Quickly Commonplacing #9

Dispatches from a wonderful family vacation

We are summering very hard right now as we wrap up a week long beach vacation with my husband’s side of the family. Lots of children, lots of chaos, lots of memories, and lots of love. I’ve been able to sneak in some good reading sessions during communal nap times and lazy evenings (in between games of boggle, scrabble, and bananagrams) which has been a real treat. It’s not a real beach vacation if I don’t get at least SOME reading done. I also got to visit the most delightful used book store and picked up some beautiful children’s books, and a few books for myself. I hope you all are enjoying your summers, and are also finding some time for bookish activities.

Current Reads:

1. Reread: Anna Karenina By: Leo Tolstoy

   1. This isn’t exactly a beach read, but it is a phenomenal novel. With the school year coming up (where I will be working as an upper school tutor in addition to homeschooling my own kids), I wanted to get in one honking classic while I still have the time. And after coming across a few notes reminding me of how amazing Anna Karenina is, I decided to pick it up again. It is still early days in this reread, so I’m just letting the beauty of the prose and the excellence of Tolstoy’s characterization watch over me. But I am noticing how different of an experience it is knowing exactly how this story will end. There’s an added poignancy, and a sense of pity that reminds me of what it’s like to read Oedipus Rex and Antigone, which the

      Reading Revisited
      crew will be discussing in June (with reading guides written by yours truly!). It’s also an incredibly readable classic, it doesn’t feel as impenetrable as say, War and Peace, can sometimes feel, because it’s more of a domestic drama.

2. New Read: Summer By: Edith Wharton

   1. I love Edith Wharton. She’s possibly my favorite American author aside from Willa Cather (Wendell Berry also has to be up there, but he’s obviously more contemporary). And this book is already a reminder of how talented she is. While Wharton’s most famous books concern the aristocratic New York society to which she belonged, in both this book and Ethan Frome (a winter book if there ever was one) she writes about the isolated world of rural New England. And as a New England girl myself, it’s fascinating to read. Her prose is as precise as ever, her ability to evoke a scene and mood with just a few sentences is mind boggling. You really feel the desperation of Charity Royall, our unhappy and repressed main character. As always, Wharton is exploring the relationships and power dynamics between men and women, and between an individual and the society in which he/she operates. Thanks to

      Dominika
      for recommending both this book, and Excellent Women (see below).

Recent Commonplace Quotes

1. “‘Do we need tea’ she echoed. ‘But Miss Lathbury…’

   She sounded puzzled and distressed and I began to realise that my question had struck at something deep and fundamental. It was the kind of question that starts a landslide in the mind. I mumbled something about making a joke and that of course one needed tea always, at every hour of day or night.” (Excellent Women, Barbara Pym)

   1. Guys, this book is a delight from start to finish. And it is so delightfully British in its humor. Like Austen, Pym portrays the life of a particular community, and the influence a particular woman has on that community. For Pym, the community is a small section of post-war London, and the heroine is Mildred Lathbury, an unmarried clergyman’s daughter who is a so-called “excellent woman”: a church-going woman who performs essential duties in her community, and it often under-appreciated and over-relied upon to solve other people’s problems. She reminded me a bit of Anne Elliot, but with a little more of an edge to her. It’s a very literary book too; references to classic literature and poetry abound. And the pendulum swing between high comedy and melancholy reflection is masterfully handled. Can’t recommend it enough.

2. “Everything may be done in a right way or a wrong; the right way is to do it as well as we can, as in God’s sight; the wrong is to do it in a self-seeking spirit, which either leads us to neglect it or follow out some device of our own ends, or to give up too much time and thought to it both before and after the doing…Just try for a day to think of all the odd jobs as has been done well and truly as in God’s sight, not just slurred over anyhow, and you’ll go through them twice as cheerfully and have no thought to spare for sighing or crying.” (Ruth, Elizabeth Gaskell)

   1. Elizabeth Gaskell continues to write some of my favorite literature, and some of the most profound theological reflections I have ever encountered. I have been repeating the phrase “there is a right way and a wrong way” over and over in my head ever since I read this book, whenever I am tempted to “slur” over my daily duties, or do things in a “self-seeking” and self-pitying spirit. Ruth has been a lovely reminder of how stories can embody truths we’ve heard hundreds of times before in fresh ways, and in doing so help us to try and live them out with greater fervor. Gaskell tackles so much in this novel; the double standards women faced (and still face) when it comes to expectations of sexual purity, the ways in which well-intentioned Christians can become so harsh in their application of the law, that they can impede the conversion of soul struggling with sin, the ways in which society can make it so hard for women in less than ideal circumstances to accept and find joy in the responsibility of bringing a new life into the world, the way in which motherhood can be redemptive, and so much more.

Excellent Earworms:

1. Music: The Lotto (Ingrid Michaelson), Diamond Dreams (Castro), Tell Me Ma (Rend Collective)

2. Podcasts: Children Deserve Better than Disney (Into the Truth with

   Haley Stewart
   ), Peter Pan (The Classical Mind)

Substack Shares:

• What I’m Afraid to Read (Dominika): Dominika continues to write some of my favorite literary content on Substack. This was such a fascinating thought exercise, and I’d love to hear what books you guys are afraid to pick up! On an entirely different note, her post There Are Only Stories is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I saw about the awful tragedies in Texas.

• “…exactly what to do.” (Meredith Hinds): An incredibly wise meditation on motherhood and the spiritual life, that struck a deep chord with me. Meredith wrote one of our family’s favorite saint prayer books (can’t recommend it enough), and it was lovely to connect with her on Substack.

• George Orwell Was Wrong (Kelly Garrison): An excellent reflection that brought to mind a very vivid memory of the first time I read both 1984 and Brave New World during a dystopian unit in high school, and how much Brave New World freaked me the hell out because I saw it happening in real time.

• Why Elite Women Struggle With Marriage and Motherhood (Kerri Christopher): An excellent narrative that helped me make sense of some of the ways I’ve struggled to embrace elements of family life/homemaking after being a high-achieving academic and a full-time teacher.

Polling the People

Last poll, I asked you which Austen novel is the most “springy.” Emma won with a resounding 81% of the vote, with Sense and Sensibility trailing with 13% of the vote. I tend to think of Emma as summer and Sense and Sensibility as spring, though I couldn’t put into words why. But both definitely are ‘warmer weather’ Austen books in my opinion. Given that it is vacation season, today’s poll is focused on reading practices during trips away.

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