What I'm reading...

When I worked at the library, I had no shortage of books on my "to-read" list, since interesting titles would come my way all the time. Now I'm a little more out of the loop, so I have to actively search for something to read next week. I generally try to have at least four books out at once: A fiction book, a nonfiction book, an audiobook (so I don't get bored when I have to do mom-things), and a God-book. So here's what's on my shelf this week, and maybe you can make some suggestions for me!

Fiction Book: Beauty and the Werewolf, by Mercedes Lackey (most recent book in the Five Hundred Kingdoms series)

This is book 6 of the series. In the world of the five hundred kingdoms, a mindless force called The Tradition influences mortals to shape their lives into stories that it recognizes. For example, let's say a father dies, leaving his only daughter in the care of her stepmother and two stepsisters. The Tradition is going to do everything it can to make the stepmother evil and the stepsisters jealous and petty, and then to get the daughter rescued by a handsome prince. But The Tradition just wants fairy tales...not necessarily those with happy endings - a girl could just as easily be shoehorned into becoming a "Little Matchstick Girl."

Godmothers and others who know about the Tradition work to manipulate it into positive stories and outcomes. For example, a girl who wants to fight a dragon might first disguise herself as a boy, since she knows The Tradition favors the heroic-girl-soldier-posing-as-a-boy story. She might then find herself learning key fighting skills twice as fast, since The Tradition has taken an interest in making her live up to her heroic potential.

I would actually love to run an RPG in this setting, where PCs could get significant bonuses to rolls if they were invoking a Traditional path.

Nonfiction Book: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois

Sounds great, doesn't it? The trick is that they mix up a big batch of dough at the beginning of a two week period, and then just bake it a loaf at a time (that's the "five minutes" part). The title's a bit deceptive, but not all bread dough recipes can hold up to storage in this way, so at least this gives me a start. A few of the dough recipes can be used in multiple variations (one dough can be used to make regular loaves, pita bread, or pretzels), but the book lacks the indexing necessary to make this as useful as it could be. *librarian peeve - needs more metadata*

Audiobook: Justice Hall by Laurie R. King

I've been reading/listening to the Mary Russell series, and this is number six. It's essentially a Sherlock Holmes fanfic (but good) - he "retires" to the country to keep bees and takes on a young female apprentice. They investigate things. Mary Russell's insufferable perfection irritated me at first, but then I remembered that Sherlock Holmes is about the same breed of insufferable, and sure enough, I came to like Mary too.

A condition for my audiobooks is that they must contain no scenes that I would uncomfortably skim over while reading them...because when it's all spoken, you just have to sit there and listen to it and blush. So only very prim and proper, non-graphic mystery novels for me, so far.

God book: The Selfless Way of Christ: Downward Mobility and the Spiritual Life by Henri J. M. Nouwen

Great book - very quick but dense read, like a sermon series in a book. I read "Letters to Marc about Jesus," so when I heard about this from a friend's blog, I requested it from Mobius. Nouwen argues that the Christian life is really the opposite of "upward mobility," which he compares to the temptations of Christ in the desert - the temptation to be powerful, relevant, and spectacular.

Some excerpts that particularly hit me:

To be a person and to be seen, praised, liked, and accepted have become nearly the same for many. Who am I when nobody pays attention, says thanks, or recognizes my work? The more insecure, doubtful, and lonely we are, the greater our need for popularity and praise. Sadly, this hunger is never satisfied. The more praise we receive, the more we desire. The hunger for human acceptance is like a bottomless barrel. It can never be filled.

Later, he writes something that ties in nicely with this post I made a few months ago:

For most of us it is very hard to spend a useless hour with God. It is hard precisely because by facing God alone we are also facing our own inner chaos. We come in direct confrontation with our restlessness, anxieties, resentments, unresolved tensions, hidden animosities, and long-standing frustrations. Our spontaneous reaction to all this is to run away and get busy again, so that we can at least make ourselves believe that things are not as bad as they seem in our solitude.
The truth is that things are bad, even worse than they seem. It is this painful stripping away of the old self, this falling away from all our old support systems that enables us to cry out for the unconditional mercy of God. When we do not run away in fear, but patiently stay with our struggles, the outer space of solitude gradually becomes an inner space, a space in our heart where we come to know the presence of the Spirit who has already been given to us. In the solitude of our heart we can listen to our questions and - as the German poet Rilke says so beautifully - gradually grow, without even noticing it, into the answer.

Overly-long post, I know. Can you recommend some more books for me? What are you reading?