Traveling Books

I got a lot of reading done on my recent trip. There's nothing like solo travel and hating to talk to seatmates on planes to amp up the reading time. A couple of weeks ago I finished Vinegar Hill, which was well written, but utterly dark and hopeless.

I needed something light after that, so started in on I'm With Fatty. The story itself was interesting, a journalist sets out to lose 50 pounds in a year, but I wasn't nearly as taken by the story as I was by the writing. Witty and entertaining doesn't quite cover it here. Ugel whipped out more novel similes and metaphors than I could count, almost all apt. If you're looking for entertainment and self-loathing, this is it.

I finished I'm With Fatty on my first flight, and started in on a book I had to read for class, Still Alice. It's a fictional account of a 50 year old professor who is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. It's written by a neuroscientist, which makes me think it might be accurate? Accurate or not, it's engaging. It's written from the main character's perspective, so you descend with her into the Alzheimer's and see life from her perspective. Even though it was assigned for my Acquired Disorders of Language and Cognition class, I would have read it (and enjoyed it!) even if it wasn't. Fascinating.

A few weeks back we got into a discussion of Arminianism vs Calvinism at my small group, which left me at a loss for articulating the tenets of Calvinism in a way that made sense to people from outside of the tradition, so I grabbed Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport off of the shelf. I've read it before, way back, but didn't realize Richard Mouw was the author. I recently listened to him on Being, talking about Christian civility in politics, and LOVED it.

So I had started the book a couple of weeks ago and had a chance to finish it on my trip. It was really interesting to come back to it after a number of years outside of the Christian Reformed Church. There are things that still resonate for me and things I question and need to think through.

At the same time, I was also reading Exponential because someone at church asked me to. The two books could not be more opposite. I disliked Exponential almost from the beginning, but couldn't quite figure out why. Reading the two at the same time made some of it clearer. There are some values from Calvinism that were informing how I read Exponential, though that may not have become clear to me had I not been reading Mouw's book at the same time. I have to say I wouldn't really recommend Exponential unless you are looking for something to challenge your thought...or maybe you will agree with it.

I am currently without a book, which feels very shiftless. I'm looking for a new one, and have a few ideas. Crazy as it sounds, I heard Jay-Z on Fresh Air and have some interest in reading Decoded. I'm interested in The Hunger Games as well. Whatever I choose may have to wait a couple of days until Thanksgiving is over, and maybe even a few weeks after that until the semester is over. Christmas break, though, is for reading. I'm making my book list, checking it twice.