Favorite books of 2024

 I read a lot of books in 2024, some poorly written, some good enough, and some excellent books that inspired me with their content and made me happy with their wonderful way with words. For me a good book combines both substance (what it says) and form (how it’s written).

It helps to be part of a good book-reading-group. I am. I hesitate to call it a club. We’re too informal for that and have no officers or protocol. We just meet regularly and have lively discussions. But, to be honest, I’d read just as much even if I were not in a group.

The following are some of the year’s favorites, not listed in any priority and being published in any year (not just 2024). I limited the list to ten fiction and ten nonfiction books. It was hard and I eliminated some good books. But, oh well. It’s interesting to see that all but one of the fiction books were written by women. The women also dominated the nonfiction and poetry categories. I wonder what that means.

Fiction

Ann Patchett, Tom Lake (2023): Patchett’s books always please me. This one tells of a mother and her three grown daughters, in the setting of a summer theater camp. It’s about telling stories and keeping secrets. How much do we really know about our parents?

Isabel Allende, The Wind Knows My Name (2023): Story of three children in three different generations, all raised in contexts of violence. Portrays well the trauma of being refugees.

Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis (2020): A fictional portrayal of the romance between CS Lewis and Joy Davidman. Extensive research gives this view of their relationship plausibility.

Geraldine Brooks, Horse (2023): Historical fiction that weaves the narratives of three people living in three different times whose stories eventually intersect. It circles around the sport of horse-racing and the story of one remarkable horse, Lexington. Touches on themes of racism, animal rights, relationships between animals and humans, and the relationship between science and art. Provocative. 

Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry (2022): One of my favorites this year. A funny feminist story of a woman chemist in a world of men. When fired from her job, the protagonist applies her science to the art of cooking and becomes a popular television personality. The book treats serious subjects with humor.

Octavia Butler, Kindred (1979): Combines fantasy, realism, and time travel as a contemporary black girl finds herself back in the era of slavery, trying to understand her family story. Brings to life the suffering caused by racism, both in the past and today.

Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts (2023): A futurist novel about the fight against injustice set in a dystopian, totalitarian society. Again, the theme of racism is strong. Reminds me of Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451.

Kristin Hannah, The Women (2024): Story of the women who served as nurses in Vietnam, the challenges they faced in war, and those faced as they returned back home. An important book.

Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead (2022): This one is a Pulitzer Prize winner and I can see why. It’s hard to read the story of this young man who grows up with everything traumatic, violent, and wrong against him. As he progresses through young adulthood so many horrible things happen to him, it’s hard to read. Yet grace continues to show up in the people here and there who befriend and believe in him. It’s a valuable window into what so many people in our culture go through.

Niall Williams, This Is Happiness (2021): I found a new favorite author in this Irish writer. This coming-of-age story is set in a small Irish village early in the 20th century, and the setting is as much a protagonist as the people in the tale. Beautiful and insightful descriptions, both of the landscape and of human nature.

Non-fiction

David Brooks, How To Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen (2023): A good book on being an authentic, other-centered, kind person who helps the ones she’s with become more of themselves. I’m a David Brooks fan.

Judy Meliner, Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner (2015): Fascinating memoir of a forensic investigator’s internship in New York City. Goes into detail of all that an autopsy in a criminal cast involves. Especially gripping is the chapter on 9/11.

Sarah McCaman, The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living and Leaving the White Evangelical Church (2024): Provocative book documenting the stories of young adults, raised in evangelical churches, who are leaving, disillusioned. I identify with many of the reasons young people leave the church but I don’t agree with the totally black picture she paints. There is still much life in the church.

Barbara Mahany, The Book of Nature: The Astonishing Beauty of God’s First Sacred Text (2023): Mahany says that God speaks to us in two main ways: through Scripture and through nature. This book focuses on nature and the need to pay attention. Give specific details about different phenomena of nature. To be read slowly and reflectively.

Patrick Bringley, All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me (2023): Memoir of Bringley’s ten years as a guard at this famous museum in New York. He tells stories of the different pieces of art as well as his personal experiences and his gradual becoming an art lover himself. I especially appreciated his reflections on art and how to enjoy art.

Nancy French, Ghosted: An American Story (2024): Fascinating story of a woman who ghost-wrote biographies of political figures, especially Republicans. During the time of Trump, she began to get uneasy as she felt forced to write things she felt were untrue. When she decided to no long write these stories, she was “ghosted” by the party, loosing her career and suffering harassment. Hard to read.

Carolyn Weber, Surprised by Oxford (2013): Memoir of a young Canadian woman who won a scholarship for graduate work in Oxford. It’s a triple love story: Weber’s falling in love with England and Oxford; her relationship with a Christian young man who explained the gospel to her and eventually won her love; and her finding God for herself, the focus of the story.

Barbara Brown Taylor, Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others (2019): Brown, a Christian professor of world religion to undergraduates, tells of her experiences as she takes a positive approach to other religions and brings students to worship services in each of the traditions. She finds so much good that she identifies what she calls “holy envy,” wishing that some of the practices could be incorporated into Christianity. She says that this approach to other faiths has actually strengthened her as a Christian.

Kristin Gault, Gifts of Sight: Discovering God's Love through the Lens of Visual Impairment (2024): Probably one of the best books of the year, and I say this because I believe it, not because the author happens to be my daughter (brag, brag, brag). Kristin combines her own experience as a teacher of the visually impaired with her larger life story, sharing spiritual insights that have risen from her profession and life.

Allen Cheney, Crescendo: The Story of a Genius Who Forever Changed a Southern Town (2019): Inspiring biography of a man who grew up poor and abused, but who discovered music early on and was soon recognized as a musical genius. An amazing rags-to-riches story.

Poetry

Jessica Jacobs, Unalone (2024): Poems based on the book of Genesis by a poet who is also a Hebrew scholar. Many of the poems are wonderful (and I rarely use that word). I wish I’d written this book!

Nancy Thomas, The Language of Light: poems of wit, whimsey, and (maybe) wisdom (2024): Okay, right. It’s my book. But I’m actually pleased with it and invite you to discover it for yourself. Available on Amazon.com.

It’s almost 2025 and I look forward to lots of things in the new year. One of those is, of course, books There’s a world of books I haven’t read. I wonder what treasures I’ll discover.

The women at Christmas

 It’s just a few days before Christmas as I write this. As I prepare my heart, I’m thinking about the women in the Christmas story. A few weeks ago, I reflected on two older women, Elizabeth and Anna. Now my heart comes closer to the center of the story and I think of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Not old. A teenager. A quiet girl, someone who pondered life’s mysteries and respectfully followed the dictates of her faith. She was probably looking forward to marriage and a family, as did all Jewish young women. She would receive those gifts, although not in the way she might have imagined. Her encounter with the angel Gabriel and his strange message is one of the most moving passages in Scripture. The poet Robert Siegel has an interesting perspective of this event, one that gives insight into Mary’s character.

Annunciation

She didn’t notice at first the air had changed.
She didn’t, because she had no expectation
except the moment and what she was doing, absorbed
in it without the slightest reservation.

Things grew brighter, more distinct, themselves,
in a way beyond explaining. This was her home,
yet somehow things grew more homelike. Jars on the shelves
gleamed sharply: tomatoes, peaches, even the crumbs

on the table grew heavy with meaning and a sure repose
as if they were forever. When at last she saw
from the corner of her eye the gold fringe of his robe
she felt no fear, only a glad awe,

the Word already deep inside her as she replied
yes to that she’d chosen all her life.

(--Robert Siegel)

Eight days after the birth, we read that “The child’s father and mother marveled at what was said about him” (Luke 2:33). One of my favorite passages about Mary is a short one, coming a few years after the birth of her young son as she contemplated all that had been told her about him: “… and his mother treasured all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:51). Bringing together the angel’s annunciation, her miracle pregnancy, Elizabeth’s prophecy, the news from the excited shepherds, and now the prophecies in the temple of Simeon and Anna, Mary had a lot to ponder and marvel over. Poet Luci Shaw captures some of what might have been Mary’s ponderings.

Mary’s Song

Blue homespun and the bend of my breast
keep warm this small hot naked star
fallen to my arms. (Rest . . .
you who have had so far
to come.) Now nearness satisfies
the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies
whose vigor hurled
a universe. He sleeps
whose eyelids have not closed before.

His breath (so slight it seems
no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps
to sprout a world.
Charmed by dove’s voices, the whisper of straw,
he dreams,
hearing no music from his other spheres.
Breath, mouth, ears, eyes
he is curtailed
who overflowed all skies,
all years.
Older than eternity, now he
is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed
to my poor planet, caught that I might be free,
blind in my womb to know my darkness ended,
brought to this birth
for me to be new-born,
and for him to see me mended
I must see him torn.

(--Luci Shaw)

Today I’m thinking about Christmas and some of my women friends. I’m especially holding in the light four of my close friends who have become widows in the last few years. Some of the books on widowhood say that after a year, the pain lessens. I don’t know, not yet having experienced this, but my friends tell me that the sense of loss continues, as do the occasional tears. Grief is not easy and swiftly gone. A family-centered time like Christmas can trigger sorrow. 

I’m thinking of a friend who within this passing year has received a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. She and her husband are processing it with courage and faith, but not without sorrow as they face the future. Another friend is caring for her husband now in increasing stages of dementia. It’s a hard road to walk as she watches this once vital, creative, and highly intelligent man slowly become another person. Her Christmas will certainly be different than mine. 

I think of the mothers of Gaza, Sudan, and Ukraine, of those waiting at the Southern borders of our own country, desperate to care for their children. Many of these don’t celebrate Christmas, being of a different faith family, but humanly speaking, they are like all of us.

In prophesying the significance of the birth of Jesus, Isaiah foretold, “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned” (Isaiah 9:2). As Mary pondered these things in her heart, she was beginning to understand this story that is really beyond all comprehension. Something larger and grander than the image of a baby in a feeding trough. 

Thank God for Mary who treasured the hope in her heart. Thank God for the faithfulness of Elizabeth and Anna. This Christmas season, may God’s mercy be near those who grieve, those who are ill, those who care for them, and all those who suffer the ravages of war, eviction, and homelessness. “On those living in deep darkness, a light has dawned.” 

Let it be so.

A criminal Christmas

 I spent one of the most memorable Christmases of my life under house arrest.

Hal and I were first term missionaries in Bolivia and ready to head off on a well-earned vacation on the Peruvian coast. We had our two toddlers with us and were looking forward to giving them their first time at the ocean, making sand castles, running in the surf, collecting shells—the whole bit. It was December, summer in South America. We were going to spend one night with our friends in the coastal city of Tacna, on route to the beach house we had rented.

Before crossing the border between Bolivia and Peru, Hal parked the car and began the legal red tape for entering the country. We noticed that the immigration agent who would process our documents was drunk, but he seemed to know what he was doing. After a few hours of going from one office to another, our travel permission was stamped and we were off.

The trip over the mountain pass and down to the coastal plains took the rest of the afternoon and we were tired when we reached Everett and Alda’s home. Everett suggested we exchange our money for Peruvian pesos that afternoon, so he and Hal headed off to the local bank. The bank clerk took our $250 traveler’s check, looked over our documents, then told Hal he would have to check in at the police station first.

Hal and Everett walked over to the police building. The police had been notified and were waiting. They immediately told Hal he was under arrest and made ready to lead him to a cell. Our crime—neglecting to declare our money at the border!—thanks to the drunk agent who apparently forget to inform us. Everett began reasoning with the officials and at one point actually got down on his knees and pleaded for them to place Hal under house arrest, promising to be a faithful jailor. It worked.

Back at our friends’ home, we noticed the security guard out in the street, keeping watch lest we should try to escape. We expected that we could resolve this snafu within a few days and head on to the beach. That was not to be. We remained under house arrest for six weeks. That included Christmas.

By God’s grace, we all found ways to cope with the situation and enjoyed our time together in the small house. We spent times in agonizing prayer, other times playing board games, with lots of good food and conversation. Even the kids seemed happy (not knowing what they were missing).

After about three weeks, city officials apparently decided we were not hardened criminals about to flee. The security guards in the street disappeared. We were given permission to visit one particular beach just outside the city limits. That meant we were able to celebrate Christmas day with a beach picnic in the summer sun of a Peruvian December. I wrote this poem:

Christmas, 1974
Tacna, Peru

Not snow, but foam
blankets these gentle slopes.
Shells and sand crabs
adorn the ground
and announce the season.
God’s glory spews skyward
in a sun-spangled spray
and gulls cry out
our carols today.
Squatting here before a
baloney-and-bread banquet,
it seems not incongruous
to celebrate the Babe
in this place,
to sit in the sand,
join hands
and sing out,
“Joy to the world,
the Lord is come!”

To make the rest of the story short, we were eventually pardoned and able to head back home. We never did make it to the beach cabin. But now, these many years later, the memory is a happy one. It reminds me that Christmas is more then snow and presents and being in familiar settings. We were with friends, we celebrated the birth of our Savior, we banqueted on baloney. It was truly one of my most memorable Christmases.

The old ones in the Christmas story

 The center of the Christmas story is a baby. All other characters circle around him—the young and somewhat bewildered parents, shepherds stunned from the angel choir, a merciful inn keeper, and the animals in the cave that may have intuited with their beastly brains that something unusual was happening.  

Other characters never make it into the creches we put up in our living rooms or out on our streets. These are people who were, in one sense, peripheral to the main events, who came before and after the night of the birth. They were old people. And while their roles may seem secondary, God chose and called these men and women to play an essential part in the story.

Two old men and two old women. Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth enter the stage well before the birth of the baby. Simeon and Anna don’t make their appearances until a week afterward.

Zechariah and Elizabeth were both from the priestly tribe of Levi, and Zechariah served as one of the priests at the temple in Jerusalem. We read in Luke’s gospel that “both of them were upright in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commandments and regulations blamelessly.” They both also carried a secret sorrow; they had been unable to have children. In a family-oriented culture, this sorrow burned within even into their old age. We read that “they were both well along in years.”

At a high point in the Jewish religion calendar, Zechariah was chosen to go into the temple alone and present the offering of incense to the Lord. It was a holy time, and many people waited outside the temple, praying for God’s forgiveness and blessing.

You know the story. While at the altar, the angel Gabriel suddenly appeared and scared Zechariah half out of his wits. After telling him to calm down, the angel’s message was even more frightening in its utter strangeness. Zechariah and Elizabeth would give birth to a baby who would grow up to become a mighty man of God, part of God’s plan of salvation for his people.

Zechariah’s incredulity was greater than his fear and he responded, “No way! We’re too old!” The angel didn’t bother addressing his doubts; he just struck him dumb. And so Zechariah remained until the birth of the baby John.

I wonder how he explained all this to Elizabeth. He was literate and undoubtedly wrote to her. It didn’t take long for Elizabeth to believe, what with the child growing in her womb. She was secluded for five months, probably due to her advanced age. It would have seemed a precarious pregnancy. But when her close relative, Mary, now pregnant with Jesus, came to visit Elizabeth, the old woman understood, not only about John, but about the child Mary was to bear. She was wise. She responded in praise. Her response greatly encouraged her young cousin who would need it in the days, months, and years to come.

Zechariah also finally got it. At the birth of their son, the couple defied cultural tradition by not naming the child after a father or grandfather. No one in the family was named John, but John it was, according to the angel’s instructions. Then the old man did a very wise thing: he praised and prophesied as the Spirit opened to him the significance of his son’s future ministry in preparing the way of the Lord.

I wonder how this old couple handled John’s strange ways and his leaving home to live as a poor man in the desert. But they were probably dead by the time John reached adulthood. They had fulfilled their role.

Now enter Simeon and Anna. Jesus had been born in a stable, received the visitation of astonished but worshipful shepherds, and now it was time for his parents to take him to the temple for circumcision, according to Jewish law. Eight days old. 

Simeon is described as righteous, anointed by the Holy Spirit. We don’t know his profession, just that he was “a man in Jerusalem.” He enjoyed an uncommon communion with the Spirit, receiving a promise that he wouldn’t die until he saw the Messiah. The Spirit urged him to go to the temple that very day, then revealed which baby was the Holy One. So Simeon did the unorthodox;  he approached the young couple, strangers to him, and took the baby in his arms and praised God. Under inspiration, he announced that the babe would grow up to be, not only the Messiah of Israel, but the Savior of the world. Heady words for Joseph and Mary, grappling with what all these events could mean. Then Simeon blessed them. I’m sure they needed to hear his words, walking them a little closer to understanding. Simeon was now ready to die in peace.

But the story continues. Anna was the oldest person in this Christmas story. Her husband died after only seven years of marriage and she was a widow for 84 years after that. That would make her over 100-years-old. (Some translations say she was a widow until she turned 84. Even that’s old in anyone’s book.) For all those years of her widowhood, her primary occupation was worshipping, fasting, and praying, so much so that some people thought she actually lived in the temple. That day, as soon as she saw the baby Jesus, she knew and “gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.” That’s what a prophetess does. I just imagine Mary and Joseph, taking all this in.

Here's a poem commemorating Simeon and Anna.

Ancient Blessing
Luke 2:21-38; Psalm 92:12-15

Old people have a reputation
for wisdom, but that’s often
not the reality. Alzheimer’s,
dementia, or outright crankiness
can overcome personality in the aged.
In spite of that,
sometimes we are blessed
to know the green leaves
of an ancient tree, taste fruit
that sweetens with the years.
So with Simeon and Anna.
Faithful servants, approaching
death, both lingered on
in the hope of his coming.
Years of waiting met reward
in the courts of the temple.
Filled with joy, held by the child
they held in their arms,
they thanked God, blessed the babe
and his parents, and gave public
witness that has become
a permanent part of the story.
Thank God for the legacy
of such as Simeon and Anna. 

And thank God for using older people. Thank God that he’s not finished with any of us. Age is irrelevant in God’s story. Take heart. 

Peripheral people

 I remember a time years ago when I attended a social gathering for young adults in our church. I was my usual quiet, non-obtrusive self. At the end of the party, one of my friends looked at me and said, “Nancy, have you been here the whole time?” I don’t know why that memory is still so sharp.

In my teenage years, I dwelled on the periphery of whatever excitement was happening. I was always the last person chosen for the baseball team in PE class. In group assignments, I needed to gather my courage to speak up. I never raised my hand in class, although I usually knew the answer. I felt left out much of the time.

This was not the whole of my existence as a young person, and I do well to remember this. My family was warm and close; I always had a “best friend;” my church family accepted and encouraged me. And so on.

And as I matured, so did my feelings. I learned to focus more on others. I also developed a keen radar that detected when someone else was feeling peripheral and I tried to befriend that person. I still do that. 

Marriage to a good, loving man and then the children God gave us brought with it all a deep place of belonging.

Even so, that lonesome, overlooked feeling pops up every now and then. Even now.

Older people are especially vulnerable to the sense of being left out. Retirement and down-sizing don’t help. Nor do the aches and pains that limit our activities. Our culture itself seems to focus on the young and fit. I feel invisible at times in a grocery store or public gathering.

The cultural ignoring of the elderly is diminishing somewhat. We now constitute a larger voting block, so there are regular times then politicians do not ignore us. They court our favor with praise and promises. TV ads target the “golden years” more than they ever have. There’s money out there.

But that kind of attention does nothing to feed the soul or give a sense of belonging. It has little to do with us as people and more to do with being a growing segment of society. And being a social segment is not comforting.

One of the most painful peripheral places for me is large family gatherings, with brothers and sisters, in-laws, and all their adult children, grandchildren and the greats. All those beautiful kids whose names I can never remember. It’s a bright space of friendly noise, singing, and of course lots of great food. But the louder the noise level, the quieter I get. My introversion kicks in big time and I often just find a comfortable chair off to the side and try to look happy to be there. Pathetic, right?

Again, I do well to remember all the good spaces where I feel at home and accepted for who I am, regardless of age. And there are many. I belong to a Sunday school class that has become my church family. I serve as a volunteer editor on a well-known journal and my contribution is appreciated. I live in a retirement community where we residents are known and cared for; age discrimination is, of course, utterly absent, since we’re all older. And among my own grown kids and grandkids, the exchanges of love are real and warm. I have much to be thankful for.

And, most miraculous of all, God calls me his beloved daughter. My name is tattooed on the palm of his hand. Although God loves all his many many children, somehow we are all unique and uniquely treasured. Age is irrelevant. 

There are no peripheral people in the kingdom of God.