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