WOMEN AND THE PRIESTHOOD by Sheri Dew

This is actually one of the books I bought on our B&N trip.  Since I am currently reading everything I can find on this particular issue due to current social conversations and my new RS calling, this book seemed appealing since, even if she's not saying anything new, Sister Dew usually says the old stuff better than anyone else.  And this book ultimately did not disappoint.  Slow to get going, the first couple of chapters were a bid tedious, but about half way through things start to pick up and Chapters 6 and 7 are the best.  In chapter 6 she gives the clearest, most relevant doctrine defining priesthood keys, authority, and power that I've ever read, and she's very convincing in her argument that women have nothing to be afraid of, or feel cheated about. This is followed by chapter 7, titled "God Reserved the High Privilege of Motherhood for Women." This chapter scared me, because I'm done with the patronizing talks on this subject, but here, Sister Dew comes through with flying colors, she avoids platitudes, discusses sound doctrine, and makes one of the best arguments for honoring motherhood I've read.  It includes this little story: " I have friends," she says, "a husband and wife, who have served widely in the Church an at the same time raised a large and close-knit family.  The husband has also enjoyed sustained professional success.  One day I asked how they had managed it all.  "One day early in our marriage the light clicked on for me," he explained. "It happened after we had been to an event sponsored by my work.  One person after another complimented my wife on supporting me in my career.  As we drove home, it dawned on me that actually I was the one doing the supporting.  I went to work every day to make it possible for her to stay home with our children and focus without distraction on the most important work we as a couple would ever do--and that was raise our children to love the Lord."  I love all the levels of perspective illustrated in this short paragraph.

I do recommend this book, even if all you read are the last 3 chapters!

THE PAINTED VEIL by Somerset Maugham

This is one of the books discussed in "The End of Your Life Book Club."  I have this book by Somerset Maugham on Audible and had listened to it about 18 months ago and decided after reading the Schwalbe's discussion of it thought it deserved another look. I put my earphones in and listened for a whole afternoon while cleaning the house and then for another couple of enjoyable hours while I worked on a puzzle at the Lake.  This short romantic book, one of Maugham's classics, is a look at turn of the century women, adultery, and redemption.It takes place primarily in colonial China and tells the story of a woman on the edges of society who is ambitiously determined to marry up. She ultimately enters into in a loveless marriage simply to avoid spinsterhood and follows her doctor husband first to Tiching-Yen (euphemism for Hong Kong) and then into the interior of China where he is studying a cholera epidemic. It's a bitter-sweet story of lovelessness and love and a story that ultimately allows for the real possibility that a person can evolve into their better self.

I enjoyed this book even better the second time and would recommend it as a good beach read or to keep you company while housekeeping! 

THE END OF LIFE BOOK CLUB by Will Schwalbe

Stand up and be counted Christensen readers!  It's a new year and I'm going to do my best to resurrect this blog, so I'm calling on all of you to re-commit and make an attempt at posting more regularly.  I also think we should post on books that are outside the Christmas B&N trip.
So here I go. 

I'll start with "The End of Your Life Book Club," by Will Schwalbe.  This book was on one of the favorite reads tables at B&N and I was attracted to the advertised themes of mothers, sons, and reading; irresistible themes.  This is Will's homage to his mother, Mary Anne Schwalbe, as she fights pancreatic cancer, and the book club that evolves as the two of them look for interesting-and distracting-conversation during long the chemo treatments.  Life long readers and discussers, the book club is simply a formalized arrangement of conversations they've been having all their lives.  Mr. Schwalbe quite successfully weaves the story of his mother, a gentle, refined, but ahead of her time woman into the chapters and what emerges is a moving tribute not only to his mother, but to the power of books to bind families and friends together.         "[Mother] never wavered" he says, "in her conviction that books are the most powerful tool in the human arsenal, that reading all kinds of books, in whatever format you choose--electronic or printed, or audio--is the grandest entertainment, and also is how you take part in the human conversation....books really do matter: they're how we know what we need to do in life...books can be how we get closer to each other, and stay close."

And now you've just read the last page of the book whether you wanted to or not! But you all know that that's how I roll, and it turns out to be a quirky habit that Mary Anne Schwalbe and I share!

I do recommend this book, it's gentle, inspiring, and well written.

Pro's-

-Well written, largely avoids the sentimentality a book like this could devolve into.
-Provides a stellar list of "want to reads"
-Fun discussion of some of the books we've read
-Models excellent critical reading analysis

Con's-

-Intimidating reading-these guys are blue blood, east coast, wealthy Harvard/Radcliff educated folks with no idea that they live a silver spoon life
-Incites jealousy--they seem to have nothing to do but read 100's and 100's of pages a week while saving the world building libraries in Afghanistan