Books: January 2018

Surprised by Oxford

Carolyn Weber

This is my third time through this gorgeous memoir (in under two years, which really says something about how much I love it) and as always, it didn't disappoint. I popped this one in my bag for my flight home from Vancouver and though it couldn't quite keep my sadness at bay (very little would have done that at this point) it was a welcome distraction and Carolyn Weber a welcome companion as I traversed land and sea to return to the bottom of the globe. Caro's honesty and searing intelligence pleasantly shock me every time I return to this memoir; I love the literary references strewn throughout and the questions she grapples with as she takes steps towards faith are still questions I grapple with well over a decade into my walk with Jesus. TDH remains my ideal for a man (read it: you'll understand why) and the Christian community that gathers around Caro as she journeys towards faith is the kind of community that I dream of being a part of and contributing to. Thoughtful, funny and gut-wrenchingly beautiful, Surprised by Oxford is by far my favourite account of coming to faith.

The Essex Serpent

Sarah Perry

Full disclosure: this book sat on my shelf (where it received a lot of compliments on its beautiful cover) for several months before I was able to make it anywhere beyond the first few chapters. Once I did, however, I was hooked. Set in small-town Essex (which, unbeknownst to me until the time of reading, is a county in England), the story chronicles the unlikely friendship between a wealthy, widowed woman who worships at the altar of science, and a slightly-prickly parson. The two are drawn together by chance and discover they have much to discuss and argue over including the existence of the mysterious Essex serpent, a myth which has resurrected itself in light of various spooky and inexplicable events in the town of Aldwinter. I loved losing myself in the story of the unlikely duo and the supporting cast of their lives, and came away more convinced than ever that faith and reason can and should coexist; at the very least, it makes for delightful, thought-provoking literature.

Salvage the Bones

Jesmyn Ward

This book is as striking as its title and will linger with me for a long while. Jesmyn Ward is a stunning writer and her words sliced me to shreds in the best possible way. The book recounts twelve days in the lives of a family in Mississippi in the lead-up to and during Hurricane Katrina. I cared so deeply about the fate of each and every one of the characters I literally held my breath when Katrina hit; certain I couldn't bear it if something happened to any one of them. I'll end this with one of my favourite passages from the book, in which the author memorably sums up the destructive power of Katrina:

"Her chariot was a storm so great and black the Greeks would say it was harnessed to dragons. She was the murderous mother who cut us to the bone but left us alive, left us naked and bewildered as wrinkled newborn babies, as blind puppies, as sun-starved newly hatched baby snakes. She left us a dark Gulf and salt-burned land. She left us to learn to crawl. She left us to salvage. Katrina is the mother we will remember until the next mother with the large, merciless hands, committed to blood, comes." 

Everything I Never Told You

Celeste Ng

Everything I Never Told You was my book club's pick for this month and I'm so glad to have finally read something by this amazing author. Ng chronicles the lives of the Lee family, in which James, a Chinese American and Marilyn, his white wife, fall in love and raise three children in a college town in Ohio. The narrative is primarily structured around the death of the Lee's beloved middle daughter, Lydia, but the story weaves back and forth between past and present, unveiling secrets each member of the family has long kept from the others, with devastating effects on them all. I was deeply saddened by just how out of place the Lees felt in their town -- they were among only a handful of Chinese families and the children were the only ones of mixed parentage. Navigating a world divided along racial lines is still not easy, but reading about just how difficult it was for the Lees pioneering their way in the 1960s was heartbreaking. (NB: I'm aware that this is a fictional account of one family's experience, but there is nothing here to suggest to me that what the Lees went through is at all dissimilar to what a real family living in their town, at that time, would have gone through.) Celeste Ng has definitely been put on my radar (years after she was put on everyone else's!) and I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of her latest, Little Fires Everywhere.

The Voyeurs

Gabrielle Bell

I first heard about Gabrielle Bell when she was on a panel I attended at Portland's annual book festival last year. In person, Bell is somewhat shy and reserved, but her answers piqued my interest enough to want to try out some of her books. Were it not for their significant weight, I would have bought one to take home with me at the festival itself, but as fate would have it, the very first book I saw when I walked back into my local library in Christchurch was a copy of The Voyeurs. I picked it up immediately and slowly thumbed my way through Bell's adventures across the globe. She has done some amazing things and met some incredible, creative people but the aspect of the book I loved the most was her own internal monologue. Her internal annotations of the situations she finds herself in were funny and at at times very relatable. Bell is very aware of her own neuroses and is constantly reflecting on how she appears to other people -- something I, too, find myself doing a lot, perhaps to my detriment. The Voyeurs is only the second graphic memoir I have ever read, and I definitely find myself wanting to pick up more in the coming year.

I Was Told There'd Be Cake

Sloane Crosley

I read Sloane Crosley's second essay collection How Did You Get This Number? after finding it by chance in the literary non-fiction section (swoon) of the Strand in New York last year. It is one of the happiest book accidents I have had in a while -- I absolutely loved Crosley's open, intelligent and hilarious writing style. Her essays are punchy and delightfully fun to read. It only made sense, then, that when I was in Portland's Powell's late last year, to pick up her first essay collection, I Was Told There'd Be Cake. Crosley's writing delighted me as much as it did the first time around; stories about moving apartments, volunteering at the butterfly exhibit at the Museum of Natural History and being the maid of honour at a distant childhood friend's wedding had me laughing out loud and reflecting on my own friendships and key life experiences. Crosley has a third book of essays, Look Alive Out There, coming out in April. Needless to say, it's been added to my book wishlist and I'll report back soon.