I read Lauren F. Winner's Girl Meets God this weekend. I loved her insights into the relationships between Judaism and Christianity. Her thoughts about politics challenged my conceptions of what a Christian should be. Also, she's an extremely good writer, if you can stand memoirs.This probably won't be an extremely long post, but I wanted to give you a general idea of what I thought about the book. First, if you do not like books written in the style of a memoir, you probably won't like this book. Still, it has extremely strong organization for a memoir.
Second, the most valuable part about reading the book was learning about the ties to Christianity from Judaism that I never knew about. She was always comparing some holiday in Christianity to a holiday of Judaism, and she knew quite a bit about the symbolism from each.
The only thing I was disappointed with was how she sidestepped seemingly important issues. She only mentioned homosexuality once in passing with no value judgment, and I was wondering what she thought about that. She never even mentioned abortion. As I mentioned earlier, she is one of the more liberal Christians I have read from (culturally and somewhat politically, but not theologically), so I was wondering what she thought about such moral issues.
So, I give the book a four out of five stars. I highly encourage you to find time to read it, but it wasn't quite profound. And, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I read this book on the suggestion of another reader. If you have any book suggestions, let me know!
5 comments:
why is it necessary for her to talk about abortion and homosexuality? it's a memoir. if she hasn't dealt personally with those issues, then i'm not sure why it's important for them to be included--she's not writing "mere christianity" or "how now shall we live?"...she's not writing a creed, she's writing a confession.
Good question.
Winner covers an amazing breadth of topics in her book. While I was reading it, I was always wondering exactly where she stood on certain issues. Usually she would explain her positions (and I mean, with extreme frequency, she explained her ideas--this covered everything to what she thought of Messianic Jews (she considered herself merely evangelical) to why she doesn't shave her legs), but these seemed to be hot topics that she deliberately avoided, which only made them things I wanted to know even more.
Besides, what's the point in reading someone's book if you don't find out what they think about things? :)
Jacob,
Could you hurry up and write your book? I want to know what you think about stuff.
Actually, I had to read Lamott's Operating Instructions: A Journal for My Son's First Year, and interestingly, I was doing a lot of comparing the two in my mind while I was reading Winner's book.
It's been too long since I have read it (and I was not taking a policktical fast), so my mind is sort of a little jaundiced toward her faith. I'd like to reread it so see if what she wrote was truly heretical (i.e., a Christianity where "Jesus" could just as well be "Buddha" or "Mohammad" or "Take-your-pick"), or whether I was just too partisan in my reading. She is funny, though, and I did get a lot out of reading Lamott's book.
As for Mudhouse Sabbath, I absolutely want to read it, but I feel that I should have a little time between the two. First, although Winner is an extremely talented writer, her voice was a little too present in the memoir-style, if you know what I mean, and I don't want to get burned out halfway through the book. Also, I feel that I should try to get a little fiction and Christian non-fiction (other than from her) before I pick up another one of her books. Oh yeah, and there's homework too...
lamott's "bird by bird" is a must for avid readers and writers.
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