Quick Lit: What I’ve Been Reading Lately

From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life by Arthur Brooks

This is another recommendation from my running partner, Beth. (It would be interesting to count up how many Beth Books make it to these monthly lists I share.) Beth and I have talked a lot the last few years about aging intentionally, and this book fits perfectly into that conversation. From Strength to Strength focuses on the completely normal but often unexpected transition of “creative decline” within our careers. The author, Arthur Brooks, says the decline comes far sooner than many of us expect — typically twenty years into our work. How we face that decline impacts our level of satisfaction in the second part of our lives. Brooks says we have two types of intelligence: “fluid intelligence”, which is present in the first half of our careers and could be described as a learning phase, and “crystallized intelligence”, where we draw on wisdom and give back to others. This doesn’t mean, of course, that we shouldn’t always be learning, nor does it mean that every career or person experiences decline in the same way. It also doesn’t mean we can’t be creative well into our later decades (as many of my writing friends are and as I hope to be, too).

As I listened to this audiobook, I appreciated thinking through achievements and their significance (spoiler alert! They really don’t amount to much as far as lasting satisfaction goes, and the more you rack up, the harder decline can feel.), the reality of eventually becoming “professionally irrelevant”, and placing priorities on the things that we all know matter most — our relationships with others. It was good to think through my own career and was a reminder, once again, to not tie my worth to external achievements but to focus on personal satisfaction and contribution. Really good food for thought.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

The opening lines of this book drew me in with their beautiful simplicity: In October there were yellow trees. Then the clocks went back the hour and the long November winds came in and blew and stripped the trees bare. But don’t let the simplicity fool you. This book is also profound.

Small Things Like These is set in a small Irish town in the mid-80s where everyone in the community is just getting by. Protagonist Bill Furlong is a kind-hearted man with a loving wife and five daughters who attend the local convent school, the only good school for girls in town. But at the convent itself Bill discovers the mistreatment of girls who are unwanted, where he’s told by the nuns and his wife and the people in town not to rock the boat but to look the other way. Bill can’t let it go. He finds himself thinking was there any point in being alive without helping one another? Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror? Beautiful and powerful. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2022.

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

This book is a story within a story within a story. The first story is of an Australian author named Hannah who is sending manuscript chapters of her latest book for feedback to an American writer named Leo. The second story, where 95% of the book takes place, is Hannah’s manuscript about an Australian writer named Winnifred (Freddy) who is writing a book (the third story) while living in Boston. Sounds a bit confusing, I know! Just try to roll with it.

One day while Freddy writes in the Boston Library reading room, she draws character sketches of the three people seated near her as inspiration for her novel. Then they hear a scream. A woman has been murdered somewhere in the building. Freddy befriends the reading room seatmates. What brought them to the library that day? Might they be connected to the murder? And what is the story behind it?

As Hannah (the first story) sends her chapters to Leo, his feedback becomes more…interesting. Something sinister is going on, but because we never hear directly from Hannah (we only have Leo’s responses to her chapters) we as readers are left wondering about so many things, particularly (at least for me) if she’s drafting Freddy’s story in a way to draw information from Leo. A clever, clever book with an ending worth discussing.