I’ve been meaning to post some recent reads for a while.

As you can see from the right rail, I’ve started N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God, widely hailed as one of the religion books of the year last year. It’s a measured, objective look at all the data related to the Resurrection, cutting past ideological cant to see what’s really the most logical conclusion, given the evidence.

Before that, and before The Recent Deluge, I read a couple of novels:

Bee Season by Myla Goldberg. No, not bumble bees, spelling bees. Anyone else read it? I was slightly charmed by it at first, as it describes a young Jewish girl’s appropriation of her gift for spelling, in the midst of her Krishna-leaning brother, her eccentric Talmudic scholarly mother and her (it turns out) whacko mother. It slowly got all Kabbalistic on us, very much about letting ultimate reality break through the letters, and so on, and I ended up thinking it was a pretentious crock, and not about real people in the least.

Then there was The Empress of the Splendid Season by Oscar Hijuelos, which I enjoyed in the reading, but for some reason, Hijuelos just doesn’t stick with me. I sort of forget what happened five minutes after I close the book.

I also have this checked out from the library, but I don’t know if I’ll get to it. After this week, I have to buckle down and finish The Other One by Julien Green and read The Malefactors by Caroline Gordon.

Tough job I’ve got.