Spring Reading Challenge is coming to an end. I really love reading and talking about books, so I will continue to review books that I am reading here. I'd really like to know what you're reading (as long as it isn't by Jody Piccoult. I'm sorry ... I just cannot stomach her books!)So this is my most recent offering: Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith by Barbara Brown Taylor. I think -- correct me if I'm wrong -- that I read about this book on Jan's blog. Taylor was an Episcopalian priest for 20 years, first in a large church in Atlanta, and then for a congregation in a small town in north Georgia. In this memoir she examines the spiritual journey that led her first to the church and the priesthood, and ultimately away from it. Her insights are, by turn, funny, wise, and poignant. This is a book I would like to own, so that I can dog ear and underline pertinent passages.
While I don't necessarily relate to the "churchy" parts, the spiritual seeking has been very much a part of my adult life, and I kind of like the journey! The Quakers talk about "finding that of God in everyone." That's actually a pretty lofty and intimidating goal, and I am apt to feel guilty if I, say, epress my extreme dislike for the likes of George Bush or Dick Cheney. But finding the sacred in everyday life, that is something that I aspire to, and this book is an inspiration.
5 comments:
Sounds good. I will have to write this one down also.
This sounds like a great book.
Sounds good.
My tenth-grader-to-be has to read a Jodi book for his summer reading this summer. Guess that's not a good thing, huh.
Don't get me started on Jodi Piccoult! Since this is my blog, I don't have to be polite about her books. She is one of those authors who takes a subject that is relatively uncommon or improbable, but gut-wrenching, and writes a novel about it. Child abduction, school shootings, a family torn apart by a child's leukemia, a dead newborn found in an Amish barn ... and the public -- mostly women -- gobbles them up and thinks they're great literature. They're standard fare for book groups. Every one of them is a bestseller. I think they are gratuitously emotionally manipulative and badly written.
There is a magazine that I used to subscribe to when my kids were little, called Family Fun. (Or, as I liked to call it, Rich, White Family Fun.) I saved articles that I liked and kept them in a binder. A while ago, I was looking back through the binder for some craft idea or recipe, and realized that Jodi Piccoult had written some of them. Her novels are extensions of her magazine articles, and directed at the same audience.
Now do you want to know what I really think? Nah, I didn't think so.
I haven't started reading the book yet, but after your review, I will! I am definitely in a seeking mode, which doesn't sit well with some people.
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