Friday Five - Books (Late Edition)

The RevGalBlogPals are talking about books.  I was kind of busy yesterday but I still want to play.  How can I resist talking about books?

Right now I'm readingThe Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration.  by Isabel Wilkerson. There's a reason why the New York Times put this book on the top 10 for 2010.  This is one of those books that makes you stay up too late to keep reading.  It's a history book that reads like a novel.  She takes three different African Americans from three different decades and tells their story of escape from the oppression of the South.  Those of us who did not live through that need to be reminded of just how horrible it was for Blacks in the South in the time of Jim Crow.  Especially if you are too young to remember seeing young people being sprayed with hoses by police on the news.  Or even if you missed watching Roots growing up.  Jim Crow was not just about having to drink out of separate water fountains.  It was about constantly being afraid of saying the wrong thing or looking the wrong way at a white person for fear you'd be tortured and lynched.    

But that's not what the book is about really.  It' an uplifting book about the human spirit and quest for freedom and to a better life.  And how are  this country was changed by this quest.

I've always wanted to have a book reading group at church and I walked into one here in my new parish.  First week they came up to me and begged me if they could keep their book club going.  Well sure.  So we are reading Ann Frank, Diary of a Young Girl again.  I always think it's good to reread classics.

Pictured are other books I want to get to.  

• The Perfect Prince, thanks to Father Anonymous' Review. 
• Good News for Anxious Christians: 10 Practical Things You Don't Have to Do by Phillip Cary.  Professor Cary is my FAVORITE lecturer from The Teaching Company - you really should get his lectures on the History of Christian Theology.  It's on sale now.  (Something is always on sale at the Teaching Company.  So only buy things when they are on sale.)

This book is about grace mostly for evangelicals (who can miss grace, sorry) but I think he addresses anxieties of a lot of Christians, even Lutherans.  Like my favorite one to debunk - the idea that you have to figure out what God's will is for your life.  God's will for your life is that you love God and your neighbor - the rest God is waiting to see what YOU will choose

• Fall to Grace: A Revolution of God, Self & Society by Jay Bakker, son of the infamous Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.  I think I will read this as soon as I'm done with the Warmth of Other Suns.  I follow him and a group called "Outlaws" on Twitter.  A group of mostly young, former Evangelicals who have discovered grace and are going crazy with it.  I will definitely review this book here and may recommend it next for our Book club.

And finally the Revgals ask about favorite genres or authors.  I have to confess to a guilty pleasure~ I read EVERYTHING written by Philippa Gregory.  I don't recommend some of her earlier work but once she got a hold of the Tudors and surrounding characters like The Other Boleyn Girl I literally wait with baited breath for the next one.  Now she's in the middle of the War of the Roses.  She's done the The Red Queen: A Novel (The Cousins' War) and the The White Queen: A Novel (The Cousins' War) and there's another one in the works.

Also I really loved the Darkover series by Marion Zimmer Bradley.  I'm sure I've read every single book in that series and then she died.  But I often reread those.  I call it feminist sci-fi fantasy.