Book a week: week one and two

Weekly report will be up soon, but I'll do this first.  I am going to attempt, without subjecting myself to too much pressure or guilt, to do the book a week thing.  So now we're two weeks in (weeks begin on Sunday), and I have been...almost successful so far.  The first week I tried reading Spinning Disney's World: Memories of a Magic Kingdom Press Agent by Charles Ridgeway.  I have this thing for Disney World, you know, and I thought it would be a nice easy read, and it had just turned up on my paperbackswap wish list, and....uh, I didn't like it.  It was kind of like reading the book my grandfather would have written, had he been a Disney press agent. Writing about his staff when Disney World first opened, he says, "Among them is a group who call themselves Charlie's Angels, the mostly young and attractive women I was lucky enough to hire.  I make no apologies for that and certainly don't confess to being a dirty old man. Disney has always attracted young attractive people for its cast members because, let's face it, Disney is a great place to have fun, particularly for ambitious young people."  This is about two pages before I stopped reading, and I think it captures most of my problems with the book nicely. In essence, it's a poorly written book by an unlikeable guy, who, if not a dirtly old man, is at least a sort of grumpy, defensive one.  So, since it was supposed to be a fun read with no real redeeming literary or intellectual value, I figured it wasn't worth finishing if it didn't fulfill the "fun" part.

Onward!  The next week (the week ending today) I read Barbara Brown Taylor's Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith.  Much better luck here.  I actually finished it on Tuesday night, I think.  Taylor writes about her experiences as an Episcopalian priest in a small church in north Georgia and how she came to leave her pulpit and take a job in academia.  The Publishers Weekly review quoted on Amazon reads, "memoir buffs will savor her journey...."  I am not so much a memoir buff as a spirtual memoir buff....the progressive Christian, Anne Lamott-esque brand of spiritual memoir in particular.  So I liked this. Not Anne Lamott, but I found it more authentic and honest and challenging than many in its genre (Eat, Pray, Love--I'm looking at you).

And now.  The week officially starts tomorrow, but I'm flirting with a couple of different possibilities already.  I started Wendell Berry's What Are People For? the other night, but I may save it for another week.  It might be too much spiritual seeking on the heels of Leaving Church.  Perhaps a change of pace is called for.  Also--I adore Wendell Berry, I really do.  I love him, I love his poetry, but.  I have a tough time making it through his novels and non-fiction. But it's not because I don't love him, so I'm going to do it anyway.  But maybe not this week.  I downloaded Jane Austen's Persuasion to my shiny new itouch, so I may go with that instead.  I may even go the library and get a real copy of it, with paper and everything.

Looking forward, there is much on my Amazon wish list.  David Plouffe's book about the Obama campaign. Stuff by Sarah Vowell. Sundays in America: A Yearlong Road Trip in Search of Christian Faith,  recommended by someone on the WTM boards (and irresistible to me, spiritual memoir buff).  I just got Michael Pollan's Second Nature in the mail today, another paperbackswap acquisition.  So I'm set for awhile (or, well, I will be if I actually buy some stuff from the Amazon wish list.