Best of 2021

The Varieties and Possibilities of Courage

My courageous life has the patience to keep teaching me. - David Whyte

My Dear Readers,

The idea to create a reading journal was sparked in January of 2016. That idea gave birth to the Soul Librarian identity and the Circulation Desk blog turned subscription email. Six years later, I am grateful for your support, especially those who purchased Soul Reading Journals, have followed this project from the beginning and those who have found your way here from faraway places and have reached out to me. It’s been an amazingly heartwarming experience for me. 

It’s been a while since I’ve written in this space, so I hope it’s not much of a surprise that this will be the last edition of Circulation Desk. I am feeling my creative energies tugged in new directions and I need to give these new ideas room to expand and see where they will go. In the meantime, this page will stay up for at least six months if you would like to access any of the content. 

When I began this project six years ago, I wanted to engage much more with how we read than what we read. I’ve never felt completely comfortable offering up the books I’ve read as recommended reading with the very big exception of the Soul Library books. Instead, when I write about the books I’ve read, I’ve tried to model how I create meaning from my own reading. In this space I’ve tried to do this for “seasons” of reading every three months or so.

No matter whether you use the Soul Reading Journal format or questions, I hope you will continue to find books that speak to your life and create your own meaning from them by simply asking:

• Why was I drawn to this book at this time of my life? And how is it similar/different from other books I’ve read lately or in the past?

• What characters/settings/symbols resonated with me most and why?

• How does this book make me feel universally connected with other people?

• How does this book make me feel completely unique?

• What will I take with me or remember from this book? 

And if this level of reflection isn’t for you and you’re looking for a simpler reading journal, I would highly recommend this one. 

And if you do want to keep in touch with my reading life, I’d invite you to follow me on Goodreads under my full name, Karen Quance Jeske.

Before I get onto my favorites from 2021, know that I appreciate your interest in my bookish thoughts so very much and that I wish you a happy new year full of blessings, joy, and good books! 

My very best to you always,

Karen

Do not be led by fear; fear cannot lead you out of the dark. Find whatever bits of hope you can — a trail of even the smallest bread crumbs, even the tiniest pebbles reflecting the moonlight—and follow them.  -Maggie Smith

Favorite Books of 2021

Feeling so often discouraged in 2021 (pandemic and workplace changes), it’s not at all surprising the books that most resonated with me this year tell stories of the varieties of courage and the possibility for courage to lead to transformation and change. Here are my thirteen favorite books that I read in 2021, in no particular order. (Interestingly, for someone who tries to read older and classic books, nine of these were released in 2021, one in late 2020, two in 2019, and one in 1850.) 

Here’s the quick list. Keep scrolling for my take on each selection. 

6 Fiction/Memoir

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune

Matrix: A Novel by Lauren Groff

Little Faith by Nickolas Butler

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

6 Nonfiction

Varieties of Melancholy by The School of Life

A Rhythm of Prayer edited by Sarah Bessey

Wintering by Katherine May

Wholehearted Faith by Rachel Held Evans and Jeffrey Chu

The Sum of Us by Heather McGee

God Land by Lyz Lenz

Poetry

Still Possible by David Whyte

Favorite Fiction/Memoir

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

A classic for good reason! I’ve made it a project to read one Dickens a year until I get through all of his best-known novels. I find Dickens very readable and relatable. David Copperfield is a coming-of-age story of the orphaned David. The novel opens at David’s birth and concludes most of the action in his late 20’s with a satisfying epilogue of how his life plays out into middle age. It is the transformative arc of David’s story and the arcs of several other characters — drawn so vividly and clearly on the page — that make this book delightfully compelling. 

David is good-natured, curious, and naive in the best ways. He is also trusting. And though that trust is misplaced or violated on occasion, he never loses it. Betsey Trotwood is David’s great aunt who is not interested in him when he is born but ends up raising him and loving him. Clara Peggotty is David’s nurse when he is a baby and is a lifelong, loyal friend. She introduces David to her brother, Daniel. Daniel Peggotty is one of the most understanding and forgiving characters I’ve read in a novel. His devotion and ability to see the best in people is boundless and inspiring. Wilkins Micawber, in part because of the faith David has in him, transforms from a well-meaning nair-de-well to a hero in the take-down of Uriah Heap. Dr. Strong and Annie Strong’s devotion to each other is a great love story. And Agnes Wickfield is steadfast, sensible and devoted to David as the love of his life. 

The novel explores how these characters weave in and out of each other’s lives, becoming the fabric that makes and shapes who they are. Dickens seems to be saying that our ability to be trusting and trustworthy — surely, an orphaned boy like David in the 19th Century needed lots of courage to do so — and to form true friendships make life worthwhile and are also a kind of superpower against the evils of the world. Next up, Bleak House, in 2022.   

Under the Whispering Door by T. J. Klune

I discovered T. J. Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea in 2020 and found it to be enchanting. As a light fantasy tale, Under the Whispering Door is also enchanting, but it’s also more. The themes in this book are a little deeper. Like Cerulean Sea, this story explores the courage it takes to form trusting friendships. But it also shows the courage involved in accepting the terrible things that happen to us, figuring out what we want, and standing up to the powerful for justice. 

Wallace is a man who has lived a greedy and selfish life. When he dies unexpectedly, he is ferried to a way station run by Hugo. The way station is a place where the newly dead can accept their circumstances before “moving on” through the whispering door. Wallace does come to accept his death, but rather than being ready to move on, he and Hugo fall in love. Wallace befriends other characters at the way station and he also sees the injustices in this system of the afterlife. When the “manager” arrives to push Wallace to move on, Wallace stands up to him. 

It’s a beautiful transformative story and illustrates how what we think of as our own imperfections are sometimes exactly the qualities needed to see something others are missing. Because Wallace comes to accept not only his death, but the kind of person he was, he is able to believe in the transformative possibilities of others as well and propose ways to offer this kind of redemption to others. 

Matrix: A Novel by Lauren Groff

This novel is 12th Century historic fiction with no male characters.  Matrix is the story of the very compelling and complex Marie de France. Living at the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine, 17-year-old Marie is clever but not beautiful enough to attract a good marriage. Therefore, Eleanor sends Marie away to become prioress and, eventually, the abbess of an impoverished abbey in England. 

When she arrives Marie is terribly disappointed but she soon learns that she is able to make a difference in the lives of her sisters and in the fortunes of the abbey. Under Marie’s leadership, it becomes a powerful fortress from the hardships of 12th Century English life. Without any male characters, the novel is an exploration of female power and creativity, especially in the face of a corrupted world. 

The novel follows Marie to the end of her life in old age. The 17-year-old who didn’t believe in God and was constantly looking backwards to a better time in her life, transforms into a brave, forward-looking protectress with faith in the Holy Spirit and even greater faith in her community of sisters. In addition to power, the novel also explores various cycles of time from the passing reigns of power to the passing of the daily hours. This is a book that has stayed with me since I finished it a few months ago and one I anticipate re-reading before too much time has passed. 

Little Faith by Nickolas Butler

I followed up Matrix with Little Faith. From Marie to Lyle, another character with more faith in communities of people than in abstract ideas of God. Lyle lives with his wife Peg in a small Wisconsin town. Years ago, after the death of their young son, Peter, Lyle and Peg adopted infant, Shiloh. They are now retired, living a quiet life and attending church weekly at St. Olaf’s where Lyle’s friend, Charlie, is the pastor.  Lyle works seasonally at an apple orchard and he and Peg both dote on their grandson, Isaac.

A challenge arises when Shiloh joins a new church in a neighboring town and becomes romantically involved with minister. Together, Shiloh and Pastor Stephen come to believe that Isaac is a healer — this particular church does not believe in medical healing. Conflict arises when it’s discovered that Isaac is diabetic and Shiloh and Stephen do not seek medical care for him, putting his life in danger. 

Lyle is a community man. Everything he does is about love, understanding, and unity. This novel explores how those foundations (faith) can be shaken and the kind of courage it takes to stand up to both bullies and those we love the most. 

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

This memoir of Zauner’s coming of age and young adulthood is organized around the death of Zauner’s mother from cancer. She also uses Korean food — Zauner’s mother was Korean and her father American — as a lens for understanding the complicated relationship between Zauner and her mother. I listened to this book in the audio format and it’s especially good with Zauner doing the narration. 

As a teenager, Zauner was creative and curious and these qualities led her to get into some trouble, and they were also a source of frustration for her mother. Their relationship was difficult until Zauner was in college. They repaired their relationship completely just at the time when her mother was diagnosed with cancer. The book details her mother’s final months of life and the aftermath. Throughout, Zauner is also coming to terms with her Korean heritage. Although, Zauner tries some Korean cooking for her mother, it is after her mom dies, that Zauner takes up Korean cooking in earnest as a way to stay connected to her mother and proudly accept her Korean roots.  

Having lost my own mother to cancer, there was much I could relate to in this mother/daughter story that winds back and forth in time. Courage is found throughout as neither Zauner nor her mother shy away from difficult conversations, forgiveness, or bold decisions. 

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

I read this novella in one sitting. It was recommended by Anne Bogel in a December blog post that I read at the perfect moment, right before Christmas, when I had an afternoon to curl up with a book for a few hours. My impulse was rewarded, as this is such a special Christmas story. 

Set in a small Irish town in 1985, the book follows Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and devoted family man with a wife and four daughters, in the days leading up to Christmas. As he delivers coal a couple times to the local convent, he makes a discovery implicating the convent in what later becomes known as the Magdalene Laundry scandals. He is warned away from saying anything by his wife, the owner of a local diner, and the head sister of the convent. The sisters at the convent also run a private girls school where his own daughters attend and is known as the best school for lifting young women out of the limited opportunities in their community. 

In the end, on Christmas Eve, he musters the courage to do the right thing, helping a young girl escape from the convent and taking her home to his family. The novella ends just as they reach the threshold of his home. 

He found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping one another? Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror? ….. The worst was yet to come, he knew. Already he could feel a world of trouble waiting for him behind the next door, but the worst that could have happened was also already behind him; the thing not done, which could have been—which he would have had to live with for the rest of his life.  

— Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Favorite Nonfiction

Varieties of Melancholy by The School of Life

Here’s a courageous admission: I have never felt so seen, understood, and justified as I did reading when reading this book. 

The School of Life is an organization that seeks to teach others how to live fulfilled lives. It was founded by Alain de Botton, author of many great books. Varieties of Melancholy is a catalog of various forms of sadness and ennui. It is written with the belief that to live a full life, we encounter melancholic feelings regularly and that it would be beneficial for us to be able to name them and understand these feelings more clearly. Specific types of melancholy explored in this book include the obvious like loneliness, aging, and Sunday evenings; but also the melancholy found in the less obvious like achievements, beauty, and parties. 

It is a soulful and thought-provoking book. My own copy is approximately fifty percent underlined. 

A Rhythm of Prayer edited by Sarah Bessey

This is a collection of prayers written by a variety of authors - all women or gender-nonconforming and many with brown or black skin. It is organized into three sections - orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. 

The prayers are varied. They are cries for justice. They are lament. They bear witness to people at the margins. They are calls to courage, including the courage to have self-compassion as well as compassion for others. Taken whole, it is a resource for courage. When I look at the world around me and feel despairing or discouraged, this is the book I pick up. 

Some of my favorites in this collection are quite long, but one of the simplest I carry with me for anxious moments is: 

[breathe in] (think or say) The holy is here

[breathe out] (think or say) present with me

—A Rhythm of Prayer by Sarah Bessey

Wintering by Katherine May

I would call this book a memoir as a spiritual companion. 

Katherine May lives on the southeast coast of England in Whitstable. In this book she mixes personal stories of the “wintering” times in her life with reflections about nature — the cold, the seasons and how plants and animals cope with these — in order to acknowledge our need for rest, renewal, and retreat. We experience wintering in the changing of the seasons each year, but also during different seasons of our life during illness, grief, or change. She says, “transformation is the business of winter.” 

Like The School of Life, May also talks about the importance of acknowledging and honoring our sadness. Doing so is the courageous act of staring down the worst parts of our experience and committing to healing them the best that we can. These cycles of wintering also expand our capacity for empathy, kindness and compassion. 

As important as the seasons of “wintering” are, it’s also important that we do not stay there:

It often seems easier to stay in winter, burrowed down into our hibernation rests, away from the glare of the sun. But we are brave, and the new world awaits us, gleaming and green, alive with the beat of wings. And besides, we have a kind of gospel to tell now, and a duty to share it. We, who have wintered, have learned some things. We sing it out like birds. We let our voices fill the air.

—Wintering by Katherine May

Wholehearted Faith by Rachel Held Evans and Jeffrey Chu

This is the book Rachel Held Evans was working on when she died unexpectedly in 2019 at the age of 37. Her husband, Dan, asked their friend, Jeffrey Chu, if he would be willing to finish the book. Wholehearted Faith, published in November 2021, is the product of Evans’ and Chu’s heartbreaking collaboration. 

It’s a beautifully communicated vision of how Evans has come to see Christianity told as both memoir and theological reflection. It takes a lot of courage to stand up to the forces of the religious right in America today and, in her life, Evans modeled how to do this thoughtfully and with dignity. I’ve admired her work for several years now especially the work she’s done alongside Jeffrey Chu and Sarah Bessey to start the Evolving Faith set of conferences and now a podcast. Like many others, my own faith journey echoes Evans’ and I found this book to be especially reassuring and comforting. 

If you can, I recommend listening to this book in the audio format. It’s read by Evans’ husband and sister, Chu, Bessey, and a cast Evans’ friends and collaborators in the work they all share. 

The Sum of Us by Heather McGee

This is a deeply researched book about how a “zero-sum” mindset prevents Americans from having a much stronger social safety net and higher quality public infrastructure. The problem, argues McGee, isn’t that we can’t afford it, but that we don’t want “those people” to have the same access and advantages that we have. In this book, she makes a compelling case that “those people” are black and brown skinned Americans. 

Beginning with the fate of public swimming pools — many were closed down throughout the middle part of the 20th Century when ordered to racially integrate — and extending to explorations of housing policy, labor policies, and voting rights, McGee makes a compelling case. But she also introduces the reader to the idea of  “solidarity dividends” to end the book on a hopeful note. 

I’ve said before in other essays, it takes courage to look at ourselves honestly — personally and collectively — but it’s a necessary first step toward meaningful change.  

God Land by Lyz Lenz

Part memoir, part social science, I enjoyed Lenz’s personal and professional grappling with the traditions, shifts, and contours of faith practiced in the Midwest, especially in Iowa where Lenz and I both live. 

As Lenz sets out to understand religion in the heartland it’s for two reasons — the struggle in her marriage to find a church home and the election of Donald Trump in 2016, led by Christian evangelicals. This book is personal but also human, philosophical, historical, critical, and feminist. She explores how the wide expanses of land, the tough cycles of farming, and stoic worldview have shaped religious practice and thought in middle America. 

The result is a unique portrait of divided America - divided by politics; divided by geography; and divided by religious beliefs (even within Christianity) — unlike those we often read in the newspapers and magazines published on the coasts. It is a portrait not with without hope, though the most hopeful parts remain obscure, at the edges, and in personal places. It takes courage to look at the truth of what she’s sketched and it’s inspiring to see her personal journey in this land in a hopeful place. 

Poetry

Still Possible by David Whyte

I have been a fan of Whyte’s work for several years now. One of the best things I did in 2021 was to join a virtual course led by Whyte called Alone and Together: Leadership in the Time of Zoom. It was an amazing experience shared by people from around the world. 

Still Possible is his latest poetry collection and it’s my favorite so far. Most of these poems speak directly to the heart about the possibilities still open to us, especially in mid-life or later years. They are also about summoning the courage to see ourselves and understand ourselves — our hopes and our fears — and to act on those hopes and fears while it’s still possible to do so. This is a pretty and slim volume I imagine keeping close and referring to often. 

Yes, it’s still possible not to hold so tightly to what you think is true, to bend your head and assume humility beneath the eaves of a still spreading sky….  —David Whyte