Soulfood

It’s time for a reading update! I’ve been making good use of the Libby app to fill my commute with audiobooks (when I’m not listening to The Theology Pugcast or the Mars Hill Audio Journal) so that pads my totals for the year. Including audiobooks, I’ve finished 21 books so far in 2024, with 11 of those being entirely new reads for me.

In the category of fantasy/fiction, I’m re-reading Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive books 1-4 in preparation for book 5 which is due to be released 224 days from tomorrow, not that anyone is counting. I finished The Way of Kings in December and re-read The Words of Radiance and Oathbringer in Jan-Feb. I’ll plan to pick up The Rhythm of War in late fall so its events are fresh in my mind when Knights of Wind and Truth comes out in December. I also read the final book of the Skyward series, Defiant, and found it perfectly adequate as an adventure but entirely unsatisfactory as a morality tale. I’ve become a bit curmudgeonly about stories in which the hero glorifies non-procreative romance. Especially YA fiction, where does everyone think the heroic children come from? Not from folks who chase glory and save the world. The next generation always comes from people who sacrifice their own glory, build homes (not to be confused with houses), and stay faithfully married while using their sexuality to procreate. There’s no point in saving the world (or universe) for people who are living now. They will all be dead in the blink of an eye anyways. Get married, stay married, have children. That’s saving the world. /rant.

I also re-read Warbreaker, and listened to Elantris, as it is clear that events and characters from those stories are becoming ever more important to the denouement of this first Stormlight Archive cycle. I re-read Dawnshard and am working my way through Arcanum Unbounded as well.

Included in my fiction reading/listening so far are the Andy Serkis narrations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers; John D. Fitzgerald’s More Adventures of the Great Brain; The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare; and Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky;

At the Fire and Ice Festival in Goshen on Jan. 5th I was browsing Fables bookstore and came across a book called In an Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh. It attempts to trace the life of a slave of a Jewish trader in the 12th century AD, in parallel with the author’s own experiences in Egypt. It is a fascinating story about Egyptian culture and it introduced me to the the valuable historical documents known as geniza. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in this sort of history! Other history-focused books (non-fiction) I read include Dallas 1963 and Mrs. Paine’s Garage, both about the Kennedy assassination, both of which were loaned to me by the inimitable, incorrigible, and inestimable Robert K. Taylor, one of my most excellent friends.

I have read several excellent non-fiction books so far as well, including Michael Reeves’ Rejoice and Tremble; Tish Harrison Warren’s The Liturgy of the Ordinary; The Abolition of Man, and The Weight of Glory and Other Essays by C.S. Lewis; Inexpressible by Michael Card (a reflection on the meaning(s) of the Hebrew word chesed); a reflection on what it means to live a life well-lived called Perfect Life, Perfect Death written by my friend Rich Starshak; and Sinclair Ferguson’s excellent work on Christ’s teachings on Maundy Thursday as recorded in John 13-17, Lessons from the Upper Room.

I’ve got loads of other books in progress or on tap, so hopefully I can keep on pace to finish a book per week for 2024 as is my typical goal, with 50% of those being new reads for me.