September (Part 1)
A Book About Books
Hello! Welcome to Book Drop Day. I hope you enjoy this bookish day of literary excitement! I know I will. I enjoyed putting this day together and I am looking forward to you experiencing it.
I had so many people volunteer their time to write about these books for us so, first of all, I wanted to say thank you to them! Secondly, if you enjoy their writing, please click on their links and follow them in order to read their other writing (which is worth reading). One of my favorite aspects of Substack is the community of writers who are so insightful and generous with their time and writing. Thirdly, some of our contributors today are fellow book club members, so if you enjoy their insights, encourage them to write more as well! My goal for this platform is that it will be a place for many readers to delve deeper into their literary life by writing. If you’d like to join that vision please send me a message!
On a separate note: There are a lot of Amazon links in these posts* and I recently learned that it is Amazon’s yearly Book Sale (until May 20th). Book Drop Day was not planned to match up with this sale, but it feels like a happy accident! If you are planning to buy any of the books new, you can get up for 50% off right now. Please, as always, feel free to buy from other vendors and use your library (I do!), but I promise that all of the books I am recommending on this list are ones I either have or will read multiple times so they would be good ones to have on your shelf.
And now, without further ado, we’re off!
Every September we read a book about books. I always hope that reading one book about reading and/or writing will prime us to be able to read all of our other books even better than we would have otherwise.
This year we will be reading Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. It is a beautiful little book and I am very excited to meditate on how our faith affects our reading and how our reading affects our faith. Madeleine definitely has her theological quirks, but I encourage you to appreciate her where she is and enjoy her musings on the creative process.
Remembering the lovely things we have forgotten is one of the reasons for all art.
If you have ever read any of L’Engle’s fiction then I will warn you that this has a very different tone. However, if you have read any of her Crosswicks Journals (which are also lovely) then I think this will feel very familiar. L’Engle has a beautiful way of talking about how her art (writing) affects her faith and vice versa..It speaks to me, even as someone who has never had any fiction writing plans. The way she talks about stories has informed how I read and how it affects my relationship with God. I hope Madeleine adds some beauty to your literary life this September.
I have often been asked if my Christianity affects my stories, and surely it is the other way around; my stories affect my Christianity, restore me, shake me by the scruff of the neck, and pull this straying sinner into an awed faith.
You will notice that my copy of this book looks a little worse for the wear. That is because the last time I read it I was very largely pregnant with my fourth and in that last few grumpy weeks before her arrival. I was carting Walking on Water around with me in my bag because she has a way of adding beauty into the mundane. I had also thrown a coffee into my bag and knew it wouldn’t spill if it was sitting up perfectly, but my husband grabbed my bag and put it on its side and coffee spilled everywhere. I was not in a good place for book destruction (no matter how accidental) to be taken gracefully so the poor man felt way more guilty than he needed have. But now I would like to go back in time and thank him because he has given me an unexpected gift. When I went to look for quotes in my book I discovered that all of my notes and underlines have disappeared. If you’ve ever desecrated a book by underlining in pen (the horror I now feel at having once done this) apparently all you have to do to erase it is dip it in some coffee*. So now I will get to pretend that I am reading it for the first time all over again!
*I do not actually recommend this method as the pages of your book will never be the same again!
It was through story that I was able to make some small sense of the confusions and complications of life.
I couldn’t find any real life friends that have read this so I found this excerpt from ’s book about books, Book Girl (which I also highly recommend) about Walking on Water…
(L’Engle’s) fascinating comparison of the creative Christian to Mary, the mother of Jesus, as he or she is asked to become a bearer of the work of the Holy Spirit, has encouraged and strengthened me in the vocation of writer as well as that of homemaker, friend and wife…
Stay tuned for September (Part 2) featuring our very own and some short stories coming soon…
*As always, some of the links are affiliate links. The few cents earned with each purchase you make after clicking links (at no extra cost to you) go toward the time and effort it takes to keep Literature Book Club running and I appreciate it!
Some of the essays in this book are favourites of mine! I think it’s a must-read for Christian creatives (with a giant dollop of caveats for some of the wonky theology.) Maybe I’ll need to write about it…