The book list continues…
"Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again" by Rachel Held Evans
"Once upon a time, there lived a girl with a magic book." With this opening line, Rachel Held Evans begins the story of how as a child she loved the Bible— with its wild stories, confusing passages, and larger-than-life tales— but lost the magic as she grew older and began to see it as a set of rules, a guidebook, a collection of individual verses that could be plucked like a tool from a toolbox to deal with any life situation. She talks about her journey to fall in love with the Bible again, and what follows is a collection of essays, imaginative scenes, narratives, and reflections to show new (and very old) perspectives on the Bible that helped her find life in it again.
The book is not hard-hitting or scholarly as many of the titles I've tackled this year are, but still draws on a large pool of knowledge, exploring cultural context, alternate ways of reading the Bible (such as the Jewish practice of midrash), and different perspectives for understanding how the Bible was read, understood, and practiced in cultures very different from our own. All in all, it's a beautiful invitation to let go of our fragmented view of the Bible as a book of answers and Twitter-length quotes to be cross-stitched or whipped out in a debate like a weapon. The Bible, she argues, is an invitation— a demand, even— to wrestle with God. Highly, highly recommended.
"Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America" by Ijeoma Oluo
Oluo's "So You Want to Talk About Race" was on my top 10 books from last year, so I knew I had to check out her latest work, a collection of narratives exploring the effect of whiteness and maleness on the founding, development, and continued cultural norms of America, and how this has been harmful and continues to be harmful to women and people of color— and to white men trapped in the toxic expectations of what it means to be "white" and "masculine." From a captivating history of Buffalo Bill to the shockingly violent background of American football, this book pulls no punches. All the chapters explored various themes and threads of American history in an insightful way, but I was particularly struck by the chapter about white men who send Oluo suicide notes, threatening to kill themselves because that's "clearly" what she wants when she points out the failures of the culture of white masculinity. Regardless of your perspective on the subject, this provocative critique is definitely worth reading.
This memoir is written by the Bangladeshi man who pioneered the now-mainstream concept of micro-lending: giving small loans to people as a way to help them out of poverty. It chronicles his early life, how he became concerned that most loans and governmental help in Bangladesh totally missed the poorest of the poor (usually focusing on people who had some land or an already-established business), and how he experimented with many different models before settling on the community-based and -run model that eventually became the Grameen Bank and spread all across the world.
Although the story got kind of bogged down in places, and I'll admit I heavily skimmed the economics- and numbers-heavy sections, it was still a fascinating read. I was particularly interested in his work in the United States and his reflections on how the poverty-alleviation programs here often actively work against people trying to find financial stability. If you're interested in economic theory and how it relates to poverty, this is a must-read.
"The Rabbit Listened" by Cori Doerrfeld
I managed to hold myself together through the reading of the book, and then I went out in the hallway and bawled— it touched me on a deep level that sometimes only picture books, like poetry, can. If you have kids, or not, I highly recommend giving this one a read.
Others in this series:
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