Summer Reading

So I’ve been reading some great books lately and telling everyone I know about them.  I’ll start with the more educational nonfiction one first and then move-on to the fun stuff.

Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw

I’m reading this book with a group from church, and we meet once a week to discuss it.  It’s been incredibly eye-opening and informative for me.  I’m still in the second chapter, so I can’t really give a very good review of it, but so far I absolutely love it.  We’ve learned more details of the political climate of the New Testament period leading up to Jesus’ birth and during His lifetime and how this affects the way we understand the context of Scripture.  The book talks about how the kingdom of God is a very different thing from any of our political kingdoms and what can result when we confuse them.  What does it mean for us to live under the rule of Christ as a separate people within our current government structure, and what could it look like for our allegiance to be to Him first?  The goal of the authors is to stir the political imagination of the reader and help us discover how we might become more involved in the issues of our day, yet perhaps in a way that’s different from how many American Christians have always done it.

The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory

This is a GREAT book!  I read it before I watched the movie, and while I enjoyed the movie, the book is (as expected) much better.  If you watched the movie, you haven’t come close to enjoying the depth of the book. It’s a beautifully told story of love, loss, betrayal, family, power, and ambition.  It follows history as closely as possible, and the character development within the historical context makes the period come alive.  I was totally sucked into the drama and couldn’t put it down until I finished it.  I found myself looking-up the characters on Wikipedia to see how their lives compared to the story and out of my own curiosity for happened.  The best part was discovering that Philippa Gregory wrote several other novels in this series about the other wives of King Henry.  Right now I’m reading The Constant Princess about Katherine of Aragon, his first wife.  I never thought I’d be so interested in 16th century England, but my gosh, these people are crazy and fascinating!  I very highly recommend any book in this series (start with this one) for some great summer reading with a little historical lesson thrown-in.