Over the past years I have filled a number of reading journals with ‘magic grabs’ or quotes from some of my favourite books and literary encounters. These journal entries have sometimes captured pearls of wisdom which resonated with me at the time or a particular way with words that caught my attention. I have up to twenty such journals which have served to plot my varied reading experiences over many years.

As I’m sure some people do with their diaries or journals, I sometimes take down from my shelf a particular one and sit with it. Categorised by the year of composition, I have my reading journals stored in chronological order. This week I looked through my 2009 journal and found an interesting selection of grabs from an autobiography by Thomas Merton called The Seven Storey Mountain. Published in 1948, this fascinating book tells the story of a young man’s search for meaning and purpose. In his early twenties, Merton’s curiosity about life led him first to be baptised a Catholic and later to enter a Trappist monastery – ‘the four walls of my new freedom.’ Labelled an ‘autobiography of faith’, The Seven Storey Mountain has been recognised as one of the most influential works of the twentieth century.

My 2009 reading journal contains the words that Merton chose to conclude his story: Sit finis libri, non finis quaerendi. Translated, these words state: ‘Let this be the ending of the book but by no means the end of the searching’. I shared this quote with my Year 12 English Advanced class on Wednesday and discussed its relationship to the two books we are currently studying – Albert Camus’ The Stranger and Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation. I also mentioned another Merton quote I had recorded: “…most honourable reader, it is not as an author that I would speak to you, not as a storyteller, not as a philosopher, not as a friend only. I speak to you, in some way, as your own self …if you listen, things will be said that are perhaps not written in this book.’ These magic grabs generated some wonderful thinking and insightful connections were able to be made with our own HSC texts.

This week’s class discussion which emanated from my reading journal entries recorded fourteen years ago – entries taken from a book published in 1948 – proved to be highly relevant, productive, and instructive. The power of storytelling!

Clare Murphy

English Coordination and Literacy Instructional Coach