For all its downsides, November is a wonderful month to sit inside and read.  Who needs to go outside when one can wrap up in a blanket and enjoy a good book (or, in my case, enjoy pieces of a number of different good books on a kind of unofficial rotation basis)?  Here are my current reads (listed alphabetically):

Delights and Shadows by Ted Kooser

I feel like a lesser person for having to admit this -- but I usually have to work at appreciating poetry.  I like to consider myself all suave and literary and stuff... but I often feel like I just don't "get it" when I'm reading (or listening to) poetry.  But for some reason, Ted Kooser is different.  My friend Eva suggested that I give him a try -- and she loaned me her copy of Delights and Shadows -- and I have to say that I've been very impressed.  He writes poetry like I (want to) write blogs:  simply taking the smallest moments, typically observed in passing, and uncover the deeper significance within.  He comes from the Heartland of America (the "About the Author" section at the back of the book says that "He is a retired life insurance executive who lives on an acreage near the village of Garland, Nebraska") -- writing poetry that is accessible to the Carhartt crowd -- and yet he has been celebrated as the Poet Laureate of the United States and as the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.  Definitely a worthy recommendation...

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The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland

Coupland is probably one of my favorite authors of all-time.  Whenever I'm at the library, I check to see if there's anything new of his on the shelves.  Last week I was surprised and delighted to find this 2007 offering.  The style of this novel is a bit unusual:  written kind of like a journal, containing the main character's first attempt at his own novel (a novel within a novel), in which the main character's novel contains the story of a university professor who also happens to be a novelist working on another book (thus, a novel within a novel within a novel).  To be honest, this book doesn't seem to be Coupland's best (though I'm still less than half-way through) -- but it's still full of the author's classic wit and brilliant observations about the little things in life that characterize people and cultures so deeply.

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The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Would you believe I've made it all the way to this point in life -- after years of concentrated study in English and American literature -- without ever having read this great classic of American literature?  And this even after having read and thoroughly enjoyed some of Steinbeck's other "lesser" works (i.e. Of Mice and Men and Cannery Row)?  Well, I finally decided to check it out and give it a read -- and I'm very glad I did.  Following a theme that seems to persist throughout my current reads, I am astonished to see how timely this book is -- how accurately it describes our world today -- even though its subject matter is Oklahoman migrant workers in the time of the Dust Bowl in the first half of the 20th Century!  Themes of the earth's resources being mindlessly used up, soulless corporations chewing up people to stave off their own extinction, and "regular" people trying to figure themselves out and determine their place in the world in the aftermath... It's really emarkable to see how relevant it is for our current world situation.  I'm only a quarter of the way through this big boy (and it is a bit slower reading than The Gum Thief) -- but it's a very worthwhile book, from what I've experienced so far.

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Isaiah

I typically struggle through the prophetic sections of the Bible (of which Isaiah is something of a lynchpin).  It's hard for me to understand their rhythms, their meanings, their applications for my life today.  My current reading through Isaiah (and Jeremiah) is no exception to this pattern of struggle -- but I have been encouraged to see how relevant the message of Isaiah can be to our world today.  Substitute Bush, Putin, Chavez, and Ahmadinejad for Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah -- and it's downright scary to see how relevant Isaiah's words can be for our world today!  Yet underneath it all, there's this beautiful glimmer of hope that shines through Isaiah's writings -- hope that's just as relevant, too, as the judgment.  Hope that our world desperately needs.  Isaiah is somehow timeless -- while simultaneously truly timely.  A very worthwhile -- if not always the most easily readable -- book...

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Jeremiah

The thing that's standing out most prominently to me, in this reading of Jeremiah, is the cyclical nature of society and its relation to God.  So little has changed since the days of Jeremiah -- and yet things have completely changed again and again and again in the millenia between Jeremiah and us.  I really appreciate how Jeremiah can't help but concede that society is self-destructing... And yet, the self-destruction is also the very first and most important step to reconstruction and renewed life.  Like with Isaiah, I've been seeing breathtaking parallels with 21st Century Western civilization -- which could be kind of scary, but which actually reassures me and encourages me greatly.  There's some good, good stuff in Jeremiah... And it's also cool to study the life of Jeremiah, as I prepare to teach our church about singleness next week -- since Jeremiah is one of the most notable singles in the Bible...

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On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder

This is our current bed-time chapter-book that we're reading with Elliot and Olivia.  We've already read through the first two, more well-known books in this series (Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie) -- which are classics of American children's literature... but we decided to keep on following the series, since the Amsterdam public library stocks the whole collection.  I've been fascinated to read these stories and learn about the history of European settlement in the Great Plains region of the United States of America (places that our family got to experience first-hand this summer), and Elliot and Olivia really seem to enjoy the stories, too.  It's also interesting to note that the 1980s television series "Little House on the Prairie" is much more heavily based on this book On the Banks of Plum Creek instead of the book by the same title as the series.  In any event, these books are great reads for both children and adults...