Each month my goal is to read a minimum of five books on a variety of topics and from different genres. Here are the books I read in November 2023. If you click on the title, you’ll go to the longer post on More to Come. Enjoy.

---

Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America (2023) by Heather Cox Richardson is an accessible and engaging work that tells how America got to this difficult moment in time. The author of the Letters from an American newsletter, Richardson’s newest volume takes us back through our past to see precedents that led to our most recent authoritarian experiment in the ascendancy of Donald Trump. As Richardson shows, there has always been a small group of wealthy people who have made war on American ideals, using language and false history as their tools of choice as they fight against the liberal consensus. But we also have a history of those on the margins — women, people of color, immigrants — who have fought equally hard to push America to live up to its ideals. Their work shows us pathways out of the current moment.

---

Small Things Like These (2021) by Claire Keegan is a short yet deeply moving novel set in small-town Ireland during the Christmas season of 1985. Bill Furlong is a coal and timber merchant who, while delivering a load of coal to the local convent, makes a discovery that forces him to consider his past and the choices he must make. This little gem of a book brings us face-to-face, in a simple yet memorable story, with how we confront our past and with the evils of a community’s complicit, self-interested silence. It is also a deeply moving story of “hope, quiet heroism, and empathy.”

---

The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham (2022) by Ron Shelton is a delightful book on multiple levels. Full disclosure: I love the movie. Bull Durham is not only the best baseball movie ever but also the best sports movie ever. It’s not even close. Shelton, a former minor league baseball player turned writer and director, has a passion for this multi-faceted story that still shines through 35 years after the film was released. And the tale of how Shelton — along with Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon — pursued every angle to make this film in spite of great odds and with challenges arising around every corner, is worth knowing as well.

---

Blue Iris: Poems and Essays (2004) by Mary Oliver is a collection of ten new poems at the time of publication, two dozen of her poems written over the prior two decades, and two previously unpublished essays on the beauty and wonder of plants. Nature is full of mystery and miracle. Oliver believes our response, if we are paying attention, should be one of astonishment and gratitude. Understanding the true enchantment and mysterious spell of nature, she found ways to hear music in her world, even when there was nothing playing, and convey that to her readers.

---

The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-year-old Man (2023) by David Von Drehle is the story of Charlie White, a man born before radio who lived to use a smartphone. Upon moving to Kansas City, Von Drehle meets White — at the time his 102-year-old neighbor — and strikes up a friendship. Over seven years he learns that Charlie lost his father at an early age, the victim of a freak accident. But it was in his response to that tragedy that Charlie learned how to live. This parable of persistence and durability points the way toward a happy and useful life.

---

The Murder on the Links (1923) by Agatha Christie begins with the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot rushing to northern France after receiving an urgent request from a client, Paul Renauld, who fears his life may be in danger. Unfortunately, by the time Poirot arrives the local police have found Renauld stabbed to death, lying in a shallow grave on a golf course, wearing only an overcoat and his underwear. This curious turn of events is made even stranger when another well-dressed man is found on the estate murdered in an identical way. Poirot has a nagging suspicion that he’s seen this crime before. As is true with many of Christie’s novels, these characters are not always who they seem to be.

---

What’s on the nightstand for December (subject to change at the whims of the reader):

• Playing Authors: An Anthology by various authors
• The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy by Robert P. Jones
• To Speak a Defiant Word: Sermons and Speeches on Justice and Transformation by Pauli Murray
• Church State Corporation: Construing Religion in US Law by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan
• The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
• The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis

Keep reading!

More to come…

DJB

---

NOTE: Click to see the books I read in October of 2023 and to see the books I read in 2022. Also check out Ten tips for reading five books a month.

---

The Weekly Reader links to the works of other writers I’ve enjoyed. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry. 

---

Photo from Unsplash