two-part invention

By: madeleine l’engle

ISBN: 978-0062505019

QUESTIONS EXPLORED:

• What does love look like in the everyday give and take of life?
• How can we navigate life with resilience and courage?
• What might balancing life and work look like for an artist?

WHAT I LOVE:

As an artist, I can become overly focused on my projects. When this happens, I forget the most beautiful creation I’m making … my creative life. Two-Part Invention reminds me that our responsibility and privilege as artists is to live life meaningfully and with intention. While this book always makes me cry, it also brings me great joy. I read it regularly. Each time, it helps me become a better wife, friend, mentor, and writer. 

PUBLISHER DESCRIPTION:

A long-term marriage has to move beyond chemistry to compatibility, to friendship, to companionship.
 
As Newbery Medal winner Madeleine L’Engle describes a relationship characterized by compassion, respect, and growth, as well as challenge and conflict, she beautifully evokes the life she and her husband, actor Hugh Franklin, built and the family they cherished.
 
Beginning with their very different childhoods, L’Engle chronicles the twists and turns that led two young artists to New York City in the 1940s, where they were both pursuing careers in theater. While working on a production of Anton Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard, they sparked a connection that would endure until Franklin’s death in 1986. L’Engle recalls years spent raising their children at Crosswicks, the Connecticut farmhouse that became an icon of family, and the support she and her husband drew from each other as artists struggling—separately and together—to find both professional and personal fulfillment.
 
At once heartfelt and heartbreaking, Two-Part Invention is L’Engle’s most personal work—the revelation of a marriage and the exploration of intertwined lives inevitably marked by love and loss.

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HERSELF: REFLECTIONS ON A WRITING LIFE

By: Madeleine L’Engle

ISBN: 978-1524759308

QUESTIONS EXPLORED:

• What are the elements of a writer’s life?
• What does it mean to write from the truth, and how can we seek it as writers?
• How might we get started, create rich characters, and tell the stories only we can tell?

WHAT I LOVE:

Herself is my go-to book for words of wisdom about writing craft, and a writer’s life. Madeleine L’Engle said many times that she doesn’t teach writers to write. However, as Carole Chase writes in her introduction to the book, “As thousands of individuals who have say in her writing workshops and read her books over the past five decades will tell you, Madeleine may not teach people how to write but she certainly inspires them to unearth the writer within.” Whenever I need to dig deeper, stretch my courage, or be reminded why I write, I return to this book.

PUBLISHER DESCRIPTION:

The author of over fifty books, including Newbery Award winner A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle is internationally acclaimed for her literary skills and her ability to translate intangible things of the spirit– both human and divine–into tangible concepts through story. In Madeleine L’Engle Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life, you’ll find hundreds of this celebrated author’s most insightful, illuminating, and transforming statements about writing, creativity, and truth.

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 A RING OF ENDLESS LIGHT

By: MADELEINE L’ENGLE

ISBN: 978-0312379353

QUESTIONS EXPLORED:

• What are the many kinds of love, and what do they look like in ordinary life?
• How might poetry and the art of writing bring solace and comfort?
• What is the impact of a life well-lived? How can we live life to its fullest?

WHAT I LOVE:

Madeleine L’Engle often spoke and wrote about her characters as though they weren’t made of imagination, ink, and paper. Instead, they arrived in her life as living, breathing people. Her characters are complicated and creative. They’re dealing with life’s highs and lows. I love how L’Engle blends light with darkness, joy with pain, making each more distinct in her work. In A Ring of Endless Light, as in all of L’Engle’s books, I read not only as a reader, but also as a writer. I’m so grateful for the way she teaches me something new each time I read her words.

PUBLISHER DESCRIPTION:

“L’Engle has the magic storytelling gift that makes it a pleasure to lose yourself in her spell.” ―Newsweek

After a tumultuous year in New York City, the Austins are spending the summer on the small island where their grandfather lives. He’s very sick, and watching his condition deteriorate as the summer passes is almost more than Vicky can bear. To complicate matters, she finds herself as the center of attention for three very different boys.

Zachary Grey, the troubled and reckless boy Vicky met last summer, wants her all to himself as he grieves the loss of his mother. Leo Rodney has been just a friend for years, but the tragic loss of his father causes him to turn to Vicky for comfort―and romance. And then there’s Adam Eddington. Adam is only asking Vicky to help with his research on dolphins. But Adam―and the dolphins―may just be what Vicky needs to get through this heartbreaking summer.

A Ring of Endless Light is a 1981 Newbery Honor Book.

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 CERTAIN WOMEN

By: MADELEINE L’ENGLE

ISBN: 978-1504049467

QUESTIONS EXPLORED:

• What makes a family, and what is the importance of family in our lives?
• How do loyalty and love interact, and where are they at odds?
• What might forgiveness cost, and how might it transform lives?

WHAT I LOVE:

While I loved reading this book the first time through as a reader, I have returned to it multiple times as a writer. It’s a masterclass in crafting complex relationships on the page through dialogue, backstory, and action. As with everything else Madeleine L’Engle wrote, this book strikes a resonant chord with me, waking me up to a more fully present way of moving through each day. With each scene, she reminds me of how valuable each moment of our lives are. Live as an artist, live with intention, live with laughter and joy. 

PUBLISHER DESCRIPTION:

As he struggles with cancer, legendary screen actor David Wheaton contemplates the one role that always eluded him: King David. Comparing his own life to that of the biblical ruler, David recalls his own numerous wives and children, forcing his daughter Emma to confront the memories of her family’s unconventional past.

As David’s loved ones gather to say goodbye to their patriarch, Certain Women masterfully links past and present in an emotional story rich in dramatic tradition, showcasing the struggles—both ordinary and extraordinary—of family life.

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