Walking a Literary Labyrinth: A Spirituality of Reading - Hardcover

Malone, Nancy M.

3.71

173 ratings by Goodreads

9781573222464: Walking a Literary Labyrinth: A Spirituality of Reading

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1573222461 ISBN 13: 9781573222464

Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover, 2003

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Who of us doesn’t have a list of books that changed our life? Reflecting on her own reading life, Nancy Malone examines the influence of reading in how we define ourselves. Throughout, she likens the experience of reading to walking a labyrinth, itself a metaphor for our spiritual journey through life. The paths within the labyrinth are not straight, but winding, and in the end, it is not the small circle in the center that defines the self, but the whole grand design of the labyrinth every experience, every person we meet, and every book we read that makes us who we are.

Malone draws from diverse sources, both spiritual and secular Virginia Woolf, Saint Augustine, E. E. Cummings, Paul Tillich, Nadine Gordimer, George Herbert, Sue Grafton, Henry James, George Eliot, James Joyce, Patrick O’Brien, E. M. Forster, Franz Kafka, Elie Wiesel, Margaret Atwood, and Tom Wolfe, to name a few. Her thoughtful and beautifully articulated examination of influential books takes in a broad range of subjects, including childhood reading; books as sacred objects; reading and social responsibility; dangerous” reading, which challenges us to examine our prejudices and beliefs; poetry; and erotic literature. And Malone has compiled a recommended reading list to inspire readers to seek out the unfamiliar or return to old favorites.

In Walking a Literary Labyrinth, Malone invites all us readers, of every religious tradition, or none, to consider the influence of reading in our own lives how and why particular books stay with us, how they shape us, and how they enlarge our humanity.

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About the Author:

Nancy M. Malone, OSU, who holds a degree in theology from Harvard Divinity School, has been an editor at Religion and Intellectual Life and a coeditor of Cross Currents. She lives on City Island in New York City.

From Publishers Weekly:

The labyrinth is a meditative path that "symbolizes our journey through life," writes Malone, an Ursuline nun with an omnivorous reading habit-she reads not solely for enlightenment but for the sheer labyrinthine pleasure of it, and confesses she is "more likely to miss my night prayers on occasion than my reading." This delightful memoir/rumination draws on an astonishingly wide range of books, from the expected St. Augustine to John Donne, Isak Dinesen and even Sue Grafton, as Malone traces the human journey "from orality to literacy," considers the impact of F. Scott Fitzgerald on her "sophomoric self," discusses her work in interreligious organizations and its effects on her understanding of other faiths, and ponders the Church's diminution of sexuality to the physical. "Reading is an intimate act," Malone quotes Harold Brodkey. And readers will enjoy their intimacy with this wise, insightful woman who shares their passion for books.
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