Taste, as St Augustine said some 1,700 years ago, is subjective. That should be acknowledged upfront whenever someone recommends a reading list. In my case, I need to state too that I’m not a full-time critic. It’s not as if I’ve read 200 books this past year and these rose to the top. I read when I can, follow book reviews, am fortunate enough to live with academic colleagues who tip each other off on good books and have friends who will occasionally tell me that a certain book “has to be read”. From that comes this list. These are the books that most touched me in the past year.
Among books on spirituality, I single out these:
✣The Taste of Silence by Bieke Vandekerckhove. They say that the book you need to read finds you at the time you most need to read it. That was the case here. Vandekerckhove is a young Belgian writer who, 20 years ago, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Her normal life ended with that sentence and, after an initial descent into darkness, she found strength by making an inner journey into the deep silence that resides inside us all. Her description of her journey is remarkable.
✣Beyond the Abortion Wars: A Way Forward for a New Generation by Charles Camosy. This is an important book that will healthily shake up both pro-life and pro-choice readers by showing that not only are we closer to each other than we thought, but also that there is a way, together, to walk out of the present political, social, religious and legal stalemate within which we find ourselves.
✣The Reluctant Disciple: Daring to Believe by David Wells. Wells, a young British layman, offers us a warm, witty and exquisitely balanced insight into how spirituality and life interface in today’s world for a person caught up in the ordinary duties and concerns of life. Among other things, it’s a spirituality for those who don’t like the word “spirituality”.
✣Mercy in the City by Kerry Weber. Weber, a young writer on the editorial staff at America magazine, chronicles her own journey through a Lenten season. This is a warm read and a very good book, with deceptive depth.
✣A Religion of One’s Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World by Thomas Moore. This book will upset a lot of people because of its rather existential concept of community and ecclesiology, but Thomas Moore writes, as always, with a freshness, insight and depth that brings a healthy challenge to everyone.
✣The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction by Matthew Crawford. Not a spirituality book in se, but it delivers on its title. If you can wade through the taxing philosophical parts, Crawford gives you a lot, really a lot, to think about.
In terms of novels, I particularly liked these:
✣The Children Act by Ian McEwan. This major novelist gives us a warm, easy-to-read story that packs a deeper metaphor.
✣ The Anchoress by Robyn Cadwallader. Did you ever wonder how people like Julian of Norwich lived? What exactly was an anchoress? Cadwallader draws us a fictional picture of their lives.
✣Purity by Jonathan Franzen. It takes 600 pages for this story to sort itself out, but it’s vintage Franzen. He tells a good tale.
✣Lying Awake by Mark Salzman. The story of a young Carmelite nun who has to discern illness from mysticism. This book is 15 years old, but well worth the read.
✣The Painter of Silence by Georgina Harding. Set in Romania just after the Second World War, Harding sets humanity and soul into the tragedy of war and into human brokenness in general. A great read, along the lines of All the Light We Cannot See.
Finally, a special category. Each year I write a column on suicide. I don’t claim any special insight into the singular sadness that surrounds a suicide, both in society at large and in Church circles. I write on this issue simply because there’s just too little out there to help anyone understand and cope with the loss of a loved one through suicide.
During the past year, I received three separate books, all written by a mother who had lost a child to suicide. The stories, while stunningly unique in that each person is his or her own mystery, bear an eerie resemblance to one another. This is not because they were each written by a mother trying to come to grips with the tragic loss of her child, but because in each case a grieving mother is describing a very similar kind of person: namely, a beautiful, over-sensitive young person who, in effect, is too bruised to cope with ordinary life. All three of these books are well worth reading:
✣Healing the Wound of my Daughter’s Suicide by Lois Severson.
✣Damage Done by Suicide of an Only Son by Gloria Hutchinson.
✣My Daughter, Her Suicide and God by Marjorie Antus.
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