God Laughs and Plays, by David James Duncan (LentBook #10)

My brilliant and well-read friend Jamie recommended David James Duncan’s books to me. Duncan has actually written a few novels, but since I wanted to read him during Lent, I had to go for his non-fiction book, a collection of essays, talks and interviews that give a fair overview of how David James Duncan thinks.
Duncan [...]

Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert (LentBook #9)

Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir about a year spent travelling in Italy, India and Indonesia in search of inner peace, is the latest in my collection of “spiritual journey memoirs” and destined to be one of my all-time favourites. I read it in about twenty-four hours and it wouldn’t even be accurate to say [...]

When Jesus Came to Harvard, by Harvey Cox (LentBook #8)

When Jesus Came to Harvard is subtitled Making Moral Choices Today. The book is based around Cox’s experience of teaching an extremely popular seminar on Jesus and moral choices at Harvard University for several years. He poses the question: How can the life and teachings of Jesus guide people in making moral choices in today’s [...]

Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller (LentBook #7)

I picked this up on a whim the other day in Chapters — the title and author sounded familiar; I thought it had been referenced in Shaine Claiborne’s The Irresistible Revolution. (I still haven’t checked to see if I’m right about that). When I came home I said to Jason, “You know how I [...]

The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan (LentBook #6)

Many years ago, on a now-defunct discussion board where I used to post, I noticed that Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World was something of a bible for hardcore atheists who insisted that only that which was verifiable by the scientific method was “true.” I commented that I intended to read the book sometime, but was [...]

The Emerging Christian Way, by Marcus Borg, Matthew Fox, Tom Harpur et al (LentBook #5)

Some of the writers in The Emerging Christian Way — most notably Marcus Borg, whose essay kicks off the collection — dissociate themselves from the label “liberal” in favour of talking about an “emerging paradigm” of Christianity. But that’s mostly rhetoric: this collection of essays is about what we all recognize as “liberal Christianity,” that [...]

Living Buddha, Living Christ, by Thich Nhat Hanh (LentBook #4)

For some time I’ve been curious about what Christians can learn from Buddhists. I believe there is a lot of wisdom in all spiritual traditions, and when I’ve read Buddhist authors or heard Buddhist acquaintances talking about some of the concepts of their religion, I’ve been interested to know more.

One of those Buddhist acquaintances [...]

Misquoting Jesus, by Bart D. Ehrman (LentBook #3)

Along with books that inspire me, I usually try to rig my Lenten reading list to include some books that will challenge and maybe even disturb me as well. The title and the buzz I’d heard around Misquoting Jesus made it seem like a book that might challenge my conservative approach to Biblical inspiration and [...]