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The Best Books I Read over the Holidays
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
What a treat! My friend sent me this book as a gift and said it was one of her all-time favorites. It is historical fiction set in the 1920s to mid-century Moscow. I read one review that described the book’s tone as “fable-like yet jaunty, patient, and faintly autumnal,” which is just perfectly accurate. It is a slow burn, but worth reading to the end.
Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan
This is as close to a “biography” of Jesus as it gets. I’ve had this on my reading list for several years (it was published in 2013), and figured Christmastime would be an appropriate setting to dig in! I was really interested in a non-religious, scholarly but readable biography that focuses on historical context. I honestly think this would be fascinating to both religious and non-religious readers, which is why I chose to include it in this newsletter. I also read a biography of Buddha this month that takes a non-religious look at his historical life and times, if you want to pair these books to read together as I did!
I recently read the book Empire of Pain, which was so well executed that I went on to read the author’s other…
