interest) Ryan enjoying Pride festivities. At the time Kate and Mark had no idea of how much they would come to mean to each other, but this chance meeting changes the lives of all involved.
With a new found friendship the two and their band of misfit pals learn a lot that week about first love, friendship, fitting in, and what the end of high school means.