Stories as a Lens to the World
A reading-wars podcast, award-winning titles, and a round up of the best best-of-the-year lists.
Hello there. I haven’t forgotten about you, dear reader. Shortly after I sent out the October edition, I had a few freelance projects pitched to me that I couldn’t pass up. Since then I’ve edited two forthcoming book manuscripts and written a feature length magazine article that should go to print early next year. So at least I have a decent excuse.
Still, if you’re anything like me, time slips by so quickly. I have yet to wrap my mind around the fact that 2023 is only a month away, yet the clock marches on. There’s something about aging that wizens you to that reality, but experience alone doesn’t offer much in terms of how to face yet another sunset taking you by surprise.
The older I get, the more I find this world confusing, which is one of the reasons stories remain so instructive to me—not to imply that they prescribe black-and-white solutions (they don’t), but they guide you through an experience to help you see what lies on the other side. And the best stories become a lens by which you can see the world a little more clearly.
I’ve been reading through Humphrey Carpenter’s The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, in which he’s catalogued select correspondence from Tolkien that sheds light on his creation of Middle-earth and the wider world in which it exists. While some of the letters come from exchanges with Tolkien’s publishers and colleagues, many of them are addressed to his son Christopher.
In Letter 73, penned four days after D-Day in 1944, Tolkien wrote to Christopher concerning a range of topics, one of them being how he practiced the craft of writing. Here’s what he shared:
I tried a diary with portraits (some scathing some comic some commendatory) of persons and events seen; but I found it was not my line. So I took to ‘escapism’: or really transforming experience into another form and symbol with Morgoth and Orcs and the Eldalie (representing beauty and grace of life and artefact) and so on; and it has stood me in good stead in many hard years since and I still draw on the conceptions then hammered out.
During this time, Christopher was deployed in South Africa as a member of the Royal Air Force, and the world stood transfixed by Hitler’s campaign for world dominance. And what Tolkien shares here is that he made sense of the chaos of his time by transforming it “into another form and symbol,” namely, that which we’ve come to know most notably as The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings.
Other letters to Christopher are peppered with these forms and symbols, as Tolkien often likens Hitler’s pursuit of absolute power to the allure of the One Ring and critiques certain Allied measures as efforts to defeat the power of Sauron with his own dark arts. It’s easy to dismiss this kind of mental wandering as that of a man disconnected from reality, but then I recall the clarity I take from every visit I make to Middle-earth; the hope I find kindled within me; the assurance that virtue and goodness are worthy of protection; and the confidence that there is a shore beyond the western sun where all wars cease and peace reigns.
Remember the gift you have in the written word, in its power to transform the way you see the world around you, to give you pause from the day’s hot takes to ponder what lies beneath the surface, to locate the roots that feed the circumstances we face every day. Remember that story that stirs you to serve, to give, to stand for the light among the darkness.
And if you have yet to find that story, let me know. I have some thoughts.
Until then, enjoy this super-sized list of recommendations for November and December, and keep an eye out for a final 2022 edition of The Foreword later this month with my favorite reads of the year. Happy reading, friends.
October/November Reads
The Chaos Machine by Max Fisher—In the most comprehensive, meticulously reported account of the effects of social media I’ve ever read, Fisher wades through the political spin to demonstrate how algorithms prioritizing user engagement (like those fueling Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter) feed biases of fear, hatred, and anxiety, radicalizing users to political extremes and contributing to horrific ends like child pornography and even genocide. A must read.
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng—As usual, Ng’s writing is beautiful and measured, but I struggled to connect with the characters in this one. While the bleak, eerily familiar police state she crafts as a backdrop is compelling, the story didn’t land with me the way I hoped it would.
Liberation Day by George Saunders—One of today’s best short-story writers, Saunders delivers another collection to further pad his storied resume. At turns poignant and darkly comedic, he plays with language in what seems like effortless creativity, utilizing bizarrely constructed tales for readers to share in his tender grasp of the world.
The Family Game by Catherine Steadman—I never miss a thriller from Steadman. With each new release, she’s matured as a writer and storyteller. While the final twist of The Family Game wasn’t as unexpected as I would have liked, it was an enjoyable read. And Steadman’s narration of the audiobook version is second to none. I always listen to her stories because she’s just that great.
Like, Comment, Subscribe by Mark Bergen—After finishing The Chaos Machine, I picked up this exposé of YouTube’s rise to the dominant video platform it has become, and it did not disappoint. The story of how a product that started as a casual pet project between recent college graduates grew into a global search engine millions of people use every day delivers all the twists and turns you’d expect. And Bergen’s writing is engaging from beginning to end.
November’s/December’s Most Anticipated
In Good Time by Jen Pollock Michel—Jen is one of my favorite writers. I’ve learned so much from her over the years through her writing on topics like desire, home, paradox, and habits. With her latest, she’s tackling the subject of time to help readers grasp a vision for life marked by surrender rather than constant, hurried anxiety.
Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson—When two socially awkward teenagers connect over their shared isolation, they combine their artistic skills to create an anonymous poster that quickly becomes their town’s obsession. As mystery and conspiracy surround the community’s questioning of who created the poster, fateful consequences ensue that carry into the teens’ adult lives.
Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy—When McCarthy emerges from hibernation to release a book, it always belongs on an anticipated. With Stella Maris, he caps off the second half of the story he began with October’s The Passenger.
Reading Roundup
A few weeks ago, The National Book Awards were handed out for the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature.
It’s that time of year when everyone begins rolling out their best-of-the-year lists. So here are a few I enjoy reading:
NPR: Books We Love—I look forward to this list/app every single year. NPR gathers up 400+ titles released during the calendar year that you can sort through with a variety of category filters. You’re bound to find a new book worth reading.
The Millions has kicked off its annual Year in Reading, which is another event I enjoy following. Each day, a new writer shares a brief essay related to a book/books they read during the year and what it meant to them.
TIME compiled a list of 100 must-reads of 2022.
NY Times whittled down their list to a top 10.
Washington Post also published a top 10 for the year.
Cultivating Attention: The Challenge of Reading Great Literature—There’s a reason certain works of literature have weathered the test of time, and it isn’t always because they’re easy to read.
Audiobooks: Every Minute Counts—Do audiobooks count as reading? The answer to that question may lie less in the medium as in how engaged you are as a listener.
The Woman Who Gave the World a Thousand Names for God—A remarkable profile of a British linguist who survived civil war in Nigeria to help produce Bible translations in indigenous languages.
The Bookcase as World’s Most Underrated UI—No matter the technology that arises, physical books continue to endure. This piece examines why.
How Traveling Booksellers Spread Literature Throughout Ancient Greece—What did the book trade look like during the time of Plato and Aristotle?
Afterword
Did you know that more than two-thirds of fourth graders in the United States are not considered proficient readers? According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 32% of these children meet the criteria of proficiency. When journalist Emily Hanford discovered that statistic a few years ago, she set out to understand why so many children were struggling.
Through her investigation, she found a staple method of teaching embraced throughout the U.S. that research has proven both inefficient and even harmful to children. The approach, commonly referred to as “cueing,” prioritizes teaching children how to determine the meaning of a text without actually helping them understand how to read the words.
Her podcast, Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong, dives into the reading wars to spotlight how marketing, politics, and profit have influenced our education system to embrace a practice that is hurting the literacy of the next generation.
Until next month, happy reading, friends.
That podcast looks fascinating! And... I, like you, love Jen's writing so much. She just has a way of communicating that I find so clear, helpful, and soulful.