The Conversation of Books

My 12 year old daughter told me recently that I have a “very bad habit of reading more than one book at a time.” I told her it wasn’t a bad habit at all! When I read more than one book at a time, the books get to talk to each other!

I like listening in to the conversation my books are having with each other. More often than not, there are themes that arise across the books I am reading, in places I don’t expect. That is part of the joy of reading!

Currently, I’m listening in on conversations among these books:

• Newton’s Principia - this begins with a beautiful poem by Edmond Halley and continues in discussing the precision of geometry, and the imprecision of mechanics and language. He is also talking about ratio and proportion and the discovery of large truths from small truths. 
• Sounding the Seasons by Malcom Guite - this is book of poetry that begins with the mathematical proportionality of a sonnet and the aesthetic appeal of a black square of text on a white page, as well as the appropriateness of of the sonnet form developing out of an oral tradition of poetry. 
• Beauty for Truth’s Sake by Stratford Caldecott - more math discussion here, coupled with wonder and enchantment, which happened to be the central ideas of a book I recently finished: Recapturing the Wonder by Mike Cosper. Neither of these books I chose for myself; one was a Christmas gift and the other is reading for school. And yet... they’re happily chatting away with each other and I am fortunate enough to be listening in. Beauty for Truth’s Sake is also conversing with the Principia. 
• Anthony Esolen’s Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child - this is another read for school, and its introduction is having a brief discussion with Sounding the Seasons on the importance of memory and the value of poetry. 
• Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway - this book on permaculture has a surprising amount to discuss with the other books I’m reading, especially the books by Esolen, Caldecott, and Guite. While the book is focused on permaculture in gardening, the introduction discusses the wide range of application for permaculture, which seems to be an overarching theme, albeit in different terminology, among several of the other books I’m reading. This interlocution has been a delightful discovery. 
• A Small Porch by Wendell Berry - part poet, part farmer, Wendell Berry has much to say in this  collection of poems and essay on the Sabbath that intertwines with Gaia’s Garden and Sounding the Seasons and Beauty for Truth’s Sake. 
• Enlightening Symbols by Joseph Mazur - this short history of mathematical notation begins with a contrast of the symbolism inherent in language, specifically poetry, and math. It is an etymology, of sorts, of mathematical notation, and as such it finds itself seated at the table, in conversation with Newton and Caldecott, and with Berry and Guite, and with Latin, with which my days are filled. 

So... these are the central contributors to the current colloquium. As I finish some books and begin new ones, the conversation will change in new and interesting ways, but the conversation will continue. That is what it means to read. I read, not to be immersed in some other world and escape this one, but to allow the conversation of other times and other places to draw me in that I may be fully immersed in THIS world. And that seems like a very good habit indeed.