This is mainly for my own interest - at the end of every year I kind of kick myself for not keeping a better list of what I've read over the past year (and, as a result, I tend to lowball how much I actually read). But maybe with the discipline of the blog - and also the fact that I know other people read this and might be interested in what *I* read, I will be better at keeping up with it. And I may put in a few comments about each book - not a real review but more of a general impression.
The first two of the new year were both completed on the train ride back (I had mostly finished one, and just begun the other, before the trip).
They are:
"Dirt: the ecstatic skin of the Earth" by William Bryant Logan and
"Stirring the Mud: on Swamps, Bogs, and Human Imagination" by Barbara Hurd
These are actually interesting books to read one off the other, so to speak. "Dirt" is written by an arborist (who apparently has a fairly well-rounded scientific education). He is also a Christian and is (in some capacity, I'm not sure quite how) attached to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.
It's not a strict factual book; it tends to be more anecdotal. But I enjoy that kind of thing, it gives me things to think about. Logan tries to connect the scientific information about soil to broader or more philosophical topics: for example, he discusses the hypothesis that clay may have actually been the site of the first life on Earth, rather than life-originating-in-the-oceans (which is what most people learn) and he talks about how if that is the case, a lot of the old creation-stories are more prescient than what we thought....I'm not phrasing it very well but it's the kind of thing that thrills my mind, the finding of connections between the disparate worlds of science, faith, humanities. The book gave a lot of things to think about, and the chapters are short, so you can read one and go off and think about it pretty easily.
Hurd's book is a little different. First off, she's a poet, rather than a scientist, and I'm guessing from comments she makes and from her general view that she is Buddhist. I hate to say it, but I found this book less engaging - in some way, shallower. I don't *think* it's simply because Logan is a better fit to my own proclivities (someone with scientific training and who follows a fairly conventional spiritual path). I didn't find myself thinking as deeply about what she said and I did about what Logan said - and in some cases, the book came across more as a catalog of "here is this thing I did in a wetland" and then "here is this other thing I did" without quite the same "deepening" that Logan seemed to have.
Still, I found her description of her friend - who sold all his earthly possessions and even gave up his art studio to go live in a swamp - pretty arresting:
"He tells me, quietly, 'I want to live like an animal, close to the earth, self-sufficient, doing as little harm as possible.' And ten minutes later: 'And I want to live like Christ, close to God, detached, open to the unknown.'"
(Arresting, yes, but not something I could do. I do not think, for me, being cold a lot of the time and hungry a lot of the time - which I am guessing "living like an animal" entails - would bring me closer to God. But it is still a startling comparison.)
No comments:
Post a Comment