March Booklist

God of All Things, Andrew Wilson (nonfiction)

I enjoyed this as a morning read, easy to get through chapters & 

always enlightening in one way or another.

"Oh, the depths of the riches & wisdom & knowledge of God!

How unsearchable are his judgments & how inscrutable his ways!

For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has

been his counsellor?

For from him & through him & to him

are all things.

To him be glory forever."

Romans 11:33-36

the Goldfinch, Donna Tartt (fiction/audio)

The longest book I've ever read! (32 hours later...)

A little rough at some parts content wise. Some really beautiful segments &

an excellent narrator (David Pittu). Had a couple memorable characters.

"Maybe even if we're not always so glad to be here; 

it's our task to immerse ourselves anyway:

wade straight through it, while keeping

eyes & hearts open."

"She was the missing kingdom, 

the unbruised part of myself I'd lost with my mother.

Everything about her was a snowstorm of fascination.

She was the golden thread running through everything."

A Woman in the Polar Night, Christiane Ritter (memoir)

I really enjoyed this memoir from 1938.

Very well written with many lovely descriptions as well as harrowing circumstances.

I would dub it a 'soul minimalist' book.

"the frozen world lies in untouched beauty,

in holy quiet."

"the immense silence of the land surrounds me

& invades me, submerging & annihilating

my human smallness."

"Up here one must be broadminded enough not to be pedantic.

I see life too with other eyes. 

Forgotten are all externals;

here everything is concerned with simple being."

One Long River of Song, Brian Doyle (non-fiction/essays)

Overall enjoyed this grouping of essays - 

collected on his family's behalf after the writer's battle with brain cancer.

"remember the crash of bodies,

the grapple in the grass

& the laughing pile on the rug,

for that was the thrum of our love."

"I believe that love is our greatest & hardest work."

After bedtime one night I sat down at the kitchen table &

picked this up & promptly got punched in the heart.

(An excerpt from Brian Doyle):