Patrick Brown, Contributing Editor
I am sure I am far from the only member of the Public Discourse family to be preparing for the release of Christopher Nolan’s adaption of The Odyssey later this summer. In part because the tale was initially orally transmitted (and in part because it’s easier to sneak in chunks of listening time while watching kids at the park), I made a point of picking an audiobook recording—Sir Ian McKellen reads the Fagles translation with characteristic aplomb. Samuel Moyn’s Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth—and What to Do About It is on my list for professional reasons, and Leander Schaerlaeckens’ history of the U.S. soccer program The Long Game: U.S. Men’s Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top is helping me get in the World Cup spirit. Then I have to decide whether I want to make room for Caro Clare Burke’s viral tradwife novel Yesteryear …
Alexandra Davis, Managing Editor
My reading group is taking on Les Miserables this summer, so I am currently carrying around what I fondly call my “brick” with me in my diaper bag. It’s quite the conversation piece when I whip it out at the pool, all 1,100+ pages of it. It’s been a blast sending our favorite witty Hugo lines to our group text thread and declaring which parts of the narrative have left us decidedly “not okay.” In all seriousness, Les Mis will always remain among my favorite stories about human complexity, concupiscence, and redemption. May we all aspire to be Jean Valjean when, at times, we are regrettably more like Javert. (Our reading group will also enjoy a screening of the 2012 movie this summer, which is a masterpiece, Russell Crowe’s singing notwithstanding.)
For a much lighter, cannot-put-it-down read, I’m nearly finished with the Catholic author (and occasional PD writer) Claire Swinarski’s novel The Supper Club Saints. It’s been a while since I’ve read a contemporary novel that so searingly captures the most honest and often unflattering angles of a mother’s interior dialogue. Not to mention, it’s often laugh-out-loud funny. Claire does enjoy some salty language, though, so caveat emptor, especially if you’re listening to an audio version.
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Having read Leon Kass’s The Beginning of Wisdom last summer—his close reading of the book of Genesis—I plan to read his sequel on Exodus, Founding God’s Nation. I also look forward to Thomas Howes and James Patterson’s Why Postliberalism Failed. And having subscribed to PD friend and author Karen Swallow Prior’s Substack, The Priory, I’ve been following her guided tour through English lit from Chaucer to Donne to Milton to Swift, among others. Next up is Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, which I’ve never read. Eager to get started.
Devorah Goldman, Contributing Editor
First, I’m reading Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: I’m in the middle of this now, and it’s not a light summer read! But it illuminates. First, it says something about our political and cultural moment, in which promises of secret, spiritual knowledge are proclaimed from popular podcasts and across social media. It also offers perennial wisdom about the human psyche and the temptation to contend with worldly challenges by rejecting the world altogether.
Second is Isaiah Berlin’s Russian Thinkers: Russia is having a moment, if celebrity trips to Moscow are any indication. So it seems like a good time to examine great Russian minds through this collection of essays by Berlin, who witnessed the Russian Revolution as a child but who spent the bulk of his life as professor at Oxford. His most famous essay among this selection is probably “The Hedgehog and the Fox.” It begins by citing the Greek poet Archilocus: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Berlin studies Tolstoy’s view of history through the lens of these two approaches to knowing, which can contradict and confound.
Third and finally is Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, a proper summer read! A young British girl finds herself penniless and impulsively boards a boat to find work as a schoolteacher in a small French village. Much is made of the contrast between British and French manners and style. A good deal in which to delight.
Nathaniel Peters, Contributing Editor
At the end of his life, the French director and playwright Marcel Pagnol wrote two memoirs of his childhood: My Father’s Glory and My Mother’s Castle. A member of the Académie Française, Pagnol’s prose exemplifies the simplicity that lies on the far side of complexity. He captures the joy of family life, and the wonder and affection that a beautiful place can inspire—in this case, the hills of Provence. The banter between his religiously atheistic father and his devout Uncle Jules is especially funny. I’ve finished the first book and look forward to enjoying the second under the warm summer sun.
At the Morningside Institute this summer, we’ll be reading Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, which tells the story of John Ames, a dying Congregationalist minister in small-town Iowa who records his life in letters to his son. The novel depicts a world saturated by the divine and explores American Protestantism, the interplay of faith and politics, and the difficult relations between parents and children. It’s a good book for exploring America’s religious heritage during the 250th anniversary of our country.
R. J. Snell, Editor-in-Chief
I’m a fan of the Aubrey/Maturin naval series by Patrick O’Brian, a writer who, like Trollope, is vastly superior to Austen as a storyteller and stylist. (I write this as part of a long-standing dispute.) I’ve read the twenty-one novels in the series multiple times but have never read the two biographies O’Brian penned, one on Picasso and the other on Joseph Banks, the eighteenth-century naturalist and explorer. I’ve ordered, although will wait until at the lake (vastly superior to the ocean, another dispute) to read Joseph Banks: A Life. O’Brian is a wonderful writer, Banks is somewhat larger than life, and the cover includes a portrait of Banks by Sir Joshua Reynolds, the artist my children studied this past term and whom my artist daughter has copied in her first oil paintings.
Micah Watson, Contributing Editor
I wish I could say I had a unifying thread running throughout the various tomes I’m working through this summer. But if there is such a thread, I’m not sure what it is. Nevertheless, here are three books. Given the 250th anniversary I’m revisiting the magnificent 1994 book by Barry Alan Shain, The Myth of American Individualism, so I can take part in a conversation this fall with my friend Jordan Ballor of the Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy. I’m reminded of just how thoroughly Shain’s work put to rest the shibboleth that early Americans were staunch individualists looking to live out ahead of time Frank Sinatra’s lyric “I did it my way” in his 1969 song.
I was also so struck, again, by the power of David Foster Wallace’s 2005 remarkable graduation address, This is Water, at Kenyon College that I thought I should take the plunge and read one of his actual books. Infinite Jest arrived on my doorstep and I didn’t realize what I had let myself in for with this 1,079-page book with 388 endnotes and a degree of difficulty that might make James Joyce proud. Check in with me next summer to see if I’ve persevered through this one.
Finally, and against my better judgment, I was persuaded by my friend Carson Holloway to write something on a Shakespeare play for a forthcoming edited volume about Shakespeare, politics, and faith. When told of a man who was very modest, Winston Churchill reportedly responded that the man had much to be modest about. Such could be said about my Shakespeare chops, but nevertheless I’m reading, and rereading, The Merchant of Venice, as well as the Geneva Bible (the one Shakespeare grew up with) in order to satisfy the claims of obligation and more friendship.
