Reading with Intention

Books That Make Us Feel At Home

Stories that genuinely engage me, the ones that grab on and won’t let go are the ones that tell something more than a string of events. They’re alive, awakening something and tangling around things in their path as they move along, enfolding them into themselves. They have multiple layers that insinuate themselves below the surface, invading the roots of a thing and reaching sideways into other realms, and at times they hint at something high and lofty.

That’s often the case for books that tell travel stories. In that genre we get to eaves drop on the “in the moment” discoveries of the traveler. We benefit from their research and many times get a front row seat as they wrestle with their deep inner musings. In On Trails: An Exploration Robert Moor invites us to experience with him his incredible thru-hike on the Appalachian Trail. He goes a step further and shares with us his relationship with trails starting with his first childhood hike and the moment when the misery of an overloaded pack and blistered feet are transformed into a life long passion for trails. We travel with him discovering trails of all kinds, in all parts of the world, in all periods of history. While he brings us along on his whirlwind of surprising discoveries, he also slows us down into thought provoking depth.

John Graves, in his book Goodbye to a River, takes us on another kind of journey. Graves records his canoe trip on the Brazos River that cuts through the heart of Texas. It’s his last trip there before construction begins on the proposed dams in the area, his last trip before this part of the river is no more. Change is the theme that brings cohesion to the structure of this book. It’s not a heavy-handed account and yet there is a nostalgia about it as he reconstructs some of the historical events that took place on the banks of the river. As he ponders how these events have shaped a fading culture, as he takes in the natural beauty of the river, and acknowledges the coming change, we are with him. All the while he is generous with himself, which ups the value of the read for me, many fold. It’s a richly woven tapestry causing me to rethink the gold standard by which I choose books.

Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard is not a book about travel, but she writes it after relocating to a cottage on an island in Puget Sound. From the island that she had traveled to, she looks with new eyes at the sublime hidden inside the ordinary. Frederick Buechner called it “A rare and precious book” in a review for the New York Times. The three days that she chooses to use as the focus of her book fill Holy the Firm’s scant 66 pages with great density. Those things hard to understand and those things brimming with the mystical drip from its pages.

How should we decide what we read? Does it really matter? We want reading to entertain us and rightly so. The word “entertain” originally had to do with the idea of hospitality. Isn’t that what we want, to settle in and make ourselves at home inside a story that allows us to grow into our best selves, our “at home” becoming something we could not have imagined when we first entered in, a place we feel at home enough that we can explore vistas that beckon us onward.

Books have the power to mentor us to be our best selves. Let’s choose thoughtfully what we read and let’s read thoughtfully.

When did you last feel changed by a book you read?

Writing Prompt For The Week: A Childhood First