While Reading and Walking

“We lay here for years or for hours,

So long we become the flowers.”

The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby is a damning exposé of the powerful Green family and all that they've done in our country to power Christian Nationalism and the rise of Donald Trump. This family, the founders of Hobby Lobby, are, through channels including Signatry, some of the strongest funders behind the powerful Alliance Defending Freedom, or ADF, a powerful force behind Supreme Court decisions including Dobbs; the insidious "He Gets Us" advertisement campaign; and Project 2025. They are a powerful symbol of how entwined capitalism, the "prosperity gospel," and the idea that the USA is, and should be, a Christian nation run by Christian faith, have all contributed to the fierce rise of conservatives in our current politics.

While the book takes a moment to set its scene, explaining how the Green family rose into its wealth and forged an empire rooted in an evangelizing mission, it picks up strongly. Most of all when it hits a story that went under-reported as it peaked during the pandemic: the Museum of the Bible, founded by the Greens and funded by them through donations that they carefully purchased, sorted, "donated," and then wrote off on their taxes, was revealed to hold a tremendous number of stolen, trafficked, and forged artifacts that were seized and returned to Egypt, Iraq, and others. This museum is intensely misleading and a center for Christian nationalism, and meanwhile its artifacts are stored (yes, really) in a Hobby Lobby warehouse. Next to the crafts inventory.

I recently saw Kimberlé Crenshaw speak. She said that many think we shouldn’t tell the “ugly” stories of history. But are they only ugly? Protestors at Selma march into a violent crowd, head held high. The story of America is that of courage and determined effort leading to change.

Just some books I got at ALA I’m really excited about…

A graphic novel adaptation by Jules Scheele of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (Avery Hill Publishing). I adore all things Woolf, and this looks gorgeous.

American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee (9/29, Cardinal)! Do I need to say more about the newest from the author of Pachinko?

Change of Plans by Sarah Dessen (out now, Simon & Schuster). My tween self adored Dessen’s emotionally rich YA novels.

As You Wake, Break the Shell by Becky Chambers (10/13, Harper Voyager). One I didn’t even know to look for! I love Chambers’s cozy, wondrous sci fi.

Enchanted to Meet You by Meg Cabot (out now, Avon). Cabot was one of my gateways from teen to adult novels back in the day! Excited for this witchy rom-com featuring a plus-size protagonist.

Nothing to See Here by Barbara Dee (10/20, Scholastic). I reviewed Dee’s excellent middle-grade about a tween dealing with sexual harassment last year, and am excited to see this new one incoming!

More Person Than Patient: Finding Your Purpose and Power with Chronic Illness by Gwen Mayes (11/3, Mayo Clinic Press). I had a wonderful conversation with Mayes about the biases patients face and how her new book tries to be a guide and reference for people trying to find care.

Moby-Dick, in many ways, surprised me. It's unexpectedly meta with the way that Herman Melville brings in stories and descriptions of whales from across literature and folklore. And the first half is surprisingly funny, full of dry and dark humor. It's also funny because Melville has an attitude about science that may have made him a raw-milk conspiracy guy today (for example, whales, he emphasizes, are NOT MAMMALS, despite what scientists say. How can he prove it? Look at whales! Are they on land? No. They are in the ocean, so they are FISH.). Paired with Melville likely being queer, and his giant crush on Nathaniel Hawthorne, the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg is delightfully charged, and (for the time) is very open-minded (with modern-day standards, there's a lot of racism in here).

Don't get me wrong: the middle of this book does drag. That's because Melville takes the time to outline whale anatomy, taxonomy, and behavior, as well as the whaling industry details. He passionately wants the reader to know everything he does, to appreciate the wonder that is the whale, and to understand precisely what whalers have to do. There are narrative things that make me understand why this novel bombed on first release. Ishmael utterly disappears for the final section of the book in favor of a voice that is likely Melville's, a much more omniscient narrator. Read as a postmodern text, by using my contemporary appreciation of metatextual and rich prose, there is a lot to unpack and investigate here. My favorite read? Perhaps not at times. But I could write a dozen essays about this book right now.

Upstream by Mary Oliver is a gorgeous collection of essays about our relationship with nature by a glorious and beloved poet. The literary essays on Emerson, Wordsworth, and more in the center are a bit denser than the others, but give invaluable insight to the rich visual, emotional, and thought-provoking stories told in the personal essays.

Fans of Oliver’s poetry will love this partial memoir, which gives rich and lovely insight into the ways the poet thought, moved, and explored, and her wanderings and observations on the trails and off them in Provincetown on Cape Cod. I loved her essay on the spider particularly. Also, I didn’t know Oliver was queer! Found out in the investigating.