Diversions

So I’m falling really behind on my task of reading 60 before 60. Now I have been reading but I haven’t been reading books off my shelves or my kindle that I had picked up because they looked interesting and then not gotten too. These are the rules and I’m much too much of an Anglican to willy nilly just start including other books that don’t fit the rules. But I have been reading. Good books. That you might enjoy.

For preaching and bible study prep I read Amy Jill Levine’s Entering the Passion of Jesus and her wonderful study of the parables, Short Stories by Jesus. Levine, who is herself Jewish, writes about the ways in which an understanding of 1st century Judaism can illuminate gospel texts and about the ways in which biblical criticism have often reflected anti-semitic tropes. No one is safe from her criticism but she also writes with great humour. I also ordered and have read portions of her commentary on the Gospel of Luke written with Ben Witherington and her annotated New Testament.

I also read the next three mysteries by Ausma Zehanat Khan after finding the first The Unquiet Dead really compelling. The second, The Language of Secrets, is about the radicalization of members of a mosque and was okay but the writing in the third and fourth books was more engaging. Among the Ruins is set in Iran and seemed particularly relevant given current events. A Iranian-Canadian film maker is killed and the detectives are asked to find out why. A Dangerous Crossing which takes place mostly in Greece is about the Syrian refugee crisis and invaded my dreams. This was an especially tough read and while I had a hard time putting it down if you can’t handle descriptions of torture this is not a book you want to start. I’m taking a break before I read the fifth in her series. I really like her character development and the way in which she creates an extended community of friends and family in the same way Elizabeth George or Louise Penny does. But her topics are grim.

Needing a bit of a break I got the latest Jonathan Kellerman, The Wedding Guest, and the latest Donna Leon, Unto Us a Son is Given, out of the library and enjoyed both. Leon is in particularly fine form in her latest and this evening I put supper in the oven to cook and lost myself in her Venice. She always makes me long to be in Venice again despite her descriptions of the smells and the crowds of tourists.

I supposed I would be ahead of the game if I was willing to count these as seven more on my list but this challenge had rules and I don’t intend to start out breaking them. Besides since I started this project I’ve bought far fewer books because I know I’m focusing on my shelves. All in all this is a good thing. So this is just a diversion – now back to the project with Caleb Wilde’s Confessions of a Funeral Director.