Just kidding – I know I haven’t – well, I mean we are three Jews, two possible Christians, and two definite non-religious people (me and my ride) but we are definitely not consciously choosing religious books.<\/p>\n
It’s just that every time I sit to write down what book we are reading, it\u00c2\u00a0 seems like there are religious undertones. Just finished Peace Like A River<\/em>, and the whole group seeemed to slightly off-put by the description of the land after death (maybe Heaven – it’s never named – but there are people running in slo-mo and fields of waving grasses…) in the second-to-last chapter. The book was excellent with the beautiful prose as promised, but still not one of my favorites. I did like the smarty-pants little girl character named Swede though. She’s an aspiring writer and has been compared to everybody’s other favorite smart girl character, Scout.<\/p>\n The new book is Jesusland<\/em> by Julia Scheeres (see what I mean?).\u00c2\u00a0 It is a memoir and very powerful. I like it better already. It may be the best of the last five we’ve read. It’s about a girl growing up in the South with her adopted black brother. Very crisp prose.<\/p>\n And on the subject of religion, The Purpose Driven Life<\/em> is not nearly as bad as I was expecting. The reading is light and fast. As Bella says, “Everything he says is so obvious. Why did he have to write it all down?” (Do you prefer the quotation marks? I don’t, but Chad says without them he gets mixed up in my paragraphs.)<\/p>\n And for my dose of self-help, I am cruising right on through Make the Connection<\/em> by Bob Greene and Oprah Winfrey. Light and enjoyable – and now I can match Oprah’s diary entries to my vague memories of judging her yo-yo dieting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Just kidding – I know I haven’t – well, I mean we are three Jews, two possible Christians, and two definite non-religious people (me and my ride) but we are definitely not consciously choosing religious books. It’s just that every … Continue reading