The Pond Overfloweth
News, colored bookshelves, and 'The Wind in the Willows'
These last few months, I’ve been working at a friend’s house during the day—one of my first readers, there from the start. For each of those months, I’ve been itching to use this friend’s glorious, color-coded, hodgepodge bookshelves as inspiration for something.
Finally, D.T. Adams and I did it.
We had some fun decking out the perfect, imaginary color-coded bookshelf with titles. Kind of like a mood-ring, sorting books by predominant color is a fun, ridiculous way to sort them by theme, temperament, and overall reading vibe. When you’re trying to decide if it’s a scotch whiskey and leather armchair kind of night, or more of a lemonade and porch swing one, judging a book by its cover, texture, (and color) might make the difference.
We hope you enjoy.
Also, D.T. Adams talks Rattie, Mole, Mr. Toad and community-building with Kenneth Grahame’s ‘The Wind in the Willows.’
If you can’t wait for that, then scroll on down.
Word on the Pond
A handful of those reading this just graduated… or are set to graduate soon. If that’s you, then hats off. But to those readers who wore their robes last week for the rousing graduation ceremony at New Saint Andrews College up in Moscow, congratulations indeed. No more thesis novel, no more reading syllabus—no more detouring several times to get a flight into Pullman during a snowstorm…
School’s out. You’ve earned some hard won freedom to use responsibly. That is, and to quote rising author and program graduate Christiana Hale: ‘Keep writing, and keep the faith.’
Welcome to life with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing.
Substack Notes
After a not-so-subtle spat with Sir Elon, Substack recently launched Substack Notes.
Like Twitter (or not, apparently… doing our own thing here guys): Substack Notes is its own microposting, sharing, comment-threading, retweeting (or rather, restacking) thingy-ma-bob. While I post more, and follow more content on Twitter, I’ll support the hand that feeds by giving Substack Notes a shout.
So far, it’s a decent place to find quotes, postings, and occasional conversations from every Substack author you follow… and apparently, some you don’t.
As a subscriber, you’ll see my notes automatically.
As a reader, and like anyone with a Twitter account, you can post ‘Notes’ yourself from the top tab on the Substack App.
So there you go.
I’ll be on Notes myself promoting Shelf of Croc and would love to chat with you there.
With no glaring reason not to, the Crocodiles approve this message.
Worth a Read:
Quick thoughts on nostalgia - and why it’s got nothing on the present and the future.
I Have Finished the Race
On my way to publishing this, I learned that Pastor, Christian apologist, and author Tim Keller passed away.
Today, as it turns out – Friday, May 19th, 2023.
I’ll probably have more to say on Tim Keller, his legacy, and a few of his books that influenced my understanding of work and marriage, fairly soon.
While I disagreed with Tim Keller on politics after 2020—or rather, I disagreed with his drawing moral equivalence between the American left and the American right, and his insisting that maintaining a winsome Christian witness means being completely (and as it turns out, impossibly) apolitical—my own faith journey owes him a debt.
His early sermons at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City (I listened to them on his Gospel in Life podcast), along with his books The Meaning of Marriage and Every Good Endeavor, kindled some embers, lending a clear Biblical framework for work and marriage in an earlier season of my life. While I’m not qualified to talk about his theology in the technical sense, Keller insisted, through preaching and apologetics, that if Christ Himself, the ‘Everlasting Man’ was, and indeed, is, the risen, death-defying, there-at-the-very-beginning supernatural deity, then he deserves awe, reverence, deepest worship—in short, everything we’ve got.
As Keller memorably put it: you don’t ask someone who reached through death to bring a little girl back to life to be your consultant.
Rather, and in a strong echo of C.S. Lewis’s trilemma (liar, a lunatic, or Lord), you kneel at his feet.
Here, and briefly, I mourn with the Keller family—and celebrate a finished race.
Our Guide to Color-Coding Your Bookshelves
Kind of like the four Elizabethan humors from the Shakespeare canon, (blood or ‘sanguine’ was hot and moist and maketh one melancholic) we carefully paired each bookshelf color to certain titles*, topics, moods, appetites, and body ailments.
That being said, we’re no Doctor Faustus, and no Dr. Oz for that matter… so read, and stack, at your own risk.
*Recommendations assume, naturally, that with the public domain, 3D printing, and Amazon knock-offs generated in Southeast Asia, all titles come in the exact color you need.
Hardback or leatherbound.
Red Section
Books brimming with passion, tension, temptation, confrontation, fiery theology and political calls-to action go here. Nothing like some feverish page turning to get those eyebrows raised, those thoughts somersaulting, and that blood circulating throughout the extremities.
Best read with red wine, a carton of Hot Tamales, and a bowl full of red meat, raw if you can handle it.
Also, consult your physician.
Suggested Titles:
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
*Obviously.
The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
*Again, obviously.
Oil! by Upton Sinclair
*Or better yet, the raging, milkshake drinking Daniel Day-Lewis movie version: There Will Be Blood.
The Anarchist’s Cookbook
*Everything you need for that weekend trip to Portland.
Demons by Dostoevsky*
*Best enjoyed in a red devil costume.
Poetry by the Romantics: Shelley’s Ozymandias and The Mask of Anarchy fit the bill.
And for drama: Twelve Angry Men, The Crucible, and any number of plays by John Osborne, one of England’s ‘Angry Young Men.’
Black Section
Books on this shelf are, of course, morose and depressing. Perfect pairing for that rainy day, or when life just seems to be going too well, and you need something to bring it down a notch.
Themes include self-induced suffering, oppression, general misanthropy, studies of evil, and the Darwin Awards.
Suggested Titles:
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.
*Title says it all.
Hamlet by William Shakespeare.
*You know why. If you don’t, read it and you will.
The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity by Carlo M. Cippola
*Good primer for more investigation into Darwin Awards.
The books of Job and Ecclesiastes
Crime and Punishment
Night
1984
The Gulag Archipelago* (or Solzhenitsyn's shorter version - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich)
*When Chapter One starts with all the different ways Mother Russia can arrest you, you know you’ve struck black section gold.
The Dead by James Joyce
Sapphire to Light Blue
These books, naturally, bridge the melancholic to water and sea exploration. Themes tilt from adventures and hopeful to the supernatural and awe-inspiring. Great shelf for classics, spiritual reflection… and less we forget, Snorkeling For Dummies.
Suggested Titles:
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana Jr.
Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
For watery classics, try The Aeneid, The Odyssey, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest*
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
For poetry, try The Fairie Queene.
… and if you fancy a more icy, nature-inspiring blue, there’s A History of the Iditarod, Into Thin Air, and Jack London’s finely chilled To Build A Fire.
Yellow to Off White
Mesmerizing, ephemeral, atmospheric… given to insanity and yet casually inspiring.
If you’re heading to Sante Fe for Mezcal tasting, or out to the desert for a Vision Quest, best pack books from the yellow section.
Suggested Titles:
Dune
*Sand, spice, cross-generational selective breeding prophecies… sounds like a party.
On the Road
*Feverish travelog from a yellow-bellied beatnik.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
The Prophet
Brave New World
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Collected Works of Hunter S. Thompson
And from Latin America, The President, short stories by Borges, and Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
**Despite their attractive yellow covers, not every ‘How to _______ for Dummies’ goes on this shelf. Of course, reading all of them in an admirable attempt to not be a dummy is a noteworthy goal.
Green Section
Kinectic. Optimistic. Pastoral. Organic. If your get-rich-fast collection is growing like fiddle leaf fig, best plop it here. Also, this section goes right in the middle, front and center for that toughest of critics, dinner guests. Gotta look successful to be successful.
Suggested Titles:
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
*OK, this one doesn’t go front and center.
Rich Dad, Poor Dad
*Now that’s more like it.
The Green Mile by Stephen King
The Secret Garden
East of Eden
How to Win Friends and Influence People
The Great Gatsby*
*For best results, print your own version with a green background and Leo DiCaprio’s grinning face on the cover.
For a classic choice, something with striving up and comers: Great Expectations, Nicholas Nickelby, FTX - Beanbag Billionaire by Sam Bankman-Fried, or the collected fan fiction of Slumdog Millionaire.
Turbocharged: Three ways to ____ your ____
*You get the idea.
Salmon Pink
Emo. Complainey. Best spot for nonfiction tell-alls in which the rich and famous bravely bear their tortured souls.
Suggested Titles:
Prince Harry’s Memoir Spare
Megan Markhle’s not-yet-written, but already sold tell all, exposing all the ways the Royal Family, some four thousand miles away, is cramping her style.
A Thousand More Little Pieces
*James Frey’s sequel
The Complete Covid-19 Survival Guide* co-authored by Justin Trudeau, Gavin Newsome, Andrew Cuomo, Gretchen Whitmer, Lori Lightfoot, Barbara Ferrer, Anthony Fauci, and a battalion of masked, vaccinated, dancing nurses.
*Not to be confused with the Zombie Survival Guide. Some things we don’t joke about. Also, that one goes in the green or the black section, depending on your odds.
Anything from Oprah’s Book Club.
Brown Section
Last section on the shelf, and of course, the very best one.
Hearty, good for the soul and good for the chest reading goes here. Best reserved for the spot closest to the cigars, pipes, and whiskey. These are the tomes you go for your best Hobbit impression, or when it’s time to LARP as an Oxford don.
Suggested Titles:
The Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin
The Oxford Companion to English Literature
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Your very own P.G. Wodehouse collection.
The Complete and Unabridged G.K. Chesterton…
You get the idea.
Any trusted, timeless, guilty-pleasure book you like… but leather-bound so you don’t break the aesthetic.
🐊
With all that, color-code away.
If you go ahead and organize your bookshelves by color in real time, snap a pic and send it in! Along with shamelessly using said picture for Shelf of Croc content, we’ll make it worth your while.
The Wind In the Willows
‘What I’m Reading’ by D. T. Adams
In Kenneth Grahame’s iconic, The Wind in the Willows, he displays a wonderful example of community life. These stories, following the Mole, the Water Rat, the Otter, Mr. Toad, and others are full of lessons for us individualistic moderns. While seemingly directed toward children, I found the lessons important for myself.
For starters, these anthropomorphic animals teach us a thing or two about the value of a well-ordered, comfortable home; nothing ostentatious, just a place that we enjoy living and into which we enjoy inviting others. Instead of always longing for somewhere else, or to be out doing something, Grahame’s book shows that enjoying a quiet afternoon sitting outdoors enjoying the sunshine or sitting by an open window, all in the company of a good friend, can be incredibly satisfying.
The home in Grahame’s story is simultaneously a reflection of the animal that lives there and a place through which they give to their friends and community. Even Badger, somewhat of a recluse, temporarily takes in a couple of young animals from the forest where he lives after heavy snow, in addition to caring for Mole and Rat.
However, this kind of community where neighbors have each others’ backs through thick and thin is not easily built. The animals put up with each other’s eccentricities and unique habits to avoid giving offense. Especially when it comes to Mr. Toad, as those of you who’ve read the story well know, the animals are often required to give up their own comfort in order to save their friend from trouble.
While Grahame portrays his characters in the country, this kind of community is possible in the city as well. If we learn to look past the current state of most American cities and see what they could be, there’s plenty to appreciate and enjoy. One could enjoy the benefits of community life in a neighborhood, where they know their neighbors and have community events. Many of the benefits of a close-knit community are built over time, rather than simply being circumstances of surroundings, like a restaurant or coffee house within walking distance.
But all this to say, it’s the people around you. The faithfulness of Toad’s friends (toward both him and each other) deepens their ties. Rat’s continual hospitality toward Mole and Mole’s good-natured participation in the various activities of Rat’s household strengthens their friendship.
While Grahame’s specific vision of a country community is in many ways nostalgic, there are principles there for us to take to heart for our own time. Having close friends, who know us well, and can share our ups and downs, is an essential part of being human. Building this kind of community is especially difficult in a time like ours, when societal trust is so low. But if we want future generations to enjoy a more fulfilling life with deep friendships and community ties, then we must be willing to do the work of laying the foundations for that kind of community.
Of course, precautions must be taken, especially for those of us who live in or around major cities. But go grab a coffee or a drink with someone you’d like to get to know better. Invite a family over for dinner. We’ve got to put ourselves out there a little if we want to reap the benefits of deep, long-lasting friendships.
Coming Up
One last poem from the insightful George Herbert, probably paired with something from a novel I’m currently reading—Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham.
Thanks for reading.
And if you dig this content, thank you for liking, commenting, posting, restacking, or sharing with a friend.