More Books

I tried to up the level of my reading during Lent--read some of the stuff I've been putting off or thought I should read rather than the easy stuff I tend to pick up at the end of the day. One book I read was Henri Nouwen's Return of the Prodigal Son. It is basically a book-length meditation on Rembrant's painting of the same name and the parable. I enjoyed it.
During Holy Week I read Max Lucado's The Final Week of Jesus which takes us through Christ's last week via scriptures and then adds reflections on daily modern life. Easy read, a lot to ponder. I recommend it. I also finally finished (I've been reading it on and off) Adolescents on the Autism Spectrum. It wasn't a bad book, I just have a hard time putting my son in the categories they have, and I really don't feel I got a lot of concrete advice about how to handle the problems we are having now.

Then Lent was over. I had a few Harliquin romances I'd picked up cheap on bookmooch and blew through them. I have them on my Bookmooch list now if you want them. They were exactly what you'd expect. I have really enjoyed Francine River's novels lately. I did a little research on her and found that she used to write mainstream romance novels until she underwent a religous conversion. Since that time she has taken her mainstream books out of print and has written Christian novels. I managed to mooch one of her pre-Christian novels, and for the genre, it was good. This Golden Valley is set mainly in California during the gold rush. Unlike many romance novels, this isn't just about two characters, but rather has several who make more than cameo appearances. The story isn't just about them falling in love and hate and love. As noted on the Amazon review, the ending was a bit contrived, but for a romance novel, this was a bit more complex than most (not that "most" is a hard standard). I read Janette Oke's A Gown of Spanish Lace which was bascially a Christian Harliquin romance--about that long, boy meet girl, they have a conflict, they get together--but only after he finds God.

I've posted several times that I' d like to find fluffy Catholic fiction--something similar to the Janette Oke book I just disparaged above, but from a Catholic perspective. I found one. Grace Will Lead Me Home is about the residents of a small New England town. One of the main characters is a priest and several others are parishiners. The book includes prayers. I found the book a little "busy"--too many characters with too little depth, but it was nice reading about them going to mass rather than to some independent church.

I'm going to hang on to the autism book for a while, but I'm off to put the rest on Bookmooch.