November

Kelsie's Pick

November can be a busy month with Thanksgiving traveling and family time so I wanted to schedule a book that is beautiful and fairly easy to read. So we are going to read Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. We read Hannah Coulter a few years ago (August 2021) and it received a lot of love from Book Club readers. We also just finished a Wallace Stegner book in May which has made me want to revisit Berry as well (since Stegner was Berry’s professor at Stanford). I have not personally read Jayber Crow, but it is usually Berry lovers’ first or second favorite (right before or after Hannah). So I feel very confident assigning it for us all to read together!

I have heard that some people need to come to Berry through his fiction to appreciate his non-fiction and that some people need to do the opposite. So I may “assign” an optional essay this month as well called Think Little that has been very influential on how I think and I think might open us up to his fiction even more fully. I personally love his fiction and essays and didn’t feel like I needed one before appreciating the other. Berry is also a poet, though I haven’t read many of his poems myself. The Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front is very good!

There is a Close Reads HQ series on Jayber Crow from way back in 2015. It was one of the first books they did so it will be fun to go back and listen!

Apparently none of my real life or internet friends (that I could track down and peer pressure into writing for me) have read Jayber Crow so my new Substack friend,

Elise Boratenski

of The Commonplace Catholic, came to my rescue. If you don’t already follow Elise she has a lovely platform where she keeps a real life Commonplace book and then writes about the books she has finished using her Commonplace quotes. She has written about a lot of our previous book club books, so please go read those while you’re waiting for the next book to drop! I knew Elise had read and loved Hannah Coulter so I reached out asking about Jayber Crow, but she hasn’t read it yet (though she did offer to read it in a few days so she could write about it and I greatly appreciate that commitment to the literary life) but said she would co-write this with her husband, Andrew, describing his experience of reading Jayber Crow for the first time:

There are books and authors that can become part of your household culture, touchstones that can help you reflect on and refine the values you hope to live by. Wendell Berry's books have, in many ways, become that for my husband and I. Jayber Crow was my husband's introduction to Wendell Berry. It's rare for me to have vivid memories of reading a book for the first time. It's even rarer for for me to remember someone else's first time reading a book. Jayber Crow, however, is the exception to the rule. I have clear memories of my husband eagerly sharing favorite passages with me, and urging me over and over again to give the book a try. He found that titular character Jayber Crow's search for home, community, and belonging struck a chord deep within him, causing him to reflect on the type of life he hoped to cultivate for himself and our family. And as he reflected, he shared his thoughts with me, and those thoughts turned into dreams and goals that have since informed decisions we've made about where we live, how we use technology, and how we spend our free time. Furthermore, Jayber Crow is book that depicts a man wrestling with questions about what constitutes true love, who God is, and the role He plays in our lives. As Jayber Crow says: "This is a book about Heaven, but I must say too that...I have wondered sometimes if it would not finally turn out to be a book about hell." It is rare to find modern literature that unapologetically deals with the virtues of faith and love, and sees God as a real and vital force, indeed as the real and vital force, in the life of the individual. Such theological depth is another reason my husband loved Jayber Crow, and another reason he continued to tell me, in the years since he first read Jayber Crow, to give Wendell Berry a try. I finally read my first Wendell Berry books (Hannah Coulter, The Memory of Old Jack, and various short stories) and am excited to finally read Jayber Crow too.

Before I found Elise’s husband I had put an SOS signal out on my Substack Notes and

James M. Decker

(who happens to also be the Mayor of Stamford, Texas) replied that he had just written a piece on Jayber Crow, Thy Will Be Done (he also links to two other pieces he wrote earlier on Jayber as well). I read his essay and teared up…you should definitely read it too!

If you missed October, here it is!

Stay tuned for December featuring our newest Reading Revisited Group Leader (in the Chicago area if you’re interested with a possible virtual option)

Hannah Suire

writing about her favorite author and a book that probably already looms large in all of our imaginations…

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