It's Monday! (9/14/15)

It's Monday! is sponsored by Sheila at Book Journey.

 

 

Didn't September just start? How can we be halfway through already? I was just getting into the summer groove, when summer kind of petered out.

 

Last week I finished A Good Enough Daughter. It brought up all sorts of feelings about aging parents and nursing homes and family relationships. It's not a book for everyone, but it helped me process some difficult family situations in this season.

 

This weekend, I finished The Jesus Cow. This was an odd book. It's a lot like his other books--full of colorful downhome, small town folks, northern vernacular, and fun language. A cow is born on Harley Jackson's farm on Christmas Eve sporting the visage of Christ Jesus on his flank. Harley dithers as to what to do, eventually getting caught up in things out of his control. I'm not sure exactly what I think of it. On the one hand, it might raise some interesting discussion on the nature of faith and integrity, but it really let me down in its conclusion, like another hundred pages of the book was distilled into a third-person narrative in the prologue. It went too quickly, too cutely, from climax to conclusion. And I don't feel that any of the characters grew.

 

 

This week, I continue reading 180 More, and I'm loving this one.

 

 

I'm also still listening to Tony Danza's I'd Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had. I cheer along with his successes and sympathize with his failures in the classroom. Teaching is one of the hardest gigs there is.

 

This weekend, I picked up Joyce Carol Oates's new memoir, The Lost Landscape. I've never read anything by Oates, but I've long wanted to. This appears to be comprised of essays--many published before. I'm enjoying the writing so far.

 

I also started Ben Carson's Gifted Hands. I'm not even a quarter of the way in, but I can definitely hear Carson's soft-spoken integrity and grace. It's written simply, and I'm already wondering if it would be a good book to give my grandson, who's nine. Carson is proof positive that denying the culture of victimhood will get a young black man (or white man, of course) anywhere he wants to go.

 

 

 

What are you reading this week?