What Should Kester Read?
- Black Hole by Charles Burns
- The Escapists by Brian K. Vaughan
- Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe
- Men and Cartoons by Jonathan Lethem
- Positively 5th Street by James McManus
What else is Kester reading?
- The Daily Bible: NIV Version (daily devotional)
- Just Kids by Patti Smith (New & Noteworthy book club)
- Walden by Henry David Thoreau (Required Reading Revisited book club)
What's Kester reading?
- Bad Religion by Ross Douthat
- Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
- The Daily Bible: NIV Version (daily devotional)
- Walden by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Required Reading Revisited book club)
- Welcome To Utopia by Karen Valby (New & Noteworthy book club)
What's Kester reading?
- Bad Religion by Ross Douthat
- Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
- The Daily Bible: NIV Version (daily devotional)
- The Meadow by James Galvin
- Prayers by Peter Washington (daily devotional)
- The Riot At Bucksnort by Robert E. Howard
- Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
- Walden by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Required Reading Revisited book club)
- Welcome To Utopia by Karen Valby (New & Noteworthy book club)
What's Kester reading?
- Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton
- Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
- The Daily Bible: NIV Version (daily devotional)
- The Meadow by James Galvin
- Prayers by Peter Washington (daily devotional)
- Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
- Tinkers by Paul Harding
- Walden by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Required Reading Revisited book club)
- Welcome To Utopia by Karen Valby (New & Noteworthy book club)
What's Kester reading?
- Absence of Mind by Marilynne Robinson
- Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton
- Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
- The Daily Bible: NIV Version (daily devotional)
- Prayers by Peter Washington (daily devotional)
- Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
- Walden by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Required Reading Revisited book club)
- Welcome To Utopia by Karen Valby (New & Noteworthy book club)
The first selection reviewed for this month's What Should Kester Read? was Alison Bechdel's Fun Home; a daughter's non-fiction account of her and her father and the relationship between them. It was a sad story, but dispassionately told, and it left me cold. It seemed to me a story that demanded great care, told by a woman who didn't care much at all, except for the aesthetics of things, resulting in a story that was beautifully crafted, but bitter and brittle and cruel.
The final selection reviewed for this month's What Should Kester Read? is Gail Caldwell's A Strong West Wind; a daughter's non-fiction account of her and her father and the relationship between them. And while it is certainly not a sentimental or sappy story, it is told with a warmth and heart that Bechdel sorely lacked. The "strong west wind" of the title works on multiple levels; Caldwell was born and raised in Amarillo, TX and west Texas is known for its winds, but Caldwell's story is about more than west Texas, it is a story of sound and fury, of family and faith, and of the challenges that come inevitably with change. Caldwell crafts a sentence like a woodworker or sculptor, her efforts come off looking effortless; a memoir both moving and magical. Whether writing about her own past or that of her father, she is unflinchingly candid and unfailingly, often heartbreakingly, real. And yet, the result never has the feel of dispassionate expose, instead it feels true. And that's because it is true; true in the way that something is "good and true;" true in the way that an arrow is true, piercingly so. Humble and sincere, honest about her own faults and foibles as much as anyone's, wry and wise in her assessments of herself, but never taking the lazy route of false modesty. This is a story about growing up and moving on and lessons learned along the way, and one sentence from her prologue was all I needed to get hooked; "Like a million cowards and trailblazers before me, I had mistaken being gone for being free." Caldwell never tries to say which of these she is, she simply shares her story and allows her reader to decide. Which, in a day and age when too many memoirists imbue their stories with more drama than is warranted, feels like the work of a trailblazer to me.
What Should Kester Read? selections
- A Strong West Wind by Gail Caldwell
What else is Kester reading?
- Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton
- Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
- The Daily Bible: NIV Version (daily devotional)
- Prayers by Peter Washington (daily devotional)
