My bookshelf is newly organized as I brought office-living books home. The home books were generous. They moved aside and made space.
In the process of touching every book and finding its spot, I noticed how many books I haven’t read.
You too?
Here’s a plan.
Do you have a book on your shelf you haven’t read or would like to re-read?
Perhaps a gift from Christmas you haven’t yet read?
Or a desire to visit a library?
So, pick a book to read in February. Then, NEXT SATURDAY, I’ll invite everyone to list their book title and author on the Prayer Bench Facebook site. I wonder how many different books there will be. Or how many books we add to our reading list!
As a bonus everyone who lists a book gets a coupon for $5 off the QUENCH email retreat because at the Prayer Bench, everyone who plays, wins! (Good towards another retreat if you already registered or share it with a friend.)
Take a look at your book shelf. Is there a book calling out to you? Pull it off the shelf and let us know next Saturday, January 31st, what you will be reading in February.
Thanks for the updates, Linda. I read An Altar in the World a little while ago. I loved it so much I would only let myself read a chapter a day. Might be time to go back to it. I just finished reading her book, Learning to Walk in the Dark and found it moving. So much so that I want to do a retreat in a place with no electricity and a wood fire. Coming up in March.
I’ve been watching for comments on all these good books and not seeing any. An Altar in the World is certainly a book worth reading more than once. Taylor says “…there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world…..Faith is a way of life. You have everything you need to begin.” And so each chapter illustrates that, I am about to read “The Practice of Saying No” – should be a good one!
As for The Inconvenient Indian….it is an easy read and a difficult read at the same time. King writes with tongue in cheek to help soften the blow of the distressing content. “Moving Indians around the continent was like redecorating a very large house.The Cherokee can no longer stay in the living room. Put them in the second bedroom. The Mi’kmaq are taking up too much space in the kitchen. Move them to the laundry………..Do we have any garbage bags left?” Chapter 8’s title “What Indians Want” is answered with “A future…..such a future will be predicated in a large part on sovereignty……Aboriginal sovereignty, by the way, is a given. It is recognized in treaties, in constitutions and in the Indian Act. It has been confirmed any number of times by Supreme Court decisions……Just in case you didn’t know.”In Chapter 9 he says it’s the wrong question to ask. The question should be “What do whites want? The answer is quite simple, and it’s been in plain sight all along. Land. …..The issue that came ashore with the French and the English and the Spanish, the issue that was the raison d’etre for each of the colonies…..never faltered in its resolve is the issue of land.” I’ve done a lot of reading on this topic since the beginning of the TRC and I still have lots to learn! This book does get a little tedious in places where King starts listing names but he can’t, in all conscience, leave any of them out.It will be interesting to hear what the Canada Reads panelists think of it!
So how are the rest of you getting along?
I am reading “Party of One”, by last name of Harris. I should say, trying to read some of it. Very political. probably wont finish but whatever I do read is enlightening.
Thanks everyone. Drop over to the Prayer Bench on Facebook tomorrow and share a quote or impression of your Feb. reading, so far. See https://www.facebook.com/prayerbench
Hi Janice! Thought I would see what books were ” off the shelf” and i didn’t find my post here so I will try again! I am reading “An Altar in the World”, too. But when the CBC Canada Reads list came out I decided to take” Inconvenient Indian” by Thomas King off my shelf as well. I’m hoping I can get a few more of them read before the debate!
I will be re-reading “Bodies in Motion and at Rest”: on metaphor and mortality by Thomas Lynch.
Thanks everyone. I hope you’ll share a good quote or two throughout the month. I believe I sent everyone the word for the coupon but if I unintentionally missed you, please let me know.
I too have many unread books on my bookshelf and my eReader….Convictions by Marcus Borg , an ebook and a real book, Blue Labyrinth, from the Pendergast mystery series by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, are my February reads along with a cup of tea on a stormy day.
I’m (re) reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love right now, in eager anticipation of the upcoming Eat, Pray, Lent retreat at Tatamagouche. For the rest of Feb, I think I’ll be reading Writing as a Sacred Path, by Jill Jepson. I wrote a lot before I went back to school…but my creative well dried up with all those academic papers! I’m hoping this book might help inspire me to write again.
A guest blog at the prayer bench is always welcome. I have Rami Shapiro’s Writing As Spiritual Practice waiting sometime for me.
I’m going to re-read An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor…I so enjoyed it a few years ago. Also going to read Linden MacIntyre’s Causeway… His story of growing up in Cape Breton….I think it will have some familiar rings for me. This of course after I finish Long Way Home….TONIGHT!
That’s three! And I loved two of them but haven’t read Causeway yet. I want too. I loved the other book I read of his. Thanks for your titles. It’s been a fun day here and on the facebook site.
I am reading, started last week and nearing the end, Divergent (one choice can transform you), Veronica Roth.
The book that called to me from my shelf has been there a long time, pages are yellowed, published in 1940s, bought at a yard sale, and the reason I haven’t read it by now …perhaps I think I know it, its been quoted and used often by others. This book is now off the shelf, on my night table, and I am committed to Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis, as my February reading.
The Roth books sounds very interesting. And good for you for committing to Mere Christianity. I’m not sure I have read it! Though I have read other things by him. The Screwtape Letters are in my memory.
This book has been sitting on my desk for a month or so … this is a good incentive to dig in.
I will be reading Cynthia Bourgeault’s most recent book on re-thinking the Trinity. ‘The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three – Discovering the Radical Truth at the Heart of Christianity’. Thanks for the February challenge, Janice.
I’ve read this book twice! It’s rich with a lot to digest. Probably will read it again.
I just finished reading THE LONG WAY HOME by Louise Penny… It was FANTASTIC! I will soon start WHERE I BELONG by Alan Doyle. I received it for Christmas :-).
I’m going to re-read it soon. Someone else mentioned Doyle’s book today too,.
Just to clarify. What’s on Your Bookshelf? is a project for February. Louise Penny’s The Long way Home will be the book for the virtual book group in March. More explanations of how this will work soon!
I have to choose from several on my shelf, but this is a good incentive to start reading!
Sounds like fun
I hope so. It wi be fun to see different titles.