Theology: Paul among the People by Sarah Ruden.

I remember the first time someone told me with a snarl that St. Paul was an exclusionary bigot. I can’t remember how many times I’ve heard that since, because it’s been so many. If you have actually read the New Testament, you’ve realized by now that Paul is a big softie—it’s Jesus you gotta watch out for. But context might help make the case to the terminally suspicious, and Ruden provides it. A scholar and translator (both linguistically and culturally) of the ancient world, she shows how startlingly new and liberative Paul’s message was then, and still is now, unchanged and unadapted. Perhaps we are not as enlightened as we think we are. Warning: you will find out some things about the Romans that will make you rue those cute Playmobil sets collecting dust in the attic. And I’m not just talking about matters of “empire.”

Cookbook: Lucky Peach Presents Power Vegetables! by Peter Meehan.

One of the durable offspring of the late, great, wacky food magazine Lucky Peach. It revels in tacky 70s-ish photography and chats at you as if you were a cool insider in the cutting-edge restaurant scene, too. But chiefly it succeeds in making veggies not just sexy but, indeed, powerhouses of the plate. Favorites: Caponata, Cold Celery Hearts Victor, Buffalo Cucumbers, Torta di Erbe, Tomato Pie, Quiche Lorraine (with shiitakes instead of bacon—trust me, it works), Zucchini Pizza, Braised Daikon with Mustard, Roasted Vegetables with Fish Sauce Vinaigrette, Zuni Spicy Broccoli and Cauliflower, Spanakorizo, Roasted Cabbage, Zucchini Mujadara, Cauliflower Chaat, Kung Pao Celeries, Potato Rosemary Bread, and, believe it or not, Miso Butterscotch.

Novel: Stay and Fight by Madeline Ffitch.

There are lots of reasons I shouldn’t have liked this book: one of the narrators is a child, who narrates nothing like a child would narrate; the plot shoots for an overdramatic climax, a typical case of literary writers stealing from genre authors’ toolboxes without understanding or respecting them; and way, way too many snakes. Yet it’s one of the very few recent novels that I kept thinking about long after I’d finished it and was actually glad I’d read, despite its flaws. Its philosophy is in the title: human life doesn’t get better by isolating or abandoning, no matter how problematic you, they, or we are. Stay and fight. It’s worth it.