Reading

I finished Joanna Trollope's Girl from the South and John Grisham's The Last Juror this week. I enjoyed Trollope's The Rector's Wife more than Girl from the South. We read The Rector's Wife in my Preacher's Reading Group in the Fall and thought it was a good read for us. One of us doesn't like her writing style and dreaded taking on The Choir, which we are supposed to be reading now. I began The Choir and then put it down for anything else on my book table pile. I'll get back to it but only after I read another preaching book. And, maybe another novel. And, when I finish Thomas Bokenkotter's A Concise History of the Catholic Church. The history is very readable and I've had a difficult time putting it down to return to work and staying up long enough at night to read through it. I have no idea if it is considered to be a "good" book to read to capture R.C. history.
John Grisham's latest is better written than his earlier books with believable characterizations and well-told stories. The hero is a young newspaper publisher in a small Mississippi town. The descriptions, langauge and characters all ring true to me. I think I've read all of Grisham's work except A Time to Kill, The Painted House and Skipping Christmas. I've listened to audio books on his legal thrillers after reading them and like the stories. Grisham drives the LH nuts because of the stick figure characters and all good/all evil issues in the legal thrillers. I'm not sure if the LH is willing to ever pick up another book. I, on the other hand, like to read Mississippi writers of all sorts and feel that we have some of the best in the Nation and beyond.
Girl from the South does a great job of describing Savannah, Georgia. Trollope catches the nuances of Southern families, the wealthy ones, and I was engaged in the story. I didn't relate to the main woman character much whose hair texture gets a good bit of page space. Somebody tell Trollope that the two keys to life are hair care products and good foundation garments. Frizzy hair is just neglect unless the person likes frizz which the woman character does not. The lead male character is about as appealing as a stranger but then maybe I've missed out on the new male since I've been married a long time and my church doesn't seem to have many men in the early 30's group. If I could hyperlink better, I'd refer you to the NakedChurch blog on "Your Church might be Presbyterian if". I tried, but couldn't do it. Will learn more, I promise.