Blogging the Spirit: Adventures in Spirituality on the First Sunday of the Month
How do you connect to God? Are there practices or pieces of art or music or liturgy that evoke this relationship?
Is there a book or poem that ‘gets you’ every time, or a writer who sparks you in those hard moments?
Do you find this connection through trees, the changing of seasons, the cycle of the moon?
In my desire to expand my mostly classic literature blog to reflect the variety of books I read, a brief exchange with fellow bloggers regarding religion and spirituality has prompted me to create an informal monthly event shared across social media.
Some suggestions: a book review, a personal post on a particular practice, share a photo or piece of art. Is there a word or phrase or passage from your liturgy or spiritual books that you find beautiful? Does a particular melody or a song connect you to God every time you hear it?
If you don’t believe in God or religion but you are inspired by life share, too.
We can find each other with the hashtag #BloggingTheSpirit to use on Twitter and Instagram and other social media. And you can put a link to your post in the comments of my first Sunday post.
The main branch of my city library is huge. It has several floors of library books, a cafe on the bottom floor and theaters for plays and films. It also has a stellar used book department with clean books in great shape in all the various categories. But its claim to fame, in my opinion, is the ‘Vintage Books’ section. Donated mostly from estate sales, there are amazing finds here. There might be a first edition of something, but mainly they are just old books or classics in hardcover or well-known books in their time, 1900-1950, that I have heard of but never read.
Yesterday, I had an exceptionally fruitful excursion that cost me only $5.75!
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
I have read very little by Didion, but this title always intrigued me: struggling through grief and heartbreak after the deaths of a husband and daughter.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
I was so happy to find a good copy of this. Molly Guptill Manning wrote about this book in her excellent, When Books Went to War. One of the ways publishers supported the war effort was to publish classic books in thin, small editions that could fit in a back pocket. Soldiers wrote to Betty Smith saying this book made them think of their hometowns.
The Paris Sketch Book, William Thackeray
Holy cow, folks…complete with illustrations by the author. I would love to know about the person in whose collection this was.
How to Astonish the French–An English Family in the Tuileries.
Summer, Edith Wharton
An important work of Wharton’s; it is an honest look at a young woman’s sexual awakening.
The Seven Story Mountain, Thomas Merton
One of my reading interests is religion and spirituality. I especially enjoy reading books about spiritual journeys and faith struggles. Regardless of the particular religion or spiritual path, I can relate and feel kinship.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harold Bloom, Ed.
Now that I have read several major works by Hawthorne, I was interested in this critical analysis of his work.
The Bostonians, Henry James
Oh, this reminds me of college literary courses! And it’s been that long since I read it. It was published in magazine installments before it came out in book form a few years before Edward Bellamy’s, Looking Backward (set in Boston), which I just reviewed, so the title caught my eye.
The Scarlet Pimpernel, Emmuska Orczy
Confession: I am a product of Saturday morning Looney Tunes and like many kids of that generation, my first exposure to classic literature and classical music was from those cartoons (and Ed Sullivan, but that is a post for another day)! Elmer Fudd is forever seared in my mind as he sings The Ride of the Valkyries and I can still see Daffy Duck sword fighting as The Scarlet Pumpernickel. Alas, it is time I read the actual classic.
Colonial Folkways, Charles M. Andrews
This slim volume was written in 1919 and describes daily life in colonial America. The subject interests me and I enjoy seeing how historians through the decades view their subject.
The Telltale Heart and other Writings, Edgar Allan Poe
I don’t have any works by Poe at the moment and wanted something for any ‘Scary October’ readathons.
The Winter of our Discontent, John Steinbeck
If I say I have never read a Steinbeck, can I still say I am a reader?; that I love old books? And yes, I have yet to read The Grapes of Wrath. I think I need a ‘California readathon’ 🙂
My sister is delivering to me a new bookcase this weekend. When she first offered it I was sure there would be a lot of empty space…
Up with life. Stamp out all small and large indignities. Leave everyone alone to make it without pressure. Down with hurting. Lower the standard of living. Do without plastics. Smash the servo-mechanisms. Stop grabbing. Snuff the breezes and hug the kids. Love all love. Hate all hate.
~John D. MacDonald
Happy Sunday, All!
I don’t have a kid, so I’m hugging what’s closest 🙂
My first Classics Club Spin! This will help me as I organize my reading for the next few months, and I need that, because, oh my, I get distracted with all that’s out there and not on my 5 year list!
The deal: Choose twenty books from your aforementioned list, number them 1-20 and put them in categories of your (or their) own choosing (optional). On Monday, December 7th, they will choose a number and that is the one you must read by February 1, 2016.
If you are not familiar with the Classics Club and you want to be, go HERE!
Five I can’t wait to read:
1. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
2. Betty A. Smith, Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943)
3. Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights (1847)
4. Willa Cather, O Pioneers! (1913)
5. Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719)
Five whose authors I know, but don’t know this work:
6. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899)
7. Wilkie Collins, Woman in White (1859)
8. William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885)
9. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
10. Benjamin Disraeli, Coninigsby (1844)
Five I am embarrassed to realize I never read:
11. Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind (1936)
12. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
13. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)
14. Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca (1938)
15. Virginia Woolf, The Years (1937)
Five I am dreading or feel obligated to read:
16. Charles Kingsley, Hypatia or New Foes with an Old Face (1853)
17. Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855)
18. Herman Melville, Moby Dick (1851)
19. H. G. Wells, TheWar of the Worlds (1898)
20. Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe (1820)
Relevant Obscurity 