{"id":3770,"date":"2015-06-23T15:17:50","date_gmt":"2015-06-23T22:17:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/irreverin\/?p=3770"},"modified":"2015-06-23T15:21:00","modified_gmt":"2015-06-23T22:21:00","slug":"prisoners-nuns-and-mockingbirds-a-summer-reading-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/irreverin\/2015\/06\/prisoners-nuns-and-mockingbirds-a-summer-reading-list\/","title":{"rendered":"Prisoners, Nuns and Mockingbirds: a Summer Reading List"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I\u2019ve said it before, and I\u2019ll say it again. Summer is for slackers<\/a>. And non-fiction is for suckers. I stick by that, and in that vein, my summer reading list is usually ALL fiction. But this year, I\u2019m going to diverge from that just a little bit. Like many white people in America, I\u2019m realizing more every day that I don\u2019t know the first thing about race, or racism, as it lives and breathes in the soil of my own country. \u00a0I heard a challenge recently: to make a commitment to read only books by people of color <\/em>for a whole year. I\u2019m working on that reading list, and hope to share it in the fall\u2026 in the meantime, we can all start with:\u00a0\u00a0\"reading\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The New Jim Crow<\/a>. An important conversation about mass incarceration and the systems that still keep some of us living in pre-Civil Rights America. And if you want more where that came from, check out Goodreads\u2019 list of 264 Books White People Need to Read.<\/a> That should keep you busy at least through the end of June.<\/p>\n

Moving on\u2026 not that it\u2019s much lighter reading, but at least it\u2019s fiction:\u00a0settle into the poetry, the heartache and the stunning beauty of All the Light We Cannot See<\/a>. It is this year\u2019s Goldfinch<\/a> (which was on last year\u2019s list<\/a>). Just gorgeous, all the way through. It doesn\u2019t end how you want it to\u2026 but war never does. It\u2019s still worth your time. I read the whole thing on vacation! Now I\u2019m ready for<\/p>\n

Amy Poelher\u2019s Yes, Please<\/a>. I\u2019ve heard that if you loved Bossypants<\/a> (and if you didn\u2019t then I am unfriending you), YP delivers a similar dose of humor, girl power, and life goodness. And then, for some life badness, I\u2019ll switch over to<\/p>\n

Revival<\/a>. Nope, not the latest from Franklin Graham (speaking of badness), but the newest Stephen King\u2014who I\u2019d given up on in the long dry desert of all the terrible things<\/em> that came\u00a0after the Dark Tower<\/a> series, but then 11\/22\/63 rekindled my obsession, and I cannot wait to read this one now. Which, I understand, features a clergy character who\u2019s gone to the darkside. (yes!)<\/p>\n

As for this clergy person, the dark side of temptation is:\u00a0going to get\u00a0your book off the library hold shelf, and noticing that RIGHT NEXT TO YOUR BOOK, The Girl on the Train<\/a>\u00a0waits on hold\u2026 for someone else.<\/em> No, I didn\u2019t steal it. But dang, I\u2019ve heard nothing but \u201cI read straight through it in 8 hours!\u201d kinds of reports about this one. High on my list. Though apparently on everybody else\u2019s, too.<\/p>\n

Feeling icky about the prospect of Go Set a Watchman<\/a> being published under questionable circumstances? Get your Harper Lee fix with The Mockingbird Next Door<\/a>, by Marja Mills. This is the memoir of a young reporter from Chicago who was granted the rare, elusive interview with the Lee sisters\u2026 and it turns out, they like her so much, she winds up moving into the house next door to them for over a year. She writes about life in Monroeville,\u00a0Alabama\u2013the small town that inspired the (not so fictional) Maycomb. Ultimately, the book turned out to be more about the author\u2019s process, and her health issues, than it is about the Lee sisters. But if you love all things Mockingbird, it\u2019s still worth the read. I especially love this passage:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe following day, my phone rang at the Best Western. \u2018Hello?\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong>
\u2018Miss Mills?\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong>
\u2018Yes, this is Marja.\u2019<\/span><\/em><\/strong>
\u2018This is Harper Le<\/span>e. You\u2019ve made quite an impression on [my sister.] I wondered if we might meet.\u2019 \u201d <\/span><\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

AHHHH! Would you not just lay right down and die on the spot? Pretty sure I would.\u00a0(if it\u2019s all true. which some say it isn\u2019t. good grief). Still, don\u2019t keel over yet, because you\u2019ve still got to read<\/p>\n

The Invention of Wings<\/a> \u2013 because I love me some good Southern chic lit. And this is not nearly so racially-oblivious as The Help.<\/p>\n

But if you really want to talk about significant issues,\u00a0let\u2019s all read Call the Midwife<\/a> \u2013 I am binge watching the whole series on Netflix, and I\u2019m blown away every episode<\/em> by the social and theological conscience of this show. You want to talk about patriarchy, women\u2019s rights, vocation, forgiveness, access to healthcare, human suffering, poverty and pretty much all the other things that matter in the world\u2014this show has it. And it\u2019s all based on a trilogy of memoirs that I\u2019m fixing to blow through. As soon as I can turn off the t.v. It\u2019s not looking good.<\/p>\n

And while we\u2019re binge watching\u2026 I\u2019m also going to read (the real) Piper Kirman\u2019s memoir, \u201cOrange is the New Black<\/a>.\u201d Unless all y\u2019all tell me that it is too different from the show and will ruin the whole thing for me, in which case, I will put it down because I love the shows.<\/p>\n

Also on my to-download queue \u2013the rest of the Lonesome Dove Chronicles<\/a>. EVEN THOUGH the last chapter of Lonesome Dove was the worst thing to happen to literature ever, I still loved the rest of it enough to power through the series. And also, because I need me a good cowboy fix in the summer.<\/p>\n

And then, when those last days of August creep up on my calendar, I\u2019m going to pre-order Furiously Happy<\/a> \u2013the new memoir coming out in September by Jenny Lawson (the Bloggess!) Because summer deserves to go out with a laugh, ultimately.<\/p>\n

Ok, we\u2019re in the last half of June, so get to reading! Toes in sand, beverage in hand\u2026 and a little world-changing in the spaces between these long, lazy days.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve said it before, and I\u2019ll say it again. Summer is for slackers. And non-fiction is for suckers. I stick by that, and in that vein, my summer reading list is usually ALL fiction. But this year, I\u2019m going to diverge from that just a little bit. Like many white people in America, I\u2019m realizing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1154,"featured_media":2808,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[1079,1078,1077,176,1076,244],"class_list":["post-3770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spirituality-in-culture","tag-all-the-light-we-cannot-see","tag-call-the-midwife","tag-orange-is-the-new-black","tag-stephen-king","tag-summer-reading","tag-to-kill-a-mockingbird"],"yoast_head":"\nPrisoners, Nuns and Mockingbirds: a Summer Reading List<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I\u2019ve said it before, and I\u2019ll say it again. Summer is for slackers. And non-fiction is for suckers. 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