If scrolling is exhausting you but you're still craving something that feels like a hug for your weary self, today’s newsletter is probably a good fit.
Five of my favourite comfort books
Hi friends,
Lately, in your comments and emails and even a few old-fashioned letters or postcards, I’ve noticed a running theme of exhaustion, grief, fear, and anxiety for many of us. Good gracious, we are in it, aren’t we? In our homes, in our relationships, in our parenting, in our churches, in our communities, in our respective nations, we are having a bit of a time.1 We are battling for hope in the midst of despair, joy in the midst of fear, peace in the midst of violence, and comfort for one another in an age of disinterest and harm. So many of us are engaged in the battle for our souls and for our overlapping values around justice and goodness and peace, no matter how we express or engage that conviction. There is zero part of us that is the proverbial ostrich-with-the-head-in-the-sand, ignoring realities around us.
You all are a highly engaged and passionate, active and prayerful people. This is something I know and love about you.
But sometimes - sometimes - we just need to take a Saturday afternoon or a Sunday evening or whatever and simply give ourselves a freaking break. We need to refuel for what lies ahead. We need to care for our bodies and our nervous systems and our souls. We need some delight. We need some rest.
In the service of that, every once in a while, we like to take a deep breath around here and just chat about something lovely-but-not-urgent or simply connect as a community and judging by your responses lately, it seems like this is a good week for that.
Now, I have just finished Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (don’t ever say I don’t know how to have a good time, eh?). It’s a sobering read for a dozen reasons, both as a parent and as an engaged citizen.2 But as he explores the foundational harms of this device-based life on Gen Z and Gen Alpha, he zeroed in on something I’ve observed anecdotally in our own lives: attention fragmentation. In short, we can’t focus any more; we’re scatterbrained, easily distracted, miserable when we scroll but powerless to stop or manage it well, and we have forgotten how to think critically, assuming we ever knew. Writing about another author’s experience, he related how “Life on the Internet changed how his brain sought out information, even when he was offline trying to read a book. It reduced his ability to focus and reflect because he now craved a constant stream of stimulation: “Once I was a scuba diver in a sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.3
During the first year or two of the pandemic, particularly during lockdowns, many of us gravitated towards comfort television. Thank you, Jesus, for Schitt’s Creek and Ted Lasso and Derry Girls and Abbott Elementary, right? In a recent AMA here at Field Notes, someone asked me about my current favourite comfort shows and I answered because that is my favourite type of tv, but the truth is that I’m more likely to be watching the hockey playoffs (that Oilers bandwagon is getting pretty familiar for me by now), but we all know I’m a pseudo-hermit bookworm who has exhausted the limits of holds for library transfers and way more likely to read for comfort than watch a television show.
Obviously there is a lot of nuance I’m blithely skipping past in this, but I suppose between the AMA question about comfort shows, my awareness of how exhausted and anxious many of us are feeling right now, and my recency bias of having just finished Haidt’s book, I decided that the overlap there was to talk about the books that bring us a bit of comfort or hope right now.
If scrolling is exhausting you but are still craving something that feels like a hug for your weary self, well, today’s newsletter is probably a good fit.
I will get us started with five comforting and hope-bringing reading recommendations off the top of my head. I think of these as the books that make me like people again (and perhaps even like being a person in the world.) These are just a handful of the ones I’ve returned to repeatedly for a mind-reset and exhale, the ones with dog-eared corners, pages wrinkled from being dropped in the bathtub, or spines broken from being placed face-open on the couch on a Sunday afternoon. With one exception, they aren’t necessarily the ones that deeply impacted my theological or sociological formation, but they are all a darn good time. I’ve tucked in a classic I adore, a more recent light-hearted rom-com for the sheer pleasure of it, a beloved book of essays by my favourite faith writer, and a couple others, too.
But I am quite keen to hear your own comfort reads too so please make sure you to chime in with your own faves in the comment section. (In my first draft of this post, I immediately scribbled down twenty-six titles, so getting this list down to five faves means that I am eager for our comment section, too…)
P.S. If the idea of prioritizing happiness or delight feels weird to you, I did write a whole chapter about that very thing in my latest book, Field Notes for the Wilderness. You’ll find it near the end of the book but basically, yes, your happiness matters too. Promise.
Okay, let’s get to the recommendations and conversation!