Pumpkin Spice & Everything Nice by Katie Cicatelli-Kuc.  Published by Scholastic, Inc in 2024. It’s a young  adult novel.

Hey, don’t knock young adult novels if you haven’t tried them.  From time to time I grow tired of reading heavy things, murderous things, complex and torturous things, and just drop back to read something light.  The heading about the title of this book says “Get ready to fall in love.”  The word fall is just like that, in italics.  So, the emphasis is on this time of year when leaves are turning brown and people are carving jack-o-lanterns and drinking pumpkin spice.

I love pumpkin spice lattes.  Not that I drink them often.  Maybe one a season.

Right now, the other books I am reading, some each day, include–

The  Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert by Rosario Champagne Butterfield which was recommended to those attending our state Baptist convention a week ago here in Madison, Mississippi.  Dr. Shawn Parker said Dr. Butterfield was a tenured professor at Syracuse University, and head of the Women’s Studies.  At the age of 28 she “came out” as a lesbian.  She became virulently anti-Christian.  The book tells how the counsel of a kindly Reformed Presbyterian pastor and his wife made the difference for her.  These days she is married to the pastor of the First Reformed Presbyterian Church in Durham, NC, and has a podcast for Jesus.

It’s a fascinating book, and not long, only 150 pages, but not one you would want to read in one evening. It needs to be savored, as my wife says.  To be read slowly and thought about, laid aside and reflected on, then picked back up for a few more pages.

When I mentioned Rosario Champagne Butterfield on my Facebook page, two friends commented that they had met her, visited with her, and were charmed.

I’ve order extra copies of this book to give to special friends.

Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia.  By Dennis Covington.  1995

When I mentioned recently plans to preach on Sand Mountain, Alabama for the annual meeting of the DeKalb Baptist Association, among the comments from friends was the question whether I had read this book.  I hadn’t, so I ordered it.  And the funny thing…

…is that this week in Christianity Today (November-December 2025 issue), Matt Reynolds has a lengthy article about this book.  Listed as “former senior books editor for Christianity Today,” Reynolds writes what appears to be a regular column under the heading “The Beckoning Nightstand,” which I like.  I don’t have a nightstand as such, but I would be embarrassed for anyone to see the stacks of books on my side of the bed, in several rows. (I went to check just now.  There are probably 30 to 40  books there, covering subjects as diverse as Pride and Prejudice, Truman’s War, Oaky Doaks (comic reprints from the 1930s), several on World War Two, one or two on Churchill, some westerns, and so forth.  Eclectic? You better believe it.

I still have My Beloved by Jan Karon waiting on the kitchen counter to my right.  It’s like having a good friend ready to sit on the back porch with me for an hour or two.  Yes, I recommend it too.