Reading Update

Book #49 of 2026 was Scythe, by Neal Shusterman. I hadn't even heard of this YA book before, even though it came out in 2016. I have the second one in the series on hold at the library!

 

Book #50 was The Children Act, by Ian McEwan. It looks like I'm going to have to read more of his books.

 

Book #51 was American Wildflowers: A Literary Field Guide, edited by Susan Barba. I didn't love everything in this anthology, but there was a lot of good.

 

Book #52 was Refugee, by Alan Gratz. This book follows the stories of three families of refugees in three different time periods. The first family is running from Nazi Germany, the second from Cuba, and the third from Syria. It's listed as suitable for grades 5-7, but I'd be careful with material as wrenching as this. 

 

Book #53 was Vigil, by George Saunders. You've probably never read anything like this before; I sure haven't. I just looked up my review of the other George Saunders book I've read, Lincoln in the Bardo, and saw that I wrote the same thing. Well, it was true about that book too. Both of them are about death, and both communicate so much in a very elliptical and stream of consciousness style. 

 

Book #54 was The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame. Ann Patchett, the owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, makes weekly reels with books that she recommends. A couple of weeks ago she mentioned this one, saying that many of her friends talk about it as one of the formative books of their childhood, but she realized she'd never read it. I'd never read it either, so I put a hold on it at the library, and now I have read it. I enjoyed it a lot!

 

Book #55 was The Storm, by Rachel Hopkins, an atmospheric tale of a beach hotel in Alabama and the various hurricanes that have hit it.

 

Book #56 was the sequel to #49, Thunderhead, by Neal Shusterman. Now I'm waiting for the third one to become available at the library. I can't imagine how Shusterman is going to continue the story, which is in a pretty big mess at the end of the second book. 

 

Book #57 was The Horse and his Boy, by C. S. Lewis. I don't know how many times I've read this book, but I always love it.

 

Book #58 was Tana French's The Keeper, the third in the Cal Hooper trilogy. It wasn't my favorite of the three, but I did enjoy it.

 

Book #59 was a book of poetry that I've been wanting to read for a while, Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry. These are poems that Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison wrote to each other and sent through the mail or in faxes. 

 

Book #60 was Prayer in the Night: For those Who Work or Watch or Weep, by Tish Harrison Warren. Warren focuses on the prayers of Compline to write a beautiful look at nighttime, suffering, and prayer. 

Reading Update

Book #39 of 2026 was The War I Finally Won, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. This is the sequel to The War that Saved My Life, which I read earlier this year. (The link is to what I wrote about it at the time.) I was happy to get to read more about Ada and her experiences in World War II London.

 

Book #40 was Good Soil: The Education of an Accidental Farmhand, by Jeff Chu. Chu participated in the "Farminary" while attending Princeton Theological Seminary, and this is a memoir centered around what he and his spiritual life experienced there as a Chinese-American, gay "writer, speaker, reporter, editor, preacher and teacher," as he describes himself on his website. 

 

Book #41 was Arundhati Roy's memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me. I learned a lot about this author, including about her political activities in India. You can really tell where her strange, atmospheric novels came from when you read about her life.

 

Book #42 was a book club pick, West With Giraffes, by Lynda Rutledge. We all loved this historical novel set in dust bowl America and including giraffes! 

 

Book #43 was We'll Always Have Summer, the third in the Summer I Turned Pretty trilogy, which I first read back in 2016 when my middle schoolers were so into them. 

 

Book #44 was The Poppy Fields, by Nikki Erlick. I enjoyed this novel about grief and healing.

 

Book #45 was Lake Effect, by Cynthia d'Aprix Sweeney, the story of pair of neighbor families that are changed forever by the decisions of two of the parents. We learn about what happened in 1977 and then we get to see the next generation many years later as they deal with the long-term effects. 

 

Book #46 was This is Not About Us, by Allegra Goodman. Not a novel but connected short stories, this book introduces us to the members of a Jewish-American family who lose one of their own in the first story. I enjoyed meeting all these finely-drawn, convincing characters. 

 

Book #47 was Kate Bowler's new book, Joyful, Anyway, which explores how to have joy in a world that is so full of not-joy. 

 

Book #48 was More Than Enough, by Anna Quindlen. I really enjoyed this novel about a DNA test and a book club.  

SJT May: Beginnings and Endings

 

This month's Spiritual Journey Thursday host, Chris Margocs, has asked us to reflect on beginnings and endings. She commented that there are a lot of ending-type transitions in May, like graduations and final exams. We have several weeks left of school, but we're already involved in external exams and getting ready for the internal ones. Plus there are performances coming up, report card comments to be written, Sports Day, and so on. It makes me tired just thinking about all of it. 

 

Chris quoted Isaiah 43:18-19 in her prompt: "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?" It's easy for me to dwell on the past. Sometimes the memories are happy ones, and sometimes I'm ruminating on difficult times that I haven't fully been able to let go. It's good for me to be reminded that the story isn't over yet; there are still chapters ahead that I haven't even imagined. (I certainly never thought I'd be living in Uganda at this time in my life, and I'm loving that unexpected chapter!) 

 

Drawn by Chris' quote, I too went to Isaiah, and I found some verses a couple of chapters later where God is speaking to Israel. He says that He was there in the beginning of Israel's journey and is still there in old age: "Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb; even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you." (Isaiah 46:3-4.) Later in verses 9 and 10 He says, "I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done." When I read these words, I realize how often my focus is on the concerns of this moment, and how hard it is to keep an eternal perspective. But when I think about the beginning and the end, both of my life (from before my birth to my current gray hair era) and of time (from ancient times into a distant future still unknown), it's easier to remember how small I am in the scheme of things, and how very little is mine to control. 

 

Thinking of beginnings, middles, and ends made me remember Billy Collins' wonderful poem "Aristotle." It's very difficult to excerpt, so maybe you should just go read the whole thing here. I decided to write my own version.

 

School Year
after Billy Collins


This is the beginning. 
Almost anything can happen.
You’ve got your blank planner, 
your blank classroom walls,
your blankety blank lesson plans to create.
Your class lists have names
familiar and unfamiliar,
but everyone will be new after the summer,
full of energy and the joy of learning.

This is the middle.
Now the grade book has blanks,
but they are messy, like missing teeth.
Now the parent conferences have
both good and bad to report,
the pencils are stubby and blunt,
and it’s time to buy the next size of school uniforms.

And this is the end,
the chapters in the textbook we won’t get to,
the lost and found overflowing with hoodies,
the shushing sound of exams
as scratching pens fill blank pages.
Graduation is almost here
with joy and tears,
and then the weeks of vacation
leading us back to 
the beginning
again. 

 

©Ruth Bowen Hersey 

 

Check out Chris' blog to see what others have written about for this month's SJT!  

 

 

Poetry Friday: Joining NPM in Progress

National Poetry Month has been passing me by this year. I did participate in the Progressive Poem, but other than that I have barely read any poetry, let alone written any. 

 

Since I don't teach English any more, I don't come across as much poetry as I used to in the course of my daily teaching job. But since moving here to Uganda I have had the privilege of getting involved more with drama. We're doing a play right now, a musical adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and last night was our dress rehearsal. I was right in the middle of the front row in my position as prompter. 

 

There are lots of reasons to love drama, and one that I've been focusing on lately is how analog it is. The kids are just out there on the stage performing. If they make a mistake, so be it; they just keep going. There are no extra takes to make it perfect. They aren't watching someone else perform; they are doing it. They are present, body and soul, belting out their songs, declaiming their lines, giggling and being shushed backstage. 

 

Last night as I turned the pages of my script and supplied words as needed, I found myself enjoying myself so much. I've seen how much our middle school actors have improved over the weeks of practice, the challenges they faced, the rehearsals before and after school, and even on a Saturday. 

 

Does the world need another performance, when you could watch YouTube for the rest of time without repeating yourself? Arguably, no. But is it worth it to put in all this work to make a play? Yes, absolutely it is! How much pleasure the audience will get on our opening night, a couple of hours from now!  

 

This morning, after dragging myself into school, I sat at my desk and lost track of time reading poems online. I just celebrated my 20th blog birthday yesterday, so I was reading past poetry posts. I was thinking back to those days when I used to write a lot of poems. In fact, I was thinking so much that I missed the morning faculty meeting. 

 

Does the world need more poems from me, when there are millions of poems on the internet, just one click away? When there are piles of books of poetry? When AI can write you a ditty in a jiffy? Arguably, no. But how much pleasure there is to be found in the slow, analog creation of something on the page that wasn't there before!

 

Here are two past posts that seem appropriate.  One is about one time in 2018 when I was late to a faculty meeting (at least I didn't miss it completely like this morning), this time due to tomatoes. And the other is one I wrote in 2012 about purple flowers in a field.

 

Irene is hosting the roundup today. Did you know she just came out with her first adult novel? You can get it on your Kindle for 99 cents here. I have it on mine and I can't wait to read it! 

Happy Blog Birthday to Me!

 

 

Twenty years ago today, I pressed Publish on my first post on this blog. Practically everything was different about my life back then. I now live in a different country, do different work, and miss my kids who are far away. (But I'm still married to the same guy, still teaching, and still following Jesus.) I'm glad I started this blog, even though the postings have been sparse lately. I'm grateful for all the people I've met, many virtually and some in person, through it, and for all the readers who have stopped by. I love looking back to see what I was thinking and reading at different times during those twenty years. I've thought about moving to Substack, where I read regularly, but so far I still love my little Blogspot. Happy blog birthday to me! 

 

Reading Update

Book #26 of 2026 was The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, by Daniel Mendelsohn. This brilliant book is by the author of An Odyssey, which I read in 2019 and wrote about at that link. This book is about Mendelsohn's search for family members who died during the Holocaust in Ukraine. What happened to them exactly? Who were they exactly? What does it mean to remember someone or to remember an event? The book explores all these questions and more. While what happened in Ukraine during World War II is extremely difficult to read about, this book was a rewarding and fascinating read.

 

Book #27 was What We Can Know, by Ian McEwan, another remarkable book. It's set in 2014 and 2119, and both time frames are completely absorbing. In the future, in a world decimated by disasters and climate change, scholars try to figure out what happened in authors' lives in the past. And while they are good at researching, there are some things we just can't know. The ideas about how life could go on in a post-apocalyptic world were mind-blowing, as was the portrayal of the search for knowledge that still could go on in a world like that. I couldn't put this book down.

 

Book #28 was The Teacher of Nomad Land, by Daniel Nayeri. This book is set in Iran during World War II and it won the National Book Award last year. It was very much worth reading.

 

Book #29 was a re-read, The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and "Women's Work", by Kathleen Norris. Short but profound.

 

Books #30 and 35 were also re-reads, this time not profound. They were The Summer I Turned Pretty and It's Not Summer Without You, by Jenny Han. I have the third book in this trilogy on hold at the library. I read these ten years ago when I was teaching middle schoolers who were devouring them.

 

Book #31 was Foster, by Claire Keegan. More of a novella, or even a long short story, than a novel, this was a beautiful book.

 

Book #32 was Birding With Benefits, by Sarah T. Dubb. Of course I had to read this romance because it was about birding. But I would have liked more details of the birding and fewer of the extremely open door sex scenes. I'm sure that opinion does not make me the typical reader of a romance novel. Sometimes the birds the characters were after didn't even get named beyond "a bird," whereas every one of the lovers' body parts definitely did get named and described. The characters were participating in a birding contest based on the Tucson Bird Alliance Birdathon. 

 

Book #33 was a new release, Counterweights, by Shannan Martin. Not only did the library acquire it after I requested it, but I got to check it out first! Martin has written beautiful essays about how to live in a challenging time without losing sight of the small things that give us joy. I loved her awareness of how many people struggle with addiction, poverty, and the justice system, even in the privileged United States. 

 

Book #34 was The Forgotten Garden, by Kate Morton. This was a book club pick, and honestly, I probably wouldn't have finished it otherwise. 

 

Book #36 was Lady Tremaine, by Rachel Hochhauser, a retelling of Cinderella from the point of view of the stepmother. While I can't say it's my favorite version of the story, it did keep me reading.

 

Book #37 was The War that Saved My Life, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. Although this was a Newbery Honor book in 2015, I hadn't even heard of it until recently. Ada and her brother Jamie are evacuated out of London to be safe from bombing during World War II, and their lives are completely changed. Ada and Jamie are abused children in their London lives, and the author realistically presents their reactions due to the trauma they have experienced. So it can be a pretty upsetting read. 

 

Book #38 was Nancy French's memoir Ghosted. I really enjoyed (and was horrified by) this story of a conservative writer in the age of Trump. 

Line 7 of the 2026 Progressive Poem is Here!

April 1 Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference
April 2 Cathy Stenquist at A Little Bit of This and That
April 3 Patricia Franz at Reverie
April 4 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
April 5 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
April 6 Denise Krebs at Dare to Care
April 7 Ruth Hersey at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town
April 8 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
April 9 Margaret Simon at Reflections on the Teche
April 10 Janet Clare Fagel at Reflections on the Teche
April 11 Diane Davis at Starting Again in Poetry
April 12 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
April 13 Linda Mitchell at Another Word Edgewise
April 14 Jone MacCulloch at
April 15 Joyce Uglow at Storied Ink
April 16 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
April 17 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
April 18 Michele Kogan at More Art for All
April 19 Kim Johnson at Common Threads
April 20 Buffy Silverman
April 21 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
April 22 Karen Edmisten
April 23 Heidi Mordhorst at my juicy little universe
April 24 Mary Lee Hahn at A(nother) Year of Reading
April 25 Tanita Davis at Fiction, instead of Lies
April 26 Sharon Roy at Pedaling Poet
April 27 Tracey Kiff-Judson at Tangles and Tails
April 28
April 29
April 30

 

I've been following the poem eagerly so far. I love the piles of books (reminds me of my bedside table) and of course I'm happy any time birds fly into a poem. But I'm a little worried about where the birds are actually going, where they live, and how they interact with the building-high anthologies. I got distracted by many side quests like looking up different parakeets (rhyming with streets) and sadly discovering that lots of them are extinct, researching bird-friendly buildings (the horizontal lines of the books are good because the birds won't collide with buildings like that as easily, since they can see that they are solid, unlike huge sheets of glass often used on skyscrapers) and exploring what kinds of birds live in cities (hint: not just sparrows and pigeons). Most people don't notice urban birds, but I'm sure that's not the case in the Land of Poetry, right? I wanted to put in some gorgeous Ugandan city birds, but I decided to keep the birds generic and maybe even just metaphors. We'll let future poets decide. Denise, I hope it's OK that I changed your period to a comma. Rose, the poem is all yours! 

 

 

 

On my first trip to the Land of Poetry,
I saw anthologies of every color, tall as buildings.
A world of words, wonder on wings, waiting just for me!
Birding for words shimmering, flecked in golden gilding.

binoculars ready, I toured boulevards and side streets
exploring vibrant verses, verses so honest and tender,
feathery lyrics, bright flitting avian athletes  

 

 

 Photo from this article