Is there anything better than Pizza Hut bringing back the BOOK IT program?
You’re right.
It would be better if they also brought back the way a personal pan pizza tasted in 1987 when you were 8 years old and you had spent the whole summer in one chair in the library reading books like that was the only thing you had to do.
Since I can’t actually do that, here’s the 12th best thing!
We can talk about books right here.
The Salt of the Universe
by Amy Leach
This is a collection of essays that fiddle with the idea of restraint and abandon, generosity and tight-fistedness, rigidity and improvisation. Also, pickles and prophets.
Amy’s essays have fantastic word play and wanderings. It makes me want to live inside her brain — which sounds weird, so forget I said it.
I absolutely fell in love with her writing after reading The Everybody Ensemble. It’s the kind of book I wish I had written, but I couldn’t have because it’s exactly the kind of book that only Amy Leach could write. As is The Salt of the Universe.
I got lucky earlier this year and introduced her at a reading when she came out to Utah and then got to spend lunch and the afternoon chatting with her. I have decided we’re friends. You can ask her if she feels the same way.
Amy is just a downright A+ human being. She is hilarious and insightful and well-read and earthy and nature-y and full of praise for all kinds of random things. This book is another treasure on my shelf.
My Rating: Delight — the kind you find on a sunny day on a back porch
Genre: Lyric essay with a dash of memoir
Format: Advanced Reader Copy, paperback, devoured while sitting under my desk at work
Read it If: You like delightful essays that peer into the things in life that we overlook or mistake. It’s especially resonant for anyone who grew up in a strict religious environment and then started reading Walt Whitman.
Steer Clear If: You don’t feel up for quirky.
Would I Recommend this to My Parents: Yes.
Ephemera: We interviewed Amy Leach on Constant Wonder | BYUradio — her episode should be out in July! You have plenty of time to read the book before we air it.
This Land is Your Land
by Beverly Gage
This book feels tricky to write about. I wanted to read something festive for the US Semiquincentennial this July. I saw the subtitle, “A Road Trip Through U.S. History,” and I got super excited. A road trip through history? Yes, please!
This book handed me two major disappointments:
There is no road trip. At one point she does mention her car breaking down, but there is no folksy travelogue of going across country. (Even though she did!)
Gage said in so many interviews that this book was about accepting a country’s mixed history (the good and the bad) and moving forward with hope. But, I read the whole thing, and whatever thread of hope she felt like she left, I couldn’t find it. The whole book felt angry.
So, there you go.
My Rating: Meh
Genre: A publisher tried to get a brilliant history professor and scholar to write a down-home memoir and she wrote a history textbook instead
Format: Advanced Reader Copy, hardback, read in the break room at work
Read it If: You want to read about some of the less traveled history spots in the U.S.
Steer Clear If: You want to read about a road trip.
Current Bookstack
Library book on my bedside table: The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo. Only a couple chapters in but so excited about this one.
Audiobook on my Libby app: The Searcher by Tana French. Only 7% in, but what a ride! Roger Clark, the narrator for this audiobook, should get about 8 and a half trophies. He’s off the charts!