Summer Reading

Rector's Reflection
Written By Meegan Kriner

I make a distinction between travel and vacation. Travel involves going someplace to sightsee, learn and expand horizons. It’s exciting but can also be exhausting. Vacation — which often involves traveling someplace — is about relaxing. For me, this means reading, especially “escape reading” (meaning books unlikely to be quoted in a sermon!). This year on vacation I’m enjoying the first two volumes of Ken Follett’s Century Trilogy and the memoir of Broadway star Chita Rivera titled Chita. 

Since people often ask what I’m reading, here is my list from the first half of 2023:

Church

  •  A Future That’s Bigger than the Past: Towards the Renewal of the Church by Samuel Wells

  • Having Nothing, Possessing Everything: Finding Abundant Communities in Unexpected Places by Michael Mather

History

  • Henry VIII by Alison Weir

  • The Wars of the Roses by Alison Weir

  • Our First Civil War: Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution by H.W. Brands

  • A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan

Broadway

  • Magic to Do: Pippin’s Fantastic, Fraught Journey to Broadway and Beyond by Elysa Gardner

Memoir

  • In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom

  • My Queer War by James Lord

  • Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

  • The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening by Ari Shapiro

Essays

  • Graceland, at Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache from the American South by Margaret Renkl

Fiction

  • Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague by Margaret O’Farrell

  • Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

  • The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery

Fiction: Escape Reading

  • The President’s Daughter by Bill Clinton and James Patterson

  • A Wreath of Red Roses: Heath Lennox Investigates by Karen Baugh Menuhin

  • The Madness of Crowds: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel by Louise Penny

  • The Paris Diversion by Chris Pavone

What are you reading? Please let me know. I’m always happy to receive suggestions of books you find interesting, inspiring, intellectually stimulating and entertaining. 

Meegan Kriner
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