Soulfood

Since the last update I have finished 16 more books, including 4 audiobooks, and 10 of them were first time reads for me. My total for the year is now up to 39, so the pace is good! I’ve got several more in queue that will be finished by the end of July and some exciting reads coming up. I finished the library’s summer reading challenge in less than 2 weeks.

I read Lemony Snicket’s The Wide Window out loud to my youngest daughter (a first time read for me), and John D. Fitzgerald’s Me and My Little Brain (from one of my favorite book series’ from childhood) to my youngest two children. In a combination of audiobooks and print editions I read, all for the first time, C.S. Lewis’s Reflections on the Psalms, Till We Have Faces, and Letters to Malcom (Chiefly on Prayer). I had previously read a book called Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemenly Warfare by Giles Milton but after the highly entertaining Guy Richie movie came out, I also picked up Damien Lewis’s book The Ministry of Ungentlemenly Warfare. I also listened to the Andy Serkis-narrated edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Return of the King, which was magnificent! And in the category of books I read because I know the author, I read Empowered Witness by Dr. Alan Strange, a history of the doctrine of the spirituality of the church as it played out in the internecine conflicts of the northern and southern branches of the U.S. Presbyterian church in the years leading up to and during the Civil War.

Way too late, I finally read two missionary classics for the first time: Don Richardson’s Peace Child and Bruce Olson’s Bruchko. In men’s group, we re-read Mitch Stokes’ apologetic work How to Be a(n) (A)theist. And on a whim, when I couldn’t sleep, I picked up Ursula K. LeGuin’s A Wizard of Earthsea and then followed that up with The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore. I plan to read the rest of the cycle (all of which will be new to me, unlike the first three) by the end of the summer. And as part of the library’s summer reading challenge I read an Agatha Christie book I have never read before, Mrs. McGinty’s Dead, because I needed to read a book with a name in the title. It was a fun read, only took one night to finish.

I want to write a bit about the last two books I finished since the last update. First, I’ll take the silly one. While I was waiting for another book to deliver in my Libby app, I saw an advertisement for a book called Soul Boom written by the actor Rainn Wilson. I figured, why not? It met my expectations, which is not a good thing. It was packed full of platitudes and feel-goodisms based on the falsehood that people are basically good, and consisted mainly of urging us to be the good people we are and love each other (because it’s good for us, because science?) and if we could all just do that and be like Rainn Wilson (who is a B’Hai adherent), we could achieve world peace in a Star Trek-like utopia. No really, he literally holds forth Star Trek’s universe as the great hope for humanity’s future. The logical and philosophical contradictions in here are too numerous to list in this space. He frequently mocks other folks for sticking with the faith they were raised in, but apparently he gets a pass because he spent some time in rebellion against the B’Hai teachings he grew up with but then later returned to – after, according to him, thoroughly exploring all the world’s great religions. Go Rainn, you’re such a hero!!! It was entertaining, but predictably bad. Be Spiritual! However you want to, as long as you adhere generally to my belief system – if you just be like me, we can all get along and we will all be happy and be able to create the kingdom of heaven on earth! No joke, that is the bottom line of this book. It’s awful. But entertaining, if you don’t take it seriously. I’m looking forward to Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization, which was the audiobook I was waiting on.

Lastly, the best fiction work I finished last quarter was Michael D. O’Brien’s The Island of the World. It is the fictitious (but nonetheless true) story of a Croatian boy who lived through the political upheavals of World War II, the communist takeover and formation of a political nation called Yugoslavia, his internment in a work camp and escape, the numerous personal tragedies he endured, and the interactions of hope, despair, and ultimately a faith that carried him through life with a spirit that was crushed but never broken. I cried a lot while reading it. I highly recommend it to you all!

Currently I’m reading David Covington’s A Redemptive Theology of Art, Andrew Roberts’ The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of King George III, D.A. Carson’s Praying with Paul (with men’s group at church), and listening to the audio edition of Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization.