Books I've Read Lately

...or, rather, books I've listened to while driving to court lately.

Last year, I had a new year's resolution to read and review 12 books. I read a lot of books but never got around to reviewing them.

Now I'm so busy with work that I almost never have time to sit down and read a book. It's sad; I love reading. However, I'm spending so much time in the car driving to court hearings in far-flung locations that I've taken to listening to audiobooks. It's not quite the same, but it's still pretty good. So here's a list and mini-review of the books I've listened to lately:

1. Searching for Sunday - Rachel Held Evans

I enjoyed this book. It's a story of how the author was raised Evangelical, found some of the views she had been taught about God and some of the culture of her religious community unsatisfying, and how she re-found God through the sacraments of the Episcopal Church.

2. Take This Bread - Sara Miles
Several of my friends recommended this book, and it didn't disappoint. It's the story of a woman who was uninterested in religion, and one day while she was out taking a walk in her hometown of San Francisco, she wandered into St. Gregory's Episcopal Church and took communion. She had a remarkable spiritual experience that led to her conversion. She started a food pantry at the church and fed hundreds of families in need. The food at the pantry was served from the communion table.

This story is juxtaposed against her experiences as a wartime journalist in South America, and some of those stories are a bit intense. I think it would have been fine if I had read them in print, but due to a quirk of how my brain is wired, I process auditory and written language completely differently, so hearing it spoken aloud was a bit much for me.

The main point of her story is that food is a spiritual event, whether it's food cooked at a restaurant, food eaten with friends, bread and wine in remembrance of Jesus, or food served at a food pantry. This really resonated with me because food is a big deal to my mom's side of the family. (Given family history, this is unsurprising - my great, great, great grandfather came to the US to flee the famine in Ireland. My great grandmother and my grandmother lived through the Great Depression. Whenever I would visit, within minutes of arriving, I would be offered something to eat.) My sister and I have decided that there should be a sixth love language in that five love languages book, and that our family's love language is food.

3. Jesus Feminist - Sarah Bessey
I picked this one up a few years ago but got busy and never finished it, so I started over and finished it recently. It's an examination of the life of Jesus and how he had a respect for women that was truly radical and revolutionary for his time. The book also analyzes some of Paul's problematic writings and puts them into context and demonstrates through sound scholarship that the typical misogynistic interpretation of the text is inaccurate. The main thesis of the book is that Christianity and feminism should go hand in hand. Anyone who takes the words and life of Jesus seriously must also be committed to feminism.

4. The God Who Weeps - Terryl and Fiona Givens
I'm almost done with this one and will finish it on my drive to Tucson on Tuesday. I heard an interview with Fiona Givens a few years back, and I was so impressed with what she had to say that I knew I needed to read her book. It came highly recommended by many people whose opinions I value. So far, I'm liking the book. It's not as earth-shattering as I was led to believe - most of the theology in there is stuff I've already arrived at on my own, but it's still nice to hear other people approaching things similarly.

5. Slow Death by Rubber Duck - Bruce Lourie and Richard Smith
And, now, on the secular side, a book about chemistry. These authors ignored the advice "don't try this at home" and tried it at home. The authors were concerned about harmful chemicals in everyday household products, so they took a page out of mad science and used themselves as human guinea pigs. They exposed themselves to common products - canned food, air fresheners, scented soaps and lotions, etc. and tested their blood after each one. It turns out that there are measurable levels of harmful substances in a lot of products we use every day.

The book is accessible and entertaining, but most of the information contained in it is stuff I already learned when I was trying to get to the bottom of why I was so sick several years ago. Once I switched to natural and non-toxic household products, I started feeling a lot better. So, really, don't try this at home.

6. The Undoing Project - Michael Lewis
I haven't read this one yet, but I heard a review of it on Freakonomics a few weeks ago, so I got the CDs from the library. I have a trip out to Needles on Wednesday and Tuba City on Friday, so I'll listen to it then. It's about two Israeli social scientists who spent their careers studying human cognition and behavior.

I'm going to be out of books by the end of the week, so I'm on the hunt for more listening material.