Four Books That Make You Feel Something…
In this, I recommend four books that you will remember because they'll leave something with you...
I have read a lot of books. Two years ago, for the first time in my forty-plus-year reading career, I started to keep a record of all the books I read. As I look back at that list of seventy-six publications (a round number would have given me much greater satisfaction), I realise that I find it hard to remember much about most of them. I look at their titles, I recall vague aspects of their subject matter, some elements of their plot (if one existed), even the odd character. I may recollect where I was when I read them (probably my sofa, I didn’t travel far in 2021) but that’s not enough because I just don’t feel anything for those books. They don’t stir any emotion in me. I didn’t think about them again as soon as I finished the last page. They didn’t come anywhere close to touching my soul. They were merely words, sentences, paragraphs, I counted down the chapters. In years to come, I will pass them on my shelves, glance at their spine, nod at them and feel nothing. They are acquaintances, not friends.
Amidst the thousands of books, I have consumed, there are only a small number that live on steadfastly both in my head and in my heart. They, the chosen few, tugged at something deep inside me. I will think about them from time to time when I am not intending to. I will never forget them because of how they made me feel. I’ll even wish I hadn’t yet read them so I could go back and feel that feeling again. I will probably not be able to explain what exactly it was that I felt – understood, inspired, affirmed, challenged, alive? Reading should never be entered into as a transactional relationship, if done well, it is beautiful and transformational – a synergistic enriching connection between reader and book. But, of course, all this is wholly dependent on a range of circumstances coming together in perfect synchronicity – the right book in the right place at the right time. It needed to be read and you needed to read it. It’s the best kind of love story!
Because my bookshelves have become such a talking-point, an excellent backdrop during Zoom meetings, people will regularly ask me for recommendations about what they should read. I am loath to give advice because I am either searching for spiritual enlightenment or scrambling for solid ground. When not looking to find answers to life’s mysteries, I am primarily a crime fiction fan, I devour Icelandic murders. During anxious times, I will reach for one of these as a source of comfort. I know what to expect, they don’t demand anything from me. Yet, I rarely suggest these to others. Instead, I play it safe, I pick books I have enjoyed just enough, that are decently written, 300 pages or less, backed up by positive reviews and somewhere near the top of the charts. My treasures, I usually keep to myself! Until now!
I wanted to share some of my treasures - those books that have made me feel something – to explain too much about what it was would deny you the pleasure of experiencing it for yourself. There are no promises though as it may not be the right time for you. All I can suggest is that you read them.
Elizabeth Strout – Abide With Me
There are some writers who make me feel, no matter what they write. Elizabeth Strout is one of them.
What happens when you are meant to be the leader but find yourself lost?
Tyler Caskey is a grieving father whose daughter has been struck dumb due to her mother’s death. He is also a minister, responsible for a needy congregation. He struggles to find the right words for his child, he struggles to find the right words for his sermons. There is a moment in this book, it comes on p297, when you see humanity at its best. You may cry.
And as an aside, this book made me so much more aware of how hard it is to be a minister!
Claire Keegan – Small Things Like These
This is a book about complicit silence. It should probably make you feel angry. It’s about choosing to take a stand. You wonder what you would do. It is dedicated to the women and children who suffered in Ireland’s mother and baby homes and Magdalen laundries. Much is left unsaid.
It’s a short novella (only 110 pages) set in a small Irish town during the winter of 1985, focusing on Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and a father to five daughters preparing for Christmas. His life is hard but good. It would be easy (and sensible) for him just to keep quiet, to turn a blind eye too like all the others controlled by an institution. But then what about all those mirrors he has passed – could he continue to look at himself in them if he does nothing when he makes a discovery during a delivery to the local convent?
Jane Gardam – Old Filth
Jane Gardam simply does characters you’d like to meet. This book is about having a hey-day and then suddenly finding yourself in old age. It’s about loss and regret. It’s also full of wonderful and engaging characters, in particular Old Filth himself, formerly an international lawyer with a practice in the Far East, now a retired judge, with only the oldest QCs able to recall what his nickname stands for.
The book covers a whole era in history from the glory days of the British Empire through the Second World War to the present day, telling the story of young Filth as a ‘Raj orphan’ sent back to England for schooling when he was only four years old. It transports you back and forward across time and continent. It’s also the first in a trilogy so if you enjoy it, there are two sequels!
“Lawyers, I suppose, were children once”.
Annie Proulx – The Shipping News
Sometimes, when reading this book, you will yearn for it to get better for this family but most of the time, it doesn’t. Yet somehow they survive, because they are in it together. In this book, there is a devastating accident which leads to a life-changing decision, a move from the frenetic busyness of New York to the remotest corner of Newfoundland. Quoyle, a journalist with his two girls and ‘the aunt’ in tow, attempts to start again. This is about confronting internal and external forces at the same time. If you feel nothing else, you will definitely feel the coldness of the landscape!
It is despairing and sad but also funny and hopeful.
And nothing to do with the book but when I reached for it on the shelf and opened it, I found this inside. Love inside a book about love, what more could you ask for!
Standard book reviews often leave me cold because they tell me little about how I might feel when I enter into a relationship with one of those books. I have provided scant information about the four I have recommended because - you need to discover them for yourself, you need to feel them for yourself.
I’ll be sharing some of the books that I’m reading in this Book Club and who knows, maybe at some point, we can read and discuss one together! Let me know what you’d like from this Book Club by commenting on this post.
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