This week, I finished teaching Dakota, an amazing book that I loved sharing with students. It was also enjoyable to read this book now that I am living on the Plains, a region close to the place Norris writes about. For that reason, I’ll quote the opening lines:

The high plains, the beginning of the desert West, often acts as a crucible for those who inhabit them. Like Jacob’s angel, the region requires that you wrestle with it before it bestows a blessing.  (1)

Earlier this week, I read J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy (2016), not only because everyone is talking about it but also because I am teaching an Advanced Composition class on community and place. Vance’s depiction of a particular community in the Midwest/Appalachia was helpful for me as I’m thinking about teaching my course.

Over the weekend, I read Shann Ray’s American Masculine at the recommendation of a colleague. I appreciate the nuanced ways the author represents religion and the individual.

I read L’Engle’s book because I wanted to see what she has to say about faith and writing, and I plan on sharing the excerpt below with my students this spring:

Too many books are published which are shabbily and shoddily written. Many are simply rough drafts, and most first drafts need long and hard revision, and that means work, and we have been taught to look down on work.

I read the book, Poverty Creek Journal, which is written by a professor who documents a year of running. Along the way, he reflects on literature and life.

At this point in the fall semester, I like to read Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” especially these lines:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep.

Today, I taught Emily Dickinson’s poetry in my American literature class, the last reading assignment of the semester. I read to my students the following children’s book about a little girl who lives across the street from Dickinson and gets a chance to meet “the Myth.” My students appreciated it!

I’ve been reading Our Only World, a collection of essays by Wendell Berry published in 2015.

I read this book recently, which was a good reminder of how books serve as community.

I read Sherman Alexie’s “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” this week, and I thought that the following line, which appears at the end of the story, was an amazing expression of good will and optimism about humankind:

Do you know how many good men live in this world? Too many to count!

Getting to this line was absolutely worth it!