August's What Are You Reading?

I have a thing about quotations, never using them unless I’ve read the original work. If only a tenth of the people who quote Thoreau, Muir, or Oliver bothered reading their books, our world would be kinder and saner.

I have discovered many an author by chance, seeing their words mentioned here or there and then reading everything I could from them with trips to the library. It wasn’t long before I began buying (too many) books because I dog-ear pages and scribble in the margins, two practices unsuitable for public property.

Frederick Buechner first caught my attention in the epigraph for John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. He was Irving’s religion teacher at Exeter, and made a lasting impression on his young student. If you are familiar with Owen Meany, you’ll know this Buechner quote is a flawless fit:

“Not the least of my problems is that I can hardly even imagine what kind of an experience a genuine, self-authenticating religious experience would be. Without somehow destroying …