I always read a lot for pure pleasure, and that continues during my sabbatical. I just read the three Anthony Horowitz mysteries that begin with The Word Is Murder, for example. Lots of Donna Leon during our time in Europe. I reread a couple of Terry Pratchetts. As a sabbatical activity, though, I’m also reading more books that, while also enjoyable, I chose in the hopes that they would expand my thinking in some way. Here’s the list.
The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, Becky Chambers. The last time I noted what I’d been reading, I had just started this. About five minutes later, I finished it. I’m joking, but wow, are her books un-put-downable. I need to read everything she has written.
Several books for my United class: Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert; How to Be an Artist, Jerry Saltz; The Creative Act, Rick Rubin; The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life, Twyla Tharp. More on these when I write more about the class, probably.
Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition: The Practice of Stillness in the Movement for Liberation, Rima Vesely-Flad. Interesting and encouraging exploration of how African-American Buddhists integrate their own heritage in ways that honor and develop aspects of Buddhism that tend to be sidelined in most, predominantly white, “convert” (as opposed to “heritage” or “Asian immigrant”) sanghas: ancestor veneration, for example. And also, and of most interest to me, how Black Buddhists unite political and personal liberation. Again, in my experience US (convert, white-dominated) Buddhism can be pretty focused on the individual, whereas Buddhism has powerful potential for social transformation. So this is exciting. And makes more than anecdotal my experiences of a couple of US Buddhist teachers, Lama Rod Owens and angel Kyodo Williams, who are African-American, are wise, solidly grounded in Buddhism, and passionately engaged in justice-making.
Lost and Found, Kathryn Schulz. Beautifully written–that sounds like I mean poetic, but it’s more that I feel like Schulz is a very thoughtful, dear friend speaking directly to me–essay on loss and its opposites, in the form of a memoir of her father’s dying and the beginning of her relationship with the woman who is now her wife. I had read part of it as an essay in The New Yorker, but I didn’t know there was a book until a colleague recommended it: thanks, Becky Brooks!
A book I had not quite finished, and can’t because I don’t remember the title or author and I can’t find it in the “recently returned” lists on any of my apps. It looks at three kids of color as they try to get an education in the racist conditions of the US’s economic, educational, and incarcarceration systems. It’s pretty recent. If you think you know what it might be, please help!
The Measure, Nikki Erlick. One day every adult on earth receives a box with their name engraved on it and a string inside. A bit clunky; she creates engaging characters, but tends to tell, rather than use their lives to show, how such a phenomenon might change us. But it’s her first novel and I’ll look forward to seeing what she writes next.
Various stories via the podcast Levar Burton Reads. If you love to be read short fiction, I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s especially good for sci fi / fantasy lovers, because while “the only thing these stories have in common is that [he] love[s] them and [he] hope[s] you will, too,” he clearly has a real love for speculative fiction.
As an aside, I hear there are people who don’t think audiobooks count as reading. I’m sure they don’t think that blind people aren’t really reading, or that children who can’t read for themselves yet aren’t having a significant literary experience when an adult reads to them, or that if your sweetie reads to you in bed he is reading a book but you’re not, so I’m sure they just haven’t thought it through.
And in various stages of completion at the moment are:
Justice is Coming: How Progressives Are Going to Take Over the Country and America Is Going to Love It, Cenk Uygur: political analysis, very engagingly written and already reminding me that US American voters are far more progressive than our federal representatives.
Goodness and Advice, Judith Jarvis Thomson: hard-core moral philosophy by the author of “A Defense of Abortion,” which essay I have preached on because it had a huge effect on how I see the ethics of abortion, and I think it should do the same for our national policies.
The Covenant of Water, Abraham Verghese. the new novel by the author of Cutting for Stone. His writing is great, but somehow the story isn’t as compelling as Cutting for Stone, or maybe it is just too slow or my attention span too short. While sick, I’ve been doing more puzzles and watching movies or TV, less reading. But I am in line for Zadie Smith’s new novel, Fraud, from the library, so I have a self-imposed incentive: finish one novel before I get the point that the next is waiting on the Hold shelf.
What have you read recently that you recommend?
Sermons in Stones 
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