Favorite Staff Reads of 2024
by CenterForLit Staff
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While the rest of the world was celebrating the new year and releasing their “best of 2024” lists, the CenterForLit crew was hard at work putting the final touches on our new website launch. Now, even though it’s two months late, we still want to share our favorite reads of the last year with you! Here is what the team was up to when we didn’t have our heads buried in details of design and coding and copyediting…
Adam: The Gulag Archipelago by Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn
This year I checked a major item off my lifetime “To Read” list: The Gulag Archipelago by Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn. I have long been intimidated by this book. It is onerously long, unremittingly dark, and intensely strident; something you read out of political obligation rather than literary interest. But it pays both kinds of dividends. Solzhenitsyn draws from his own experience as a prisoner in the Gulag as well as more than 200 interviews with former prisoners. The result is a gripping narrative of the origins and development of the Soviet camp system that is equal parts autobiography, political history, and philosophical rumination. Solzhenitsyn is great on demonstrating the evils of totalitarianism. As Anne Applebaum says in her forward, Gulag helped create a world where “Soviet communism is no longer held up as anybody’s political ideal.” In particular, he charges Lenin, not Stalin, with ultimate responsibility for the USSR’s crimes against humanity – saying, in effect, that the problem of totalitarianism is not primarily political but philosophical and even spiritual. Even more profoundly, Solzhenitsyn implicates all men in the disaster: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts.” This critique makes Gulag one of the great contributions to world literature of the 20th century. I am sorry I didn’t read it sooner.
Missy: My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
My most stirring read of 2024 was the Chaim Potok novel, My Name Is Asher Lev. Many will recognize Potok for his classic father-son story, The Chosen, in which a Hasidic Jew, expected to follow his father into a vocation as a rabbi, chooses instead to pursue a career in secular psychology. Potok, himself a Hasidic Jew, continues his devastating exploration of sacred and secular callings in this lesser-known work. The novel follows Asher, a child prodigy whose artistic sight, skill, and temperament conflict with his family’s religious traditions. Though he loves his family and his faith, his vision transgresses the conventions of his people. His maturing work as an artist places him in a larger and more diverse tradition, whose praxis encompasses broader symbols and more universal sufferings. Asher’s growing success thrusts artistic responsibility upon him that threatens to destroy his relationships. Through Asher, Potok voices the suffering of the alienated artist, compelled by honest stewardship to artistic authenticity.
Emily: Loving to Know: Covenant Epistemology by Esther Lightcap Meek
Since beginning my career at CenterForLit, I have become obsessed with the question of literary interpretation: How do authors and readers communicate successfully? How do we know if they’ve been successful? These are sub-questions under the broader category of epistemology, the philosophical study of how we know what we know. In my pursuit of this interest, I had a professor recommend to me Esther Lightcap Meek’s book, Loving to Know. Although I’m sure this sounds like dry and dusty stuff, Meek’s book is wonderful in its endeavor to make these ideas accessible and relevant to the everyday reader. The theory she arrives at is both profound and incredibly urgent for Christians today. Meek believes that all knowing is, what she calls, “interpersoned.” She argues elegantly that people only come to know things in loving relationship – with each other, and with the loving, personal God. Furthermore, instead of static fact, knowledge is a living and growing thing that deepens over time like a friendship. I haven’t seen a better case for the importance of the Great Conversation and I’m giving copies of this book (cheaper, used copies…ha) to every educator I know!
Megan: The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
Far and away, the best read of my year was Katherine Arden’s Russian fairytale, The Bear and the Nightingale. With spare elegance reminiscent of the Russian greats, Arden relates the tale of a wild maiden, Vasilisa Petrovna, born on the edge of a Russian forest. Far from the civilized and devout bustle of Moscow, the pagan hinterlands teem with folktale devils like the rusalka, who float in forest pools in hopes of drowning hapless travelers, and the pot-bellied domovoi, who stoke home-fires and protect the hearth. For common folks, these elemental spirits are little more than superstition. Peasants and lords alike make oblations in the light of their midwinter ovens to appease these lingering phantoms, but few can say whether their rituals are motivated by faith or fear. For Vasilisa Petrovna, however, the spirits are as real and temperamental as her waspish stepmother or her fond elder brother, Alyosha. Her gift of sight seems a burden when it alienates her from the town; but when Vasilisa meets a powerful enemy in the forest whose elemental hunger may devour her village, she must find the courage to embrace her gifts and intervene. If you are looking for an immersive fairytale to while away midwinter evenings, this first installment in Arden’s trilogy won’t disappoint. Though the cover implies that the book is a work of juvenile fiction, there are some mature plot elements – parents, be advised!
Ian: The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown
I’m a sucker for a work of historical journalism that reads like fiction and The Boys in the Boat is the best representative of the genre I’ve read since The Devil in the White City. Brown’s prose style and characterization read like the best imaginative literature, but his story lands like the truest kind of fact. He masterfully draws out the imagery of the racing shell, building it into a symbol of both team and national identity. But he also depicts it as personal crucible for the heroic main character, Joe Rantz. In the end, Brown’s characterization of self actualization as self-emptying rings powerful and true. This was also a fun read for me because it’s a Washington state story and I’m familiar with all the places mentioned – it brought the profundity of the story all the closer to home! If you’re into audiobooks, this one is read by Edward Herrman (Lorelai’s father on Gilmore Girls) and is worth checking out on Audible.
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