What's been keeping me away...

Welcome back to the week after Spring Break, reader! I hope you had a nice one...if you got a break, that is. I was just sitting here wondering what exactly I had been doing this entire month (yes, since March 1) that had kept me from posting about anything on this blog. I came up with just a few things...

Bridal shower and friends visiting
Very full week of church work
Midterm
Going home (somehow you never do end up having all that extra time, do you?)
Roomie trip to San Antonio
Houston Ballet day
And even more church work! For reasons I'll discuss later.

Yes, March has been quite the month, and now it's nearly over. (58 days til the wedding! AHH!)

I promise I'll talk about all those things I just mentioned (well, maybe not work or the midterm in detail...those weren't too exciting), but first I wanted to talk about one more thing that's kept me from having enough free time to blog. A thing that was perhaps my first love...reading for fun.

I'm a big-time reader, and always have been. (My mom likes to talk about how, when I started driving, my family realized I didn't actually know how to get anywhere in my semi-small town, because I was always reading in the backseat of the car.) For most of my life, I mainly read fiction. During my second year of college, I got into a big non-fiction phase: mainly theological stuff, probably because I was doing a lot of spiritual exploration in my own life. I also got into autobiographies.

I've been blessed to get to read a lot more for fun during this semester than I have in the past couple of years. Another reading quirk I have is that I rarely read one book at a time. I'm usually in the middle of 3 or so: one fiction (for reading before bed), one non-fiction related to spirituality, and one other non-fiction (or classic fiction that's hard to read). This month has been no exception, so I thought I'd share my recent textual exploits with you.

The Non-Fiction:

The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan

(Photo source)

So I have a feminist streak (I mean, I really have to, since I am a woman and want to work in the church), but I'd never actually read this or known anyone who did. I happened to spot it on the shelf at my dear friends Jeremy and Sara's house, and Sara told me I should borrow it.

I didn't know much about it except that it was known for launching the second wave of the feminist movement. I wasn't at all sure how the book would be set up...I mean, it is titled "Mystique," after all. I thought it might be weird and unclear, but it's actually based largely on research. Betty Friedan addresses "the problem that has no name" but was shared by many housewives of the 1950's: the idea that women are supposed to be fulfilled simply by marriage, sex, and childbearing...but, frankly, aren't.

This may not sound like such a huge deal now, but you can see how it was mind-blowing at the time of its release. If you are into psychology (particularly psych of women) or sociology, you would find this book interesting. I have, like, 20 pages left.

The Fiction:

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
(Photo source)
This isn't actually the one I have- I couldn't find mine online. But you get the idea.

I mainly started reading this because there's a movie coming out, and since I usually like books better than their movie versions, I wanted to read the book first. Unfortunately, the Jane Eyre movie is limited release (dumb), which does not include College Station. But whatev. The book is still good, even though I went into it knowing what the big plot twist was (I read another book that frequently referenced Jane Eyre). I probably have about a quarter of this one left.

If you're a big Jane fan, someone in my roommate Carly's class mentioned a book that might be of interest to you. It's called Wild Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys. It was written in 1966 and acts as a prequel to Jane Eyre by telling the "before" story of one of the characters (I can't say which one in case you haven't read Jane Eyre!). Anyway, I haven't read it, but it seems like it would be interesting.

The Religious (and Controversial):

Love Wins, by Rob Bell
(Photo source)

If you haven't heard about this book, I would encourage you just to actually pick it up and read it. It'd take a lot less time than sifting through all the blog posts and reviews and videos (both in favor and not) that have come out since, like, a month before the book was released in full.

Obviously, this is Rob Bell talking about his views on the afterlife. In general, I am a fan of Rob's work (see Velvet Elvis, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, and the Nooma video series). I think the thing I like most about him is that he explains and incorporates a lot of Jewish historical and cultural context into his writing about contemporary Christianity, but in a way that is easy to understand.

Anyway, I'm not going to go into some huge rant on here because A) I don't care for ranting, and B) approximately 1238471234 people have already done that, so if you want to read dissertations for either camp (pro-Rob or anti-Rob), you can use Google. I'll just say that I'm about 60 pages in, and I haven't really read anything yet that I hadn't already considered on my own time, except some historical/cultural tidbits, as stated above.

So, there's what's been distracting me from my blog. :)

Anyone else been reading anything interesting? I'd like to hear about it!