Additions to the Bookshelf | No. 1

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Now that I've got the bookshelf up and running, it's time to start the practice of regularly sharing what I've been reading. (I'm so excited for this.) Here's what I've been reading since setting up the bookshelf in May. These titles are also going up on the permanent page for ease of access.

Third Culture Kids 3rd Edition: Growing Up Among Worlds, by David C. Pollock, Ruth E. Van Reken, and Michael V. Pollock - This book is the seminal work on TCKs. Cathartic, insightful, wise, thought-provoking. I'm going to be mulling over this book for a very long time. If you are a TCK or are closely connected to one, this is a must-read. 

A childhood lived in, among, and between various cultural worlds is indeed becoming the norm rather than the exception. 

While parents may change careers and become former international businesspeople, former missionaries, former military personnel, or former foreign service officers, no one is ever a former third culture kid. TCKs simply move on to being adult third culture kids because their lives grow out of the roots planted in and watered by the third culture experience.

Grief is an affirmation of the good, not a negation. We don't grieve for the loss of things, places, events, and relationships we don't care about or love. Again, it doesn't mean there are not good days and wonderful new things, places, events, and relationships ahead. It means that something precious has been lost and there needs to be a time to mourn that loss in order to move on more fully to the good of the present. 

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte - I've read this four times and it gets richer every time. (This time around I read it for my Skype book club, and the discussion should be interesting in light of Wide Sargasso Sea.) I am in awe of Jane herself - her moral courage, her capacity for love, her independent spirit, and her faith. This time around I particularly enjoyed all the references to faerie - this book taps into folklore and fairytale on so many levels and I love it. 

Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigor . . . If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?

The Dutchess of Bloomsbury Street, by Helene Hanff - Funny, short, and poignant, with lots of reflections on literature, England, and the contrasts between London and NYC. 

Somewhere along the way I came upon a mews with a small sign on the entrance gate addressed to the passing world. The sign orders flatly: 

COMMIT NO NUISANCE 

The more you stare at that, the more territory it covers. From dirtying the streets to housebreaking to invading Viet Nam, that covers all the territory there is.

Ballet Shoes, by Noel Streatfeild: Sweet book that to be perfectly honest I read because Kathleen Kelly recommends it in You've Got Mail. I picked up my copy at the books market on the South Bank of the Thames in London, and it smells wonderful. In the vein of Swallows & Amazons, The Railway Children, and All-of-a-Kind Family. Didn't love the ending, though.

The Fossil sisters lived in the Cromwell Road. At that end of it which is farthest away from the Brompton Road, and yet sufficiently near it to be taken to look at the dolls' houses in the Victoria and Albert every wet day, and if not too wet, expected to "save the penny and walk". 

Saving the penny and walking was a great feature of their lives.

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A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles - the same mastery of language, observation, and characterization found in Rules of Civility, with a very different feel. Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov spends most of his life under house arrest in a hotel in Moscow, but as the years pass his world expands rather than becoming confining. Food, friendship, fun and games - and a tumultuous era in Russia. Somewhat slow at parts, but immensely satisfying climax. Points for Casablanca references and an engaging child with a penchant for yellow.

"How do you spend your time?"
"Dining, discussing. Reading, reflecting. The usual rigmarole."

The Virgin of Bennington, by Kathleen Norris - I expected this to be a memoir, which it is in part, but it's more a tribute to Betty Kray, Norris' mentor and a hugely influential figure (though often unrecognized) in American poetry from the 1930s-1980s. Far more than an arts administrator, Kray was a hard sense businesswoman, brilliant instigator, builder of companies (in the Fellowship of the Ring sense of the word), and compassionate and beloved mentor to some of the most influential American poets of the 20th century. I found a new mentor in the pages of this book.

I had learned from Betty that being upset was not my job. Nor was I to judge. If a poet was so nervous that she showed up drunk for a reading, all I could do was try to bring the program off as well as I could. And if that failed, I might at least get some food into her before I sent her on her way.

Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, by Kathleen Norris - A bracing meditation centering around the sparse, harsh beauty of life on the Dakota plains. 

Disconnecting from change does not recapture the past. It loses the future.

I'm always eager to add new books to my TBR list: I'd love to hear what books you've been loving recently. Do share in the comments below!