(affiliate links included in this post, but only ever for things I love so much I feel compelled to share!)

I am trying to post gratitude posts leading up to Thanksgiving her as well as on Instagram.

Because gratitude is POWERFUL and I love that Thanksgiving is centered around that.

So I figured now would be a good time to talk about some books I am grateful I read recently. Books have such an ability to help take a look into so many different windows of life, to walk in someone else’s shoes through those pages.

I mentioned that I read The Invention of Wings to prepare for my trip to South Carolina with my sisters (back HERE). Oh that thing made me think! Two intertwined stories that brought me right into Charleston in the early 1900s.

It was interesting that right after that trip, the host of our next book club announced the book she’d chosen to discuss the next month: The Book of Longings. Which is by the same author as The Invention of Wings (Sue Monk Kidd).

I loved reading both those books, one centered in the slavery-entrenched South, and the other written from the perspective of an imagined wife of Jesus of Nazareth. At first when I read that introductory sentence: “I am Ana. I was the wife of Jesus ben Joseph of Nazareth. I called him Beloved and he, laughing, called me Little Thunder.” I wondered about that…was I really going to like a book that depicts the wife of someone as holy as Jesus? But you know what? I really loved it. Because we have so little information about whether Jesus was married, and it made me delve deeper into thinking about that possibility.

As the author mentioned in the postscript, it would have been quite irregular if Jesus wasn’t married, as most Jewish young men were. Would a possible wife not be mentioned because the scriptures are largely an account from men? Women weren’t allowed to write, let alone keep their own records. Who knows, but it was interesting to think about. Also, interesting to think about how Jesus started His ministry. I like books that make you think like that. (Loved The Red Tent that I read forever ago as well, depicting more depth into Bible stories that made me go back and read the Old Testament with so much more vigor!)

Most of all I loved the question Sue Monk Kidd posed at the end: “How would Christianity be different if there was record of Jesus being married?” Think about that one for a minute. Interesting question, right?

I think it’s so amazing that the author could write such different books, obviously after such extensive research. People are impressive, and I’m so grateful for creative, inquisitive, eloquent minds who take me to other worlds and make me delve deeper.

Some of my favorite books:

To Kill a Mockingbird

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

The Good Earth

So many more of my favorites if you click HERE.

And also here at the top of the blog:

Just hoover over that “good books” title and the drop-down menu will come up, you can then hoover over favorites or parenting or favorite Christmas books or books for youth. I’ve tried to link most of the books I love up there!

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