Reading for Resilience

Vagabond English: Book Club Picks for Spring and Summer 2021

Vagabond English: Book Club Picks for Spring and Summer 2021

What can be better than diving into a book--holding an adventure of the written word in your hand?

What can take the place of traveling as you turn the pages?

Whether you visit incredible new places, walking strange streets, feeling the dust of the traveler on your shoes.

Or you find yourself returning home--in one way or another.

Or even find yourself traveling within…


What is more beautiful than the exciting and surprising stack of new books waiting for you?

Only one thing I can think of tops the delicious flavor of solitary hours spent in words...and worlds:

Knowing that people who understand you--and your book--are reading alongside you.

Reading for Resilience: Why Good Books Get Us Through...

Reading for Resilience: Why Good Books Get Us Through...

It’s funny, the things I know for certain? They never cease to surprise me anyway. Like reading novels and discussing them with people you trust...and who inspire you.

Earlier this week, I showed up to our writing chats, curled in layers of wool against the cold and armed with tea. It was like a small break from, well, everything else.

We met to talk about Mr. Pip. A beautiful book set during the civil war on Bouganville off the coast of Papua New Guinea. A book that sweeps you up with beauty and resilience in the face of catastrophe.

And that got us all talking about the way stories get us through.

In Mr. Pip, one of the main (and mysterious!) characters, Mr. Watts, reads Dicken’s Great Expectations to the school children as all the teachers have left the island. Ultimately, he draws the entire village into the story, to create something new a new tale that deviates perhaps from Great Expectations...possibly from the whole and exact truth of his own life.

“Do we forgive Mr. Pip for not being entirely honest?” I wanted to know in our book chats?

Do we forgive the author for telling us the story that we need to hear? For handing down the story that makes us strong rather than ‘just the facts?’