What are you Reading?!?!?!

[Mrs Haruo]

Actually, I am reading "My Lord Guardian"-- some mindless puff of a regency romance novel I picked up on the free pile at the ferry dock last time I went to see my dad. It's marked .25 in big black felt tip marker so it must not have sold at the "Friends of the Library" book sale. Perfect for rainy gray days when you have a head cold and your brain feels clogged with tapioca pudding.

[KeithE]

[Tim Bonney]

I recently read "Christianity for the Rest of Us" by Diane Butler Bass and am now reading " And I'm now reading "American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists." (Not that I expect anyone else here to be interested in the second book.)

I thought Bass's book was quite good.

[Haruo]

[Mrs Haruo]

Well, surprise surprise. She married "Her Lord Guardian" and will I suppose live happily ever after. Now I am back to "The Anger Workbook for Women--How to keep your Anger from Undermining Your Self-Esteem , Your Emotional Balance, and Your Relationships." by Laura J. Petracek, Ph.D LCSW. It's being used as the textbook for a Women Veteran's Healthy Anger Management group I am in at the Seattle Vet Center. Very worthwhile and helpful book. I recommend it to men also, to help understand their wives and significant others as well as themselves. There are lots of anger management programs for men, women are socialized differently and mostly taught to stuff angry feelings.

[linda]

Just finished: Pierced for our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution by Steve Jeffry, Michael Ovey, Andrew Sach.

Currently reading: A Biblical Standard for Evangelists by Billy Graham.

Dh ordered for Valentine's Day (love a man who buys books!) something by E. Y. Mullins. Not in my hands, cannot tell you the title but do know the author.

[Stephen Fox]

is part of this Pen/Hemingway award winning novel. Heard the story couple days ago on NPR.

Lot of resemblances to his growing up in Franklin, Virginia and my experience in Gaffney, SC couple hundred miles further southwest down I-85.

http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011- ... rayer-no-2

House of Prayer No. 2 by Mark Richard

[Ed Pettibone]

[linda]

Yes--I'm enjoying it very much. I have put it aside temporarily to read my Valentine's Day gift: Axioms of Relgion by E. Y. Mullins.

[Haruo]

I was thinking of creating a new "What are you reading?" thread (à la Global Warming) but decided since this one is only on page 3 I should give it a chance to get up to 10 before propagating.

Anyhow, recent titles have been
by Kirby Larson, a very well-done historical novel of the Japanese-American internments of World War II, directly based on the experiences of the current interim pastor of Seattle's Japanese Baptist Church, Brooks Andrews, and his family (the protagonist is his fictional kid sister, whose diary from shortly before Pearl Harbor till a year and a half into the war the novel purports to be). I would highly recommend this book to any historically engaged young people, and to adults as well. Especially Baptist ones.
, by Arika Okrent. For those interested in getting an overview of the wide diversity of invented human (or humanoid) languages, this is the best general introduction to the field I've yet seen (at least in English, and I can't think of a better broad overview of the field that doesn't focus heavily on the a posteriori auxiliary languages (e.g. Esperanto) in Esperanto, either. Again, I would highly recommend it to those interested in such things.

I have just begun reading , by an interesting Somali-refugee-turned-Dutch-academic-and-controversial-atheist-formerly-Muslim writer, now on the payroll at the American Enterprise Institute. I'll try to remember to report on it when I'm done.

[Stephen Fox]

Here in Alabama had a strong two months
Read the novel TheDevil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock

Now reading Perrotta's The Leftovers and working on Anne Beatties fictional semi historical work on Imagining Pat Nixon

Non fiction works include Baptist pulitzer Wayne Flynt's latest Keeping the Faith for which I wrote a guest column published in the Ft Payne Times Journal where Bobby Welch was Baptized.

And Donna Johnson's Holy Ghost girl; a NY Times endorsed memoir about the daughter of organist for Tent Revival faith Healer Brother David Terrell whose Blessed Areas in the 70's included Portersville, Community,Alabama bout five miles North of Collinsville where he told his following to gather and wait for Jesus return.
He hadn't shown up yet and in the 90's several of the children of that pocket of his blessed area helped Collinsville get to the State finals in the 1a HS basketball tourney. I went down to Bham for the game.

[John Sneed]

I just cracked the binding on "Slave" by John MacArthur. After that I am looking hard at reading "Whatever Happened to the Reformation."

[Dave Roberts]

This is definitely a group with eclectic tastes. Fun to know what the members do read.

[Blake]

I just finished the first volume of The Complete Sherlock Holmes. Instead of going to the second volume I opted to go to The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. In a more serious mood, I'm slowly working my way through Kierkegaard and Theology by Murray Rae. The Complete Works of Oswald Chambers has become my new devotional material.

[KeithE]

On the religious front I just finished reading by Stuart Murray. Interesting.

On the entertainment front I finished The Litigators by John Grisham about a week ago (not his best).

On the political front I'm slogging through by Lawrence Lessig and also Bill Clinton's . Also read this Kindle Short called which gives the short history, makeup, approaches, goals, and demands of the OWS (those things the press neglects to mention). It only costs $2.99.

Back to Work is probably the most enlightening, so I'm going to bed with Bill's book to read myself asleep (as I do most nights)

[Blake]

[Haruo]

I just finished , which I greatly if not thoroughly enjoyed. I would probably give it four stars at Goodreads. There were a few little lapses that made me wonder, for example, a missionary ancestor of the madman is described as going to Ceylon to preach the gospels. Plural? And there is a reference to "switching on the lights" in a room in 1872.

But it's a fascinating book linguistically, and one that makes me want to translate it into Esperanto. (There are actually rather few books where I really feel this way. This is one. is another, and Moby-Dick.) In the case of the Professor and the Madman, the constant dependence of both the story and wording of the story on the English of the OED makes me wonder how I could make it work in another language. I wonder if it has been translated into German, say, or French... or Japanese?

[David Flick]

[Haruo]

[KeithE]

I’m reading by Stephen Meyer head of the Intelligent Design group Discovery Center in Seattle. His book was totally convincing as to the unlikelihood of random formation of a self-replicating cell from a presumed primordial soup (Chemical Evolution or abiogenesis).

So far it is not as good but I’m only 1/3 through. This time he is taken on Biological Evolution by examining the Cambrian Explosion fossil record.

This if course after reading Lamar’s Remembering Miss Adie. All of BLife should read it.

[Haruo]

I'm reading Pearl S. Buck's , her (auto)biography of her China-missionary father, Andrew Sydenstricker. I'm finding it a fascinating book, and I wonder if any of the rest of you have read it. She wrote it as a sequel to her mother's biography, . I'm particularly intrigued by her father's Presbyterianism, and am wondering what branch of the Presbies he belonged to. I'm thinking maybe PCA, but then I think, no, maybe Cumberland. But then I think, no, more likely PCA after all. Whatever it was it was (still as of the book's writing in the mid-thirties) very misogynistic and very fundamentalistic and very Southern. Anybody know? (I haven't looked the info up yet.)

When I call it an (auto)biography I am trying to recognize the great pains Buck went to to tell her father's story without intruding her own. The recurrent references to "one of his daughters" always leave me wondering if it's Buck or one of her sisters, but I'm inclined to think the former.

[James]

I just finished, Sing Them Over Again to Me: Hymns and Hymnbooks in America. It is a series of essays on the evolution of hymns and hymnals and their use in churches and American society for devotion, indoctrination and worship. It was a pretty good read and far different from the standard type of hymnody book.

I also just finished one of Margaret Marons, Judge Knott mysteries. Maron has been around the Baptist block a few times and has a way of describing the rural south and its religion in an easy to read style.

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/ ... s-hometown

Hoping to read the novel above this fall, while I wait on Tracy Thompson's New Mind of the South; River of Darkness and The Cotton Kingdom as review by Delbanco Cover story recently in New Republic titled Lincoln's Long Game; and next Spring in the anxious seat for Charles Marsh's long anticipated correction to Metaxas bio of Bonhoeffer and Randall Balmer setting the record straight on the Pilgrimage of Jimmy Carter and the politics of Adrian Rogers and company that coagulated to bring him down with the help of Jesse Helms, Pressler and Ed McAteer.

[Stephen Fox]

Haruo, thanks for reminding me; one I've wanted to read for some time.

And all of us should read Lamar's novel by Christmas. I've read excerpts and honored he bases on character on my Dad.

[Haruo]

I just came back from the public library (King County) with the six items they were holding for me. I haven't read any of these yet, but may or may not do all six soon. (I'm also still working slowly through Pearl S. Buck's and trying to get a foothold in , Book 14 (and the final volume, they say, of , and rereading some of the stories in . Not to mention all the hymnstuff...) Anyhow, here's the list:

": Gloucester in the Age of the Dorymen", John N. Morris
": A Story of Race and Inheritance", Barack Obama
": Reconciling Darwin and Chomsky with the Human Brain", W. Calvin & D. Bickerton
": A Board Game Documentary" (DVD)
": Reflections on Jewish Cultures", Ilan Stavans
": The Autobiography", William Shatner with David Fisher