Thursday, April 30, 2009

New Books!

I just got the May/June issue of Relevant Magazine in the mail, and the first thing I flipped to was their 2009 Summer Reading Guide.  As always, they offered some great new books!  Here are the ones I'll be adding to my ever-growing reading list:

Angry Conversations with God:  A Snarky but Authentic Spiritual Memoir by Susan E. Isaacs     I've heard about this book before, and I'm drawn to the idea of someone who writes about God with something other than the happy-go-lucky, Jesus-changed-my-life attitude.  Here's a quote from her in the blurb from the magazine:  "I often felt a huge burden of regret over the mistakes I made, the time I wasted in my life; but it also gave me fresh gratitude for God that He got me through all of that.  Writing was like a sacrament.  I was honoring God by telling the truth about my life.  I was honoring Him."

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larson     This novel about a 12-year old genius cartographer who wins a prestigious Smithsonian scholarship (they don't know he's in middle school) and train-hops across the country sounds delightful and endearing.  It includes the boy's diagrams and illustrations of things like "Maps of People Doing Things" and "Freight Train as a Sound Sandwich."  (That's not a very good review.  Check out the one in Relevant or go read the book yourself.)

Made From Scratch:  Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life by Jenna Wogenrich     My propensity for anything handmade and/or eco-friendly immediately drew me to this book.  It's part narrative, part handbook on the hows and whys of independent, sustainable living.

Endpoint by John Updike     The only impression I have of John Updike is from reading one of his short stories in a high school english class -- I didn't like it at all.  But Relevant's review of his new, posthumously published collection of poems and the excerpt they included may convince me to rethink my opinion.  Plus I've been on a poetry kick lately...  

Requiem 
by John Updike

It came to me the other day:
Were I to die, no one would say,
"Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
Of promise--depths unplumbable!"

Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know,
"I thought he died a while ago.:

For life's a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.


1 comment:

J. M. Richards said...

They all sound interesting--but that first one sounds especially intriguing.

Have you bought it yet? Was it at Borders or something?