Reading Round-Up, Spring Cleaning Version!

ETA:This post started on April 20th, but I'm just now getting around to posting it on April 25th! (It's our fourteenth wedding anniversary, by the way.) :-)

Well, I've given up trying to do any sort of reading round-up for March...who can remember March? Both the end of last month and the beginning of this one are blurring for me, as I'm far too busy and frankly, exhausted. The past two weeks have been especially difficult: I've been sick with sinus/cough (and it's taken a definite turn for the worst in the past few days so I've had to go on antiobiotics); I've begun my new half-time job as parish administrator at our church (trying very hard to remember all my former secretary skills -- who knew that one could forget years of professional skills and habits so quickly?); my sweet daughter has been struggling with my new schedule and with less time with Mommy and has been acting out her stress through some difficult behavior, especially with her Daddy (and I miss my mornings with her soooo much); and oh yes, I left taxes to the last minute and had to spend several late nights fighting through the craziness of self-employment schedules, etc. Have I left anything out? Well, yes. :-) Those things I listed are just the "biggies" -- all sorts of other things still crowd my days as well, including paper grading, house cleaning, feeble attempts at writing.

I'm feeling a real need of prayer time, significant, real prayer time, rather than hurried prayers of blessing and petition as I run frantically hither and yon. Don't get me wrong: hurried prayers are a lifeline sometimes, and I'm thankful for them. But I need time with God, time to just rest in his presence, time to bring before him some of the hurts in my own heart as well as the hurts of others. After not quite two weeks as chuch administrator, I am already feeling somewhat pummelled by the depth and breadth of need here in our tired little town. More on that later perhaps.

So, with all this going on, have I had any time for reading? You bet. Some nights I'm so wound up after a far too long day, there's no way I can sleep without reading for a while first. And I've had some other moments here and there in the past month where I've been able to cram in reading. I'm doing a good bit of what I call "fluff" reading (helps me in that unwinding process) but I'm also dipping my toes into some more serious stuff. So here's a brief list of what I've been dabbling in book-wise in the past few weeks, though in no particular order:

Dorothy Simpson murder mysteries. Anyone out there know her? I discovered her at a library book sale (all paperbacks ten cents!) and have been absolutely delighted to discover a new Agatha Christie type writer, albeit a bit more contemporary. She's really good at English "cozy" mysteries -- my favorite of the mystery genre. I think she wrote mostly in the 1980s and 1990s (though for all I know she may still be at it) and I love her detective Inspector Luke Thanet. Thus far I've read two books: The Night She Died and Puppet for a Corpse. Very creative.

Jan Karon. I feel like I owe Ms. Karon an apology. I read the first two books of her "Mitford series" about ten years ago, and pretty much ever since then, whenever someone would ask me if I liked them, I added all kinds of qualifiers. "Yes, although they're not really great literature." "Yes, they're so comforting and downhome, I feel like I'm curling up with a copy of 'Southern Living'." "Yes, they're especially good, light reading for when you have the flu." That sort of thing. And...well, there's still some truth in those sentiments, I must confess. But having read through several more books in the series in the past few months (including A New Song, A Common Life and In This Mountain most recently) I have a newfound respect for Karon's narrative art. She manages to capture "slices of life" and very human personalities in poignant ways; she doesn't hesitate to write like people talk and frankly, to write about what real people talk about in the ways they really talk about it (including faith...and let's face it, we don't always talk about our faith profoundly) and she manages to provide her characters and readers with a real sense of hope. In times like ours, I think that's especially valuable. I also think she grew as a writer through the series. I was most impressed with her ability and willingness to have beloved, jovial Fr. Tim, the main character of the books, suffer through the throes of major depression in In This Mountain. Yes, he comes out on the other side (and you want him to!) but it's not cliched and pat at all. And I frankly love some of her minor characters, who remind me a bit of Lake Woebegoners. I'm especially fond of Emma Newland, Hope Winchester, and the regulars who eat breakfast at the Grill on weekday mornings.

And a sidenote: when I started reading Karon ten years ago, I knew almost no evangelical Episcopalians. For the past almost 9 years, I've lived, worked, and prayed with LOTS of them. So now I know just how good Karon is at capturing that particular ethos.

Yikes -- I started this post five days ago and have yet to either post it, or write fully about what I'm reading (I've just covered some of the fluff here!). This is getting way too long, so I'll go on and post. More soon on other things I'm reading by Marva Dawn and Rodney Clapp, among others.