November Book Reccommendations

I have to admit that I haven’t been very good at updating the sidebar on What I’m Currently Reading. I picked up and rather quickly put down Oliver Stone’s USA because I hadn’t yet seen many of the films referenced. I will hopefully be picking that up when that task is completed! What I have been reading instead:

The Straight Man by Richard Russo
I was lead to believe (by an overly chipper member of our HR dept at work) that this was a funny book. It was funny only in the wryest sense, in which you feel bemused but somehow more depressed for the characters. Coming from an HR recommendation, that just made my reading of the book rather weird. Other than that, it picked up in the second half and was definitely an easy read if nothing else. The one line that stuck with me which I thought was salient: “I’m not a ______ (fill in the blank: sadist, misogynist, whatever), but I can play that role.” There are so many times we pick up the end of a joke or deliver a line knowing that we’re playing a role, more than we’re being true to our own characters. Such an interesting behavior.

The Good Book by Peter J. Gomes
This has been a truly seminal read for me. Growing up in a conservative (Southern Baptist) family, I have had a hard time reconciling what I do see as my own true faith, with my now fairly-liberal political and social views. How can I have faith in the same God of my childhood upbringing and also believe something so heretically different from what my parents/grandparents/minister/ believe about the world. This book takes an intellectual look at what it means to read the Bible and how much the Bible has been misused to mean whatever the cultural consensus prefers. Using examples like prohibition/temperance, slavery, women’s rights, anti-Semitism, abortion, and other cultural battles, Gomes outlines exactly what the Bible does say that could be related to these topics and gives examples of how these passages have been interpreted (for better, or more often for worse). The cultural construction of spirituality is a subject I’ve always been interested in, and this was a really enlightening and truly NEW understanding of some of these issues and how people can construct very different worldviews while still believing in the God of the Bible. I highly recommend it.

The Latest Non-Required Reading Anthology Edited by Dave Eggers
This time the guest editor was Judy Blume and some of the front matter they’ve compiled is truly hysterical. I haven’t gotten to any of the stories yet (I’m sharing this read with the Guy so I’m waiting for him to finish). But the opening bits were just classic. My favorite was seeing the Best Facebook Groups and seeing some of mine in there! Yes, I’m a member of the Facebook Group “I judge you when you use poor grammar.”