Netgalley Nooner- nonfic edition

I just got Pandemonium from the library yesterday, so I’ll be buried in that for a few days. Sorry kids, Mommy’s reading, feed yourselves.

But! I started three really good nonfics before my Pandemonium squealing began. Some people (read: most normal people) like to read straight through one book before they begin the next- which makes total sense. Since I’m neither normal nor do I often make sense, I like to hop around when reading nonfiction. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s a holdover from high school and switching classes every 90 minutes.
Anyway. Weirdness aside, I am enjoying each of these books for wildly varied reasons.

 

American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare, the Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee, by Karen Abbott

I don’t know a thing about Gypsy Rose Lee, except that Bette Middler played her role in Gypsy. Right? I don’t know that I’ve even seen Gypsy. In any case, I am thrilled at the new-to-me genre of Not Boring Biographies. I read Devil in the White City two years ago for my bookclub, and ate it up. Then I read Sin in the Second City, and loved it. There was another one I’m forgetting now, but I liked whatever it was, too. Perhaps I’m a sucker for baudy, shady, dark figures in history. Certainly Gypsy fits that role. I’m excited to learn more about her, and Karen Abbott paints a beautiful story.

*edit*
I’m a dope. While looking Karen Abbott up on the twitters, I realized: SHE WROTE SIN IN THE SECOND CITY.  No wonder I like this one, too.
As you were.

 

Trip of the Tongue: Cross-Country Travels in Search of America’s Languages, by Elizabeth Little

I joke about being a word nerd, but it’s true: I love our ridiculous language. English is full of contradictions and double meanings and borrowed words and senseless rules, but it is also rich and deep and vast and full of literally endless possibilities. Elizabeth Little begins in Queens, New York, surrounded by dozens of foreign languages, and then treks across the nation to learn more about her own. Now I get to benefit from her journey, without paying for all that gas.

 

Lifted: Living the Resurrection Life, by Sam Allberry

Allberry is a pastor in the U.K., where Lifted was published in 2010, but it just came out statewide a few weeks ago. I didn’t think it was possible, but somebody has written a funny book about Christ’s death and resurrection. Ok, so it’s not a humorous look at the killing of our Lord and Savior, but it does have several funny analogies and chuckle-able parts. Allberry claims, and rightfully so, I think, that Christians in general and evangelicals in particular focus on the cross, and tend to forget the Three Days Later. I believe all Christians should study about and meditate on the redemptive power of Christ’s blood shed on the cross, but we shouldn’t glaze over the affirmation of filled promises of the resurrection. I’m really looking forward to finishing this one, and contemplating not just the cross during this Lenten season, but the full implications of a Risen Messiah.

So, that’s what I’m working on this week. What are you reading?

Posted from Marco Fuego (my handsome Kindle Fire). Please excuse any (er, all of the) typos. You look pretty today.