Add Some Beauty to Your Life: Excerpts from Middling

I write an occasional newsletter (quarterly when I don't forget) to friends and family about my life: music, books, work, and getting older. I'd love to send it to you. Sign up for Middling here. What follows is an excerpt from the summer 2019 issue.

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I’ve started reading George Orwell: A Life in Letters, and I’m enjoying them, although I have the sneaking suspicion that he might have been a jerk. He’s awfully sardonic, which you would think as a cynic I would appreciate (and most of the time I do). But he’s writing letters during the rise of the Nazis, and his morose predictions for the health of the world come off a little uncaring, as though despotism is little more than an annoying intellectual curiosity. In fairness to Orwell, he’s famous for speaking out and less famous for but equally engaged in joining the fight against tyranny. I'm only partway through the book and he's already fought in a war against fascists. Meanwhile, I’m sitting at home toggling back and forth between 24/7 news channels while shaking my head and chuckling at the collapse of democracy. So who’s the jerk?

A more engaging recent read was An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim. I’ve described it elsewhere as The Road with bureaucrats. A time-slip novel with scenes separated by decades of a world-reshaping pandemic, we watch the lead character lose her great love and fight to get it back. We see her great strength in the face of manipulation by people with power and the petty betrayals of people without. It reminds me some of Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, another powerful journey story featuring a strong female lead. Good stuff.

Now and then I edit a book that I’d be content to be remembered for. Such books are usually a perfect storm of literary craftsmanship, creative thesis, sound thinking, and struggle credentials. Given, by Tina Boesch, is one such book, a study of what the Bible means by blessing. It’s born of Tina’s experience living overseas, where the language of blessing is woven throughout society. In the face of this culture of blessing, the way Americans encourage one another seems woefully thin, so Tina turned to the Bible and discovered that “blessing” is not just a pronouncement but an ethic to be lived into. Tina commits herself to the dignity of every person and place she describes. It’s a beautiful book because blessing begets beauty. Pick it up and add some beauty to your life.

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If you'd like to get Middling in your in-box, give me a shout and I'll set you up. In the meantime, check out my review of The Underground Railroad alongside my review of Space Opera. You can find it here. Thanks for reading!