My words about Sonia Sotomayor's My Beloved World aren't able to do justice to
the writer's graceful memoir. I recommend the book without reservation. Finally ...
While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease. Genesis 8:22 RSV
Aileen Boone Simpson Library First Baptist Church Volume 6, Issue 4
Fall 2013
“All seasons have something to offer” ~Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle
Talking in the Library The start of school always stirs a nostalgia. Remember the typical opening day assignment: write a short paper entitled “What I Did during the Summer.” As a teacher in the 1980’s, I had a summer experience worth telling: In a summer school audio-visual education class at NCSU, most of my classmates were members of the men’s basketball team. While my recent summer was more ordinary, I’m excited about new books I read and look forward to others on my “To Read” list. First, a guest review: Judy Page’s sparkling writing about The Sign of the Weeping Virgin by Alana White may send this novel flying off the shelf. We do make wait lists. My words about Sonia Sotomayor’s My Beloved World aren’t able to do justice to the writer’s graceful memoir. I recommend the book without reservation. Finally, there are other titles to mull over and we’ll talk again here around the holidays. ~Anita Bare
“Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower” ~Albert Camus
The Sign of the Weeping Virgin by Alana White Library Committee Members: Anita Bare, Chair Kathryn Cunningham Laura Goddard Pam Powell Hannah Scoggin Harold Stuart Joe Webb Church Office 99 N. Salisbury St. Raleigh, NC 27603 (919) 832-4485 The Top Shelf is published quarterly in February, May, August, & November. A copy may be found at www.fbcraleigh.org/Learn
I love books. I love reading. I peruse book reviews in newspapers, magazines, book stores and libraries. I make lists of books I might like to read. But my most recent and delightful find, The Sign of the Weeping Virgin by Alana White, came from the display in the church library. While waiting for Bob who is on the nominating committee, I picked up The Sign of the Weeping Virgin. Seventy-five pages later the meeting ended and I was pulled out of the streets, markets, churches and cathedral of Florence, the homes, palaces, and workshop of the Vespucci’s, Medici’s, and Botticelli, the papal excommunication of a republic that refused to recognize the pope’s ban, the mystery of the disappearance of a young woman, Camilla Rossi da Vinci, presumed to have been kidnapped by the Turks, and the intrigue surrounding the tears sometimes flowing from a painting of the Virgin Mary of Santa Maria Impruneta in the Ognissanti Church. I soon returned to the Renaissance and was immersed in the fictionalized account of the lives of Guid’Antonio Vespucci, his nephew Amerigo, Lorenzo de’Medici, the Magnificent and Sandro Botticelli, based on the careful research and deft pen of Alana White. Good authors give birth to their characters, but when they are famous men who have been dead for centuries, it takes a special skill to revive them as White has done. A few weeks ago, we traveled to Florence and I felt an intimacy with the city, thanks to this book. Standing in the Duomo, Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore where the book begins, to the last scene at San Minato Church where we attended a Gregorian Mass, I felt at home. I was literally walking the cobblestones streets of Florence with Guid’Antonio as my guide, confronting the complexities and achievements of civilization. ~ Judy Page
My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor One of the best books I’ve read this year is Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s memoir, My Beloved World. Justice Sotomayor, the first Hispanic to serve on the high court, grew up in public housing in the Bronx, New York. Her parents, immigrants from Puerto Rico, Sonia and her younger brother (always called Junior) lived in close proximity to other family members. It was her paternal grandmother who presided over a kind of family headquarters where the families gathered to party and sometimes to lament. For Sonia, her grandmother’s home was her safe place. While she knew her parents loved her, their struggle over her father’s alcoholism dominated her home life. The yelling and arguments made up the child’s first memories. Early on, Sonia developed a self-reliance almost unbelievable in a child so young. When diagnosed with diabetes at age seven, her ability to speak up and act for herself may have saved her life. One morning Sonia awakened to her mother’s loud voice demanding her dad learn to give the shots to his daughter. He was
afraid because of his hand shaking which then turned the argument to his drinking. Right away, seven year-old Sonia resolved to give herself the shots and she did. Sadly, before her ninth birthday, tragedy struck with the death of her father. Once more, Sonia’s determination kept her little family from folding. In clear, honest prose, Justice Sotomayor reveals many details from her life for the very first time. She shares colorful stories of her family and many members of the extended family as she comes to understand them and her own background. One can almost hear her voice and catch her smile as she relates the unlikely story of a girl from immigrant parents finishing high school as valedictorian, graduating Princeton and Yale Law School with highest honors, starting a career in the New York DA’s office, in private practice, and as Federal District Court Judge and finally as Supreme Court Justice. A highly readable account of the life of an admirable public official, this is a book you won’t want to miss. ~Anita Bare
“Autumn, the year's last, loveliest smile” ~William Cullen Bryant
On the Shelf: New Books Non-Fiction Baptists Today at 30 by Bruce Gourley The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II by Denise Kiernan The Gospel According to Dr. Seuss by James W. Kemp The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap: A Memoir of Friendship, Community, and the Uncommon Pleasure of a Good Book by Wendy Welch Modern Shapers of Baptist Thought in America by William Powell Tuck The Pastor: A Memoir by Eugene H. Peterson
Fiction And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini Benediction by Kent Haruf The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (ages 12 and up) Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel by Jeannette Walls
