Oh, the books, I can't wait to see the books

Ok, I have nowhere near the number of books as Rory. Heck, I don't have near the number of books as Kat. But I do love to read.

I just finished reading "The Unlikey Disciple - A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University" by Kevin Roose, and let me say, it was quite the read. I enjoyed it, for the most part. I felt like parts of it were repetitive, and redundant (Lorelai: It's repetitive. Rory: And redundant. Lorelai: It's repetitive. Rory: And redundant. Lorelai: We certainly are entertaining, Mac! Rory: Indubitably, Tosh!), and I don't necessarily agree with all of his thoughts or his methods, but it was an entertaining read.

The book was written by this guy who was a student at Brown, and he decided to take a semester at Liberty. He'd gone to the Thomas Road Baptist church with his boss once who was writing a book of his own, and realized that the congregants saw that he wasn't like them, the dynamic of the conversation changed. His thoughts were, to quote from the book, "What if I spent a semester at Liberty as a student? What if, instead of speculating about Christian college life from afar, I jumped over the God Divide and tried to experience it myself?" And what came from that is this book.

I must say that a lot of the characteristics of Liberty are similar to those of BYU. I mean, you pick up the back of the book and read, "No drinking, smoking, cursing, dancing, or R-rated movies...A sophomore at Brown University, Kevin Roose wasn't used to rules like those." With the exception of dancing, that's totally BYU. In the first chapter, he's talking about how much people at Liberty pray, and then he says, "Put it this way: if prayers emitted light, you'd see us from space." Then I thought about it, and I kind of wish praying did emit light. I would love to see a picture of the U.S. from space to see the glow coming from Utah. It would be awesome.

One of my favorite parts of the book is also about prayer, but it cracked me up. Growing up Mormon, our prayers are very formal. Not like Evangelicals, and their praying all at the same time, everyone saying something different, so you can't make out all the different speakers. So, after this group prayer Roose is part of, one of his friends makes the observation that God heard all of those different prayers even in the midst of all that chaos. Then the friend says, and here's the part that cracked me up, "Man, God is a stinkin' baller!" I don't think I would have ever described God as a baller, but it was pretty entertaining.

So, I can't give away everything in the book, I'm just saying that it's definitely worth the read. Kat, if you ever wanted a semi-close look at a religious school without having to go to a religious school, seriously, read the book. No, it's definitely not Mormon, but there are many similarities. Worth the read.

By the way, when I was coming up with the title to this post, my first thought was the quote from season two, the episode where Chris comes with Sherry to Rory's debate. The episode after the basket festival where Lane gets in trouble. Anyway, she says "Do you wanna hear how I used up my five minutes of phone time today? Talking to amazon.com trying to get them to overnight it to me in a plain package with a return address referencing something Korean and religious." That occurred to me because, while this post is really "religious" it references something religious. Just thought you'd like to know the thought process. I have a weird brain.

Update on 10/10/10 - A question; now that I've recently finished reading two books, what should I start reading next? Any suggestions?