Books I'm Reading Lately

I've got several books going, and you may want to check them out.

- Just finished the Marilynne Robinson novel Gilead, and it was charming and beautifully written. It sort of meanders lazily through the inner battleground of a man's soul. It's in the form of a long letter written by a 76-year-old preacher in the 1950s to his late-in-life son, aged 7.

- Before that I read Michael Chabon's delightful novella, The Final Solution, according to the jacket, "a short, suspenseful tale of compassion and wit that reimagines the classic nineteenth-century detective story." I heartily agree. Brilliant, as always.

- Now I've started reading this year's winner of the Man-Booker Prize (the famous UK award), Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty.

- Not long ago I finished Father Edward Beck's second book, Unlikely Ways Home, beautiful vignettes of the various pathways to God. I'm a huge fan of his first book, a spiritual autobiography entitled God Underneath.

- Occasionally I am dipping into the latest collection of Krazy Kat comic strips, I believe the fifth volume of Krazy & Ignatz published by Fantagraphics. And, by my bedside, Volume 6 of The Essential Spider-Man.

- I'm enjoying a book of 365 Buddhist readings published recently by Pilgrim Press. And I'm reading a book about Christian icons and a recasting of the Psalms by Jim Cotter.

And a few other things here and there. What are you reading?