Folding Up
Writer: Mary Bess Dunn
Year end retrospection is a ritual I rely on for insight and inspiration. Folding up one year while looking forward to the next, I read old journal entries, review social media posts, camera rolls, calendars and voice mails. All are worthy of my time during the last weeks of the holiday season. These rituals ground me, especially this year. After a year of upheaval, punctuated by grim statistics and empty seats at the table, paying homage to ‘a year in the life’ feels down right cathartic.
Reflecting on books I’ve savored over the past 12 months is always part of this ritualist mix. This year’s practice is about more than making a list of books I’ve read. It’s also about celebrating the kind of reader I’ve become. I’ve always been one who reads with pen in hand. Maybe because I am a writer I find it nearly impossible not to respond to the art and craft of what I’m reading by marking up pages with wavy underlines, giant stars, simple checks, or side bar scribbles. Unfortunately, not all books meet this fate. Some, even though I struggle to the end, are just not worthy.
Last January I resolved to break the habit of finishing every book I start. Too many aspects of my life are guilt ridden—reading should not be one of them. I gave myself two guidelines: I must read the first 50 pages, and, if within those pages I haven’t made a single notation or underlined a single sentence, phrase, or word, I should seriously think about putting it aside. Life is too short.
I’ve been mostly successful in carrying out last year’s resolution and in light of my success, have decided not only to list the books I’ve read during this tumultuous year, but to record at least one margin note or underlined sentence I left on the page. Mind you, I’m bad at keeping track of what and when I read, so for this exercise I’ve sorted through books off the shelves and spread them on the floor around my desk. My plan is to pluck up each one, flip through and find a hidden gem or two. Another caveat: Unlike those who boast of reading hundreds of books a year, I expect my list will be puny. I am a slow reader—very slow. The writer in me is too attentive to the author’s craft, word choice and story structure and I want to relish the experience.
Regardless, here’s a sampling of a few favorite books and quotes of 2020. They are in no particular order-except for the first one, which is probably my favorite and one I return to frequently.
Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss by Margaret Renkl
Starred: “Aren’t transitions always marked by tumult and confusion?”
The Mirror & The Light by Hillary Mantel
Underlined: “There are books which say, contemplate your final hour; I live every day as if, that night, you go not to your bed but to your bier.”
The Angel Dialogues by Anthony Abbott
Double starred: “For a long time, he sleeps, his dreams as grey as the clouds that children draw, slipping sliding outside their preplanned lines..”
P.S. Listen to Charlotte Readers Podcast’s interview with Anthony Abbott here.
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez.
Underlined: “Rather than write about what you know…, write about what you see. Assume that you know very little and that you’ll never know much until you learn how to see. Keep a notebook to record things that you see…”
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
Two stars: “There are a few times in life when you leap up and the past that you’d been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to lean on is not yet in place, and for a moment you are suspended, knowing nothing and no one, not even yourself.”
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate Dicamillo
Circled: “I have been loved, Edward told the stars.”
Where the Light Falls Selected Stories of Nancy Hale edited by Lauren Groff
Curvy underlines: “A joy held secretly within the heart can illuminate a dark time or a difficult day.”
Eveningland by Michael Knight
Check marked: “Kendra sleeps late on Saturdays, drawing slumber over her head lie an extra blanket.”
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Check marked: “her morning mantra in the bathroom mirror I am highly presentable, likeable, clubbable, relatable, promotable and successful”
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
Side note: “Here, here!! That’s our boy!!”
An Odyssey: A Father A Son and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn
Side note: who’s doing the teaching here??.
Educated by Tara Westover
Underlined: “Whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into, that is who you always were.”
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy
Starred “Sometimes just getting up and carry on is brave and magnificent.”
You Will Never Be Forgotten: Stories by Mary South
Exclamation marks: “My mother’s love…If I searched for it, perhaps I would find that emotional inheritance, hidden somewhere inside myself like an appendix, an organ I didn’t know was there.”
Sybelia Drive by Karin Cecile Davidson
Underlined: “I dreamed…we saw how the world held us on its sharpest edge, judged us by how carefully we took the corners, and then dropped us to see how we fell.”
Why I Don’t Write by Susan Minot
Curvy underlines: “….on your own had its advantages. ..you could pick up and leave. You could visit new lives and try them on for a while. And what else was life for but to check it out?”
About the Writer
After retiring from a career as a teacher educator, Mary Bess Dunn continues to follow her lifelong passion for literature and writing. A nominee for the Pushcart Prize, her work has appeared in several literary journals, including The Alembic, Pembroke Magazine, and Quiddity International Literary Journal. Most recently, her short story entitled “Helping Hands” was announced as a finalist in the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards. Mary Bess is an avid cyclist who also enjoys yoga, pickleball, travel, playing the piano and hugging the grandkids. She is a lifelong resident of Nashville, Tennessee.
Website: marybessdunn.com
Writer’s podcast episode, HERE.