AliBlog

Alan Jones: Reimagining Christianity
If - like many - you've been tempted to dismiss Christianity as a judgemental, patriarchal Western religion but - like me - have longed to see it as a mystical, metaphorical and compassionate process, this book is for you.

Amy Tan: The Hundred Secret Senses
I've just finished my first Amy Tan novel, and so I'm wishing I had an eccentric sister with yin eyes and lost memories of a past life. But alas I'll have to settle for another magical story from Tan - which should I read next?

Helen Nearing, Scott Nearing: The Good Life
I've been buying Jeromy books for the past 15 years, and he's never read a single one. Until now. I bought him this classic on self-sufficient living, and now he's devouring every book and magazine that he can find on the subject.

Matthew Van Fleet: Tails
A Christmas gift from Aunt Susan and Uncle Beau, this book is Robey's current favorite. He just learned how to pull the tabs to make the tails wag.

John Irving: The Fourth Hand
Pick a favorite John Irving book? I can't. Read them all. Laugh, snicker and fall in love with the characters, not despite of but FOR all their flaws and idiosyncracies.

Saul Bellow: Henderson the Rain King
Is there any better way to overcome a mid-life crisis? If only we all had the resources and dumb luck of Henderson and the lyrical dexterity of Bellow.

Hunter S. Thompson: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Take a trip with Thompson into the swill and swine of Vegas. It still makes me laugh and gasp and hallucinate more than any other book I've ever read.

Oliver Sacks: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
That one of my favorite authors of all time is a socially-awkward yet highly perceptive neurologist is a testament more to Sacks' ability to write plainly about complex subjects than it is a comment on my own attraction to the strangely bizarre. Or is it?

Rick Bragg: All Over But the Shoutin'
Read this book and you will almost wish that you had grown up poor and fatherless in the deep South, if only to be a part Bragg's mother's clan --lively, hard-working and proud.

Betty Smith: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Read this book at least once a decade, and you'll root for Francie again and again, but for different reasons each time.