By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog
The greatest Mormon blog in the universe.
Emily Debenham is a three-time Mormon Lit Blitz finalist. She loves ancient history, Mormon literature, and telling herself stories.
There are two things you need to know about my younger self. First, I was a voracious reader. Second, I was obsessed with LDS fiction. The combination of being obsessed with a niche market of books and a voracious reader meant that I constantly ran out of books. So, here are three tales of the strangest ways I acquired my next LDS literature hit.
Congratulations to one of BCC’s own!!
(click to enlarge)
Title: The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith
Author: Matthew Bowman
Publisher: Random House
Genre: History
Year: 2012
Pages: 352
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN-13: 978-0679644903
Price: $26.00
Hallelujah! The world needed an accessible, neutral, brief, birth-to-present history of Mormonism, and it needed it right now. Matthew Bowman has written that book. Including every relevant moment from the boy Joseph’s leg operation to Twilight, and from suffragist Emmeline Wells to Broadway’s Elder Price, all in a slim 253 pages (plus several appendices), Bowman works a space-packing miracle reminiscent of Dr. Who’s TARDIS or Mary Poppins’ carpet bag. Opinion makers in the media, politics, and academia who want to join the conversation about Mormons will be well prepared by this brisk and rigorous overview, and I imagine many keeping a heavily Post-It-noted copy near at hand in the coming months and years. Bowman’s work shines most brightly in its detailed rendering of the uniquely fertile soil for religious innovation in the time and place of young Joseph Smith’s America, and its painstakingly balanced study of the early origins of the church. Interested outsiders will also find, in Chapter 8, an excellent portrait of daily life for “an active, committed Mormon family” today, including the rhythms of weekly meetings and activities, and private devotional life such as Family Home Evening.
[Read more…]
Bryan Caplan, an economist, blogger, and owner of the world’s ugliest website, has written a new parenting book (Parenting ideas! From an economist!) called Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think. The book is available for pre-order on Amazon.com here, and will be released in mid-April.
I plan on getting a copy and doing a full review later, but before doing so, I am curious to see what the gut reaction of BCC’s readers is to the simple statements found in the title: Parenting is a) less work and b) more fun than conventional wisdom indicates. As a father of two children, I struggled all weekend in trying to decide if I agree or disagree with either statement, and am still not sure of myself. If forced to make an unqualified, un-nitpicky decision, I would probably say that a) is false and b) is true in my experience.
If you have children, are these statements true for your experience? What were your expectations of the hardships and enjoyment of parenting before children? Has your perception of these things changed with time? Do you think that your religiosity affects your perception of how easy/enjoyable parenting is? [Read more…]
LDS Headlines
By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog 
Recent Comments