Each month my goal is to read a minimum of five books on a variety of topics from different genres. Here are the books I read in December 2023. If you click on the title, you’ll go to the longer post on More to Come. Enjoy.

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The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future (2023) by Robert P. Jones begins with several clear and powerful stories and ends with a question that, though difficult, must be answered if we are to illuminate the path forward. Jones has crafted a searing yet courageous look at contemporary issues around race set within the context of a 15th century church doctrine. “The spirit of the Doctrine of Discovery continues to haunt us today. We remain torn by two mutually incompatible visions of the country. Are we a pluralistic democracy where all, regardless of race or religion, are equal citizens? Or are we a divinely ordained promised land for European Christians?”

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Church State Corporation: Construing Religion in US Law (2020) by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan takes a deep dive into several Supreme Court decisions to argue that “American law has shown that it cannot think religion without the church.” The Supreme Court — especially under Chief Justice John Roberts — has favored “the Church” over individuals with religious beliefs. This bias towards “the Church” is carried even further in that the decisions by the Roberts Court to preference corporations over individuals in a variety of areas of law extends to the corporations that are also churches. Sullivan makes the strong case that the Court “has misinterpreted the separation of church and state to mean that the state must cede sovereignty to any corporate body claiming exemption from generally applicable laws for reasons of faith.” 

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To Speak a Defiant Word: Sermons and Speeches on Justice and Transformation (2023) by Pauli Murray; edited by Anthony B. Pinn brings together the most important sermons, lectures, and speeches from 1960 through 1985 written by one of the most consequential and hopeful of 20th century Americans. Murray was a nonbinary African American member of the LGBTQ community, a civil rights and women’s rights activist, an author and poet, and a brilliant legal scholar who became the first female African American Episcopal priest in the United States, and a saint in the Episcopal Church. In this work one sees how Murray’s religious ideas and her sense of ministry evolved over a period that became one of the most tumultuous in American history, not unlike the one we are living in today. Yet through it all, she remained struck by a sense of wonder and hopefulness. 

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The Thursday Murder Club (2020) by Richard Osman takes us to Coopers Chase, a high-end and peaceful British retirement village on the grounds of a former convent where four residents meet weekly to discuss unsolved crimes. We soon discover that Coopers Chase was built with drug money by the “loathsome” Ian Ventham and maintained by his dangerous associate, Tony Curran. When first Curran and then Ventham are murdered, the septuagenarian sleuths have real-life cases to solve in this light, witty, and big-hearted mystery novel.

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Playing Authors: An Anthology (2023) is a collection by 18 writers asked to consider the question of authorship. The creative act of writing in today’s world is at the heart of this newest release from Old Iron Press, a female-led, small independent press in Indianapolis. “Literary mashups, personal essays, alternative history, and other disobedient forms” are included in this work, which begins with the sad and insightful and laugh-out-loud funny “Hemingway Goes on Book Tour.” In this post, I chat with that story’s author, Robyn Ryle, about inspiration, the challenges of modern publishing, the need for more diverse voices, and imagining other famous authors in the rat race of today’s book tour.

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The Four Loves (1960) by C.S. Lewis has been described as a “classic” of the British writer, scholar, lay theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and bestselling author. In this work, Lewis takes the reader through a description of four different types of love: “affection, the most basic form; friendship, the rarest and perhaps most insightful; Eros, passionate love; charity, the greatest and least selfish.” Lewis reminds us that God is love, and that love is the divine energy. But because none of us has direct knowledge about the ultimate Being, we are forced to use analogies. “We cannot see light, though by light we see things.” So is it with love.

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What’s on the nightstand for January (subject to change at the whims of the reader):

• A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman by Lindy Elkins-Tanton
• Coffeeland: One Man’s Dark Empire and the Making of our Favorite Drug by Augustine Sedgewick
• When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut
• Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May
• The Dirty Duck by Martha Grimes

Keep reading!

More to come…

DJB

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NOTE: Click to see the books I read in November of 2023 and to see the books I read in 2023. Also check out Ten tips for reading five books a month.

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The Weekly Reader links to the works of other writers I’ve enjoyed. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry. 

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Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash