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Jun 3, 2021Liked by Leah Libresco Sargeant

I want to recommend Natalie Carnes’ Motherhood to every mother I know! It’s a beautifully written mediation on motherhood following the themes of Augustine’s Confessions.

I second the Uprooted by Gracy Olmstead recommendation... also read recently — Stephanie Paulsell’s Honoring the Body and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a new edition with an introduction and reading questions by Karen Swallow Prior.

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Jun 3, 2021Liked by Leah Libresco Sargeant

I love reading lists! Recent reads and recommendations: Gracy Olmstead’s Uprooted, Simone Weil’s The Need for Roots, Patricia Polacco’s picture books with my kids, Laura Mooneyham White’s Jane Austen’s Anglicanism. It's been grand to reread Austen with White, does a superb job of acquainting the reader into Austen’s world.

Upcoming: I am looking forward to reading Charlotte Mason’s series on education this summer. I’ve loved gleaning from Mason’s work through secondary sources, but I’m excited to read her own words in depth. I also have Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop on deck, and I’m planning to finish Mary Carruthers’ wonderful The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture.

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I've been reading Rumer Godden's books, including "In This House of Brede" and "Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy." The latter is about a (real) Dominican third order that mixes women who have been in prison and women who have a more 'typical' vocational path and only a few people know which is which. Beautiful. I am stoked for Erika Bachiochi's forthcoming "The Rights of Women" on Mary Wollstonecraft. I got an advanced copy to review and it's wonderful.

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On my list now: Corregidora by Gayl Jones, Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen (pen name of Danish author Karen Blixen, who also wrote "Babette's Feast"), The Wild Orchid / The Burning Bush and Madame Dorthea by Sigrid Undset, and (a re-read) How to Read a Novel by Caroline Gordon. Just finished The Five Wounds by Kirstin Valdez Quade and found it moving and insightful, along with her prizewinning short story collection Night at the Fiestas.

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Recently read and loved Charis in the World of Wonders by Marly Youmans. Sort of a Puritan Cinderella story and the poetic language was enchanting, though the death of a child about the age of my own in the first chapter was hard to read. In non-fiction I read Blessed Are the Nones by Stina Kielsmeier-Cook and felt so. seen. Would highly recommend to anyone who is (or is feeling) "spiritually single" or is looking for a faith community to belong to. Next up I have The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah and maybe this is the summer that I'll read Revelations of Divine Love! Oh, and I'll definitely be joining Joy Clarkson's book club on Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - I got that book for Christmas and read it in January and I liked it, but I also had a distinct feeling that there was so much more to it than I was getting. I think it will help to hear Joy and others tell me what I missed!

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Most recent books I've read by women: Patricia Lockwood's No One Is Talking About This, which I only read because I got assigned it for review but ended up thinking was pretty extraordinary; and a late draft of Bridget Eileen Rivera's forthcoming Heavy Burdens, about harms experienced by LGBT Christians in our churches, which tells a lot of important stories. Up next is Alyssa Cole's When No One Is Watching. Lol I guess the theme of my distaff reading is "Things No One Is Doing."

Underrated weird little book: Sayaka Murata's Convenience Store Woman, which really charmed me; I reviewed it here: https://kirkcenter.org/reviews/retail-heaven/

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I've been enjoying Laurie King's Mary Russell novels this past year--Mary being a sort of female feminist Sherlock Holmes (she starts as his protégé, during the nineteen teens). The prose is exceedingly well written--smooth and witty, and you definitely want to keep turning pages. The other great female find for me has been Patricia Wrede's YA fantasy series (there are several).

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Rosemary Sutcliff's trilogy beginning with The Eagle of the Ninth --- she's so good with imagery and evoking the feeling of a place.

Elizabeth Goudge --- ever and always, this time the Eliot trilogy. It's a testament to her that even the books that aren't her best work still sweep you off your feet in places.

Robin Lorsch Wildfang, Rome's Vestal Virgins, for a book I'm doing on the last of that order. It's so extremely detailed about their daily life and, while not overlooking the academic battles about disputed passages and things, manages to give you a sense of them as real people.

And Building the Benedict Option! I'm part of a new church-history-reading group at my church and hosted the first gathering, and since we're all coming out of pandemic restrictions with our sense of community rather frayed, I wanted to pack it as full as I could. And I really really liked the book.

That was a good article you linked to. I'm going to have to share it with some of the people I know.

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I've really enjoyed Jenny Odell's How to do Nothing, Grace Olmstead's Uprooted and the poetry of Claire Wahmanholm.

Here's Claire in Couplet Poetry: https://coupletpoetry.com/claire-wahmanholm/

And here, one of her many poems on motherhood: http://32poems.com/poem/claire-wahmanholm-2/

I also loved this piece in Guernica by Eloghosa Osunde, also on motherhood & womanhood: https://www.guernicamag.com/gold/

I'm excited for There's a Revolution Outside, My Love edited by Tracy K. Smith and John Freeman: https://bombmagazine.org/articles/theres-a-revolution-outside-interview-hwang-kleber-diggs/

I've preordered (they sold out!) a beautiful book of quilts by Black women created in response to George Floyd's murder, We Are the Story: A Visual Response to Racism: https://textilecentermn.org/product/wearethestory-book/

And Broken by Jenny Lawson is also high on my list.

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I recently finished Nomadland by Jessica Bruder. It's an excellent nonfiction look at people who live in RVs and vans, most of whom do so because they cannot afford to live in more permanent homes. I believe there is a recent movie based on it. I highly recommend the book. It's fun and interesting, and I learned a lot about a big swath of our disenfranchised brothers and sisters.

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Cat’s Eye, by Margaret Atwood. It’s a so-called Southern Ontario Gothic about nine-year-old girls being horrible to each other. There are a ton of Shakespeare references and a possible cameo by the Virgin Mary. I’ve re-read it nearly every year for, oh, twelve years.

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>> What’s something you’re looking forward to reading soon (be it a book or an open tab that you’ll definitely get to)?<<

ROAR by Dr. Stacy Sims. I’m now officially menopausal and an athlete. She writes good helpful interventions for women athletic types and will be releasing a book about menopause in the near future.

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