Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
I don’t know how many times we listened to this book when I was growing up, but I added to the count by sharing it with my husband on our first American road trip together. It is a dear, laugh-out-loud funny, historical, and heartwarming tale of a family with, yes, a dozen children. Set in the years around World War I, this hysterical memoir recounts the escapades of a family headed by a father who happened to be a motion-study expert and was intent upon applying those systems to the raising of his own brood. (If you want to listen to this as an audiobook, be sure to get the version read by Dana Ivey.)
The Complete James Herriot: All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
My family had an hour dedicated to high tea and read-alouds every Sunday afternoon, and Herriot’s charming accounts of life as a Yorkshire country vet were often requested. Stories both tender and funny, they evoke English country life with soul-warming insight into the workings of the human (and country) heart.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
A children’s book, a fairy tale, and a symbolic science-fiction romp through space and time—L’Engle’s beloved novel could be classified as all of these. It opens with the classic mystery line “It was a dark and stormy night,” amid whose bluster we are swiftly introduced to Meg, myopic, stubborn, and fiercely protective of her gifted little brother, Charles Wallace, and her brilliant scientist mother. Meg’s father, a respected scientist, has been missing for a year, and that night she is summoned to an intergalactic search for him by the midnight visit of the mysterious Mrs. Whatsit, who blusters clumsily into the Murray kitchen, demanding, “Have you ever tried to get to your feet with a sprained dignity?” Thus begins a quest, in the company of the marvelous threesome Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Whatsit, to rescue Mr. Murray, who is imprisoned on a distant planet by the evil power of It. In her whirlwind story, L’Engle immerses Meg and us in both the glory of the universe and the evil that must be combated and resisted, not just by strength but by holy foolishness, by the death-defying, beauty-making power of love as enacted even amid Meg’s faults and fallibility.
The Giver by Lois Lowry
This perceptive and challenging dystopian novel for young adults was a fascinating read-aloud for my family. We kids were mostly teenagers by the time we encountered this provocative tale of a society in which pain and strife had been eliminated . . . as had most of what we would consider necessary for a rich life: emotion, memory, pain, and joy. But Jonas, a young boy ready for the assignment of his societal role, soon discovers these basic aspects of humanity when he is appointed as the next “Giver,” the single person in a generation who is given the task of remembering pain, beauty, love, and fear, receiving and bearing these difficult emotions on behalf of the community. A fascinating exploration of what it means to be human.
Rainbow Valley by L. M. Montgomery
This is the seventh book in the Anne of Green Gables series (reviewed on page 54), and while I have read them all countless times, this was the one we siblings read aloud and loved—boys and girls alike. A story weaving together the adventures of Anne’s own lively brood of six with that of the motherless Merediths, children of the local Presbyterian minister, the tale is full of Montgomery’s usual flair for recounting the comical mishaps of village life as they tangle with the high drama of childhood imagination. But there is also romance, as the Meredith children seek a new mother, and the forging of bonds between the Blythes and the Merediths that will last through the Great War hovering on the horizon of their childhood.
The Heaventree Trilogy by Edith Pargeter
When my friend Ruth recommends a book, I generally order it whenever I next have space in my reading list. She was right about this one; this superb historical novel, set in the contested Welsh borderlands of the thirteenth century, traces the fate of the young and loving Harry Talvace, an architect of loyal heart and high ideals. Contracted to the powerful and difficult Lord Isambard to build a cathedral on his land in the Welsh borders, Harry finds himself entangled in the intrigues of politics, unrequited love, and the dictates of his own tender conscience. This is one of those stories that just feels like a pleasure to read with others, the kind that makes you forget the passing of time. There’s worth here, of course; I love Harry’s vision in creating his cathedral, the care with which he brings stone to such life that it echoes with the life of God. I love his loyalty to the peasant boy he claims as his brother. I even love his frailty, the sensitive heart that leaves him so vulnerable to the powerful and cruel. But there’s also the pleasure of a rollicking good story of lyrical narration, lively characters, and a powerful evocation of the danger and beauty suffusing the medieval world.
Just David by Eleanor H. Porter
By the famed author of Pollyanna, Just David is the story of a young boy, newly orphaned, whose gift of music and guileless heart combine to startle a whole town to new life. A lovely, idealistic novel that combines mystery (who is David, who was his mysterious father, and why have they lived in solitude in the mountains?) with the tale of the grieving older couple who takes him in, Just David is steeped in innocence and beauty, and their power to restore.
Kidnapped: Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751 by Robert Louis Stevenson
A daring tale of high adventure and a kidnapped young boy who wends his way through the Scottish Highlands, this classic novel was the first I read aloud as a teenager to all my siblings . . . and the one my brothers never balked at reading. We were riveted by Davy’s plight at the hands of a mercenary old uncle and his journey to reclaim his lost inheritance.
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
You knew I couldn’t let this list go without at least one title by Lewis or Tolkien. This is the shorter and homier novel that opens the future adventures recounted in The Lord of the Rings. Bilbo Baggins was the first hobbit to go on a grand journey, a timid soul chosen as the “burglar” to aid a band of dwarves in defeating a dragon and reclaiming their gold. This novel subtly probes themes of courage, greed, and fellowship, stirring our own hearts with a little of Bilbo’s feeling as we read that “something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick.”
Right Ho, Jeeves! by P. G. Wodehouse
My brothers will still sometimes slip into the nasally, posh accent of the upright butler Jeeves when they have something particularly hysterical to say. There’s nothing quite like Wodehouse for a certain kind of British narrative humor and nothing like the escapades of Bertie, a foppish young gentleman of the twenties who must be continually rescued by the long-suffering but often self-righteous Jeeves. We listened and laughed to this audiobook on many a road trip throughout my teen years.
“What! You Too?”: The Firsthand Accounts That Remind Me I’m Not Alone
(OR, MEMOIRS THAT FEEL LIKE FRIENDS)
I’VE ALWAYS LOVED that C. S. Lewis was the one who described friendship as being born the moment at which two people say to one another, “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”[1] because he was the author who provided that sense of camaraderie for me. When I first read his description of joy—the feeling of delight and desire that welled up for him in the reading of old stories, in looking into the tiny world of a child’s garden, in glimpsing the far-off hills—I felt as if someone had looked into my mind to give words to the wonder and yearning I could not, in my teenage angst, express. Lewis was fundamental in teaching me to understand my own flashes of joy—in music, in story, in glimpsing the landscape out the window on a long road trip—not as distractions from spiritual growth but as glimpses of God’s expressive goodness, meant always to draw me deeper into his reality.
Memoirs are a special genre. They are gifts of particular and personal generosity in which an author allows a reader to inhabit his or her own
memory, that journey of image and imagination by which we arrive at the truths that shape the way we live. Biographies recount the outward facts of a life; memoirs tell the story from the inside. What I have realized is how often the following books have offered shelter to me as I am forming my own tale. By dwelling in Madeleine L’Engle’s Crosswicks Journals, I have managed to keep hold of God’s goodness when discouragement might have made me lose my grip. The refuge of Buechner’s The Sacred Journey helped me to discover afresh that grace is present even in the moments when we come face-to-face with our own mortality. Lewis helped me to translate beauty into God’s own invitation. One of Andrew Peterson’s songs (“Shine Your Light on Me”) recounts the way his friends once were “singing out my song / when the song in me had died,” and I often feel that this is the grace of memoirs. They sing and speak what needs expression, and sometimes rescuing, within us.
As you travel through the titles below, may you, too, find strength for the story forming in your soul as you dwell in the narratives of those who have traveled before.
The Sacred Journey: A Memoir of Early Days by Frederick Buechner
In this account of a moment in his childhood that shifted his experience of time, Buechner delves into the heart of what it means to discover our own mortality, to realize that we are under the power of time, with the clock ticking toward death. That might sound dark, but this is a luminous book, recounting a child’s innocence and the way grace restores the trust that our first encounter with death strives so hard to take from us.
The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection by Robert Farrar Capon
This book is a revelry in the “taste and see” goodness of God by a talented chef and Episcopalian priest who finds grace in the midst and making of feasts. I first heard it read aloud as a contemplation before a feast at a conference celebrating creativity, fellowship, and creation. Most of us were teary before dinner began. A delicious book replete with recipes, it is a joyous, immersive experience exploring the hunger of our souls and the rich satisfaction found in the person of Christ and the supper of the Lamb.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Part nature memoir, part meditation on the beauty and violence of the natural world, part theological discussion, part lyrical essay, this memoir considers the profound beauty of the world and its fallenness as glimpsed in the quiet of the solitary year Dillard spent in a rustic cabin. Wry and poignant, humorous and wise, with insights like this to startle you awake: “The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.”
The Crosswicks Journals by Madeleine L’Engle
You’ve seen L’Engle in my lists a couple of times before, but this time it is for her Crosswicks Journals, her contemplation of her life in different phases: as a wife, as a daughter, as a mother. Drawing on childhood memory, theology, and literature, L’Engle’s musings always lead readers to a deeper engagement with the beauty of the world and the people who so richly make its story. She asks hard questions, and she makes honest observations about herself, her husband, and her children, but she writes in such a way that the asking is a way of walking forward in hope, in seeking beauty. These books also inspired me to follow L’Engle’s example of keeping a dictionary next to the dining room table—you never know when a certain word will come up in family debate! In this series:
A Circle of Quiet
The Summer of the Great-Grandmother
The Irrational Season
Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage
Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life by C. S. Lewis
It might begin to seem that I’m trying to fit Lewis into every book list in this book, and that might just reflect the scope of his insight and influence on me! This autobiography is the account of Lewis’s conversion from atheism to Christianity, but it is much more than simple testimony. This is Lewis’s exploration of joy—the feeling that for him evoked “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.” The sense was kindled in him by mythic stories, by the beauty of nature, by moments in his childhood, and by a longing so poignant he eventually came to believe that “if I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”[2]
The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot by Robert Macfarlane
I found this memoir on a book table of a rambling bookstore in England. Macfarlane’s account of his journeys on foot, this book is part poem, part natural history, part history, part contemplation on the pilgrim nature of human existence, written in the contemplative, watchful voice of a writer who lives in profound and affectionate attention to the world around him. I’d read any of Macfarlane’s books for pure education and literary pleasure.
Also by Macfarlane:
Mountains of the Mind: Adventures in Reaching the Summit
The Wild Places
The Lost Words
Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller
A postmodern memoir of faith; traced through the shifting lens of art, music, and culture; a book whose honest doubts and open pursuit of God give voice to the spiritual hunger and pilgrim identity of many young believers. This memoir, tracing the slow growth of faith, is funny (“I always thought the Bible was more of a salad thing, you know, but it isn’t. It’s a chocolate thing”), honest (“the most difficult lie I have ever contended with is this: Life is a story about me”), and poignant in recounting Miller’s acceptance of a God who, like jazz, doesn’t always resolve.
The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris
Norris’s memoir about a season spent in a Benedictine monastery, “immersed in a liturgical world” that sated a deep hunger in her soul, this is a beautiful, poetic exploration of the life of liturgy, ritual, contemplation, and prayer. It gave shape and articulation to my own deep desire for a sense of meaning and rhythm in the life of faith.
Also by Norris:
Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith
The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and “Women’s Work”
[1] Lewis, The Four Loves, 113.
[2] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 136–37.
Chapter 8Books Can Open Your Eyes to WONDER
Unlocking the Beauty All around Us
In a world where thrushes sing and willow trees are golden in the spring, boredom should have been included among the seven deadly sins.
ELIZABETH GOUDGE, THE ROSEMARY TREE
THE SUMMER I WAS TEN, I stalked through my backyard, intent upon naming the trees, the rocks, the nooks and corners of my world. I had a battered copy of Anne of Green Gables in my hand, as it was this red-haired sprite of a story-world friend who had inspired me to such action. Anne sees a “lake of shining waters” in a duck pond and a “white way of delight” in an apple orchard, and after a summer morning immersed in her story, my own sight seemed to shimmer with her imagination. I suddenly perceived the vivid personhood of the world around me—grandfather trees and playful flowers, the tiny world of my backyard made suddenly rich with the mystery of a creation that came to me like the presence of a friend. In trying to describe my own world in Anne’s imaginative terms, I began to see it differently. The world began to mean something in its beauty. I touched a pine tree, and the bark became toughened skin on a wise old soul. And the light—what should I call it? It was like my mother’s hand on my face.
To be a woman who reads is to be a woman who wonders.
Words liven us to the vast, vivid, bustling world around us, kindling us to see sky and tree, child and friend afresh as gift, as mystery. Anne’s engagement with the world taught me to encounter the stuff of life not as a collection of atoms or something to be taken for granted but as real treasure, a gift I was made to ponder and love. Little did I know while reading Anne of Green Gables that twenty yea
rs later in college I’d read Alexander Schmemann’s For the Life of the World and realize that embracing Anne’s wondering view of creation allowed me a glimpse of the sacramental life—a belief that, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning puts it, “earth’s crammed with heaven, / And every common bush afire with God.” A woman who reads sees the fire and stops to stare in wonder.
One of the great gifts of reading comes to us in the renewed vision of strong, good words. Language, as philosophers continue to learn, has the power to shift our consciousness, to make us freshly aware of the world, to enable us to see things we just didn’t notice before. Owen Barfield, philosopher and friend of C. S. Lewis, writes particularly of the way imaginative words in a work of poetry or fiction have the power to give us a “felt change of consciousness.”[1] When we read a well-crafted novel, encounter a startling combination of words in poetry, or read a psalm praising the Creator for his creation, we encounter not just beautiful or descriptive language but a fresh view of the world. The words we use on a daily basis teach us to see the physical world in a certain way. The way we (and the books we read) describe our homes, our families, and the stuff of ordinary life actually teaches us to value and understand it. A scientist shows us how to look out the backyard window and describe a magnificent old oak tree as a Quercus (Latin name), while the songwriter and poet Rich Mullins speaks of an oak in spring (in his song “The Color Green”) as a creature who “lifts up his arms in a blessing for being born again.” And then there’s Tolkien, who turned trees into people and called them Ents.
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