Writing, Language & Books

Faith, Religion & Scripture, Notes & Essays by David Rodeback, Writing, Language & Books

Reading in Transit: Jana Riess and Julie Schumacher

Posted on by David Rodeback
Authors Bookstore at MSP -- irresistible section

Context (or Chatter)

I spend more time writing than reading, these days — too little of both — and I read online more than I read printed books. But if you read this blog, you probably don’t need me to tell you there’s a charm in holding the book in your hands and turning actual pages instead of staring at a screen. Also, actual books have a far longer battery life.

I’m in Bloomington, Indiana, just now, traveling with a family member who has an audition today at Indiana University’s sprawling, beautiful campus (which must be simply gorgeous when it’s green). I spent lots of hours in and between airports yesterday. Much of that time I spent reading actual books, and it was delightful.

On a similar trip to Pittsburgh a few weeks ago, I found Authors Bookstore, a charming airport bookstore at Minneapolis-St. Paul, and bought a very promising, shortish novel which claims to a national bestseller. I’m not disputing that; its renown is sufficiently compatible with my never having heard of it before. I started reading it then and finished it yesterday.

Authors Bookstore at MSP
A little bibliophile Mecca at MSP

Then I finished a book I picked up almost on a whim in Salt Lake City a few months ago and starting reading on the warm, sunny commuter train (and platform) at the end of workdays. It was excellent too, and the fact that I read the second half of it only yesterday doesn’t disparage its charms at all. I do that with books, even very fine books.

And yes, I’d be pleased to tell you more. Thanks for asking.

Notes & Essays by David Rodeback, Writing, Language & Books

Rereading Scout

Posted on by David Rodeback

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper LeeDecades ago, I read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and immediately declared it one of my favorite books. Then, over the ensuing years, I mostly forgot it.

What I knew I remembered was a trial – thanks, I suppose, to the movie, in which Gregory Peck plays Atticus Finch. The Oscar-winning film focuses more on the trial than the Pulitzer Prize-winning book does.

What I remembered without realizing it was the book’s compelling child’s-eye view of life and people and the world.

What I had forgotten, or perhaps could not see then as I do now – for reasons not belabored here – was the utter charm of the book. The human insight in the novel feeds mind, heart, and wit. The prose in which it is wrapped is artful and delicious.

Notes & Essays by David Rodeback, Writing, Language & Books

Barber Baby Bubbles and a Bumblebee (and Me)

Posted on by David Rodeback

This week brought two noteworthy birthdays at 180fusion, where I work. For the company’s 5th birthday we had ice cream and cake. For Dr. Seuss’s 111th birthday — Monday — we took it on the road. About 20 of us went to Woodrow Wilson Elementary in South Salt Lake City and spent part of the afternoon going from classroom to classroom, reading Dr. Seuss books to the students there.

Before we were finished, we had visited more than 20 classrooms, from kindergarten to sixth grade, for half an hour each. I myself read to kindergarten students, first graders, and third graders, in groups ranging in size from 4 to 13 students.

The students at Woodrow Wilson presently come from 26 countries and speak 28 native languages. Most are refugees or recent immigrants from such places as Nepal and Somalia. A school official told us that some students who were in school this week were in a refugee camp in Africa just a week or two earlier.

History and Biography, Notes & Essays by David Rodeback, Writing, Language & Books

Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower

Posted on by David Rodeback

A few years ago, not more than four, I decided it was time to enlarge my understanding of period of American history I had studied very little: the 17th century, give or take, from the arrival of the Pilgrims on the Mayflower in 1620 through the aftermath of King Philip’s War (1675-76).

I bought three recent books and began reading the first, Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower, a New York Times bestseller and winner of the National Book Award a few years ago. It’s a very readable book, and I immediately began to enjoy it. That it took me until I was on a recent flight to Seattle to finish it is no reflection on the book itself. It is simply a consequence of the fact that, though I read quite a bit, my reading time — with mental energy for history and in a situation where I can sit and mark up a book — is quite limited. So I read dozens of other books — mostly fiction — while I was reading this one off and on.

Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower

Some of the roots of our national founding are in that period, I knew — including some of our early challenges with respect to religious freedom. I also expected the ambivalence of Pilgrims, and later Puritans, toward the indigenous peoples. I expected fear, heroism, bloodshed, confusion, brutality.

I suppose I expected insights into the challenges of diverse peoples attempting to coexist. But as I began to read, there were some interesting surprises on that theme. And there were sad accounts of what I had mostly forgotten, the beginning of the slave trade in New England, involving native slaves.

Notes & Essays by David Rodeback, Writing, Language & Books

Ann Padgett on Writing: “I Learned How to Forgive Myself”

Posted on by David Rodeback

From Ann Padgett’s “The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir about Writing and Life” (This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. New York: Harper, 2013, pp. 19-60)

Why is it that we understand playing the cello will require work, but we attribute writing to the magic of inspiration? . . .

Art stands on the shoulders of craft. If you want to write, practice writing. Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish, but because you long to learn how to write well, because there is something that you alone can say. Write the story, learn from it, put it away, write another story. Think of a a sink pipe filled with sticky sediment. The only way to get clean water is to force a small ocean through the tap. Most of us are full up with bad stories, boring stories, self-indulgent stories, searing works of unendurable melodrama. We must get all of them out of our system in order to find the good stories that may or may not exist in the freshwater underneath.

. . . I got better at closing the gap between my hand and my head by clocking in the hours, stacking up the pages. Somewhere in all my years of practice, I don’t know where exactly, I arrived at the art. I never learned how to take the beautiful thing in my imagination and put it on paper without feeling I killed it along the way. I did, however, learn how to weather the death, and I learned how to forgive myself for it.

. . . I believe, more than anything, that this grief of constantly having to face down our inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is the key. I can’t write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself. (pp. 28-30)

Faith, Religion & Scripture, Notes & Essays by David Rodeback, Writing, Language & Books

It’s Because She Writes Like This

Posted on by David Rodeback

This site is quite new, and I have a long backlog of things to add, including favorite links on several pages. In case anyone has already paid enough attention to the Faith Habit page to wonder why my first thought for favorite links there was Given Breath, I’ll tell you.

It’s because Kimberly Joy Hall thinks and writes like this.

Notes & Essays by David Rodeback, Writing, Language & Books

Huntley Fitzpatrick: “I passed on the scotch and the smokes, but kept writing.”

Posted on by David Rodeback

Yesterday, somewhat randomly, I ran into an author’s biography at Amazon.com, to which I point you for its style as much as its insight. Her name is Huntley Fitzpatrick. Apparently, she writes young adult fiction — how well or how prominently, I cannot say. I know of her only what I read there.

Here are some excerpts from her Amazon author page, where you should read the whole brief bio, if her charm speaks to you too.

I was lucky enough to be born to parents who read every kind of written material with interest and enthusiasm, and let me do the same. From the start I searched for books that let me fall in love…with the story and with the boy. For most of my childhood I divided my devotion between Almanzo Wilder from The Little House books, C.S. Lewis’ Prince Caspian and Tom in Louisa May Alcott’s An Old Fashioned Girl.

I figured out early that stories were what made sense of the world when it was confusing and made the best moments permanent. I was shy and nearsighted but good at anything that involved reading and imagining, so quickly decided the only logical career to pursue was writing. To this end my father gave me a typewriter (it was a long time ago), a package of Lucky Strike cigarettes, a bottle of Scotch and a note advising me to “Be Bold, Be Bold, Be Bold.” For my tenth birthday.