Books I have read or am reading since I finished Martin Chuzzlewit:
Fix the World
I am currently reading How Cycling Can Save the World, which I picked up on a whim at the library. It is SO interesting and motivating despite its overly earnest title. My university has a wellness office and I want to send the director a copy. And my mayor is into bicycles -- I wonder if he's read it yet.
I am also reading Searching for Sunday by Rachel Held Evans. I read Year of Biblical Womanhood a couple of years ago and found it pleasant but mostly unmemorable. This one is much better: appealing writing in a distinctive voice. I am still battling post-election angst (60! percent! of! white! Catholics! voted! for! Trump!), and her perspective is helpful. The author and I have some theological disagreements but I'm enjoying her book anyway.
Science and Recreation
I've told you before about how much I enjoy Matt Fitzgerald's books. I bought How Bad Do You Want It? last year, and then it languished on the shelf because almost all of my reading is on Kindle these days. I finally finished it last week. It's about the role of mental toughness in sports. Fitzgerald has a knack for describing scholarly papers clearly and illustrating their findings with well-chosen stories.
It's a little funny that I already wrote about theological differences in a post that also talks about Come As You Are, also finished last week. Emily Nagoski and I appear to be poles apart theologically, but I'll be thinking about her book for a long time. Lots of interesting material on how women differ from men -- not in a squishy Mars/Venus way, but based on parameters like responsive desire and non-concordance. She spends a big (and absolutely fascinating) chunk of the book talking about neuroscience, the ways that eagerness, expectation, and enjoyment interconnect in our heads.
Escapist Kids' Fiction
How had I never read Swallows and Amazons? Loved it. Pure delight. Could be an instruction manual for free-range parents. (Well, free-range parents who are willing to be investigated by CPS for negligence. Hard to fathom the changes we've seen in cultural perceptions of kids' abilities over the past 90 years. I bow to the Swallows & Amazons moms.)
Another library pick: The Lotterys Plus One. My La Leche League friends and I used to email each other about the commune we would found someday. This is a book written by someone who has clearly had similar email conversations. It's written by Emma Donoghue, author of Room, which is why it caught my eye. It's an earthy-crunchy fantasy, and it made me roll my eyes about eleventy-zillion times. OH PLEASE, I said when I learned that all of the kids were named after trees. SPARE ME, I said in its many heavy-handed moments. But then...I finished it in an evening.
Recent Comments