Best books of 2013

I love lists. Here, again, are my favorite books for the year just ending. I read a lot, so choosing which books most impacted, encouraged, motivated or delighted me is an exercise I enjoy. (I’d love to hear about your favorite books, too.) These are not books necessarily published in 2013 (although several of them were). They are books I read during the year.

Non-Fiction

--Minding the Light: Our Collective Journal, West Hills Friends Church (2013): This collection of stories makes me want to do the same thing at North Valley Friends.

--Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo (2012): A beautiful/horrible narrative view of poverty in India. Hard to read, but worthwhile.

--The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully by Joan Chittister (2008):­ These short devotional chapters by one of my favorite nuns almost makes me want to grow old.

­­--Girl Meets God: On the Path to a Spiritual Life by Lauren Winner (2002): I love good memoirs, and this story of Winner’s conversion from Judaism to Jesus is a winner. I also read her more recent Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis (2012).

--A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband “Master” by Rachel Held Evans (2012): This was a favorite. Evans does a great job of poking fun of legalism while at the same time showing the values behind the ancient rules and regulations.

--The God of Intimacy and Action: Reconnecting Ancient Spiritual Practices, Evangelism, and Justice by Tony Campolo and Mary Albert Darling (2007): I love the way the authors bring together the often separated areas of spirituality, evangelism, and work for social justice. Very holistic and healthy.

Fiction and Poetry

--The Whalesong Trilogy (1981-1994) by Robert Siegel:  Adventure combines with the beauty of language. I love it when a poet writes novels.

--The Waters under the Earth by Robert Siegal (2005): Seigel has been my discovery of the year, both his fiction and his poetry. In this collection of poems, “Turtles” alone is worth the price of the book.

--Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013): A novel of cross-cultural conflict and adjustment (or maladjustment) as the protagonist moves from Nigeria to the USA, and then attempts, after many years, to go home again.

--And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini (2013): This Afghani author again delivers a story set in a complexity of cultures and shows how families navigate (or fail to navigate) those complexities.

--The Book of Dead Birds  by Gayle Brandeis (2003): A dark/light book that weaves intercultural and environmental issues, while telling an unusual mother/daughter story.

--Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie (1990): This fantasy disappointed me, but I mention it because I love the metaphor of the “Ocean of the Stream of Stories,” with the plot of the stories going wrong and the quest to heal them by going to the source. I also like that at the end, “Peace broke out.”

--The Taliban Cricket Club by Timeri N. Murari (2012): More intercultural stuff, with a great story that affirms the creativity and courage of women.

--The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (1990): A series of short stories, based on the reality of the author’s time in Vietnam. Very moving and insightful.

My two favorite books this years, always a hard decision (and apt to be changed), were Rachel Held Evans’ A Year of Biblical Womanhood (non-fiction) and Timeri Murari’s The Taliban Cricket Club (fiction).