Featured in our library this Month

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By Sue Williams, Library Coordinator

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We’re happy to announce a “Library Sunday” the first week of every month. During coffee hour the adult library in Lincoln House will be open and ready for your visit. Grab your coffee and head over using the back door of the Social Hall and the back door of Lincoln House.

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Children's library

Eleanor by Barbara Cooney  (J Biog Roosevelt)

This charming picture book gives a very interesting account of Eleanor Roosevelt’s early years. It shows the solemnity and loneliness of her situation punctuated by rescue from an ocean liner collision and some meaningful outings with her father. By the age of 9 she and her younger brother were orphans in the home of their grandmother, but they enjoyed occasional visits to their Uncle Ted and his wife and six children. At 15 she began boarding school in England, making good use of the French learned from her early nanny. She made many friends and had a happy time.

 

My Name Was Hussein by Hristo Kyuchukov  (J Kyu)

This inviting picture book shows the life of a Roma boy in Bulgaria, his extended family, his community, their holiday celebrations. He explains how his name had  been handed down in his family and means "handsome" in Arabic. He tells how life changed when the army came to town, closed the mosque and tore up his parents’ identity cards. Every family member was required to choose a Christian name. No one wanted a new name, but that was required so they could get new cards. Hussein became Harry in school and out in public, but at home he could be called his usual nickname, Hughsy. 

 

Walking the Bible: An Illustrated Journey for Kids through the Greatest Stories Ever Told by Bruce Feiler  (YA 222 Fei)

Photographs, maps and drawings abound in this attractive book for older kids created from an earlier bestseller for adults. Readers go along on a 10,000-mile trek through the Fertile Crescent, tying together stories from the creation, Noah, Abraham, Joseph and Moses to Mount Sinai. It’s an interesting combination of religion, history, archaeology and science.

Adult Library:

Inventing the Passion: How the Death of Jesus Was Remembered by Arthur Dewey  (232.96 Dew)

The Easter story can be appreciated in new ways by readers of this book. Dewey, a theology professor at Xavier University in Ohio, emphasizes the meagerness of facts in our gospel tradition. Indeed, the only fact from early years was that Jesus was crucified by the Romans. Crucifixion bore a heavy stigma, and Jesus’ followers were traumatized, in need of time to think over their experiences and put things back together to make some sense. This book examines the Easter story in all four gospels and also in the earlier letters of Paul and the Gospel of Thomas. There are many citations of work by John Dominic Crossan, who lectured and preached in our church, and fascinating material about midrash, a Jewish creative technique referenced in various books by John Shelby Spong, who also taught here. Karen Armstrong calls this book “not only learned and accessible but exciting.”

 

Drinking from the River of Light: The Life of Expression by Mark Nepo  (153 Nep)

“In this heartfelt and beautiful book, Mark aims to help his readers find the river of light within themselves and learn how it wants to express itself,” writes Parker Palmer, author of a number of interesting books in our library. Nepo is a poet and philosopher as well as a long-time teacher in poetry and spirituality. This is a very inviting book with many eye-catching words of wisdom. It consists of four sections: Basic Human Truths, Being Shaped by Life, The Deeper We Go, and Becoming One With. All through, the reader is encouraged to reflect and to share with a friend or loved one. Nepo’s conclusion: “What lives between us is the real poem that enlivens each of us. This drink of luminosity is always within reach. This belongs to everyone.”

 

Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage by Anne Lamott  (813.54)

Anne again draws us effortlessly into her world of friends and experiences, noticing the everyday workings of love, hope, grace, forgiveness and faith. She wrote this book around the start of Covid, so it includes some apt observations like this one: “Inconveniently, I know that the mystery of grace means that our crazier leaders are the sick child, too, as precious to God as your new baby daughter, nephew, niece. We have to work with the fact of their incapacities. The alternative is to give in to the hopelessness and dread. Having never been loved has made some people hard and blind, so they lack the focus and insight to help save the earth for their grandchildren.” In our library Anne’s popular books are split between Biography and literature.

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* Please see our book carts in the Social Hall and one in the Narthex for exciting books for all ages.
* Visit the Chapel Library for children’s and YA books any Sunday by going through the church school rooms. And visit the Library in Lincoln House during office hours all through the week and during coffee hour whenever the sign is hung near the back door of the Social Hall.

Happy reading!