Ah, summer reading. What was once a bit of a chore during high school has become a habit and a delight now that I’m older. The biggest difference is that now I get to choose what I’m going to read! So without further ado, here’s a short list of books for the summer:

• “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction” by Eugene Peterson (in progress)
• “Sag Harbor” by Colston Whitehead
• “Everything is Illuminated” by Jonathan Saffron Foer
• “Once a Runner” by John L Parker
• “Henderson the Rain King” by Saul Bellow and Dave Eggers
• “Narnia and the Fields of Arbol: The Environmental Vision of C.S. Lewis” by Matthew Dickerson
• “The Furious Longing of God” by Brennan Manning
• “What is the What” by Dave Eggers
• “The Four Loves” by C.S. Lewis
• “Marathon” by Hal Higdon (how to train for 26.2!)
• “Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C.S. Lewis” by C.S. Lewis (a collection of his letters).

Ah, summer is finally here. I went camping last night at Yellowwood to kick off the summer properly. Since I changed the blog design the photos show up kind of small, so a reminder that if you click on them they’ll expand to full- screen.

More blogging to come now that exams are done!

I laid awake for a good hour last night after I turned the light off. I’d just finished reading “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle,” by Dave Wroblewski, and my mind just wouldn’t shut off.

It’s a great book, and I highly recommend reading it. There are the obvious undertones of “Hamlet,” but Wroblewski’s writing also seems to combine the traits of some of my favorite American writers – John Steinbeck, Richard Adams and John Irving.

Wroblewski’s writing waxes poetic – he’s wonderful at describing things in a way you haven’t quite heard before. His best writing is about abstract concepts, though, and I particularly enjoy the few chapters that are about the family’s dog, Almondine. Her loyalty and devotion are touching. I don’t want to give much away, but here’s a passage from a chapter about her from late in the book:

“She had learned, in her life, that time lived inside you. You are time, you breathe time. When she’d been young, she’d had an insatiable hunger for more of it, though she hadn’t understood why. Now she held inside her a cacophony of times and lately it drowned out the world. The apple tree was still nice to lie near. The peony, for its scent, was also fine. When she walked through the woods (infrequently now) she picked her way along the path, making way for the boy inside to run along before her. It could be hard to choose the time outside over the time within. There was still work to do, of course. The young ones in the barn knew so little and she had taught so many before. It hardly seemed worth trying when she was asked, though she did.”