All Booked Up
It’s been a while since I got in on a little meme action. But it seems I done been tagged by Nicole. For those of you who have been following my book list, a few of these answers will come as no surprise.
1. Number of books you have owned:
Well, between the two of us, we’re at somewhere over 600 at the moment. But have owned? That’s an awfully tricky one. I tend to buy more bookcases before getting rid of books. Then again, we donated a few boxes to the Friends of the Berkeley Public Library a year or two ago. And then there were all those books I sold back in college. So, I don’t know… Let’s just call it an even 1,000 give or take a few hundred and move on.
2. Last book(s) I bought:
The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde — Fforde’s ffirst book after his delightful Thursday Next series. I’m having a difficult time getting into this one. It’s still fun and still has all the signs of a Fforde book, but I haven’t yet invested myself into his new set of characters. Maybe that will change by the end. I hope so.
The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann — I have a fairly tall pile of books that I want to read next. But this has been spoken of with such reverence by so many people I’m in the habit of reading that I might need to put it near the top of the pile.
3. Last book I completed:
Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation by Miroslav Volf — I just completed it this weekend, and the final chapter is the most challenging, so I’m still processing it. There is quite a bit in this book that I found compelling, and you should expect Volf to start showing up in future posts. But he also ends with a picture of God that disturbs me for reasons that I’m still thinking through.
4. Five books that mean a lot to me:
This isn’t a complete list. Rather, it’s a quick list of books that I adore. Were I to attempt to summarize why I love each of them, this post would take me a few more hours. So I won’t. And I’m not stopping at five, either. So there.
- The Brothers K by David James Duncan
- A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
- Gilead by Marylinne Robinson
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey
- Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
- Bloom County Babylon: Five Years of Basic Naughtiness by Berkeley Breathed
- Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
- The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor
- and whatever other books make me wake up in the middle of the night and kick myself for forgetting....
4b. What are you currently reading?
The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde — (see above)
The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard — I haven’t picked this up in a while, not because it isn’t excellent, but because I got distracted by other things.
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri — A Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of short stories. I’ve been reading this slowly and savoring each story. It’s lovely.
5. Which 5 bloggers are you passing this onto?
Hmmm… For some reason, I feel weird about tagging people. Some folks just plain don’t seem to go for the memes. Many of the folks I would ordinarily go to have already been tagged, especially since Nicole gave Kevin a head start. Other folks have already done this a while ago, I think.
So if you comment here or if you’re linked on my sidebar and you feel like doing this but haven’t been tagged, have at it.
13 Ripples from “All Booked Up”
Meg says:
August 28, 2005 at 6:08 pm
Oh, oh! Tell me what you think of Exclusion and Embrace. I read it this summer and am still processing it. I read it while I was at Taize, in fact, which has cast the message of the book in an even fuller light in the shadow of Brother Roger’s murder.
I would be interested in the setting of Ubi Caritas if you can e-mail it to me. address: -removed-
(I love your list of books, by the way, I feel the same way about the 1/2 of them that I have read and now I have impetus to try reading the other 1/2)
zalm says:
August 28, 2005 at 8:08 pm
I don’t know what you have on your pile next, Jim, but… oh, wait, I do know what you have on your pile next.
Anyhow, I’m sure those are plenty good and all, but you should really think about clearing off your list for Mrs. Robinson. As a pastor, as a father, and as a man who loves literature, you are going to adore Gilead. I promise you.
Jim says:
August 28, 2005 at 8:08 pm
Oh, and Lahiri’s book is lovely. I mean to get to Gilead… if I had books enough and time… or rather, time enough and books.
zalm says:
August 28, 2005 at 8:08 pm
Hey, Meg! I saw Volf on your list, too. I’m glad you asked about it.
I’m still processing it in part because I only finished it yesterday, but also in part because I started it a few months ago. With the whole seminary thing, you’re probably a little more used to his academic style, but it’s been several years since I’ve read something so referential and so obviously part of a “literature.” So it was a tougher slog than I anticipated.
That said, I found it both challenging and thought provoking. I think. I mean, on one level, the whole book is more or less a detailed discussion of empathy, which isn’t terribly groundbreaking. But on another level, the way he goes about grounding that empathy in the self-donating love of the cross is pretty compelling.
As an intellectual exercise, it’s an interesting book. But thinking about how to live it out is a bit frightening. As Volf states from the beginning, self-donating, non-violent love in a world of violence is beyond scary � it’s downright scandalous. And yet it would be silly to read the gospels and pretend like Jesus calls us to anything less.
In the next few weeks, I’m hoping to use his ideas to continue looking at redemptive conversation and to explore his ideas about justice and reconciliation.
I mentioned that I’m still wrestling with the final chapter. That chapter was actually the primary reason that I decided to read the book. One of our pastors quoted something from the last few pages in a sermon that piqued my interest. And yet now that I’ve read it, I find that I’m struggling with it more than I expected. One the one hand, it makes a lot of sense to me and jives with the largely reformed theology I’ve been around throughout most of my life. Yet on the other hand, I’m really starting to wonder about a picture of God (and particularly Jesus) that could be so violent, particularly when calling us to nonviolence.
But just when I’m starting to object, he writes something like this:
And, in the middle of my objection, I feel like he’s got me pretty much pegged.
I guess I’m still working though my own ideas of eschatology, which is fine. But I can’t talk about the book without confessing that I have a hard time with the image of Christ as the Rider of Revelation.
I’d love to hear some of your thoughts, Meg. Or, on the freakishly unlikely chance that anyone else stumbles upon this who has read the book, feel free to chime in.
Jim says:
August 28, 2005 at 8:08 pm
Thanks for the link, bro. That previous meme was not exactly the same. You and Educat simultaneously tagged me, only I saw hers first. So I answered this one too, what the heck.
zalm says:
August 28, 2005 at 10:08 pm
I think I understand. That was a metaphor, right?
Honestly, I probably would have been just as neurotic about tagging people even if he hadn’t beat me to the punch.
Nicole says:
August 28, 2005 at 10:08 pm
Thanks for playing, Zalm. And Sorry for giving the hubby a head start. Sometimes we have to do those things, politics and all. If I upset my bordering neighbor, life is a lot more difficult than upsetting, say, some country that doesn’t sleep in my bed...
Zossima says:
August 31, 2005 at 9:08 am
Yes, pick up Brueggemann next, by all means. Wonderful book. And there’s a lot of love for Bloom County on my bookshelf.
Shanna says:
August 31, 2005 at 4:08 pm
You inspired me to skip my copy of Gilead to the top of my “To Read” list. I’m only on page 26, and it’s already left me speechless. I’ve said to my husband, after reading her “Housekeeping”, that I had the sense that she writes “like a man”, but I wasn’t sure what I meant by it. Now that I see how much more I connect with her as she channels a male voice versus a female voice, I’m left feeling stronger and vaguer in that opinion.
Anyway, thanks - I needed to be inspired, and she’s really delivering.
zalm says:
August 31, 2005 at 6:08 pm
Yay! Any day I’m able to move Gilead to the top of someone’s reading list is a good day indeed.
You also reminded me that I meant to link this post to my earlier post about Gilead. Don’t worry, I don’t give anything away.
bestman says:
September 1, 2005 at 7:09 am
I forgot to mention to you recently, Zalm, that I finished it on my last flight home...a few hours after recommending it to the friends I was staying with--only to discover that they had already started reading it anyway. Anyway, I have already found myself missing it. Although there are three or four on your list here that I haven’t read/finished, I think I can safely agree that placing it in this company is completely justified.
Everybody, please read this book. If you live in Chicagoland, ytou can borrow our copy.
Shanna says:
September 1, 2005 at 7:09 am
I’m curious if anyone has also read Housekeeping, and what they thought about it in relationship to Gilead. Zalm?
zalm says:
September 1, 2005 at 1:09 pm
I haven’t read Housekeeping yet. I probably will at some point, but the few people I’ve talked to who have read it after Gilead have been impressed but a little disappointed.
I guess that’s not terribly surprising with something as transcendant as Gilead. I feel the same way about every Irving book I’ve read after finishing Owen Meany.
If Kristen’s out there lurking, I know she’s read both.
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