A list of more Favorite Books-- from our 2011 interviews

Favorite Books- Part II from 2011 Interviews @blog.spiritualbookclub.com

These books come recommended, so we're sharing, who doesn’t love a great book list? Hmmmmm? Sure, there are old stand-bys, but some new ones for you too….

Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Order of the Phoenix J. K. Rowling

Flannery O’Connor’s short stories

Andrew Louth’s “Discerning the Mystery.”

David Sheff’s “Beautiful Boy“

Michael Chabon’s “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.”

The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman

No Future without Forgiveness by Desmond Tutu

“Have you got the guts to be really healthy” by Don Chisholm

Cleanse & Purify Thyself by Richard Anderson

Jane Austen’s Collected works (and if pushed Persuasion )

Evelyn Waugh’s

Sword of Honour trilogy

Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

Upton Sinclair’s,

The Jungle

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe

Marilynne Robinson’s

Gilead

Barbara Kingsolver’s

The Poisonwood Bible

Terry Pratchett’s

Diskworld series

P.D.James works

Douglas Adams,

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

James Herriot,

All Creatures Great and Small

The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others (2004) by Scot McKnight

To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, & Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World by James Davison Hunter

Bruce Chatwin’s

The Songlines,

Jack Gilbert’s book of poems,

The Dance Most of All.

Joseph Conrad’s

Heart of Darkness
John Updike’s

In The Beauty of the Lillies

Walker Percy’s

“The Second Coming”

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s

“The Great Gatsby.”

Till We Have Faces by CS Lewis

Beyond the

Abbey Gates by Catherine MacCoun

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

Paula D’Arcy’s

The Gift of the Red Bird and Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies and Plan B.

Mary Oliver’s books of poetry

The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Riso and Hudson

The Purpose of Your Life by Carol Adrienne

Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

Ordinary People as Monks and Mystics: Lifestyles for Spiritual Wholeness by Marsha Sintear

Ficciones by Borges

Varieties of Religious Experience, by James

Call it Sleep by Henry Roth

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

Dracula by Bram Stoker

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Lit by Mary Karr

The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

the Bible

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.

All Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque

Good Poems – arranged by Garrison Keillor

Virginia Woolf’s

To the Lighthouse

The Book of Margery Kempe

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

by J.R.R. Tolkien
Gone with the Wind

by Margaret Mitchell

Plato’s Republic

The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

The Sparrow

A Day with Pete the Seagull

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

Wild Swans by Jung Chang

Empire Falls by Richard Russo

The Spontaneous Healing of Belief

and
Small Miracles-Extraordinary Coincidences from Everyday Life

For your suggestions, thank you: Verity, Jason, Nicole, Marcia, Kristina, Michael, Janet, Ray, Elissa, Robert, Dean, Greg, Kelsey, Jennifer, John, Meredith, Christine, Janelle, Carlos, Elizabeth, Amy, Ray, John, Cynthia, Elizabeth, Tyler, Eric, Conor, Brendan, Joan, Katie, Tracy

25 Books Those We Interviewed Loved....

25 Books They Loved: @blog.spiritualbookclub.com

Our list of interviews this year included a fine host of folks, and here are 25 of their favorite books (with more books to come!)

　



Women  by Charles Bukowski

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

The Seat of the Soulby Gary Zukav

I Had It All The Timeby Alan Cohen

Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney and Anita Jeram
The Nativity, Julie Vivas
The Holy Bible

A Wolf Story by Jes Byron Huggins

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith by Barbara Brown Taylor

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith by Kathleen Norris

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari:A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams & Reaching Your Destiny by Robin Sharma

A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

Quantum Healing:


Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine by Deepak Chopra

Sailing Alone Around the Room: Collected Poems by Billy Collins

The 1928 Book of Common Prayer by Oxford University Press

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson

The Isaiah Effect by Gregg Braden

The Way of the Wizard by Deepak Chopra


Thank you: Phil, Cash, Elizabeth, Daniel, Karen, Amy Julia (she blogs here at Patheos at Thin Places),Graham, Diana, P. V., Bob, Sharmen, Peter Michael, Brent

The fabulous Gretchen Rubin's 7 books that changed her life

Gretchen Rubin

If you don't know Gretchen Rubin, if she's not a household name to you, well, you've been missing something, or rather someone, namely Gretchen.
Gretchen has been on a great journey, one that has lessons for everyone, about what makes us happy, what does not, and how to let go.
She has a monthly newsletter which is always good food for thought. In her recent newsletter, she mentioned her short list of

7 Books That Changed The Way I See the World

We got her permission to share her list and comments with you here:

1. Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language. I've never been interested in interior design or architecture, but this book taught me how to be aware of why certain spaces are pleasing -- or not. I think about it all the time.

2. Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics. I've never been interested in comics, and reading this book didn't give me an interest in comics -- but it's a fascinating analysis of art and visual communication, and is itself a perfect illustration of the arguments it's making. Hmmm...this description makes it sound boring, but believe me, it isn't.

3. Virginia Woolf, The Waves. This is not a book for everyone. It is demanding. I find it overpoweringly beautiful -- really. I love it, but it makes my head explode to the extent that I can scarcely read it.

4. Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. I know, with that title, who wants to pick it up? But this book is brilliant and thought-provoking, and made me understand, for the first time, the power of graphs, charts, and the like.

5. Wayne Koestenbaum, Jackie Under My Skin: Interpreting an Icon. This book revolutionized my understanding of how a writer could approach a biographical subject.

6. Mark Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World. I remember picking this up in a bookstore and thinking, wow, you can really do some crazy things with non-fiction. It helped me understand that I could be a writer without being a novelist or a journalist. This sounds obvious, now, but it was a huge realization for me.

7. J. M. Barrie, The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island.  A story from which almost everything has been eliminated. Crazy genius.

Looking at this list, I'm fascinated to notice a pattern that I've never picked up before: in all these books, a great deal has been cut out. This is interesting to me, because as a writer, I struggle with the persistent impulse to eliminate, to find structures that permit radical excision. In fact, The Happiness Project is the first major thing I've written that doesn't do this. What's the lesson there? I'm not sure.

* While you're checking out those books, you can also consider....The Happiness Project! (Can't resist mentioning: #1 New York Times bestseller).

Order your copy. Read sample chapters. Watch the one-minute book video. Listen to a sample of the audiobook.
Among other things, Gretchen is also the author of three other books.

• Follow her as @gretchenrubin on Twitter
• Visit her Facebook Page and join the discussion about happiness
• Join her on the Happiness Project Toolbox, view clips of TV appearances on YouTube and on the Reviews and Buzz Page.
• For speaking engagements: BrightSight Group

• For press inquiries: email grubin@gretchenrubin.com 

What Meredith's Reading....

Meredith Gould, whose blog you may already be following, or maybe you're following her on "The Twitter?"

Here's what she's reading this summer:


The Liturgical Mysteries by Mark Schweizer*.  Laugh out loud funny, especially for those who have been in or around music ministry. They're on Kindle for $0.99!  So far I've read, The Alto Wore Tweed and The Baritone Wore Chiffon.  I'm currently enjoying The Dead Saint, by Marilyn Brown Oden, which is a Bishop Lynn Peterson mystery that I also snagged on Kindle for free or near-free.  

*Author and Composer Mark Schweizer is editor of St. James Music Press. He is the author of nine “Liturgical Mystery” novels, as well as several opera and musical librettos. His published musical compositions can be found in the catalogs of Concordia Publishing House, H.T. Fitzsimmons, Lorenz, Selah Publishing and St. James Music Press.

Your summer reading list? We want to hear!

Tell us your plans for summer reading,
we want to hear!

Send us your planned summer reading @
info at spiritualbookclub.com

2011 Spiritual Book Club list

Spiritual Book Club Reads for 2011 So Far:
December 2010 and January 2011, we read... The Revelation of the Magi by Brent Landau


For February and For March, Dr. Brenda Shoshanna's book Fearless: The Seven Principles of Peace of Mind See her interview on our blog)

















For April, Living a Course in Miracles by Jon Mundy, PhD

For May, Heaven is for Real:A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back by Todd Burpo




















Further suggested reading: 
Also Joan suggested: Surviving the Dragon: A Tibetan Lama's Account of 40 Years Under Chinese Rule by Arjia Rinpoche. Arjia Rinpoche started the Buddhist Center for Compassion and Wisdom in Mill Valley, CA, and is the director of the Tibetan Cultural Center.

Spiritual Book Club Lists per year, welcome to our world :-)

Spiritual Book Club Lists Per Year

Spiritual Book Club List 1999
August Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
Sept.  Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
Oct.  Conversations with God by Neale David Walsch
Nov.  Conversations with God by Neale David Walsch
Dec.  How Good Do We Have to Be? By Rabbi Harold Kushner

Spiritual Book Club List 2000
Jan. 2000 A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Feb. The Art of Happiness by The Dalai Lama
March Encountering God by Diana L. Eck
April The Cup of Our Life: A guide for Spiritual Growth  by Joyce Rupp
May Everyday Simplicity: A Practical Guide to Spiritual Growth by Robert J. Wicks
June Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
July The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother by James McBride
August God Stories edited by C. Michael Curtis
Sept. God Stories edited by C. Michael Curtis
Oct. A Reason for Hope by Jane Goodall
Nov. A Quaker Book of Wisdom:Life Lessons in Simplicity, Service, and Common Sense by Robert Lawrence Smith
Dec. The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence

Spiritual Book Club List 2001
Jan. 2001 Life Lessons by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler
Feb. Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore
March Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore
April A Grace Disguised by Gerald Sittser
May Dance of the Spirit: Seven Steps of Women’s Spirituality by Maria Harris
June Dance of the Spirit: Seven Steps of Women’s Spirituality by Maria Harris
July God at the Edge: Searching for the Divine in Uncomfortable and Unexpected Places by Niles Elliot Goldstein
August Otherwise by Jane Kenyon, had a local poet come to talk about poetry and spirituality
Sept. Transitions by William Bridges
Oct. The Four Agreements: A Toltec Wisdom Book by Don Miguel Ruiz
Nov. Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O’ Donohue
Dec.    Also brought in objects that reminded us of God

Spiritual Book Club List 2002
January: The Eyes of the Heart by Frederick Buechner
February: The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hahn
March: The Essential Koran translated by Thomas Cleary,  guest speaker the Iman (prayer leader) from the local Islamic Center
April: The Essential Koran continued
May: The Way to Love by Anthony de Mello
June: Lying Awake by Mark Salzman
July: The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
August: The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell
September: The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell (continued)
October: God in the Dock by C.S. Lewis
November: When God is Silent by Barbara Brown Taylor
December: Skipping Christmas by John Gresham

Spiritual Book Club List 2003
January:  Will the Circle be Unbroken Studs Terkel
February: Will the Circle be Unbroken Studs Terkel
March: Traits of a Healthy Spirituality by Melannie Svoboda
April: The Sacrament of the Present Moment by Jean-Pierre de Caussade
May:  Powerful Prayers by Larry King
June: The Giver by Lois Lowry
July: Embraced by the Light by Betty J. Eadie
August: Your God is Too Small by J. B. Phillips
September: The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
October: Deposition: Poems by Katie Ford
November: Dear Heart, Come Home by Joyce Rupp
December: The Vigil by Wendy Wright

Spiritual Book Club List 2004
January  Just Another Spiritual Book by Bo Lozoff
February The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
March (First time, no book club this month due to poetry reading)
April The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
May Appetites: Why Women Want by Carolyn Knapp
June: Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton
July: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
August: Faith Stories: Short Fiction on theVarieties and Vagaries of Faith by C. Michael Curtis
September 12:
October 10:
November 14:
December12:

Spiritual Book Club List 2005: 
January
February
March The Mantram Handbook by Eknath Easwaran
April The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
May Anatomy of the Spirit by Carolyn Myss
June: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott
July: The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Toiban
August: Breakfast at the Victory: The Mysticism of Ordinary Experience by James P. Carse
September: The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People by Jonathon Schell
October: Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times by Studs Terkle
November: Why by Michael Shermer
December: Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller

Partial Spiritual Book Club List  2006
January: What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam by John Esposito. A local Muslim spokesperson Syed Tariq Gilani graciously accepted our invitation to join us in this discussion. Syed also recommends other books written by Esposito.
February: Pearl, a novel by Mary Gordon
March: Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, Shri will lead this discussion from his experiences with Hindu beliefs, life in India, etc.
April

(Will fill in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 soon)

Spiritual Book Club List 2011
January Fearless by Dr. Brenda Shoshanna
February Fearless by Dr. Brenda Shoshanna

    20 Questions for Spiritual Book Club Discussions
1. Who was really moved by this book? Who really liked it? Why?
2. Who really didn’t like this book? Why?
3. What do you think the author was trying to do with this book?
4. Would you have written the book differently? Why?
5. What character(s) in the book did you most identify with?
6. What page(s) are your favorites in the book?
7. Did this book change your thinking at all? Did it change your sense of spirituality?
8. Do you look at the world differently after reading this book? Why or why not?
9. Does this book remind you of any of the other books we’ve read?
10. What links do you see, from this book, to the other books we’ve read in this group?
11. Do you think the author has addressed her/his main topic deeply enough?
12. Was there anything missing in this book that you would have liked to have seen in here?
13. What would you like to ask the author, about this book?
14. Did this book prompt you to any new action or change in your life?
15. Would you recommend this book to anyone else?
16. Is the author of this book doing anything “new?”
17. In your opinion, is this author holding true to her/his faith tradition? Why or why not?
18. Is there a sense of grace or discernment in this author’s writing?
19. What currently feels like the biggest obstacle in your faith journey, or challenge you face?
20. Anything else?