Literature Threads

The Books that Saved My Summer

{A guest post from my friend, Tina — you’ll see her around here quite often ;-)}

It’s been a strange summer for me, marked by a lingering sadness over the deaths of a family member and a family friend. In the midst of it all — the slow goodbye, the devastating phone call, the questions and tears, I’ve found comfort and encouragement in the books I’ve been reading. For those of you who also find yourself in a season of grief, sadness, or confusion, here are a few recommendations:

1) Return to the familiar.

Over the summer I’ve found myself returning to old favorites. When my own world is topsy-turvy, I find comfort in visiting with old friends and reading stories that I know will turn out well. I grieved alongside Marianne after Willoughby turned his back on her, and admired anew Eleanor’s courage in the face of her own loss (Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen). I journeyed once again to the Outer Banks with Tandi and then to Elm Creek, Pennsylvania with Sarah as they started new lives in new towns and, through the stories and friendship of others, learned to dream new dreams for their lives (The Prayer Box by Lisa Wingate and The Quilter’s Apprentice by Jennifer Chiaverini).

For those walking through a hard season this may be the perfect time to peruse your own bookshelf and pick out a few of your favorites. Let yourself enjoy those sweet friendships and stories once again. It’s the reading equivalent of putting on a favorite old sweater and curling up with a cozy blanket and a cup of tea when everything around you is cold and stormy. 

2) Go deep.

In this summer of deep emotions swirling around my home, it can be difficult to know how to talk about them together, or how to process them. In-between the familiar reads I’ve been trying to purposefully read books which will help us engage with our feelings of sadness and loss.

I spent much of June reading A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L’Engle aloud with my teen daughter. It was cathartic for us to visit with Vicky as she spent a last summer with her dying grandfather, and as she tried to help a friend who had attempted suicide. Having dealt with both those situations at the beginning of our summer, I so appreciated the hard questions and deep emotions L’Engle had her characters ask and feel. This allowed my girl and I to share in those emotions and questions without having to talk directly about our own. Such a gift!  

During my family’s week of slowly saying goodbye to my mother-in-law, I was reminded of the rhythms and varying seasons of sowing, growth, and harvesting in Hannah Anderson’s garden oriented devotional, Humble Roots. Revisiting the process of life and death, and just how much of it is out of our control, grounded me during that week of letting go (and later that summer when hail decimated my garden). I handed the book off to my husband after I read it and it was a quiet encouragement to know we were sharing thoughts as he read and saw all that I had underlined and marked up in the book.

I also read Katherine Reay’s latest novel, The Printed Letter Bookshop, during that week. Anything with bookshop in the title will always grab my interest. I loved this story of unexpected change in the three main characters’ lives. Watching their hard-won but beautiful transformation when they choose to embrace their brokenness rather than fighting it, was a timely encouragement to lean into my grief rather than numbing myself to it.

In a season when I’ve had so many questions and emotions swirling in my heart I found respite in these books. Each reminded me that I am not alone in dealing with overwhelming feelings and grief.

3) Escape into a magical world.

Sometimes, when my own world is particularly hard, it is a gift to journey to an altogether different place, particularly one with magic or whimsy in it. 

I spent time this summer journeying with Piemur and fire dragons to the Southern continent of Pern, solving mysteries and learning to let go of old dreams and find new ones (Dragondrums by Anne McCaffrey). My kids and I journey to Wales and discovered Arthurian legends come alive in The Grey King by Susan Cooper. I delighted, once again, in meeting all kinds of magical creatures alongside Ella in Gail Carson Levine’s fanciful retelling of Cinderella (Ella Enchanted).  I got lost in the wonder of words and ice cream in Natalie Lloyd’s, A Snicker of Magic. And, I enjoyed a romantic journey to a medieval world with “mirror” twins Adele and Eleda as they grow up and learn the perils of telling truths and keeping secrets in The Truth Teller’s Tale by Sharon Shinn.

So for those of you who’ve also had a rough summer or are trying to pull it together as kids settle into school and the nights turn a bit cooler, my encouragement is to take a reading trip down memory lane with an old favorite, go deep in a book that helps you engage with your emotions, or just escape altogether into a fanciful, faraway world. 

~Tina

(Amazon links are affiliate links. You can be assured that we only recommend what we love!)

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