July Reading Report

 Books I'm Reading

Dominon: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, by Tom Holland

Parable of the Sower, by Octavia E. Butler

I'm nearing the end of both of these and would like to finish them this week, making room for some of the other books waiting in the wings.

Books I've (perhaps foolishly) Just Started Reading

Conscientious Objections, by Neil Postman

Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis

Revelation for the Rest of Us, by Scot McKnight

The first of these has been on my shelf for a few years (a pick-up from a Little Free Library). I'm on a mission to read these books that have been waiting for ages to be read, so this one is up next. And of course Postman is always engaging and thought-provoking.

As for Mere Christianity, this will be my third read (at least), but my first in many years. This book and others by Lewis was helpful to me in the years before I came to faith. Now my church men's group has asked me to give a presentation on Lewis next month, so I'm hoping to read this and The Screwtape Letters in the meantime.

And then there's the McKnight book. I'll be taking my time with that one. One chapter every now and then.

Books I Intend to Read as soon as I Get a Chance

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, by George Saunders

Ethics, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The first was a gift. It's an appreciation of some of the great 19th century Russian short stories, so it looks like I will be reading some of those as well. We're talking Turgenev, Gogol, Tolstoy, Chekov.

As for Bonhoeffer's Ethics, well, Christian ethics or Christian moral philosophy is something I've been

wanting to get into. I'm hoping this will be the first of a series on that subject.

A Book I'll Be Reading for the Foreseeable Future

A New Testament Biblical Theology, by G. K. Beale

A little bit before bed each night. It's gonna take me years to finish this beast!

Reading Report

Perhaps this post should be called, "Re-reading Report." Goodreads allows you to mark books as Want To Read, Reading, or Read. I think they should have an option for Re-Reading.

Anyway, I'm re-reading The Lord of the Rings. This is either the 3rd or the 4th time, I think, but it's been a good long while since the last reading. In fact, I think I understand it a little better now. One thing I marvel at is Tolkien's attention to landscape details. There is nothing generic about his descriptions of landscape. In fact, it is vitally important to his narrative. Related to that is the thinginess of his writing. It is relentlessly earthy, concerned with tools, homes, furniture, clothing, etc. Tolkien is nothing if not rooted and grounded.

At the same time, I'm re-reading a well-known book by Tolkien's fellow-Inkling, C. S. Lewis. The book is The Screwtape Letters. Again, for the 3rd or 4th time. The book is a marvel. I consider it extremely useful and will come back to its many lessons in this blog at some point.

I gave up on Suicide of the West, by Jonah Goldberg. I am sympathetic to the argument of the book and definitely learned some things, but it was becoming a bit of a tedious slog. It is no shame to give up on a book. 

And as if I need to be reading something else, I am greatly enjoying An Irish Country Doctor by Peter Taylor. This was a library discovery. Most of the Goodreads reviewers give it a moderately positive review, saying it was "sweet," which seems to be a damning with faint praise kind of word in this context. Others said it was "sweet" and meant they hated it. Me, I'm totally enjoying it. And yes, it is definitely sweet.

Reading Report

Day 7 of my foolhardy attempt to write 20 posts in 20 days.

I'm coming to the end of a couple of books, and also starting a new one. The two I'm almost done with:

• The War that Killed Achilles, by Caroline Alexander. This is a remarkable book. Not something I was planning to read, I noticed it while browsing the shelves at the library, read the first paragraph (just like my mother taught me to do) and decided to bring it home. I've read the Iliad a couple of times, but it's been quite a few years. I'm far from being an expert, but Caroline Alexander seems a really insightful writer. I'm liking this book much more than I expected to, actually.
• The Perfect Pass: American Genius and the Reinvention of Football, by S. C. Gwynne. Although I read a fair amount of sports history, I seldom read books about football. The last one was probably, oh, let me see, a biography of Bart Starr, read when I was about 12 years old and an avid Green Bay Packers fan. Anyway, this is another one of those books I happened upon while browsing the shelves at the library (something everyone should do). Entertaining and interesting, I actually learned a few things, though I've been a football fan for about 5 decades now. A fun read.

Then there's the one I just started:

• And then there's the new one, just begun. I thought I needed a good tense thriller. Back at the library, I happened upon the books of John Lawton. He writes historical thrillers set in the the WWII era. The one I chose to read first is called Second Violin. This is from the Inspector Troy series. I'm maybe 50 pages in and it has absolutely captured me. I need to hurry up and finish those first two so I can devote myself to this one. Can't wait to get back to it!

Reading Report: Cowboy Fiction

So, I've finally delved into cowboy lit. This is a genre I've wanted to investigate for some time, but except for The Ox-Bow Incident and The Big Sky (both really fine novels, btw) I had never read a western novel. I started my investigation by simply wandering the fiction stacks at my local public library. I noticed quite a few authors that seemed to have potential, but settled on Elmer Kelton.

It was a good choice.

I've read three Kelton novels so far: Barbed Wire, Llano River, and Dark Thicket. All of them are simple and direct story-telling, swiftly paced, sometimes humorous, and always thoroughly readable.
And after Googling his name I was not surprised to discover that he's been voted the greatest Western novelist of all time by the Western Writers of America!

Kelton's heroes are strong, laconic, tough, essentially decent, often somewhat worse for the wear after years of hard living, and we find them at a point in their lives when they realize they themselves must change in some way, but they're not sure how that works. Circumstances will bring that necessity to a point of crisis. So far, Llano River is my favorite.

I'm going to keep on with the Kelton, but of course I need to branch out. So I Googled "best western novels" and came up with several lists from which to choose. That's how I happened upon my current cowboy novel, The Hell Bent Kid, by Charles O. Locke. What a page turner! Young man kills another man in self defense. But the victim's brothers are out to get him. They chase him through the desert of south Texas, heading towards Mexico. Ordeal and adventure ensues. Told in the first person by the "hell bent kid" in the form of diary entries, with occasional idiosyncratic spelling ("tarnally" for eternally). This one is hard to put down. [Amazon: The Hell Bent Kid]

Anyway, point is, I'm loving these books. Looks like this will be the summer of cowboy fiction for me. Saddle up and let's ride!

Lists: Best Western Novels from the WWA, from Early Bird Books, and and from author Lee Goldberg