Even on sabbatical, my pile of books to read grows faster than I can actually read them. So many heavy hitters await, like Pauli Murray, Walter Benjamin, and the memoir Lost and Found, by Karen Schulz.

I’m reading for fun, too: I reread Curtain (Agatha Christie)–what a finale–and have just finished The Sword of Summer, the first in Rick Riordan’s Magnus Chase series. The munchkin likes the Percy Jackson ones the most, and I do want to catch up there, but I particularly love Norse mythology, which is the setting for this series, so she recommended them. I got the second, The Hammer of Thor, from the library today.

In the more serious category, I have recently read:

Lila, Marilynne Robinson–as with Gilead, this was a reread and I decided to listen to the audiobook. Marvelous.

How to Be an Artist, Jerry Saltz

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, Elizabeth Gilbert

The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life, Twyla Tharp

And I am currently reading The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rick Rubin. All four of those are for my upcoming grad school course, The Arts As Leadership. I am finding Rubin less simpatico than the others. That may mean I have more to learn from him, or it may not.

Yesterday, a book I pre-ordered arrived. It’s of interest not just because it’s by the new president of the Unitarian Universalist Association and a colleague I admire greatly, but because: ecowomanism! So I have dived in.

What have you read lately that you’d recommend to others?