Summers are full of fun and travel, vacations, and often fewer meetings and commitments. For the second summer, we are offering the FPCA Book Club. The thought is to choose a book, take it with you on your travels. Read it, reflect on it, and then we will come back together on August 30th for a luncheon after the 11 am service. People will be invited to sit at tables with others who read their books.
If you would like to read these books as part of the summer social groups, we are also happy to facilitate those connections.
This summer’s books have been chosen through the lens of radical hospitality: what it means to truly see one another, welcome one another, and create spaces where people can belong, heal, and grow.
In a world that often feels hurried, divided, and lonely, these books invite us to slow down and pay attention to the people around us. Some explore friendship and generosity. Others help us think about faith, family, grief, curiosity, or the ways we care for children and one another. Together, they ask an important spiritual question: How do we become people who make room for others?
One selection, David Brooks’s How to Know a Person, explores the transformative power of deeply listening to and valuing others. Brooks writes, “There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen.” We cannot help but hear echoes of our church’s calling to practice radical hospitality.
In Theo of Golden, a mysterious elderly man quietly transforms a small Southern town through hidden acts of generosity and kindness. Remarkably Bright Creatures offers a moving story of grief, aging, and unexpected friendship through the relationship between a widow and an unusually perceptive octopus. And Wonder: 52 Conversations to Help Kids Fall in Love With Scripture equips parents and caregivers to engage children in honest, thoughtful, and life-giving conversations about faith and the Bible.
Whether you are an avid reader or simply curious, we hope you will join us as we explore stories and ideas that help us imagine a deeper connection with God, one another, and the world around us.
Questions? Reach out to Shannon Jordan at sjordan@fpcasheville.org.
How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen David Brooks
David Brooks’s How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen is a guide to fostering deep, meaningful connections. The core thesis is that the ultimate social skill is making others feel genuinely valued, heard, and understood, which helps repair modern social fragmentation and loneliness—how can this not be a part of our mission of radical hospitality?
As David Brooks observes, “There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.”
Theo of Golden: A Novel by Allen Levi
Theo of Golden (2023) by Allen Levi is a heart-warming novel about an elderly, mysterious man named Theo who moves to a small Southern city (Golden, Georgia) and embarks on a mission of anonymous generosity. He purchases 92 unique portrait drawings from a coffee shop and returns them to their subjects, transforming lives through connection and kindness.
Wonder: 52 Conversations to Help Kids Fall in Love With Scripture by Meredith Miller
Parents and caregivers who want to raise kids in the faith often feel ill-equipped, especially when it comes to talking about the Bible. How do they tell the stories in ways their kids can understand? What do they do with the questions (so many questions!) their kids will ask? And how do they make it something their kids actually want to do? Wonder addresses these pain points by combining creative Bible storytelling for kids, fun and engaging conversation prompts for families, and key contextual information for adults.
Instead of simply presenting Bible stories, as a children’s Bible would, this book actually equips grownups to talk about the stories with children. Each story is accompanied by historical, literary, and cultural background to help parents understand the original form, audience, and intention for the story. Meredith frames each story to help grown-ups talk with kids about how the story’s original audience would have understood it, so kids can understand the life-giving story the Bible invites us all into.
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
While now a Netflix Film you may or may not have watched—some say the book is better! This summer option is a heartwarming, bestselling debut about grief, aging, and unexpected companionship. The story centers on Tova Sullivan, a widowed cleaning lady at a local aquarium, who forms an unlikely, life-changing friendship with a remarkably intelligent and observant captive octopus named Marcellus.