Buying, reading, and discussing of late…

Busy, busy again.  I meant to get a post up before my husband and I headed off to Chicago last weekend, but obviously that didn’t happen.  We were there to attend the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, where he presented a paper called “A Connecticut Valley Yankee in a Cappadocian Court:  Jonathan Edwards, Eastern Christianity, and the ‘Spiritual Sense‘” (can you tell he’s a Twain fan?).  Among the interesting sessions I heard were a poetry reading by the phenomenal Nikky Finney; presentations by four women writers on “Art as Spiritual Practice”; and a panel discussion of Amy Sullivan’sThe Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats are Closing the God Gap.  In the Exhibition Hall, I couldn’t pass up the great discounts on Amos Yong’s Theology and Down Syndrome: Reimagining Disability in Late Modernity (which has been on my reading list for over a year) and the new prayer book Praying the Word: Illuminated Prayers and Wisdom from The Saint John’s Bible (I have begun collecting the seven gorgeous volumes of this hand-copied Bible).  I also got the chance to spend an hour browsing at an all-time favorite used bookstore, Powell’s, where I found a crisp unmarked copy of Eric Jager’s The Last Duel, which I had added to my TBR list after hearing him speak at the Festival of Faith & Writing in April.

In other book news, I am currently reading The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard (which is forcing this non-philosopher to dip into The Oxford Companion to Philosophy from time to time) and Susan Howatch’s Glittering Images, the first of six novels and so good that I must now read them all (thankfully, a fellow Bookmoocher is making them readily available)!  Last week I read Phyllis Tickle’s The Great Emergence and had a fun exchange with her about it on Facebook.

Are you familiar with any of these titles?  What are you reading now?  Talk to me, and in the meantime I’ll be trying to get up another review soon.

07. November 2008 by Mindy
Categories: Currently reading, Your turn | 5 comments

Comments (5)

  1. Pingback: Mindy Withrow » praying with imagination