Mailbox Monday on Friday

Nine Women: Portraits from the American Radical Tradition ~ by Judith Nies, 1977, 2002, biography, xxii + 342 pages

In an expanded edition of her history of American women activists, Judith Nies has added biographical essays on feminist Bella Abzug and civil rights visionary Fannie Lou Hamer and a new chapter on women environmental activists.  Included are portraits of Sarah Moore Grimké, who rejected her life as a Southern aristocrat and slaveholder to promote women's rights and the abolition of slavery; Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave who led more than three hundred slaves to freedom on the Underground Railway; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the first woman to run for Congress, who advocated for women's rights to own property, to vote, and to divorce; Mother Jones, "the Joan of Arc of the coalfields," one of the most inspiring voices of the American labor movement; Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who worked for the reform of two of America's most cherished institutions, the home and motherhood; Anna Louise Strong, an intrepid journalist who covered revolutions in Russia and China; and Dorothy Day, cofounder of the Catholic Worker movement, who fed and sheltered the hungry and homeless in New York's Bowery for more than forty years.

Mailbox Monday encourages participants 

to share the books they received and also 

check out the books received by others.

I've been watching for this book all week, but 

it arrived later than promised.  I'm just happy

it's here and in better condition than I expected.

Mailbox Monday ~ on Thursday

A Bigger Table: Building Messy, Authentic, and Hopeful Spiritual Community ~ by John Pavlovitz, 2017

No one likes to eat alone; to approach a table filled with people, only to be told that despite the open chairs there isn’t room for you.  The rejection stings.  It leaves a mark.  Yet this is exactly what the church has been saying to far too many people for far too long:  "You're not welcome here.  Find someplace else to sit.”  How can we extend unconditional welcome and acceptance in a world increasingly marked by bigotry, fear, and exclusion?  Pastor John Pavlovitz invites readers to join him on the journey to find — or build — a church that is big enough for everyone.  He speaks clearly into the heart of the issues the Christian community has been earnestly wrestling with:  LGBT inclusion, gender equality, racial tensions, and global concerns.  He asks if organized Christianity can find a new way of faithfully continuing the work Jesus began two thousand years ago, where everyone gets a seat.  Pavlovitz shares moving personal stories and his careful observations as a pastor to set the table for a new, more loving conversation on these and other important matters of faith.  He invites us to build the bigger table Jesus imagined, practicing radical hospitality, total authenticity, messy diversity, and agenda-free community.

Donna surprised me today.  After our "Life Transitions" group meeting, I followed her into the office where she picked up a package that had been delivered earlier.  In it were TWO copies of this book, one for herself and one for me, so we could read and discuss it together.  Thanks, Donna!

Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to other participants.

Mailbox Monday ~ one more book (twice)

Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne ~ by Wilda C. Gafney, 2017, religion

Womanist Midrash is an in-depth and creative exploration of the well-known and lesser-known women of the Hebrew Scriptures.  Using her own translations, Gafney offers a midrashic interpretation of the biblical text that is rooted in the African American preaching tradition to tell the stories of a variety of female characters, many of whom are often overlooked and nameless.  Gafney employs a solid understanding of womanist and feminist approaches to biblical interpretation and the socio-historical culture of the ancient Near East.  This unique and imaginative work that is grounded in serious scholarship will expand conversations about feminist and womanist biblical interpretation.

This is the only book I've gotten in the mail since my last Mailbox Monday post in July. I decided to ALSO buy the Kindle edition of this one, so that's why I have "twice" in the subject line above.

Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to other participants.

Mailbox Monday ~ one book

The DASH Diet Younger You: Shed 20 Years ― and Pounds ― in Just 10 Weeks ~ by Marla Heller, 2014

The DASH diet ― the most trusted name in diets ― has helped millions of people lower blood pressure, lose weight, and improve their health.  Now it can help you look and feel 20 years younger.  Marla Heller has developed a program with five age-defying strategies that can halt and even reverse many of the effects of aging by improving blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar.  In just 10 weeks, you can:

• Reverse the diseases of aging.
• Fortify and rejuvenate hair and skin.
• Revitalize and strengthen bones, muscles, and joints.
• Improve heart health and blood pressure.
• Lose weight, especially in the tummy.
• Look and feel younger, healthier, and slimmer.

This is the only book I've gotten in the mail in ages.  I've been adding books to my Kindle instead.

Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to posts by all the other participants.

Mailbox Monday ~ Little Boy Lost

Little Boy Lost ~ by J. D. Trafford, 2017, fiction (Missouri), 9.5/10

Attorney Justin Glass’s practice, housed in a shabby office on the north side of Saint Louis, isn’t doing so well that he can afford to work for free.  But when eight-year-old Tanisha Walker offers him a jar full of change to find her missing brother, he doesn’t have the heart to turn her away.  Justin had hoped to find the boy alive and well, but all that was found of Devon Walker was his brutally murdered body — and the bodies of twelve other African American teenagers, all discarded like trash in a mass grave.  Each had been reported missing, and none had been investigated.  As simmering racial tensions explode into violence, Justin finds himself caught in the tide. And as he gives voice to the discontent plaguing the city’s forgotten and ignored, he vows to search for the killer who preys upon them.

This ARC (Advanced Reading Copy) arrived in my mailbox last week, and I started reading it the next morning.  Although it's 329 pages long, I finished it before going to bed that night.  Maybe it's that I have lived for almost three years in St. Louis, the setting of the book.  I was pleased when I recognized a location and just as pleased when I googled a location and looked at Google's "street view" to visualize the locale.

"We walked down two blocks from Crown Candy to my office on the corner of Fourteenth and Warren" (p. 32).

Sure enough, Crown Candy is exactly two blocks from a couple of buildings that could house a lawyer's office.  When I mentioned Crown Candy to my friend Barbara, she said we'll have to go there to eat.  Our friend Donna agreed.

"As the rest of the city emptied out, heading to South County and Saint Charles, I crossed Forty against traffic and drove back over to the Northside" (p. 38).

When I moved here, I quickly learned that the locals still say "Forty" instead of I-64.  It's both, but when I hear "Forty," I think of I-40 going East and West across Tennessee from Nashville to Knoxville.  In St. Louis, "Forty" is the highway that was there before the Interstates were built.  One local told me today, "I always say '40-64' so everyone understands."  Yep, I've learned that, too.  The author mentions...

• "...the Central West End's beautiful brownstones" (p. 72).
• "...eating ice cream from the Clementine's Creamery on Lafayette Square" (p. 120).
• "Castlewood State Park..." (p. 139).
• "...dinner together on The Hill..." (p. 166).  I've been there, done that.
• "...McKnight Road..." (p. 175).
• "...got off the highway in Clayton..." (p. 211).
• "...Carl's Drive In off Manchester Road" (p. 212).
• "...North Florissant..." (p. 226).
• "...Bellefontaine Cemetery..." (p. 240).
• "...Page Boulevard..." (p. 272).
• "...Bosnia..." (p. 274).  A lot of Bosnian refugees settled in St. Louis.
• "...Tower Grove Park" (p. 286).
• "Traffic on Forty wasn't too bad.  I took the Jefferson exit off the highway..." (p. 289).  I've taken that exit to go visit a friend.
• "Then I crossed an imaginary line, and everything dimmed.  Cafe's were replaced with dirty fast-food restaurants.  Churches went from majestic to pop-up, and the brownstones devolved into a mix of questionable housing, pawn shops, and dollar stores" (p. 72).

Aha!  That "imaginary line" has a name here in St. Louis:  the Delmar Divide.  Delmar Boulevard runs from the downtown area through the Delmar Loop, an area of shops and restaurants where an eclectic group of people hang out, from elderly folk like me to college kids and parents with children.  The Delmar Divide apparently ends at the Loop, and I live two or three miles west of there, near the western end of Delmar Boulevard.  I can see Delmar from my window.

My father took a deep breath, and then he ... turned around.  "I fought the battle over segregated lunch counters and the right to vote, but this is different."  He pointed at me, lying injured in bed, my face swollen and cut.  "The White Only signs have been taken down, but they're still there.  This is your fight now" (p. 57).

The story is about racism, so this quote feels loaded to me.  I moved to St. Louis in June 2014, a couple of months before Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson.  That area is, of course, north of Delmar.  The police in the story are "worried about another Ferguson" (p. 262).  It's a divided city, so this remark by one of the characters in the novel about a cemetery is on target:

"Truly sad that the most diverse neighborhood in our city is one for the dead and not the living" (p. 242).

And yet there was humor in the book, too.  Like this from the narrator, who is a single parent:

"Like all middle-aged men who were about to have a romantic liaison in a fancy hotel, I called my mother first to ask for permission" (p. 236).

I rated it 9.5 out of 10 and definitely recommend this book, but the sad news is that it won't be published until July 18.

Mailbox Monday ~ one arrived today

The Living God and the Fullness of Life ~ by Jürgen Moltmann, 2015, religion

Modern humanity has accepted a truncated, impoverished definition of life.  Focusing solely on material realities, we have forgotten that joy, purpose, and meaning come from a life that is both immersed in the temporal and alive to the transcendent.  We have, in other words, ceased to live in God.  Moltmann shows us what that life of joy and purpose looks like.  Describing how we came to live in a world devoid of the ultimate, he charts a way back to an intimate connection with the biblical God.  He counsels that we adopt a "theology of life," an orientation that sees God at work in both the mundane and the extraordinary and that pushes us to work for a world that fully reflects the life of its Creator.  Moltmann offers a telling critique of the shallow values of consumerist society and provides a compelling rationale for why spiritual sensibilities and encounter with God must lie at the heart of any life that seeks to be authentically human.

It's been 2-1/2 years since I did a Mailbox Monday post.  With my Kindle and several libraries at my disposal, I rarely order books.  This one arrived today.  Mailbox Monday, a meme started by Marcia, is now hosted on its own blog.  It's a way for readers to share the books that arrived in the past week and explore other book blogs.  Warning:  Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles, and humongous wish lists.

Mailbox Monday ~ Zealot

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth ~ by Reza Aslan, 2013, biography

Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Reza Aslan sheds new light on one of history’s most influential and enigmatic characters by examining Jesus through the lens of the tumultuous era in which he lived:   first-century Palestine, an age awash in apocalyptic fervor.  Scores of Jewish prophets, preachers, and would-be messiahs wandered through the Holy Land, bearing messages from God.  This was the age of zealotry — a fervent nationalism that made resistance to the Roman occupation a sacred duty incumbent on all Jews.  And few figures better exemplified this principle than the charismatic Galilean who defied both the imperial authorities and their allies in the Jewish religious hierarchy.

Click here for a 27-minute video interview with Reza Aslan, along with a long excerpt — the entire nine pages of the book's Introduction.

This book arrived in my mail a couple of weeks ago, but I haven't mentioned it yet here on the blog.  Mailbox Monday is a place for readers to share the books that arrived in the past week and explore other book blogs.  Different bloggers host the meme each month, and Yolanda @ Notorious Spinks Talks is our September host.  The monthly tour schedule is on the right sidebar of Mailbox Monday.

Mailbox Monday ~ two books have arrived

White Lies and Dark Chocolate ~ by Dana Lynne Pitely, 2012, fiction (Ivory Coast)

"Everybody loves chocolate.  Well, maybe not everyone.  I suppose there are a few who have never tasted chocolate.  Abdul, a 10-year old and a 3-year veteran of the cocoa fields in the Ivory Coast, has never had chocolate.  Rose Isope, a direct descendant of the famed fabulist Aesop, has a problem with that.  Rose will do everything she can to give Abdul a piece of chocolate.  This is a novel about one person’s determination to change a common practice of doing what is easy over doing what is right."

TimeWarp, Inc. ~ by Cotton E. Davis, 2012, science fiction

"When historian Gwen Hoffman first meets time traveler Mike Garvin, an ex-Special Forces weapons sergeant back from ancient Gaul where he was embedded as a centurion in Julius Caesar's elite 10th Legion, she is more than a little put off.  Scarred and dangerous-looking, the man appears more thug than time traveler.  Yet he is the person TimeWarp, Inc. is sending back in time to protect Jeshua bar Yosef (Jesus son of Joseph) from twenty-first century assassins; the man Gwen was assigned to prepare for life in first-century Galilee.  Gwen, of course, has no idea she and Garvin will become lovers.  Nor does she realize she herself will end up in Roman Palestine, where she will not only meet Jesus but face danger alongside Mike in the adventure of a lifetime."

These two books have arrived in my mailbox, and I expect to review both of them within the next few days.  Mailbox Monday, on tour during February @ Unabridged Chick, is a place for readers to share the books that arrived in the past week and explore other book blogs.  Warning:  Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles, and humongous wish lists.

Mailbox Monday ~ hey, I won a book

Wendy at Caribousmom had several book giveaways during BBAW (Book Blogger Appreciation Week). I entered the one for Speculative Fiction — and won!

The Knowledge of Good and Evil ~ by Glenn Kleier, 2011

Read an excerpt.

Summary from the Publisher:

On December 4, 1968, world-famous theologian Father Louis Merton visited the ancient Dead City of Polonnaruwa, Ceylon, entered the Cave of the Spirits of Knowledge, and experienced a vision.  It’s claimed he found a backdoor to the Afterlife, that he looked into the Mind of God and escaped with a secret so powerful it could change all humanity ... bring wars to a standstill ... end forever the age-old hatreds between races, creeds and cultures.

Six days later as Merton prepared to announce his discovery at a religious conference, he suffered a horrific death under mysterious circumstances.  But the secret did not die with him.  Merton left behind a journal.

Years later, beautiful psychologist Angela Weber and her troubled fiancé, Ian Baringer, are on the hunt for Merton’s long-lost journal and its door to the Afterlife.  Angela, an agnostic, wants to help Ian heal the wounds of a traumatic childhood plane crash that took the lives of his parents.  Ian, a defrocked priest, no longer trusts in religion’s promise of eternal life.  He must know for certain if he will ever see his parents again, and is driven to find out firsthand what lies beyond, and what it holds for mankind.

Together, Angela and Ian plunge headlong into a global chase, pursued by a shadowy cult, dead bodies, and destruction in their wake.  If Ian and Angela succeed, they will defy the gates of heaven and hell to learn a secret hidden from the world since the dawn of time.

This one sounds very good.  And the good news for ME is that the book arrived in the mail Saturday.  Yippee!  Thank you, Wendy!

Today's Monday, so I think I'll call this Mailbox Monday, even though I've never done this meme before.  The book did arrive in the mail, after all.  This photo comes from Wendy's blog.

This week’s edition of Mailbox Monday is being hosted by Leah at Amused by Books.  To share what arrived in your mailbox and see what other readers got in the mail this week, click here.  Be warned:  Leah says joining the fun "can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles, and humongous wish lists."