Two Books

I keep a list of the books I've read in a little notebook by my bed. But I've just finished two books that I would love to remember well enough to jot them down here. They could scarcely be more different, but both were great reading for me...

I'll start with "Talking with My Mouth Full." Written by Bonny Wolf, an NPR commentator, it's the food book I would have loved to have written. Every chapter is a different food theme, followed a by a handful of corresponding recipes. She starts with the history of the bundt cake and moves on through her favorite kitchen tools, passing on family recipes ("Family cookbooks have recipes for Jell-O salads and Christmas cookies. No recipes call for foie gras or truffle oil."), crazy state fair food, Thanksgiving dinners and famer's markets from San Francisco to Spain to Israel... She writes personally of friends who cook and dinners she's given, in a very down to earth sort of way. You'd just like to drop by her house for lunch and exchange a few recipes.

More importantly, I just finished "Reasons for God" by Tim Keller. He answers questions culled from years of good talks with skeptics and as a pastor of a large church in Manhatten he's met a few of those. He treats their point of view with respect and understanding and presents, it seems to me, a wonderfully fair-handed look at important questions such as the validity of all religions, or suffering in the world. The books feels as though it was written by a modern day C.S.Lewis and in fact, Keller names him as an influence in the acknowledgments. The book draws widely from a deep range of writers and thinkers, from Bono to Flannery O'Connor, from Nietzsche to G.K. Chesterton. The value of the book for me lies in the way that it confirmed my faith and at the same time brought me up short in matters of sharing financially in a world that has so many physical needs and also gave me a new view at sin in my life that I had managed to overlook for some time. I love God more for having read this book. I wish it were on the bookshelf of every person who wants to know the truth about God.