Seasonal religious displays
Lots of bookstores have a Christian fiction section. However, in some areas it may be a good idea to have a section devoted to another religion rather than lumping it into the “other” section. Often you’ll see sections devoted to Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, or general “eastern religions”.
If you don’t have enough books to make it a standard section, so you may just want to do a display around the appropriate holiday when interest peaks. Here you can see a seasonal display aimed as unusual group, the Pastafarians:
This display pretty well hits the key points of a seasonal display.
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Food for the celebration - pasta & beer in this case
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History and biographies of notable members of the religion- pirates being the best choice for Pastafarians
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Items related to the religious tenants- thus the books on evolution, the US Constitution, satire, skepticism, and global warming
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A festive decoration- candy and pirates go together
You can use that basic list to set up a similar display to appeal to your local religious community. Make sure to set your display up at least two weeks before the holiday. For Pastafarians, you’ll want thins set up for April 1st and September 19th.
If you really want to go the extra mile, consider setting up a special holiday page featuring your selections. You can see an example of a holiday page.
For more info on Pastafarians, be sure to visit The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
I'm in a cranky, cranky mood today. Not entirely sure why. Cranky cranky cranky.
This post is a little cranky, but I actually wrote it days ago, when I was in a perfectly lovely mood.
Peony by Pearl S. Buck.
This one gets a resounding "meh" for reasons I can't really put my finger on. Quite possibly, maybe only because it wasn't as good as
The Good Earth (which I had to read for school, but it was so good that when I didn't get it finished for class, I went back and finished it when the semester ended).
Also, I used to walk by Pearl Buck's Nanjing house on my way to class. So maybe it's just that it wasn't as good as I was hoping...
Anyway...
Kaifeng is a city in central China known for once having boasted an active Jewish community. (Not converted Han Chinese, but rather ethnic Jews who had sought refuge in China, where they were allowed to worship freely.)
This is a story about a Jewish family in Kaifeng as their community slowly dies into full assimilation into the greater Chinese community. Peony, the title character, is the bondmaid to David, the only child of one of the most observant families in town.
Part of this story deals with the death of the community when there's no one left to take over for the Rabbi. Part of it deals with Peony's forbidden love for David and the inherit cultural differences between the Chinese and Jewish ways of life. (Had Peony been a bondmaid in a Chinese family, she could have easily been taken as a concubine, which is not allowed under Jewish law.)
The bulk of the story deals with the questions of assimilation and staying true to one's roots. The assimilation in Kaifeng kills the community, but keeping apart leads to the massacres of Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. Only briefly does Buck touch on the fact that outside of China, Jewish people were not given the choice between being separate and assimilating. They were kept separate on purpose, which lead to being murdered for being different. That might be my main problem with this book-- that this truth is fairly muddled for most of the narrative.
Also, it tends to be a lot of people just sitting around and talking.
But, I really appreciated the ending, which is not Hollywood perfect, but as happy as you can get with still being true and real to the story and time and place.
