For the Love of Books...


Just wanted to share a few of the books I've been digging into recently. I'll try to keep this updated as things change!

I'm kind of in the middle of...

 The Valley of Vision:
A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions
Compiled by Arthur Bennett, 1975

Love You More: The Divine Surprise of Adopting My Daughter
Jennifer Grant, 2011

If You Bite and Devour One Another
Alexander Strauch, 2011

Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847-1848



Books I've stalled out on...

Emma
Jane Austen, 1815
   Now I'm not, nor have I ever been, a Jane Austen fan. Perhaps I too easily missed the point when I read Pride and Prejudice in high school, but I easily fell asleep then whenever I picked it up to read for my English class. Regardless, I decided to give Austen a second chance (10 years later), and have started reading Emma because it was a free read on my Kindle app (iPod) and I needed something to a) not get terribly invested in because I'm hitting thesis work mode again and b) I needed something to help me get to sleep. As I continue reading it, both a) and b) are proving true. I'll finish it, and I hope something awesome happens before I do, but it might just be proof that Austen and I aren't really meant to be close friends.

 Not With a Bang But a Whimper
 Theodor Dalrymple, 2010


The Networked Nonprofit

Beth Kanter & Allison Fine, 2010
   My next stop on the back-to-thesis tour, this book has been on my to-read list for years. I'm a few chapters in, and it's already providing helpful definitions and context that I took weeks of each semester (while a full-time master's student) to compile for various papers. It's super-helpful, easy-to-read, and a great centering point from which to launch the rest of what will eventually be a completed thesis and degree.

 The Problem of Pain
C.S. Lewis, 1940
   I picked this up, partly because I haven't read much of Lewis in recent years (with the exception of the Narnia books) and partly because the idea intrigues me at the season of life I find myself within - in ways that I never have wrestled with before.
   The introduction alone is enough to stew on for days, intellectually speaking. Lewis, as always, is a philosopher and a man who understands both the world he lives in and the God who saves him. There are rare glimpses of transparency that are only found in a few of his works, namely A Grief Observed. I look forward to reading more, but this will likely prove to be a more drawn out reading as I seek to digest the wisdom and insights Lewis presents.


Books I hope to read sometime soon...

The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky

Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Middlemarch
George Eliot

Les Miserables
Victor Hugo

The Feminist Mistake
Mary Kassian


Previous Years' Reads
 2012 Archive
2011 Archive