For your reading pleasure during this General Conference weekend.

What better place to begin than Elder Christofferson’s September 24th devotional address at BYU I, titled “The Prophet Joseph Smith” (transcript here). Christofferson spoke about the work done on the Joseph Smith Papers Projects, as well as advocating for a more complete (but always Spirit-led) understanding of Joseph Smith himself. For a summary of the talk, see the Maxwell Institute’s blog (the post is aptly titled, ” A little learning is a dangerous thing,” … so get a lot of it instead”).

At an October 2 talk at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business, Mitt Romney spoke critically of the government shutdown, but also made it very clear that he would not run for president a third time. As reported by Deseret News:

“I’ve had two bites at the apple. Three strikes and you’re out,” he said. … “Running for president and losing still was one of the greatest experiences of my life,” he said. “Winning or losing is not how you define success. It is what you give your life to.”

Speaking of the University of Utah, this semester, students have the opportunity to take a special kind of Book of Mormon class. The class, which deals with the Book of Mormon as a literary product, is taught by David Bokovoy, an associate instructor with a PhD in Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East from Brandeis University.  According to the Salt Lake Tribune, “The course, sponsored by the donation-funded Tanner Humanities Center and taught by David Bokovoy, examines how the book mimics the Bible in language and tone, and how the story fits as a piece of 19th-century American literature.”

For anyone looking to learn more about the Ordain Women movement, Dialogue Magazine is offering a  virtual round table, featuring Emily W. Jensen, Chelsea Shields Strayer, Lisa Butterworth, Neylan McBaine, and Saren Eyre Loosli. Check it out here.

The Atlantic takes on mythologies surrounding the female reproduction system, including an LDS instructional manual titled, Living, Loving, and Marrying in their analysis. The manual referred to menstruation as “the weeping of a disappointed womb”–medically inaccurate, perhaps, but fully reflective of its time.

Lastly, the Bunyion offers readers a solution to the government shutdown: let the LDS Church run the country. No word on Obama’s response, as yet.