I’ve been on a roll lately, having recently read three splendid books which I highly recommend.

First, Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is an award winning young adult novel. The narrator, Junior, a high school student growing up on the Spokane Indian reservation, tells his growing-up story with great humor and surprising insight. Junior elects to transfer from the reservation school to the white school in town, and the ensuing travails of love and lust, defeat and victory are a joy and a challenge to consider. I’ve recently discovered Alexie, as I first posted here, and am continually amazed at the beauty of his prose not to mention his courage to take on taboo subjects. I recommend it.

For something entirely different I also highly enjoyed Barbara Brown Taylor’s An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith. The last BBT I read was Leaving Church, which I enjoyed but which was a challenge as well. An Altar in the World was a book I found easier to embrace since when reading it I felt like BBT was free to claim what she knows, to testify to the faith and spirituality that makes her tick, rather than explaining over and against the institutional church. Each of the twelve chapters focuses on a spiritual practice — the practice of waking up to God; the practice of walking on the earth, the practicing of saying no — which are delicious meals on their own, but as a whole, the book is a banquet of faith thoughts and acts fit for anyone contemplating one’s place in the world.

Finally, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen is a joyful romp of the tale of Jacob Jankowski, a young veterinarian, and his depression-era stint with a low rate traveling circus. Told through the remembrances of Jacob who now lives in a nursing home, the story is part adventure novel, part romance, part circus history. Well-written and well-researched, I look forward to more from this emerging author.

So turn off the TV, log out of Twitter, and run over to your local bookstore to pick up one of these top-rate reads.