Reading and Listening
embracing the new year
Welcome to my newest readers, fellow bibliophiles, and educators!
Doubles
As I look at the writing year ahead, I am filled with gratitude for the support of my readership. Two years ago, I moved my newsletter to Substack. In the same two years my readership doubled from 250 to almost 500. Wow.
In 2016 when I first began writing in earnest, I had no idea that I would persist past one or two years. Eight years later, the numbers astound me. Over 150 articles, essays, newsletters are circulating on ye ol’ world wide web with my name stamped on them. I moved from free to paid writing (usually) in a dozen outlets and finally earned a significant check on a single article.
Thank You!
I have readers around the world in 45 US states and 17 countries. The most popular posts this year were Literary Loves: Willa Cather and George MacDonald, Focus and Finish: Rejections, Waves, and Shakespeare, and A Seven-Year Cycle.
When I included a poll last year, I asked why you read my letter. Your top answers were equally balanced: book reviews, anecdotes, and spiritual content.
Welcome to this year’s poll! My husband and I enjoy recording and editing the audio, but we also wanted to see how many readers use Substack’s audio feature.
I would be remiss if I didn’t also thank several other Substack writers who have recommended me to their readers this year. Huge thanks to
at , at , and at !On my nightstand
I love December for many reasons—marking and celebrating Christ’s birth, Christmas poetry, the bustle of activity, Christmas programs, Christmas baking, and the shift to a vacation routine, that is, long hours with family, friends, and bookfriends!
My December reading best shows the variety of what I read in a year. I no longer keep up with Goodreads or bother with a year-end list as I have in the past. Each December book represents a personal interest. Two relate to curriculum: Lambert’s A Castle with Many Rooms and Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Two relate to workshop content I’m preparing: Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success and Malesic’s The End of Burnout. One is for sheer fun: Jordan’s The Dragon Reborn. And one is dear to me: Berry’s A Timbered Choir. The last was a Christmas gift of poetry from my youngest son.
I leave you with one of Berry’s early poems, Sabbath Poem III from 1979. As he shares in his Preface, his poems were written in silence and solitude, usually outside. “A reader will like them best, I think, who reads them in similar circumstances—at least in a quiet room.”
To sit and look at light-filled leaves
May let us see, or seem to see,
Far backward as through clearer eyes
To what unsighted hope believes:
The blessed conviviality
That sang Creation’s seventh sunrise.
Time when the Maker’s radiant sight
Made radiant everything He saw,
And every thing He saw was filled
With perfect joy and life and light.
His perfect pleasure was sole law;
No pleasure had become self-willed.
For all His creatures were His pleasures
And their whole pleasure was to be
What He made them; they sought no gain
Or growth beyond their proper measures,
Nor longed for change or novelty.
The only new thing could be pain.
Let me know your book stories, poetry stories. What are you reading? What are you finding helpful? I would love to hear from you in your reading or classroom journey.
As always, thanks for reading and listening! And a blessed New Year to you all!
Christine
Happy New Year !!!
Christine,
I just discovered your audio link.
Thanks for sharing your talent with the world.
Have a blessed year!
-Jeff Jewsome