May 2018 #DiversifyYourBookshelf Suggestions — Religion

This month, the theme for my reading challenge was religion. Having been raised in a devout Full Gospel Christian home, it’s not as though the practice of a religion is unfamiliar to me; I, unlike most of my age demographic, still attend church on Sundays, and still find solace and comfort in prayer. For me then, the ideal was to have this month’s book teach me something I didn’t know, either about my own faith, or another.

I ended up selecting God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible by Adam Nicolson. For me, one of the most difficult concepts to wrap my head around has always been that the Bible, the word of God, is a translated, edited, Jacobean (in my favourite translation) compilation. I’ve seen enough editing of a secular variety to know that editing can be very political. It was important then, to reaffirm my commitment to my own religious exploration by being a good critical thinker and digging into what the editing and translation process had done to the text I have loved and grown up with. Nicolson makes the case that so much of the majesty of the KJV is deeply influenced by the personalities involved in its translation. What I was disappointed to find is that rather than chronicling the religious sects these personalities represented, and the way that influenced their work, he focuses on the people as near silos of thought, something I found a little implausible. For me, reading about this aspect of religion will just have to continue.

Below are suggestions for other books on the theme I received:

My name is Red — Orhan Pamuk

My Life With the Saints — Fr. James Martin, S.J.

Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity — Fr. James Martin, S.J.

The Red Tent — Anita Diamant

All Other Nights — Dara Horn

Altai — Wu Min

Morality Play — Barry Unsworth

The Twelfth Transforming — Pauline Gedge

The Wonder — Emma Donoghue

Sister Mine — Nalo Hopkinson

The Dreamblood Duology — N.K. Jemisin

The Lions of Al-Rassan — Guy Gavriel Kay

The Lies of Locke Lamora — Scott Lynch

The Angels Knocking on the Tavern Door — Hafez

The Secrets of the Self — Muhammad Iqbal, translated by R.A. Nicholson

The Invention of World Religion — Masuzawa

Saint Joan — George Bernard Shaw

The Way of the Bodhisattva — Santideva, translated by the Padmakara Translation Group

The Food of Bodhisattvas — Shabkar, translated by the Padmakara Translation Group

Interior Castle — Teresa of Avila

The Theology of Liberation — Gustavo Guttierez

Songs of the Saints of India — John Stratton Hawley and Mark Juergensmeyer

When a Woman Becomes a Religious Dynasty — Hildegard Diemberger

The Tao of Islam — Sachiko Murata

Map is Not Territory — Jonathan Z. Smith

God in Search of Man — Abraham Joshua Heschel

Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism — Gerschom Shalom

The Chosen — Chaim Potok

The Orchard — Yochi Brandes

The Book of the City of the Ladies — Christine de Pizan

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal — Christopher Moore

Solve for Happy: Engineer Your Path to Joy — Mo Gawdat

Muhammad: His Life According to the Earliest Sources — Martin Lings

Beyond Timbuktu — Ousmane Kane

The Impossible State — Wael Hallaq

Palace Walk — Naguib Mahfouz

God Is Not Great — Christopher Hitchens

God is Red — Vine Deloria Jr.

Happy reading!