Book Girl: A Journey Through the Treasures & Transforming Power of a Reading Life by Sarah Clarkson.
Book Girl Discussion Question #8: In chapter 4, the author says, ‘A great book meets you in the narrative motion of your own life, showing you in vividly imagined ways exactly what it looks like to be evil or good, brave or cowardly, each of those choices shaping the happy (or tragic) ending of the stories in which they’re made.’ In what ways have books shaped the story of your life?
These are the books I chose to list in a post about books that shaped or defined me back in 2005:
1. A Severed Wasp by Madeleine L’Engle. Why did this book impress me so much when I first read it several years ago? It’s about real people attempting to live authentic lives in New York City. It’s about community and how that community is formed. I’m very interested in how families interact, how intentional communities are formed and sustained, especially artistic communities and Christian communities. I think there’s something more there, too, but I can’t put my finger on it.
2. A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Van Auken. Van Auken tells the story of how he re-lived his life with his wife, Davey, after her death, by listening to the music they listened to together and re-reading the books they read together. It may sound maudlin, but it’s not. He also comes to terms with his loss and with the flaws in their relationship and with priorities, how marriage partners who find their ultimate security in Christ and His love can grow closer to each other. But those who hold onto each other jealously and possesively lose the thing they most want to preserve. I think I’m married the way I’m married, very happily I must say, partly because of this book.
3. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. C.S. Lewis talks about joy as an elusive longing for Something that is just out of reach. Tragedy is also an elusive feeling that depends on just the right combination of circumstances. Paton’s book about South Africa under the apartheid system and about the power of forgiveness to redeem, sometimes, is truly tragic. I also think this is what life is like: essentially hopeful, but tragic in the short run. Sometimes the Good is too little , too late.
4. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Life-changing. Lewis puts into words what I believe and why I believe. Definitely part of my mind’s landscape along with the Narnia books, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, and Till We Have Faces.
5. My first homeschooling book was John Holt’s Teach Your Own. This was before I had any children. Even though I use workbooks and curricula with my children, the unschooling, easygoing, let them teach themselves, philosophy is a part of my homeschool, too. I do want them to learn to learn and to enjoy learning, to be self-educators. I’m also drawn again to the sense of community that is present in Holt’s books.
6. The book that most shaped my life as a young Christian teenager was The Edge of Adventure by Keith Miller and Bruce Larson. I haven’t re-read this book in a long while, and I suspect it’s full of what I would now consider psycho-babble. But at the time the emphasis, again (note the recurring theme), on Christian community and basic Christian disciplines was exactly what I needed to hear. A lot of my ideas about prayer and discerning God’s will and following Christ in obedience came from this book.
7. All the Way Home by Mary Pride. I know that Mary Pride is a lightning rod for criticism and controversy, but her ideas about home and family being a center for economic, spiritual, and social influence were and are liberating for me.
8. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien. Either I’m focused on the ideal of community tonight or else the theme of my whole adult life is comunity and how families come together to form real communities. I’ve wanted to live in Hobbiton, in a nice little hobbit-hole, ever since I first read Tolkien in the late 1960’s.
9. No Graven Image by Elizabeth Elliot. A young missionary finds that God is trustworthy, but not necessarily fathomable. I find the same to be true in my Christian life. This novel and the book of Job are my mainstays in the time of suffering and difficulty.
10. Cheaper by the Dozen by Ernestine and Frank Gilbreth. Was it from this book or somewhere else that I got the idea that it could be fun to have a lot of children and to teach them things in my own home? I think some of the nonfiction I listed above (and life) fleshed out the details, but Cheaper by the Dozen planted the seed of an idea long before I even realized the idea was there.
Hard task. On another day, I’d probably pick an entirely different set of books. And I didn’t even begin to list my childhood influences–the picturebooks that formed my imagination and the chapter books that made me think and made me grow. I’ll save all that for another post, but the ten books above have definitely shaped and do continue to define who I am. What books made you who you are or confirmed your direction in life and work?
I might tweak the list a bit after more than ten years of continued contemplation:
Instead of Mary Pride’s book, I would list The Hidden Art of Homemaking by Edith Schaeffer. Mrs. Schaeffer’s books about incorporating art into everyday life is and was inspiring to me as I lived a typical suburban life—and did it in sometimes not-so-typical ways.
The Hobbit was certainly an influence, but perhaps The Lord of the Rings did even more to give me images and role models for courage and perseverance and finding joy in the small things in life.
What books have shaped or defined your life and thought?
