#5 What to Read + happy halloween 🎃

fiction, a collection of essays, a running memoir, and the last trial of Harper Lee

Oct 31, 2023

Happy Halloween!

My husband doesn’t like the holiday; poor lad. I adore it. Our feelings, I suspect, were highly influenced by our mothers. For me it is childhood at its best: running around the neighborhood in Omaha Nebraska, meeting up with a posse, dressed up in costume, holding a pillowcase, and collecting candy in the dark windy night with very little-to-no supervision.

There were crunchy leaves under our feet and a big, fat moon sat yellow in the sky.

Also, we liked to be scared, but not too much.

Did you know? The brain delights in being tricked, which is why we love reading a book that takes us by surprise. Our favorite sights and stories make sense, but when we don’t see that thing coming - delightful!

After a night of trick-or-treating, we arrived home at a deliciously late hour (8:15?) where me and my four siblings would sit on the orange living room shag carpet and dump out our haul.

Candy was audited, counted, divided, and put into categories. We guarded our piles with ferociousness until serious negotiations would begin, an activity that surely rivaled any loud and heart-pumping wall street trading session.

Least traded: candy corn, toothbrushes

High property value: milk duds, anything full size and chocolate

This was the great fun of Halloween: independence, running on crunchy leaves in the dark night, a possible siting of Freddy Krueger or Boo Radley, the sound of a chainsaw (upon reflection, whut?!), and of course: CANDY

This year I’ll start the day by turning into a witch and reading to pre-schoolers. I’ve carefully chosen my two picture books. Something fun, a little spooky…but not too much.

Even with sorrowful world news, even if we’re lucky to get a single trick-or-treater (life in the sticks), I can’t help feeling the happy childhood anticipation rising.

And joy, my friends, is an act of resistance, isn’t it?

Last week it was GLORIOUS weather. Yesterday it was all-day pouring rain and cold. The rain resulted in our glorious, gorgeous fall leaves being rained off the trees. Rude.

Yes, the live free or die state likes to keep it spicy; tomorrow it’s supposed to snow.

Catch the joy while you can. And there is so much of it.

Happiest of howling Halloweens…

Read on for more joy, in the form of BOOKS I read in September and October!

Book and Audio Recommendations:

Good for a Girl: A Woman Running in a Man's World by Lauren Fleshman. One of the most decorated collegiate female runners of all time, this book is both a love letter to running and a rallying cry for women as Fleshman calls for change within the sports world. I loved this book and you’ll be hearing more from me about it…!

These Precious Days by Ann Patchett. A collection of essays by “a literary alchemist.” Patchett writes about friendship, love, the death of a dear friend, books and writing (my jam, all of it). If you liked This is a Story of a Happy Marriage (perhaps my favorite collection by Patchett), you’ll like this.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. We often say our children have secret lives, but do we know the secrets of our parents? The secrets of their past? Do our parents give us a sanitized version? This is the story of Lara and Joe and their three daughters, who, during the time of Covid, come home to help on the cherry farm. Here they learn more about Peter Duke, the boy Lara first loved - and who became a famous movie star.

Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep (audiobook narrated by Hillary Huber) A Goodreads Choice Nominee for best nonfiction book in 2019, Furious Hours, Ann Patchett says, “shouldn’t work, but it does.” It’s the story of an Alabama serial killer and the true-crime book that Harper Lee worked on obsessively in the years after To Kill a Mockingbird. If you’ve long loved Mockingbird and Lee, you’ll enjoy - but be prepared to wait hundreds of pages for them to appear. Also, I seriously question if Lee actually consented to the publication of her only other “finished” manuscript, Go Set a Watchman.

One more “book” recommendation…

This morning I read and discussed The Epistle of Paul to Philemon with 23 high school students for a “seminary” class. The very short “book” or letter is Paul (under house arrest) writing to Philemon (a wealthy Greek convert), asking him to welcome Onesimus (Philemon’s slave/servant) back to his home as a brother (after Onesimus ran away). Paul is willing to settle the debt, to reconcile the wrong between them, acting as a “Christ-like figure.” It’s a good story, with the message being: the gospel of Christ changes a servant to a brother, that we are all equal in the eyes of Christ. That’s the lesson. This was what Jesus’s ministry was all about.

If you want to know what the bible says, read it. Discuss. Dig in. Don’t rely on so-called “biblical view” politicians for info. I keep wondering: are we reading the same book?

What are you reading and recommending? I always like to hear.

Amy

Lit With Amy Makechnie

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