Fundraising the Dead by Sheila Connolly

I like reading "cozy mysteries" and Fundraising the Dead by Sheila Connolly certainly fits the genre. It also echoes much of what I do as the director of the Bolduc House Museum in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. If you want to see a portrayal of the interaction that can happen among the board and staff members of a small but expensive to run nonprofit museum/archives, this is a fun glimpse of that reality. Not only does the protagonist, Nell Pratt, speak with an authentic voice, the story lasts long enough to be really satisfying - and it leaves the reader caring about the characters and hoping to meet them again.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

When I was in high school I encountered two literary works that continue to play in my imagination. The first was a short story that I read in French, have forgotten both the title and author, but vividly remember the story. It was a murder mystery told in the second person: YOU are there. The second was Strindberg's one-act play, "The Stronger." This play was the focus, and my performance as the speaker in this 20 minute long monologue was the outcome, of a six week intensive independent study of realism in theater. I went on to showcase that performance in a high school Thespian conference workshop at the University of New York - Albert - probably in 1972. The play features two women, the mistress and the wife of the same man, who meet by accident on Christmas Eve at a cafe. By the end of the play, the previously unaware wife is privy to her husband's affair. However, she never says a word. The only clues you get are the non-verbal ones visible to an audience and the words spoken by the mistress. The hanging question that lingers at the end of the play is which woman is "the stronger" and the audience can debate the answer forever.

Either or both of these works could be the template for The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid. In this book, which makes the reader uncomfortable by its use of the second person right from the start, you hear the conversation between a Princeton educated expert in finance and a member of some American special operations team or an assassin. The man from Princeton is a Pakistani and the conversation occurs at a market restaurant in Lahore. The Pakistani man's name is Changez. Understanding French as I do makes me wonder if the author on purpose named his protagonist the imperative form of the verb to change. It is a demand in French: You, CHANGE! (now).

By disclosing his haunting love affair with a gorgeous, intelligent, fellow Princeton alumna, who is reaching out to him, exposing herself, wasting away, provoking but then rejecting his advances, and self-destructing because she cannot get past the death of her first lover, Changez describes his opinion of America. His metaphor depicts a culture whose core values are stuck in the past and overlook relational qualities of respect and self-respect for the good of the "fundamentals:" the bottom line no matter how much that implies a rejection of aesthetics, mercy, and honor.

It looked, at first, as though Changez had been changed by his American experience. He was the first in his class and the most successful new hire at a financial firm that evaluated new and troubled corporations around the world. After the 911 attacks on the United States, he was forced to reconsider whether indeed he had become a New Yorker or whether, at heart, he was a Pakistani. It was not a militant Islamic mind-set that caused him to quit his lucrative position and return to Lahore to teach finance and promote student activism in the university there. It was the combination of the post-911 fear-based rejection of his person in New York and the realization that another, more respectful and relational way to approach life were his fundamentals, not finance.

Whatever the reader's opinion of radical Islam, this book forces the American who eats across the table from Changez, at Changez's expense, to confront fear and the future. It is impossible not to experience some empathy, as the listener American, for the reluctant fundamentalist. But, at the end of the book, you don't know whether the American has suffered through the whole meal and walk through the threateningly lonely Lahore street in Changez's company only to pull the pistol out from its hidden shoulder harness to assassinate his host. Or, perhaps, the brawny Pakistanis in the shadows have designs against the life of the American who is merely pausing to get his business card out of his pocket before thanking Changez for a stimulating evening.

I think this book is destined to be a classic.

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero

This is one of the most courageous books I have read ever. It confronts the failure of many Christian evangelicals and congregations to truly mature with joy. Scazzero blames the failure on our refusal to allow God to deal with our emotions, saying that spiritual maturity is impossible without emotional maturity. He details how our theology can negate the validity of our emotions and how that theology has allowed many of us to perpetuate the flawed emotional habits that we learned from our families of origin. Not only that, he makes an eloquent case for Christians to incorporate reflection and other spiritual disciplines we tend to associate with monasticism into our personal walk to allow space in our lives for true integrated emotionally healthy spirituality to emerge in each of us. He emphasizes that we are the objects of God's lavish love, indeed that we have been adopted into His family. Then he provides the counterpoint quoting Richard Rohr: "Life is hard. You are not that important. Your life is not about you. You are not in control. You are going to die." This book has teeth and Christians who want to grow should consider reading it.


Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality 2006

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

Combine themes from Orwell's 1984 and Madeline L'Engel's A Wrinkle in Time with the rules of FaceBook or some elaborate social video game world and you might find yourself in the contrived future of Fforde's book. There, a person's worth is determined by their ability to perceive colors. The world is enhanced for everyone by manipulating pigments to dye foods and flowers. The pigments are harvested from found metallic fragments left behind by a mysterious ancient civilization best described by Risk and Monopoly maps. This is a story for people who enjoy an extended metaphor or a complex logic puzzle. The most intriguing novelty from my point of view is the road made of organoplasma - a substance that grows and injests people and other items not made from bronze. Of course, there is the requisite love story, villains, and twists that predictably keep a reader engaged. A fun read.

Fforde, Jasper, Shades of Grey. 2009

Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

A wise Hebrew king once decided to explore folly, madness, riches, and work in order to figure out the essence of wisdom, the best way to organize a mind, the most satisfying approach to life. His conclusion was to remember the Creator. Elizabeth Gilbert's quest was motivated by similar questions. It took her to Italy, India, and Indonesia and on the way she allowed herself to be confronted and to confront pain, anger, shame, and brokenness. In the end she is much healthier and happier and she has arrived at an approach to life that feels full. Her writing is courageous and intimately authentic - I resonate with many of the situations, emotional dilemmas, and, what's more,  I understand how to enter the spiritual world and linger there. However, I have quite different spiritual boundaries and, remembering my Creator, I prefer not to empty my mind through meditation but rather to allow Him to transform it. Another author, George Otis, Jr., explored the similarities of spiritual experiences between the various religious traditions. He is a theologian and his book, apologetic -in the formal theological sense of the word. I lean towards Otis' bias, rejecting the notion that every tradition contributes desirable, positive spiritual value and careful not to issue spiritual invitations to serpents or other familiars no matter how they purport to transport one to another place or state. There is a spiritual hiding place that, while not at all "safe" to first access is filled with peace and there, in Him, I hide in plain sight. I would love to go to lunch with Elizabeth Gilbert. An honest person, a New Yorker, an authentic seeker after truth, she and I would have an interesting respectful conversation. 

Gilbert, Elizabeth. Eat Pray Love. 2006. Penguin Books.

The Opposable Mind by Roger Martin

A fascinating metacognitive analysis of integrated thinking. I do it (integrated thinking) intuitively and recognized the process Martin described through his interview anecdotes and diagrams. For people looking to explore what creativity is and how to foster it in others, this is a must read. The quote at the start of chapter five was unfamiliar to me but one I won't forget now. "By three methods we may learn wisdom: first by reflection, which is the noblest; second by imitation, which is the easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest." ~ Confucius

Martin, Roger. The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win through Integrative Thinking. 2007. Harvard Business School Press.

Micro Trends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes by Mark J. Penn

This is a quick read - the chapters are short and formatted in a predictable pattern - but it is a big paradigm changer. Mark Penn is a sociologist/statistician/analyst whose ability to spot very small trends helped formulate campaign strategies for victorious candidates as in Bill Clinton in 1996. That was when he identified a group of under-recognized young mothers and labeled them "soccer moms" to recruit them to vote Democratic. The label served well enough for Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, to adopt the moniker for herself in the 2008 campaign. Politics aside, Penn's book explains how the inter-connectivity of the world wide web makes it possible and profitable to market to a niche group of individuals once 100,000 of them can be located. Then he explores a plethora of micro trends spanning all aspects of our culture: religion, education, life style, family, work, fashion, leisure, and technology to name a few biggies. When relevant he also comments on the same micro trends in their global contexts. So, I recommend reading this book to take the pulse of American culture and to discover a different way of thinking about what our fellow citizens are doing and deciding.

Penn, Mark J. with E. Kinney Zalesne. Micro Trends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes. 2007. Twelve. New York