Book Girl Read online

  Praise for Book Girl

  The book so many of us have been waiting for. Here’s a collection of book lists that will nurture and nourish your own reading life as a woman. I love this book!

  SARAH MACKENZIE

  Author of The Read-Aloud Family and host of the Read-Aloud Revival podcast

  As a fellow book girl, I delight in Sarah Clarkson’s joyful compendium of suggestions and reflections for a life filled with reading. Clarkson’s interleaving of personal experiences throughout Book Girl shows us that books have the power to transform us, to nourish us, and to sustain us; a good book can be a comfort, a challenge, or a companion for the journey. Why not join the merry company of book girls past, present, and future? The book lists, on a varied range of topics and moods, form the heart of Book Girl; Clarkson’s warm and relaxed style and insightful comments mean that readers will find many new favorites as they peruse the pages of this charming and valuable guide.

  DR. HOLLY ORDWAY

  Author of Apologetics and the Christian Imagination: An Integrated Approach to Defending the Faith

  I can’t imagine a more wise and tender guide to a life of reading than Sarah Clarkson. Reading Book Girl feels like curling up with a cup of tea in a cozy armchair by the fire, while a soul-friend tells you passionately about her favorite books, how they’ve shaped her, and how they might shape you, too. My own bookshelves are about to get a whole lot more crowded.

  JENNIFER TRAFTON

  Author of The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic and Henry and the Chalk Dragon

  Reading is vital for a faith-filled life. From being read to in the womb all the way to her adventures in Oxford, England, Sarah Clarkson takes us on her journey of becoming a book girl. She invites fellow women to allow books to lead us through all the ups and downs of life. Through her story and her wonderfully compiled lists, you’ll find encouragement to seek beauty, strength, and companionship in the books we read.

  HOLLY PACKIAM

  Storyformed.com

  Sarah Clarkson’s luminous prose incites the very wonder for which she so lovingly advocates, and her Book Girl is a wise and winsome guide to the reading life. Crack open the cover and prepare to embark on a lifelong adventure.

  LANIER IVESTER

  Writer and speaker

  I expected Sarah Clarkson’s Book Girl to be a warm, winsome eulogy to the reading life—and it absolutely is. But it is so much more! In affirming the power of books to shape our vision and our response to life, Sarah’s book does exactly what she says good books will do: spark hope, kindle joy, enlarge love, deepen faith. Reading Book Girl revitalized not just my love of books but my love of life and my love of God. I came away from its pages with a renewed commitment to live faithfully, courageously, and joyfully right where I am.

  K. C. IRETON

  Author of The Circle of Seasons and Anxious No More

  Visit Tyndale online at www.tyndale.com.

  Visit Tyndale Momentum online at www.tyndalemomentum.com.

  Visit the author’s website at www.sarahclarkson.com.

  TYNDALE, Tyndale Momentum, and Tyndale’s quill logo are registered trademarks of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. The Tyndale Momentum logo is a trademark of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. Tyndale Momentum is the nonfiction imprint of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois.

  Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life

  Copyright © 2018 by Sarah Clarkson. All rights reserved.

  Cover illustration drawn by Eva M. Winters, designer.

  Cover photograph of library copyright © Martin Poole/Getty Images. All rights reserved.

  Cover photograph of chair copyright © Dasha Petrenko/Adobe Stock. All rights reserved.

  Cover photograph of pillow copyright © Martin Barraud/Getty Images. All rights reserved.

  Designed by Eva M. Winters

  Edited by Stephanie Rische

  All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version,® NIV.® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

  Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version.

  Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible,® copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

  For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Tyndale House Publishers at [email protected], or call 1-800-323-9400.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Clarkson, Sarah (Editor for Whole Heart Press), author.

  Title: Book girl : a journey through the treasures and transforming power of a reading life / Sarah Clarkson.

  Description: Carol Stream, Illinois : Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2018. | Includes bibliographical references.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018015078 | ISBN 9781496425805 (sc)

  Subjects: LCSH: Spiritual life—Christianity. | Christians—Books and reading. | Books and reading—Religious aspects—Christianity. | Christianity and literature.

  Classification: LCC BV4501.3 .C5274 2018 | DDC 248.4—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018015078

  Build: 2018-07-31 11:11:02 EPUB 3.0

  To my little book girl, Lilian Joy

  Contents

  Foreword

  Introduction: Becoming a Book Girl

  Chapter 1: On the Crafting of Book Lists

  Chapter 2: Begin at the Beginning

  Chapter 3: Books Can Broaden Your World The Beloved Dozen: The Novels That Taught Me How to Live

  Books That Talk Back: My Favorite Books about Books

  Chapter 4: Books Can Shape Your Story Girlhood Classics: The Books That Began It All for Me

  Biographies: The Real-Life Epics That Shaped My Dreams

  The Nightstand List: Classics You Should Eventually Read

  Chapter 5: Books Can Stir You to Action Girl Power: My Favorite Novels about Brave and Faithful Women

  “Courage, Dear Heart”: The Spiritual Classics That Made My Heart Strong

  “What to Do with the Time We’ve Been Given”: Books That Helped Me Navigate Contemporary Culture

  Chapter 6: Books Can Cultivate the Imagination Novels of Eucatastrophe: The Fantastical Stories That Taught Me Hope

  Books about Imagination: Why You’re Never Too Old for Narnia

  Chapter 7: Books Can Foster Community The Books We Shared: My Family’s Favorite Read-Alouds

  “What! You Too?”: The Firsthand Accounts That Remind Me I’m Not Alone

  Chapter 8: Books Can Open Your Eyes to Wonder “A Little Poetry Every Day”: The Poems That Opened My Eyes to Wonder

  Startled Awake: Novels That Kindled My Delight in Existence

  Beauty Speaks Truth: Books about the Arts

  Chapter 9: Books Can Deepen Your Soul The Holy Way: Books That Taught Me to Pray

  The Gift of Sacred Time: Books for the Church Year

  Chapter 10: Books Can Impart Hope Not Escapism: Novels That Helped Me Cope with a Broken World

  God Is Big Enough: Spiritual Books That Helped Me through Seasons of Struggle

  Epilogue: Books Are Meant to Be Passed Along

  Acknowledgments

  Discussion Questions

  About the Author

  Foreword

  THERE ARE MOMENTS when it seems like the clouds of life part and the sun comes peeking through like a warm blanket of grace wrapping around my soul. It feels as if God is tenderly bending down to kiss my cheek to remind me of his affection and grace.

  This sunshine invaded my life when I had my first child, Sarah.

  I wa
s not prepared to be a proper mother. I had never changed a diaper, had only babysat once that I remember, and was totally ill equipped to know what to do. Not being practical by nature, I awkwardly learned how to meet her basic physical needs. But I mainly dreamed of caring for my little one by attentively investing in her mind and soul.

  Prior to Sarah’s birth, I had lived in Vienna, surrounded by highly intellectual and educated adults from the international community of the United Nations, with diplomats, expats, and people from countless nations and every walk of life coming through the international chapel where my husband and I worked. Though I had a college degree, had studied four different languages in the countries where I’d lived, and had taken theology classes with my husband, Clay, while he was in seminary, I felt keenly the lack of a broad and well-developed education in my own life.

  As I rubbed shoulders with these thoughtful and well-read people, it awakened in me a passionate longing to have a deeper well of wisdom born from reading and from the input of people wiser than myself. I yearned to know how to think about a variety of subjects; how to gain insight into history, art, theology, great literature, and philosophy; how to discover the biographies of heroes; how to pursue a soul-satisfying education. But it was only as I was exposed to this new, vast realm of ideas and inspiration that I understood I had been fed on crumbs of knowledge when there was a feast to be enjoyed.

  I transferred my own longing for a broader exposure to the best authors, artists, philosophers, and theologians to Sarah and my other children who came after her. I supposed that they, too, had an intellectual potential for growing in these areas, and I made it my mission to read to them as a regular rhythm and habit of our daily lives.

  Sarah was a ready companion in all things books. She was born reading, and she read more profoundly than anyone I had ever met. Her enthusiasm pushed me further in my own search for great books. Three more siblings eventually entered our reading community, and reading soon became a daily guide for my children. We journeyed through the pathways of adventuresome tales, mountains of theology, rivers of literary and artistic delight, and mysterious forests of historical odyssey. Swimming in the waters of imagination together gave us a kind of intimate bond with one another that only soul sharing can accomplish. Our souls were shaped and formed on the same stories, experiences, and messages as we grew together.

  As I read to my children and watched them grow, seeking out time to spend in our treasured books, I realized that I was beginning to live into my own intellectual potential alongside them. By seeking to explain great ideas to them, my own interest in education and inspiration was satiated. As I taught them, I realized that all people have a capacity to love learning and to seek wells of knowledge, but their “mental muscles,” so to speak, must be exercised.

  Now one of my greatest pleasures is to meet with Sarah for coffee and to share ideas, to know what she has been reading, to discuss what we are both learning. The deep wells of reading extensively provided her a treasure chest full of knowledge and ideas from which I could also draw as we grew through the years in our own friendship over books. I have even been known to take notes from our times together. The love for learning has only increased in my life, but it has also led me to greater satisfaction as a woman as I have lived into my educational and intellectual potential.

  If you are someone who wants to grow intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, and educationally, I know this book will lead you forward in these desires. Following the footsteps of others who are more well read and more broadly educated has given me a pathway to journey forward in my own life. And that is what this book will do for you. It will inspire, encourage, teach, and model the way forward as you expand your own heart, soul, and mind in the great stories and best thoughts found in books from throughout the centuries.

  But the best part is that you will feel you have found a friend to guide you, one whose heart is enriched and ready to walk hand in hand with you into an exploration of unmined treasures. Sarah is a companion who will bring you just what you longed for but didn’t know how to ask for. Be blessed in the reading of this book!

  Sally Clarkson

  IntroductionBecoming a BOOK GIRL

  The world was hers for the reading.

  BETTY SMITH, A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN

  MY MOTHER SWEARS she read to me while I was still in the womb. I must admit, I used to chuckle at this idea, half skeptical and wholly amused at the mental image of my mother reading dramatically to her newly swelled belly. But I don’t laugh anymore. For even as I type this sentence in the quiet of my tiny front room in an old Oxford row house, I’m aware of the kick of my own unborn girl-child and the picture book I have laid nearby for the read-aloud break we will take in a few minutes. It’s Miss Rumphius this morning, the story of a little girl who discovered that one of her great tasks in life was to “make the world more beautiful” and did just that by planting lupines in rainbow hues throughout the countryside in which she dwelled.[1]

  Words like those, and images like that, are the kind to which I hope my daughter will waken as the story of her own life begins. In speaking them over her unborn little being, I yearn for her already to be formed by a love for the beautiful in a world that often demeans it, by a sense of her own worth and capacity, by the sort of story that will begin to show her the kind of strong, intelligent, loving woman I hope she will become. I understand now, with an ache in my heart that is both my gratitude and my own newborn hope, that my mother desired the same for me in those months before my birth. I almost laugh into the quiet as time seems to expand around me, past and present united in the stubborn and loving wish of two young mothers who hoped to give their coming daughters the beauty of the world and the strength to bear its sorrow, and knew that one of the best ways to do that was through the gift of the reading life.

  It’s the same gift I hope to pass on to you in the pages that follow.

  What’s So Good about Being a Book Girl?

  That is the question at the heart of this book, and my answer comes in the pages that follow as I explore the gifts I received from being raised as a book girl myself and as I tell the story of my own reading life, the one I yearn to give my daughter as she opens her story in this world. Gifts of learning and wonder, of hope renewed, of the capacity to ponder, of the will to act—these are just a few of the gifts to be explored in the chapters to come as we consider the particular goodness of being a book girl.

  The reading life is like one of those potent graces bestowed by fairy godmothers on princesses in old fairy tales, the sort to help a young heroine grow in all good things, to love life in its fullness and beauty, but also to make her strong in resisting the forces of evil stepmothers or wicked fairies already gathered round her cradle. I read aloud to my belly (as did my mother before me) because I firmly believe that books will help my daughter come into the full strength of her womanhood in all its intelligence and joy, its capacity and grace—and I’m firmly convinced they’ll do the same for you.

  Those gifts boil down quite quickly to three basic wishes, bright as any in a fairy story. They are the wishes, the hopes that ache in my heart as I read aloud to my little girl, the ones that echo back to me from my mother and shape my prayers for you as this book begins.

  I want your heart to be stocked with beauty. To be a book girl is to be formed by a bone-deep knowledge that goodness lies at the heart of existence. The feel of my mother’s warmth behind me as she read is one of the first things I can remember—the safe anchor of her body and the music of her read-aloud voice the ocean on which my small consciousness sailed into power through stories of music and brave maidens, feasts and castles, family and home. Before I knew how bad the world could be, I knew that it was wondrously good. I want the same for my daughter and for you. I want your imagination to be shaped by beauty, filled by characters of grace and strength, livened by a sense of wonder in the ceaseless gifts of ordinary life.

  I want you to be strong for the battle. Th
e future book girl of mine so merrily kicking my ribs will be born into a world where beauty is under siege and goodness is on the defensive. She will live out her story in this broken place, and sorrow will be her portion long before I’m ready for her to bear it. When my mother walked with me through the nightmares of my girlhood, the dark midnight terrors that plagued my young imagination, I’m sure she knew only bewildered grief. But she taught me how to fight the good fight and to hope with a fierce, creative will by reading me stories that came like lifelines in the night. I can picture her there in the shadows, reading of brave Lucy Pevensie or the staunch Princess Irene, who faced down terrors and fought their way back home. In my memory I see us as held in a circle of light cast from the pages of those stories. It’s a light I have found throughout my life in the narratives of great books, the one I yearn for my daughter to discover when her own battle begins, the one I hope will come to you in the stories that cram the pages ahead.

  I want you to know you’re not alone. A book girl is joined not just to one but to two great fellowships, for the reading life sets book girls in the never-ending companionship of story as well as in the company of one another. To be a book girl is to take up membership in the ranks of women who read and, by their reading, live to the brave and courageous full. I knew this deeply in the reading times I shared with my mom throughout my girlhood and in the ideals I now share with both my mom and sister as we write and chatter back and forth about the novel we’ve both read or the theological classic we feel will change our lives . . . again.

  But I also know it in the generosity of the women who have been my mentors and friends, the ones who stepped into my seasons of discouragement or transition with a novel for the road or a quote to set me back on my feet. I yearn for my little book girl to know this rich camaraderie, to know that when she is hopeless or lonely, there is another book girl who can kindle her courage and steady her soul. I hope that she will know this in person, but if she cannot, I hope she will find it in books that stand with her as companions and friends. I long for her to discover, as I have, the voice of companionship that can reach out from the page of some great novel or memoir to help her to find her faith afresh.