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I start each year with the intent of writing up Finished Reading posts on a book-by-book basis. Then I find myself in the first week of February and realize I’m nine books behind already. So it’s compendium time. Here’s what I’ve ready in 2018 so far:

• The Bomb Maker by Thomas Perry - A fairly nondescript detective story, but an entertaining way to spend the end of my Christmas break.

• Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus by C. Christopher Smith - A call to build church community slowly and faithfully in an era when we want everything to have a formula.

• Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works by James K. A. Smith - the second book in Smith’s Cultural Liturgies trilogy, reminding us that we are formed by our bodies and daily physical practices in deeper ways than the mental/intellectual formation activities we undertake. I didn’t find this one as readable or interesting as Desiring the Kingdom, but I’m definitely sticking around for the third book of the series.

• Breeder by K. B. Hoyle - a fun little dystopian YA story.

• To Sin Against Hope: Life and Politics on the Borderland by Alfredo Gutierrez - a memoir of a Mexican American activist and politician. A good bit of history that I was unfamiliar with - the Mexican American experience in the US southwest in the 1960s - 1980s.

• The Take by Christopher Reich - I’ve enjoyed a bunch of Reich’s other thrillers, but this one didn’t really do it for me.

• Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering by Ronald E. Osborn - Really enjoyed this one. Osborn comes from a denomination (Seventh Day Adventist) that requires a strict literalist view of the Genesis 1-2 creation account. He gives that account a close reading and grapples with what philosophical problems such a view can give us.

• Absolutely on Music: Conversations with Seiji Ozawa by Haruki Murakami - a Japanese author (and music lover) sat down and had several conversations with the noted conductor. These are presented as an edited transcript. I am fascinated by the insights into the mind of a musician.

• At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance - A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power by Danielle L. McGuire - Oof, this one was a challenge. Not from a readability perspective, but because it forces the reader to grapple with the blanket acceptance of white-on-black violence, including sexual violence, that was prevalent in the American south up through the 1960s and even into the 1970s. White men would routinely kidnap and rape black women, knowing that they would likely not even be arrested, and that if they were tried they would be acquitted. What an evil history, and so recent. Terrifying.