A Blow to the Head, vol. 1

What I'm Reading: Katherine Rundell edition. What are you reading?

Mar 05, 2025

If you know me at all, you know I love books.

So I thought I’d start writing occasionally to find out what you’re all reading, & fill you in on what I’ve been enjoying, too.

Franz Kafka asked,

If the book we are reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading it for?

Today, I’ll tell you about an author who’s been a delightful blow to the head for me lately.

Her name is Katherine Rundell. She’s a wide-ranging, curious, brilliant writer of both fiction and nonfiction. Her biography is fascinating; learn more here. Her novels are, I suppose, part of that nebulous and nonsensical young adult genre. But they’re as delightful and insightful for old adults as are other great “YA” novels—Narnia, The Hobbit, etc.

Rooftoppers is the novel of hers I’ve read most recently. It’s funny, wild, imaginative. For instance, Rundell perfectly captures the personality of a soulless bureaucrat sent to monitor the orphaned protagonist:

“The child is your ward. She is not your daughter.” This was the sort of woman who spoke in italics. You would be willing to lay bets that her hobby was organizing people.

The character of the girl’s ward—her adoptive father—is likewise perfectly captured:

Sophie didn’t entirely understand him. Charles ate little, and slept rarely, and he did not smile as often as other people. But he had kindness where other people had lungs, and politeness in his fingertips. If, when reading and walking at the same time, he bumped into a lamppost, he would apologize and check that the lamppost was unhurt.

I’m also reading Rundell’s biography of John Donne, Super-Infinite: the Transformations of John Donne. It’s amazing. I quoted from it in my recent post on paradox. It’s filled with sentences like these:

[Donne] wanted to wear his wit like a knife in his shoe; he wanted it to flash out at unexpected moments."

and

The human soul is so ruthlessly original; the only way to express the distinctive pitch of one’s own heart is for each of us to build our own way of using our voice.

Amen.