Rev. Dr. Jeff Garrison
Aaron McAlexander, Greasy Bend: Ode to a Mountain Road (Stonebridge Press, 2016), 224 pages, a few black and white photographs. Highway 58 cuts across Southern Virginia, from Cumberland Gap (Along the Tennessee/Kentucky border) to the Tidewater. The highway crosses swamps, fields of peanuts and tobacco, old industrial towns like Danville and Martinsville, then climbs the Blue Ridge … Read more Highway 58 and some recent photos
Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North. (2013, Audible, 2014), 14 hours 59 minutes What a complex book. At times I loved it and other times I wondered what I was doing immersing myself within these words. The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a title taken from Basho, a famous Japanese haiku poet … Read more Recent readings
I’m catching up on some recent reading… Tilar J. Mazzero, The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It. (Harpers Business, 2009), 264 pages. Late last year, I listened to the author’s “Great Courses” lectures on “Creative Nonfiction.” She often used examples of her own writing including this book. I … Read more Four Books: Champagne, Skid-row, Generosity, & Mountain Midwifery
Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer (2014) This is the story narrated by an unnamed man who doesn’t fit in, anywhere. A bastard. His father was a French Catholic priest and his mother a Vietnamese maid. In many ways, the narrator is of two minds. Given the opportunity to study in the United States, he learns the ways … Read more Two Books: A spy thriller and a self-congratulatory humorous look at gumption
Lisa Deam, 3000 Miles to Jesus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life for Spiritual Seekers (Minneapolis Broadleaf Books, 2021), 211 pages including notes and a few drawings and maps Early pilgrims In the centuries between the crusades and the Reformation, there were many devout Christians who made pilgrimages. While Rome and Santiago de Compostela (the Way … Read more Two books on Pilgrimage
Haw River 1975 I pause, standing in the door of the gas station at the edge of Pittsboro, a Coke in one hand and a pack of peanuts in the other. Ripping open the peanuts with my teeth, I shake a few from the bag into my mouth, chasing it with a swig from the … Read more Haw River: a short memoir and a book review
Barry Lopez, About This Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory (New York: Random House/Vintage Books, 1999), 273 pages. This is a wonderful collection of essays. I listened to an abridged edition as well as read the essays. The Audible version of the book was wonderful because the late Lopez read his work. The collection (in the book … Read more About This Life
Ronald W. Hall, The Carroll County Courthouse Tragedy (2013 printing, Hillsville VA: Carroll County Historical Society,1998). 272 pages including sources and a few b&w photos. This is another book that I’ve read in order to learn about my new locale. In March 1912, there was a shooting at the Carroll County, Courthouse in Hillsville, Virginia. When all … Read more The Carroll County Courthouse Tragedy
Amy Peterson, Where Goodness Still Grows: Reclaiming Virtue in an Age of Hypocrisy (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2020), 197 pages including notes. Fifteen years ago, I read Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue by Paul Woodruff. Since then, I’ve read it several times and have spent considerable energy thinking about virtues. Perhaps this itch drew me to this book. In … Read more Where Goodness Still Grows
2020 has come to an end. It was a year that we’ll not forget. Personally, it didn’t rise up to the trauma of 2016 (when I ruptured my quad-tendon, was in the hospital with sepsis following a prostate biopsy, and dealt with a tropical storm and later Hurricane Matthew), but it was still a terrible … Read more Wrapping Up 2020 (my reading summary for the year)