Book Comforts

It is late morning on the weekend as I write this. Rain and thunder fill the sky, and typify the most ideal time to be reading indoors, snuggled on the sofa. Maybe even with a cup of tea within arm's reach. My comforts at home lately have been books. In a time of isolation, many of us are having a hard time with various aspects of living in an age of Coronavirus. 

I thought I would share some books that have been filling my time and imagination with good stories and/or thoughts. Maybe something will spark your interest.

The Other Side of the Sun
Madeleine L'Engle
I am still thinking about this book, which is the sign of a well-written story. L'Engle has always been a delightful storyteller to me, and I have read almost every book she has written, but this one somehow slipped through the cracks. It takes place after the Civil War, and a young British bride comes over from England to stay with her new husband's eccentric aunts, uncles, and great-aunts in their massive home on the beach on the South Carolina coast. Whilst her husband is immediately called away to handle some secret foreign state crisis, she has to navigate the south's culture, heat and humidity of the south, family secrets, and some intense racial issues that she had never been exposed to before. This story displays L'Engle's masterful way of weaving complex situations within the realm of an extended family. She always writes so beautifully about family.

All Hallows' Eve
Charles Williams
His stories always have a supernatural element of the earthly world suddenly being invaded by the realm beyond. There is usually a little bit of the creepy and disturbing. C.S. Lewis was a great admirer of Charles Williams, and he became an Inkling, joining that literary group in Oxford at Lewis's invitation. I have deeply enjoyed each of the books I have read so far. In this novel (taking place in WWII time), a young women finds herself walking across Westminster Bridge in London, noticing how strange it is that nobody is there, and how it is dead silent. She realizes shortly thereafter that she is dead, and yet she is roaming the streets of London. Someone is trying to break into the realm of the dead. The love between she and her husband defies the separation of death, but the goodness will have some twisted evil to face, in a man who is known as Father Simon.

The Word in the Wilderness
Malcolm Guite
This was my Lenton devotional reading each morning, in which Malcolm selected a poem for each day, and wrote a reflection on that poem. I so deeply enjoyed this book, and every poem he selected (some poems were his own, and others were my favourites like Gerard Manley Hopkins, George Herbert, Dante, Milton, and a few lovely modern poets). It started my morning off with exactly what I needed - a wonderful poem to make me think, and a short reflection to help me go deeper with the poet and the poem. I was truly sad when this book ended.

City Guide, London
Cereal Magazine
Feeling the loss of my trip to England in March-April, I started reading this beautiful guide book before everything fell apart in the world. It is a sleek, modern guide of a few of the charming places in London, from bookshops (Daunt Books!) to cafes, to museums, the book also shares some of the stories of designers who call London home, and what they love about such a multi-cultural vast city with its own smaller, distinct neighborhoods that each tell their own fascinating story. The photographs are beautiful and artistic, and it's a refreshing, minimal spin on a guidebook. It is a curated guidebook.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Toshikazu Kawaguchi
This little Japanese story charmed me. It is about a little basement coffee shop down a side alley in Tokyo. It has been there for more than 100 years. In this tiny cafe, if you sit in a particular chair and have the coffee poured out for you at the table, you will travel back in time to a time of your choosing. But there are rules you must abide by: you cannot leave the chair, nothing you say or do can change the present, and you must drink the whole cup of coffee before it gets cold. So, there is a time limit. There are consequences if you do not drink the coffee before it gets cold. This is the tale of those who chose to go back in time for a particular reason - to see a loved one, to receive a letter, to see a child, etc. The stories are touching, and the characters are charming. And I wanted to drink coffee the whole time I read it.