I picked up The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World to read during Lent along with the folks at Cafeteria Christian. I love Desmond Tutu, though, and I'm not good at sticking to a reading schedule, so I finished it way ahead of time. I was frustrated by this book at first because it felt like it was barely scratching the surface. I wanted more details, more explanation, and I just wasn't getting it. I'm so glad I stuck with it, though! Each chapter revealed another layer, and another, and yet another. The same stories circled back, but with a deeper understanding of the forgiveness process as the book moved on. I got a…

I went into Jenny Odell's How To Do Nothing thinking I was getting a general "how to slim down your social media usage" type of book, but this completely surprised me! I loved its nuanced, anti-capitalist perspective. Odell discusses the far-reaching implications of how our attention is being used as a commodity, as well as how to subvert that in deeply meaningful ways. She makes great points about how the ability to choose to unplug from social media involves a lot of privilege, and how it misses a larger, more important point. Instead, she encourages readers to resist and redirect our attention in order to regain control, without giving up connection and community. (Including a cool bit about the free,…