1. The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain, Ballantine
2. The Great Gatsby, by F.Scott Fitzgerald, Scribner
3. Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, Mariner
4. The Orchardist, by Amanda Coplin, Harper Perennial
5. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky, MTV Books
6. The Language of Flowers, by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, Ballantine
7. The Prisoner of Heaven, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Harper Perennial
8. Death Comes to Pemberley, by P.D. James, Vintage
9. The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern, Anchor
10. Rules of Civility, by Amor Towles, Penguin
11. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by Rachel Joyce, Random House
12. Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, Anchor
13. State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett, Harper Perennial
14. Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel, Picador
15. The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey, Reagan Arthur/Back Bay Books
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
