July's C-SPL Reader of the Month, Mary Potter Kenyon, is the program coordinator at Shalom Spirituality Center in Dubuque. She is the author of seven books, including the award-winning Refined By Fire: A Journey of Grief and Grace and a book on creativity to be released by Familius next year.
Q. Can you tell us about your reading interests?
A. I’m a strong believer in lifelong learning, so am naturally drawn to non-fiction, though there’s nothing like a good fiction book to escape into. As a non-fiction writer and workshop presenter, I also do a lot of topical research, easily reading 30-40 books related to my current project. For the last two years those topics have been creativity, mindfulness, gratitude, spirituality, and the intersection between art and faith.
Q. What is the best book you have read within the last year, or ever?
A. I can’t choose just one book, but I can say that although I’ve never read the juvenile fiction author Madeleine L’Engle is famous for, I was influenced by her Crosswick journal series. As a mother of eight children, I struggled to maintain a semblance of sanity through the craft of writing. I knew I had discovered a kindred soul when I read how she spent the morning of her 40th birthday lamenting her lack of success as a writer. With yet another rejection in the mail, she covered her typewriter in a grand gesture of renunciation. Pacing the room, crying and wailing, she realized she was imagining how she was going to write about the pivotal moment. She had an epiphany I can relate to: Madeleine could no more stop writing than she could stop breathing.
Working on a book about creativity this past year, I revisited some of L’Engle’s non-fiction. I read her Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, which led me to read several biographies, including Listening for Madeleine: A Portrait of Madeleine L’Engle in Many Voices by Leonard S. Marcus, the juvenile biography Becoming Madeleine: A Biography of the Author of A Wrinkle in Time by her granddaughters Charlotte Jones Voiklis and Lena Roy and A Light So Lovely: The Spiritual Legacy of Madeleine L’Engle, Author of A Wrinkle in Time by Sarah Arthur. L’Engle’s Two-Part Invention, chronicling the death of her husband from cancer, was the first book I read after my husband died in 2012.
Q. What is your ideal reading environment?
A. When I moved from a four-bedroom house with a home office to a two-bedroom, 760-square-foot house in Dubuque, I made sure I created a “space” for myself where I could write and read, surrounded by my favorite things. That space in my bedroom includes a recliner and a book-themed lamp on an end-table hand-painted by my daughter to look like book spines. I followed the advice of Spark Joy author Marie Kondo when I downsized for my move. Everything in the room brings me joy; the art on the walls created by my mother and children, the vintage cabinet I inherited from my mother that holds a collection of books signed by the authors, and a trunk filled with letters, cards, and other memorabilia, topped by a quilt my mother made and a wooden St. Michael statue she’d carved.
Morning reading is accompanied by a cup of coffee. Afternoon and evening reading always includes hot tea. I generally finish fiction books in one sitting, so plan ahead for a free weekend afternoon that often extends into the wee hours of the next morning. Non-fiction is easier for me to set down for later.
Q. What book are you most excited about reading next?
A. I have a long to-read list, and a wooden crate full of books near my reading chair, but always look forward to new books by favorite authors and am especially looking forward to Heather Gudenkauf’s Before She Was Found. Alas, my fiction reading is delayed by my current research on the topic of creativity.
Q. When do you decide to stop reading a book?
A. I used to think I had to finish every book I started, but there are too many good books in the world to struggle through a badly written one, or a book I’m not enjoying by the second chapter. Occasionally, I’ll still want to know the ending of a book I am abandoning. I have no qualms about skipping to the last chapter.
Q. Do you remember when your love for reading began?
A. Having older siblings who loved reading, I couldn’t wait to learn. The summer before first grade my sister Sharon read a Dick and Jane book to me so many times that I memorized it, learning to read in the process. Bored with the worksheets and phonics lessons in first grade, I’d sneak books off the shelves and hide them in my lap to read. I finished the entire set of readers before my teacher spotted my subterfuge one day. “What are you doing? You can’t read yet!” she scolded. When I began reading out loud to prove I could, she snatched the book from me and told me I’d learned to read “wrong.” The girl who’d learned to read incorrectly never stopped reading. Bullied as a child, books became my best friends. I found escape in the worlds that Lois Lenski, Jean Little, Eleanor Estes and Carolyn Haywood created, and it was my dream to someday become a writer. My sisters and I would check out four or five books at the library after school on Friday, and by Sunday, we’d be trading books because we’d finished our own.
Check out more of Mary Potter Kenyon's Favorite Books
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See the past C-SPL Reader of the Month blog posts here.
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