I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: There’s a time for ploughing through book after book, and there’s a time to savor page by page, letting a few words linger in your heart and mind until they change you.

For the month of October, I have just two books with which to regale you, both spur-of-the-moment purchases at Barnes and Noble. But don’t worry, this month I went to a book sale at my local public library and picked up a whole stack, so next month will be fuller.

I’m also easing back into audiobooks. There’s something about winter and it being dark all the time that makes them more appealing than opening a real book and having to keep my eyes open.

Anyway, the poetry book I read this month was Pádraig Ó Tuama’s “Kitchen Hymns.” It paired exquisitely with my other read, Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.”

Each in their own way is a theological reflection guiding the reader back from the lofty heights of purpose, life, death and meaning to the holy mundane of the kitchen table, the turning of days, and the countless ways we drift toward and away from each other in the minutiae of life.

Considering “Middlemarch” is one of my favorite novels, it’s probably obvious that this is a theme I’m attracted to in writing, but I was divided on the execution in these cases.

I should admit that in the case of “Our Town,” I’m a bit biased by my proximity to the real town of Peterborough in south-central New Hampshire.

In both cases, my failure to be awed likely stems not from any actual failure on the part of the writer, but from an oversaturation on my part of the very ideas which they put forth. I’ve spent too much of the last couple years with Christian Wiman and Franz Wright to be easily struck by the integration of the holy into a grimy poem, for example. That shouldn’t take anything away from the value of these two particular spins on those ideas, however.

What are you reading right now? Do you find that, by intention or coincidence, your reading in different seasons comes to coalesce around certain themes ?