Let's see. I'm still reading Acedia and Me by Kathleen Norris. I need to finish it, because it's due back at the library soon. This is a book that I'm going to look for at Half Price Books, because I may want to read it again in a few years.
This week I finished Nineteen Minutes by Jodie Picoult. A more depressing book I haven't read in quite some time. As I said on Monday, if high school is really like that, I'm glad we homeschooled. The book is about a Columbine-like school shooting. I'm sure we'll have a good discussion at book club, because we have a couple of retired teachers--their take on school culture should be interesting.
I also finished The Care and Feeding of Husbands by Laura Schlesinger. I think this is a very, very fine book. It tracks right along with a lot of the advice I have given over the years. I'm considering buying several copies of the book and handing them out. Especially, maybe, as wedding gifts for young brides.
After almost 30 years of marriage, it's the truest marriage help book I've ever read. It would radically tic off feminists, so I automatically like it. And she explicitly says this is advice for marriages that are hurting, but not in cases of abuse, addiction or affairs. Those things need more help than any book. If you think you need a little marriage tune up--try this one, girls. It couldn't hurt.
Next on the stack, Right Ho, Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse. After that, I don't know. Something off my giant pile of "to reads."
How 'bout you?
I just finished reading Acedia and Me. I found it very thought provoking and identified with much of her experience. I think it is an important book for many of us baby boomers.
As usual in books of this sort, one has to spit out the bones. In this case, sadly, there seems to be a pretty big bone. Is it just me, or does there seem to be an unstated assumption that everybody, no matter what gets to go to heaven? Her husband, a fallen away Catholic, never makes his way back to any kind of faith that I could gather from the book. Yet the author seems assured that he is experiencing the afterlife.
The other thing that kind of bothered me was she never self-identifies what church she goes to. She says her leaning towards the Catholic Church discomfited her husband. She never says she converted but next thing you know she is talking about being a Benedictine Oblate. Kind of confusing??
But overall I would recommend it as I do think she is right in identifying acedia as being a prevalent but unnamed sin that afflicts many of us on our spiritual journey.
Jim, I think you're right in your analysis of some of the "bones" in the book. I found another of her books, Cloister Walk very good, but at the same time, by the end of it I was practically yelling, "So, convert already!!!!"
I think she has an Anglican/Lutheran type background, though I could be wrong. She mentions that her sister or sister in law is a priest/minister, and while she never said the denomination, I was left with the impression that it was one of the more liturgical type churches. I could be completely off base about that, though.
I have identified with much of the book, though. I think it is THE baby boomer sin! (Well, maybe after pride, which always runs in first place, to my mind.)