Tuesday Tome - Vacation Reading

We're doing a few days of vacation on the North Shore of Lake Superior, and then we'll take a few more days of staycation on the north shore of Lake Johanna. Here's what is on the vacation reading list.

Gilead: A Novel (Marilyn Robinson)

From Publisher's Weekly:
Fans of Robinson's acclaimed debut Housekeeping (1981) will find that the long wait has been worth it. From the first page of her second novel, the voice of Rev. John Ames mesmerizes with his account of his life—and that of his father and grandfather. Ames is 77 years old in 1956, in failing health, with a much younger wife and six-year-old son; as a preacher in the small Iowa town where he spent his entire life, he has produced volumes and volumes of sermons and prayers, "[t]rying to say what was true." But it is in this mesmerizing account—in the form of a letter to his young son, who he imagines reading it when he is grown—that his meditations on creation and existence are fully illumined.
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Simply Jesus (N. T. Wright)

From Amazon's Book Description:
Bible scholar, Anglican bishop, and bestselling author N. T. Wright summarizes a lifetime of study of Jesus and the New Testament in order to present for a general audience who Jesus was and is. In Simply Jesus, we are invited to hear one of our leading scholars introduce the story of the carpenter’s son from Nazareth as if we were hearing it for the first time.
“Jesus—the Jesus we might discover if we really looked,” explains Wright, “is larger, more disturbing, more urgent than we had ever imagined. We have successfully managed to hide behind other questions and to avoid the huge, world-shaking challenge of Jesus’s central claim and achievement. It is we, the churches, who have been the real reductionists. We have reduced the kingdom of God to private piety; the victory of the cross to comfort for the conscience; Easter itself to a happy, escapist ending after a sad, dark tale. Piety, conscience, and ultimate happiness are important, but not nearly as important as Jesus himself.” As the church faces the many challenges of the twenty-first century, Wright has presented a vision of Jesus that more than meets them.
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The Best News You Will Ever Hear 
(Thomas Jay Oord & Robert Luhn)
From Product Description:
This book tells the best news you will ever hear. Ever! The authors guarantee that your life will change for the better by the time you finish reading it. They are confident in sharing this great news, because they are not making it up. It s true. The Best News You Will Ever Hear reports news that has changed millions and millions of people. And it reports that news in a way that you ve never heard. Prepare yourself. Focus your attention and read carefully. This news should change your life for good forever!

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