Book Meme 5/2007

Well, it's a coincidence that I built a new bookcase yesterday, and started reshelving my collection, and I read Kasia's book meme over at Clam Rampant. So, here we go:

Three works of non-fiction everyone should read:

1- The Imitation of Christ, by Tomas à Kempis, is more a guide to monastic living and discipline. But, it is full of exhortations to holiness and temperance that are applicable, and perhaps necessary, to maintain a Christ-centered perspective amid this materialist society we live in.

2- In My Own Words, by Mother Teresa, is a great study in charity and love of Christ through love of the poor. Her gentle reminders are, at times, a scourge to the modern, complacent christian conscience. Do we see Christ in the poor? What have we done for Him today?

3- Kasia had listed, as many others would, Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. I would agree, it's a great book. I would also add The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer as another excellent resource. Be wary of cheap grace.

Three works of fiction everyone should read:

1- The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein are the iconic tomes of fantasy writing, and touch on all the classic themes of love, sacrifice, courage, and hope. The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis, are also great, and also listed by Kasia.

2- Brother Elijah, by Michael O'Brien, is an apocalyptic novel which, unlike Jack Chick tracts, doesn't paint the Pope to be the Antichrist. Fancy that, a non-fundamentalist version of the apocalypse.

3- A Brave New World by Aldus Huxley is a novel about a future utopia/dystopia. The citizens, pacified by mindless leisure, free sex and intoxication substances, tolerate totalitarian control and a rigid caste system. It's scary how the scenario is plausible, given our current lust for recreation and self-centered entertainment.

Three authors everyone should read:

1- Like the throngs of others, I'd say C.S. Lewis, for all the obvious and much rehashed reasons. He's got a great insight into living christianity.

2- Thomas Merton, but with a couple caveats. His earlier writings are full of inspiring observations and solid christian meditations. Later in his life, he persued and wrote much about his fascination with Buddhist meditation. These later writings were the springboard for many syncretist experiments by liberal catholics, trying to combine Buddhism and Catholicism. As the goals are diametrically opposed, many of these catholics ended up being more Buddhist than Catholic.

3- Many would list G. K. Chesterton, but I haven't read enough of his work to read give him any enthusiastic endorsement. I'd have to say Pope John Paul II.

Three books no one should read:

1- Altas Shrugged, Ayn Rand's epic Objectivist tirade, will do more to ruin one's sense of charity more than anything else. While I share her distaste for socialism, the alternative she posits it equally evil.

2- Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard. "Why believe in someone else (God, Jesus) when you can believe in youself?!" No thanks.

3- Beyond Good and Evil Freidrich Nietzsche.


I'd also like to recommend a couple children's books that anyone would find fun and amusing. Backbeard and the Birthday Suit by Matt McElligott and Grumblebunny by Bob Hartman and David H. Clark. Check them out at your local public library. Cheers.

And now for something completely different..

In a recent expedition to the public library, my children have brought forth a gem. Of sorts.



Meet Backbeard the Pirate. That's right, Backbeard. It's a funny story and a welcome reprieve from the news of the day.

Backbeard was so hairy, it was sometimes tough to tell if there was a pirate underneath.
Backbeard was also the toughest, loudest, most unsanitary pirate ever. This made it hard for him to keep a parrot. Most quit after the first few days.

Written by Matthew McElligott, and illustrated by same, Backbeard and the Birthday Suit will hopefully be followed by others.

Book meme

Got tagged by da Digital Hairshirt, so here's my predilections in bindery:

1. One book that changed your life: Ironically, as Digi also picked, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read it in 10th grade, as a young republican, and it was like throwing napalm on a fire. Of course, I ended up a white supremacist as well, go figure. It colored my thinking for a decade before I snapped out of it. Looking back on it, it's so much an outgrowth of the 'Will to Power' philosophy, and definitely not something to be enbraced by a brother of Christ. Though, I still think of socialists as slimy deviants.

2. One book that you have read more than once: I like reruns, but I like to read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, once a year, around the holidays.

3. One book you'd want on a desert island: Like most anyone else, I'd want a Bible, preferrably the RSV, with laminated pages (for preservation, the elements can really eat guilded leaf pages).

4. One book that made you laugh: An Idiot for All Seasons, by David Feherty. Golf commentator extrordinaire, Feherty is just too dang funny.

5. One book that made you cry: Mother Teresa: In My Own Words, a compilation of Bl. Teresa of Calcutta's remarks on various topics. That woman's words should be a scourge to the conscience of Western Christianity.

6. One book you wish would have been written: "Really, I mean it." by Yeshua Ben Elohim

7. One book you wish had never been written: The Q'uran, enough said, lest the book's adherants find me and kill me.

8. One book you are currently reading: The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers, a compilation of shorter writings about the desert fathers .

9. One book you have been meaning to read: Summa Theologica, by St. Thomas Aquinas. Like I'll EVER have time to do that..

10. Tag some others: DAD29, Name Hidden, unless you've already done it.

DVC's Protestant underpinnings

A great post over at the Fifth Column, "Pagan Flesh, Protestant Bones" aptly describes the protestant, rather than gnostic, roots of Brown's theological porn.

Scourging

A small-framed woman,
humbles the mighty with her love
of Jesus, of the poor.
He words scourge my conscience,
tearing into my complacency,
revealing flesh calloused by self-interest.
Her rebuke burns me
everywhere I look,
as if I'd been staring at
a lightbulb filament.


This is a brief reflection after reading "Mother Teresa, In My Own Words" while in Las Vegas.