Reading List

My dear friend, Zoë, sent me a box of seventeen Shakespeare books last week. It was such a delightful surprise to come home from work to find a box of books waiting for me by my mailbox. (It's the best of surprises, for a bibliophile like me!) She found the set at a library sale, which is the best way to find good, old treasures. The neat thing is, I only have two of the books she sent me, so my collection of Shakespeare has suddenly increased exponentially! I have lots of reading to do. And that is a very good thing.

In the meantime, since I have been devouring books in these past few weeks, I thought I would share a few thoughts on the books I have finished.

Faith, Hope, and Poetry: Theology and the Poetic Imagination by Malcolm Guite
This very scholarly book is a source of so much insight, knowledge, and analysis of the poetry of the English language and imagination. I got to know Coleridge, Blake, Davies, and Herbert who are quickly becoming very near favourites of mine. I enjoy how Malcolm explains the poems to reveal the deeper meanings and Christian tones. I feel like I will need to read this again in a year or so, in order to apply more that I learn between now and then.

Waiting on the Word by Malcolm Guite
An advent book, with a poem and reading for each day through Epiphany. Poems are selected from some of the old favourite poets (Rossetti, Blake) as well as modern poets I do not know as well. It's a beautiful book, and I will be reading this every year at advent. 

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
When Hemingway lived in Paris in the 1920s, he was a young writer trying to finish his first novels. This is his memoir of living there, and the authors (like F. Scott Fitzgerald) he met and learned from. His descriptions of those meetings and the things he learned from others were my favourite parts.

Ship of Theseus by Doug Dorst
This is a modern fiction book that caught my attention and was definitely worth reading. It is quite a mysterious  adventure, with deeper themes of discovering who you are. I wrote about it more in this post.

Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box by The Arbinger Institute
In your personal and work life, you tend to think inside a box where you look at every situation in the way that will best benefit you. This book helps you see how much you do that with others, especially with those who are closest to you at home and at work, and how to get out of the box and change your whole outlook to be encouraging, open, and looking toward the interest of others over yourself.