What I Read On My Book Tour

Sorry for the low posting volume, folks — I’ve spent the last two weeks in New York City and Boston, doing book talks, radio, science museum trips (ok, that last is not technically related to *publicizing* Arriving at Amen, but it is totally in the spirit of the book), and I’ve been a little tuckered out.

The train trips did give me a lot of time for reading of my own, though, so here’s the rundown of what I read while trying to entice people to read my book:

• Excellent Women – Barbara Pym
• Dear Committee Members – Julie Schumacher
• The Golden Thread – Louis de Wohl
• The Kernel and the Husk – Edward Abbott
• A Glass of Blessings – Barbara Pym
• The Christians as the Romans Saw Them – Robert Louis Wilken
• To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion 1914-1918 – Adam Hochschild
• The Paying Guests – Sarah Waters
• Strength to Love – Martin Luther King, Jr.
• The Secret History – Donna Tartt
• Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel
• Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Back-Room Deals Can Strengthen American Democracy – Jonathan Rauch
• Bring Up the Bodies – Hilary Mantel

Everything was a first time read except Tartt and the Cromwell books, and The Kernel and the Husk is from my reading list for 2015 (only nine left!).

One other pleasure I got to revisit on this trip was the Boston Museum of Science, where I got to see the world’s largest Van der Graaf generator (read: lightning machine).  When I was an intern at the museum, I got to be inside the machine for one of the lightning shows (safely inside a Faraday cage).  This time, I had to content myself with lying on a bed of nails, instead.

I back home after midnight last night, but now it’s morning, the library is open, and I can go pick up all the holds that turned up while I was away.

• Vicious – Victoria Schwab
• The Good Doctor: A Father, a Son, and the Evolution of Medical Ethics -Barron Lerner
• Young Catholic America: Emerging Adults In, Out of, and Gone from the Church – Christian Smith
• Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain – Antonio Damasio
• The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky (book club with friends!)

And if you’re looking for non-book reading suggestions, may I suggest Kate of Gruntled and Hinged?  She hosted me for one of my nights in Boston, is one of the most thoughtfully compassionate people I know, plus the two of us have a great deal of fun cribbing from each other’s Goodreads feeds.