Bookbag

I like books - particularly those that aren't on a professor's required reading list.  Here are a few I've read recently.

MY BREAD
Jim Lahey is founder of the Sullivan Street Bakery in Manhattan. His no-knead method of making bread has been popularized by a number of food writers including Mark Bittman of the New York Times. This coffee table book, which now has buttery fingerprints in/on it, teaches neophytes how to make artisan-style bread in a Dutch oven. So easy and so fun! I will never buy another boule in which to serve dip, soup, or stew.

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
I frequently feel as if I’m an outsider in the so-called Christian community, so the refreshingly honest Anne Lamott almost always makes me smile. A tremendous writer, Lamott is perhaps best known for her Salon.com essays and books such as Traveling Mercies in which she describes her faith journey, and Operating Instructions where she chronicles her adventures as a single parent. Lamott’s latest volume written with son Sam, Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son, is tremendous. I was laughing uncontrollably by page 10. In it, she provides a poignant and humorous look at her grandson Jax’ first year.

JUST A MINUTE
Wess Stafford is president of the non-profit Compassion International. Compassion is perhaps best-known for its child sponsorship program that impacts the lives of some one million children in the developing world. In Just A Minute, Stafford who spent his childhood as a missionary kid in West Africa, encourages readers to make a difference in a child’s life. All of us, according to Stafford, are qualified to make such a difference. “You all deserve an honorary doctorate in ‘childhood.’ You have done a minimum of eighteen years of ‘field research’ in this complex subject.”

SAYING IT WELL
In terms of theology and the role of women in the Church, Chuck Swindoll and I likely differ. Still, he’s a tremendous teacher and I would love to sit and listen to him (and also Eugene Peterson and Walter Wangerin) tell stories. In this book, Swindoll emphasizes that we must know who we are, accept who we are, and be who we are. Though Saying It Well is targeted towards people in full-time ministry, the content he shares is applicable to everyone. We all have a message we wish to communicate.

STILL
Lauren F. Winner, who teaches at the Duke Divinity School in Durham North Carolina (and wears the greatest vintage eyeglasses), is the author of several amazing books including Mudhouse Sabbath and Girl Meets God. Her most recent book, Still: Notes on a Midfaith Crisis, came out in January. In it, Winner discusses her mid-life, mid-faith crisis. Ordinarily, I stay up late and read Winner’s books in one sitting. I struggled to finish this one.