I Need a Good Book to Read

I keep a "Want to Read" list of books on Goodreads and a "For Later" list on the Princeton Public Library site.  Some Saturdays I leave the library with four or five books and later I return three or four of them unread--or, as I label some books on Goodreads, "abandoned."  

A big problem for me is that when I finish a book I really appreciated, I find it challenging to find another one worth reading.  I have become weary of reading the British murder mysteries I have enjoyed because they fill my head with too much evil so I have taken many of them off my "Want to Read" lists.

This week I finished a book that I really appreciated--Through Dark Days and White Nights (Four Decades Observing a Changing Russia) by Naomi F. Collins.  I liked it so much that I asked her publisher to forward my thanks to her.  Much to my surprise, I got a reply from Ms. Collins the next day wondering how I came about finding her book which was published 16 years ago.  I sent her a copy of my five star Goodreads review telling her I found it via Early Bird Books and mentioning our lives as graduate students and travellers in Europe.  She responded again with ways that her life and ours had coincided and was very grateful to me for writing her. I love it when a book sends me to Wikipedia to get more information or in this case, to find a short history of Russia from the library. 

Sometimes I think there is so little I can do for others at my age and with my general inertia but when I take the time to email a word of appreciation to someone, it is received so well.  In fact, one of Jim's Notre Dame colleagues sent me a gift of a hardback copy of her book The Cross when I told her how much I enjoyed the Kindle iphone version with its beautiful artwork that I had purchased and read.

In recent weeks I have challenged myself to read Evolution of the Word by Marcus Borg and The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently  by Amy Jill Levine.  I read one or two chapters at a time and appreciated both books as ways of looking at Scripture not as proof texts or texts for sermons or small group study.  

I guess if I have a hobby, it is reading--finding good books to read and then enjoying them and reviewing them on Goodreads. I am so grateful for eyes to see, for libraries to provide books, and for my Kindle app to purchase books inexpensively.