Lit, by Mary Karr

For July, we will be reading a memoir that was on the New York Times bestseller list last year - Lit, by Mary Karr. Follows is a review of this book by Susan Olasky, originally published in World Magazine (12/5/09 issue):

Lit | Mary Karr

Lit is often painful to read. Mary Karr tells how she began drinking and eventually stopped, and how her hard won sobriety came about as she came kicking and screaming to faith in God. As Karr achieved worldly success—winning poetry awards, getting published, teaching at Harvard, marrying a New England blue blood and having a child—she began falling apart. She writes with a combination of searing honesty about her own faults and restraint in describing the faults of others, including her husband from whom she divorced. The book's raw language will offend some readers, but never have I read a more moving account of someone seeing her need for God's mercy.


We will discuss this book on Friday, July 29 at 7:30 pm.

November 2010: Washington Square

For November, we are back to a classic - Washington Square by Henry James. This is a short novel written in 1880 by Henry James, who was American born but lived in England most of his life. It focuses on the relationship of a widowed father and his daughter.

So as not to conflict with the Thanksgiving holiday, we will be meeting the first Friday of December to discuss this book.

How to Read a Book

This month we will be reading How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading.


Now, this selection may seem redundant to those of you who already know your phonics, but I would highly recommend you pick it up with us! The point of this book is not to get you from first page to last, but rather to help you understand the contents of the book. It will suggest what sorts of questions you should ask when you approach a book and teach you to look for the clues that provide you to those answers. Even if you have been reading for years, you will learn something from this book! I am looking forward to reading it again after first reading it 11 years ago.

We will meet for our discussion on Friday, October 29 at 7:30 pm. See you there!

September Selection

I'm late getting the title out this month ... and our discussion comes early! So, we're reading something short - The Death of Ivan Ilych, by Leo Tolstoy. This short story begins with the death of an upstanding member of society, and then remembers his life - with Tolstoy asking, "What did it gain him?" The reflections on death and life by Ivan Ilych's still living peers are also recorded, challenging us, the living, to refect on our own mortality.

The discussion of this short work will be this coming Friday, September 24, at 7:30 pm. For more information, including the location of the discussion, please leave a comment and I will contact you.

August: The Good News We Almost Forgot

The reading for August will be The Good News We Almost Forgot, by Kevin DeYoung. If you're reading this blog, you have access to Amazon's product description; but I have nothing else to say, so I figured I'd copy it here:

If there is "nothing new under the sun" then perhaps the main task now facing the Western church is not to reinvent or be relevant, but to remember. The truth of the gospel is still contained within vintage faith statements. Within creeds and catechisms we can have our faith strengthened, our knowledge broadened, and our love for Jesus deepened.

In The Good News We Almost Forgot, Kevin DeYoung explores the Heidelberg Catechism and writes 52 brief chapters on what it has shown him. The Heidelberg is largely a commentary on the Apostle's Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer and the book deals with man's guilt, God's grace, and believers' gratitude. The result is a clear-headed, warm-hearted exploration of the faith, simple enough for young believers and deep enough for mature believers. As DeYoung writes, "The gospel summarized in the Heidelberg Catechism is glorious, it's Christ gracious, it's comfort rich, it's Spirit strong, it's God Sovereign, and it's truth timeless." Come and see how your soul can be warmed by the elegantly and logically laid out doctrine that matters most: we are great sinners and Christ is a greater Savior!

We will meet to discuss this book the evening of Friday, August 27.

June is Fiction!

And for this month, we're reading The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

This book centers on an old house where a fictional family has lived for over two centuries. The story Hawthorne weaves about this family examines how one generation passes guilt on to its progeny and the progeny responds to this burden with retribution or forgiveness.

We will discuss this novel on the last Friday of the month, June 25th at 7:30 pm. Please see Sunday's bulletin for more details on how to join us!

For May: The Practice of the Presence of God

Although May's selection was written by a monk in medieval France, I suspect that we would all benefit from reading it. Using the mundane, Brother Lawrence calls us to a realization that God is a part of all of life, and we have a choice of acknowledging Him or not.

Take your time reading through this slender collection of musings, letters, and notes, but finish by May 28th to join us for a discussion of The Practice of the Presence of God!