The Old and the New: Rediscovering Literature Through Well-Read Mom
Written by Nicki Johnston
I started a new Well-Read Mom group for women in my parish this year. Inevitably, I received inquiries about the need to pay for a booklist, allowing me to articulate the many ways Well-Read Mom has enriched my life during the years I’ve been a member. I’ve met wonderful friends, grown in my vocation, exercised my power of attention, read books I would never have read on my own, and revisited beloved books with a fresh perspective because of the theme we’re exploring or the insights from my group members. Clearly, as those of you who are members know, Well-Read Mom is so much more than a book list.
And yet, one of the benefits of Well-Read Mom is, in fact, the thoughtfully curated booklist.
Each of us comes to Well-Read Mom, a different kind of reader. Some of us hardly read at all before joining—maybe we’ve never been readers, or perhaps we read a lot when we were younger, but now, as mothers, we have lost touch with this part of ourselves. Some of us read only what is useful or spiritual, and we must be permitted to read fiction. Some of us read voraciously but only from one particular genre or a best-seller list that leaves us wanting more. Well-Read Mom helps us remedy all of these tendencies, and another that I frequently encounter among ardent book lovers: reading only old books.
As a homeschooling mom, I am sympathetic to this. Once our eyes are opened to the treasury of literature from the past and we become aware of how much great literature we missed in our education, we desire to remedy it. Old books—for ourselves or our children—feel safer with less questionable content. More importantly, we know that the books that have withstood the test of time are good. All of these reasons are valid. It is hard to know if a new book is good and worthy, and none of us wants to waste our precious reading time on something that will disappoint or even scandalize us.
And yet, I believe new books ought to have a place in our reading.
In his Preface to St Athanasius’s On in the Incarnation, C.S. Lewis offers a “good rule.. never to allow yourself another new [book] till you have read an old one in between.” He warns about our “mistaken preference for modern books” and asserts that if forced to choose between “only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old.” Lucky for us, we are not forced to choose. By reading along with Well-Read Mom, we have no problem adhering to Lewis’s dictum of reading old books between new ones, but perhaps we should consider with what frequency we ought to mix new ones in with the old. After all, when Lewis wrote this, his now beloved books (along with those of his contemporaries, including JRR Tolkien and Sigrid Undset, to name two) were new!
Lewis jests about this when he writes, “Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books.” I, too, want to support the authors and publishers who are using their God-given talent to add thoughtful, quality literature to our current cultural conversation. Since making this a priority in my own reading life, I’ve found a few trustworthy sources of good book/author lists and a publisher (Wiseblood Books, which I learned about through Well-Read Mom) that I do all I can to support. But my go-to source for worthy contemporary literature is Well-Read Mom itself.
I’ve noticed that each year, our reading list includes at least one book (sometimes two or more) by a living author. For the Year of the Father, this includes Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River and our current selection, The Father’s Tale by Michael D. O’Brien. The former book is a longtime favorite of mine, but the latter was entirely new for me.
In our monthly audio introducing this book, Carla Galdo says, “The writing style of Michael O’Brien fits well with our mission here at Well-Read Mom because it is evident that he believes in the power of story.”
I completely agree and would go one step further in saying that Well-Read Mom’s mission to “reorient ourselves to what is good, beautiful, and true” is true about O’Brien as an artist. As I read his book, I wondered how he and his work were steeped in these transcendentals.
By reading The Father’s Tale, we are introduced to the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the writings of Dostoevsky, and the artwork of Rembrandt. Of course, if you’ve been reading along with Well-Read Mom, you’re already familiar with Hopkins from the wonderful book Exiles (Year of the Mother), written by another great living Catholic writer, Ron Hansen. Together, we’ve read The Brothers Karamazov (Year of the Worker) and Crime and Punishment (Year of the Sister) and can understand O’Brien’s references to Alyosha and Father Zosima, Raskolnikov and Sonya. And if you were in Well-Read Mom during the Year of the Artist and read Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son, you knew from the moment Alex walked into the Hermitage museum in Saint Petersburg which painting he was about to encounter.
This knowledge and understanding is part of what it means to be “well-read”. There is a satisfaction in understanding literary references—not a prideful patting ourselves on the back but a humble delight as though bumping into an old friend. When a living author clearly loves what we love, we immediately have something in common with them. A good contemporary book adds another voice to an age-old conversation in which we, as readers, are invited to participate.
If you enjoy O’Brien’s book, you’re in luck because his corpus is extensive and will keep you reading for quite some time. If not, look to your Reading Companion or the Well-Read Mom booklist for other titles by living authors. The Family Supplement, suggestions for further reading, and past summer reads abound with contemporary titles that are well worth your time.
There’s no shortage of good books being published today, and I hope Well-Read Mom will encourage you to add more of them to your reading life this year.
About Nicki Johnston
Nicki Johnston lives in Kansas with her husband, Graham, and their four sons. Together they homeschool, hike, camp, craft, square dance, and read many, many books.
About Well-Read Mom
In Well-Read Mom, women read more and read well. Our hope is to deepen the awareness of meaning hidden in each woman’s daily life. We long to elevate the cultural conversation and revitalize reading literature from books. If you would like us to help you select worthy reading material, we invite you to join and read along. We are better together! For information on how to start or join a Well-Read Mom group visit our website wellreadmom.com
