Book Girl: A Journey Through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life

Starred review. Blogger and author Clarkson (Read for the Heart) shares her deep affection for books in this enlightening mix of memoir, spiritual affirmations, and reading lists. “A woman who reads is a woman who ponders, who knows the holy secret of time spent in quiet,” she writes, and reading her book feels akin to walking into a library or bookstore and spending a few hours browsing. Her suggestions are wide-ranging—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, George Eliot, C.S. Lewis, Thomas Merton, A.A. Milne, Lucy Maud Montgomery, among many others—and are introduced by Clarkson asking, “What makes a book acceptable to me as a Christian reader?” Great books, Clarkson contends, wrestle with life’s great questions and influence readers’ worldviews and theologies. Not all suggestions are overtly Christian, but they do speak to spiritual truths: Anna Karenina is about adultery, for instance, but also about “the consequences of putting self-fulfillment above other people.” Whether highlighting fables, novels, or works on church doctrine, Clarkson’s fun lists will prompt bibliophiles to rediscover books they have loved and help readers looking for books to deepen their spirituality