"The thing that I read which kept me Alive (as opposed to just living)"

320 Sycamore Studios publishes original kid stories served fresh monthly, plus essays, book recommendations, and postcards from Readerville. Everything is completely human-written.

That quote in the headline is a steal from Shawna Lemay’s always luminous Transactions With Beauty blog. For her, the “thing” was reading about poet Li-Young Lee, and the three postures of awe that spark his lyric poetry.

“So this is what’s getting me through,” she writes, “Thinking about adoration. And repeating in my head the words, holy holy holy.”

It’s got me thinking about how to cultivate more adoration in my own life.

Well, just do it, I suppose. Make it a habit. And pass it on.

In that spirit, here are things that I read recently which kept me Alive (as opposed to just living).

1. It’s okay to be off in your own world

Sara Pennypacker’s middle-grade novel “Here in the Real World” centers on a boy named Ware and two of his friends who, together, take a half-demolished church and sanctify it for nature and the imagination.

At one point in the book the Ware’s mother tells him “You were always kind of off in your own world.” Which sets him to thinking.

Off in his own world. His mother had never said that before. At least not in that blaming way. As if it was something he should be ashamed of.

Someone else had said it that way recently. He didn’t remember who, but he hadn’t liked it then, either.

He had changed this summer. He was spending more time off in his own world. And, it turned out, he didn’t feel ashamed about it. It turned out, he really liked it there.

“He really liked it there” … I know the feeling! (Sometimes too much, as my loved ones will attest.

You might like hearing Sara Pennypacker talk about being in her own world, and about the value of children having secret places, in this short video clip on her website.

2. There’s such a thing as a world book capital

My wife and I drove to Strasbourg last Saturday (it’s just a couple hours away from our home in Stuttgart) to meet one of her friends and roam around the city.

Somewhere in the course of the day, I found out Strasbourg was UNESCO’s World Book Capital for 2024.

Wait, what?! I thought. There’s a World Book Capital program?

Indeed there is. UNESCO launched the initiative in 2001,

“designating a City as ‘World Book Capital’ annually. The designated cities around the world are dedicated to fostering literacy, lifelong learning, copyright protection as well as freedom of expression.”

How great is that? This year’s book capital is Rabat and next year it’s Medellín.

Book tourism needs to be a thing.

3. Books can free students from the tyranny of the present

I recently reread, and was re-blown away by, Neil Postman’s essay collection “Conscientious Objections”. The subtitle is “Stirring up trouble about language, technology, and education” and I recommend it to anyone looking for insights on those topics. Plus, he’s really fun to read.

One of the essays is called “Defending Against the Indefensible” (the title is an allusion to George Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language”). It includes this passage:

“We are fortunate to have available an alternative [educational] tradition that gives us the authority to educate our students to disbelieve or at least to be skeptical of the prejudices of their elders. We can locate the origins of this tradition in some fragments from Cicero, who remarked that the purpose of education is to free the student from the tyranny of the present. We find elaborations of this point of view in Descartes, Bacon, Vico, Goethe, and Jefferson. And we find its modern resonances in John Dewey, Freud, and Bertrand Russell.”

When I despair at the state of the world, I take solace in the small things. The love I share with my partner. My kids. Friends. A small stream in the woods near my house. Almond croissants.

And all the bookish goodness in the world.

PS. All the content I write is free, but if you want to support my work, consider a one-dollar tip, max, for the year. That’s it! One buck. Once a year. No AI. No auto-renew. No shenanigans. Thanks, Jeff.