A Miscellany of Books

Hmm....so what exactly have I been reading lately? Well, I finished off Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna and enjoyed it very much indeed. I would have said 'immensely', but I thought the latter third was a bit too fragmented to qualify for that. Still, it was good enough that I ordered The Poisonwood Bible from the web for less than charity shop price (£2.76), although I haven't started it yet.
The visit of Pope Benedict to the UK inspired me to buy the biography written by Rupert Shortt - I didn't quite manage to read it in its entirety while he was here (which was my intention) but still managed it pretty swiftly and it was very good - although not quite up to date with the latest events - but it did only cost 1p (plus p&p).
Another book that spans the divide between my academic and personal interests is Diarmaid McCulloch's tome The History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years which is a monster paperback that's going to take some getting through! A small section at a time, I think. Bart Ehrman's Jesus Interrupted was another purchase and although it's interesting, it's not the earth-shattering work I think he thinks it is. At least, not to me with my background in textual criticism.
The Husband, making his way slowly through Bill Bryson's book on small-town America The Lost Continent got a rude awakening when it was recalled by the library for another borrower, having already clocked up a fine, and has had to settle down with another Bryson offering: Neither Here Nor There: A Journey Around Europe which should probably hit the spot.
Daughter #3 having read and enjoyed Long Ago and Essentially True has started on a charity shop edition of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, which was one of my personal teenage favourite reads. Everyone who reads it thinks that they're Esther.
I've also managed to purchase a number of academic books for my studies, the most interesting of which were a very lovely Douay-Rheims/Vulgata Clementina, which looks like a proper Bible and a print to order copy of the Septuagint (the Old Testament in Greek translation), which smells rather pleasantly of fresh ink and a tiny gold-edged, clasp-bound prayer book called The Key of Heaven: A Manual of Prayer for the Use of the Faithful, which has a picture of St Therese of Lisieux (her feast day today!) on the front and a crucifix concealed in a compartment within the front cover. It is very pretty, rather worn, and has obviously been used and loved well. I shall continue to love it and use it too.