From Winnie the Pooh when Pooh gets stuck in Rabbit’s hole and is forced to lose weight before he can get out.
“I’m afraid no meals,” said Christopher Robin, “because of getting think quicker. But we will read to you.”
Bear began to sigh, and then found he couldn’t because he was so tightly stuck; and a tear rolled down his eye, as he said:
“Then would you read a Sustaining Book, such as would help and comfort a Wedged Bear in Great Tightness?”
So for a week Christopher Robin read that sort of book at the North end of Pooh, and Rabbit hung his washing on the South end . . .
If, like Winnie the Pooh, your are looking for a substantive book while you are wedged in a tight place, then I refer you to a couple of links.
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Justin Taylor has provided a nice summary of Marilynne Robinson’s work who has one the Pulitzer price and is on faculty at the G.S.O. Iowa Writer’s Workshop.
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Trevin Wax has provided a helpful summary of books he reviewed in 2009.
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Or, take a rest in Wendell Berry.
What books (besides the Bible, of course) sustain you, Chris? Do you return again and again to comfort books or do you get lost in new literature? Cookbooks? Travel narratives? Hardy Boys?
I’m always curious what books others read, and especially when they are buried under banks of snow in the eternally long January days. (Except Patricia, panting under the Florida sun….I’m tempted to winter there!)
Mary,
You can see some of my choices in the recommended reading link over on the right of my blog.
I read a lot of fiction – – right now I am reading the latest Charles Todd mystery. I really like those. But, then I also read large amounts of theology.