James Baldwin’s "Go Tell It On The Mountain"

In James Baldwin’s “Go Tell It On The Mountain,” religion is not a matter of faith, for God’s presence is apparent in the rapturous outpouring of joy from a church choir that has lost itself in song and dance.

“Their singing caused him to believe in the presence of the Lord,” Baldwin writes about his central character, 14-year-old John Grimes. “Indeed, it was no longer a question of belief, because they made that presence real.”

Baldwin's debut novel washed over me like a wave, completely absorbing me with its fiery intensity, its poetry, its dialogue so pitch-perfect that I felt like I was in the room with the characters, listening. It’s a transcendent novel, with long stretches that transported me from my physical self, fully immersing me in the story. It’s the kind of reading experience I hope for every time I open a new book, a hope rarely fulfilled.

Like Baldwin, I’m an atheist. But as I lost myself in his masterpiece, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was witnessing the divine, for Baldwin makes that presence real.

The best paragraph (p. 7):

They sang with all the strength that was in them, and clapped their hands for joy. There had never been a time when John had not sat watching the saints rejoice with terror in his heart, and wonder. Their singing caused him to believe in the presence of the Lord; indeed, it was no longer a question of belief, because they made that presence real. He did not feel it himself, the joy they felt, yet he could not doubt that it was, for them, the very bread of life—could not doubt it, that is, until it was too late to doubt. Something happened to their faces and their voices, the rhythm of their bodies, and to the air they breathed; it was as though wherever they might be became the upper room, and the Holy Ghost were riding on the air. His father’s face, always awful, became more awful now; his father’s daily anger was transformed into prophetic wrath. His mother, her eyes raised to heaven, hands arced before her, moving, made real for John that patience, that endurance, that long suffering, which he had read of in the Bible and found so hard to imagine.

Markus Zusak’s "The Book Thief"

As I read Markus Zusak’s “The Book Thief,” I kept wondering why the narrator—Death—was so determined to tell the story of a little girl named Liesel Meminger who has a penchant for stealing books.

The novel is set during World War II, a time when Death was extremely busy. The novel portrays him not as a Grim Reaper but as an overworked cynic, pushed to his limits by the endless backlog of souls he must extract from lifeless bodies. When we meet Death—I ascribed male features to him though I can’t remember whether the book does—he’s zipping back and forth from concentration camps to battlefields to bombed-out cities. “In 1943,” he tells us, “I was just about everywhere.”

Day and night, Death is a firsthand witness to the worst of humanity. He has every reason to forsake humankind, to dismiss us as a vile species not worth his time or attention. And yet even Death is moved by the courage and convictions of Liesel and her adoptive family. He is moved to tell her story.

And maybe that’s the point—that even amid genocide, small acts of love and kindness matter. There’s something fascinating about a species with such enormous capacity for both good and evil.

Overall, “The Book Thief” is sad, beautiful, poetic, and riveting. Its first fifty pages and last fifty pages rise to the level of masterpiece.

The best paragraph (p. 243):

Of course, I'm being rude. I'm spoiling the ending, not only of the entire book, but of this particular piece of it. I have given you two events in advance, because I don't have much interest in building mystery. Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It's the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest, and astound me.