Books and More Books

This is from something called “The Big Read” from the NEA. They came up with a list of their top 100 books, and they estimate that the average adult has only read 6 of these books. I have bolded the one I have read. It adds up to 32 for me. I got this from here. She pointed out that the list is very European centered. I also find some of the list surprising. Anyway, for a guy who reads 40 - 50 books a year, I certainly could add some newer ones (like Michael Chabon and Junot Diaz).

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (not all-yet)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks1
8 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


Note: This reminds me that I have not blogged for a while about my reading. There is a lot to say- now all I have to do is say it.

Another Book Award

Locus magazine's readers' poll was announced on Saturday. At the top as best SF novel,

• The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon.

Amen, and Amen to that. Suspend your belief system that says things have to be reality and you will find reality in surprising ways in this remarkable book.

Also named were

NOVELLA

• "After the Siege", Cory Doctorow

who's blog BoingBoing is always a read and a ride.

and

NOVELETTE

• "The Witch's Headstone", Neil Gaiman,

a transplanted Minnesotan with a remarkable imagination and also a blog that can be quite interesting.

Prose Worth Reading

I have finally finished Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. It was not for lack of interest that I took so long. First, and foremost, is the problem of a book-o-phile like me has- and that is library books. They need to be read and returned. So, since Kavalier and Clay was borrowed from my daughter, the urgency wasn't there.

But there was another reason. I was afraid to finish it. It's presence on my nightstand somehow or another gave me a sense of literary presence. If I finished it, I would have to give it back. Plus I would come to the end of what is truly a Great American Novel. Chabon is nothing short of remarkable in this tour de force of writing. Like I mentioned with Denis Johnson last week, Chabon doesn't let a page go by that doesn't have at least one sentence of wonderful structure and wording. He can master a run-on sentence by making the whole sentence into its own short image.

Johnson has a power in his words that pull you in, carry you along, even sometimes as they drag you through the mud of human existence. But unlike Johnson, Chabon's words and style have a lightness to them that floats you along to the next phrase and into the flow of the story. Yet it is a structure that doesn't get in the way. You don't even notice it. Imagine being in an airplane soaring above a landscape of great beauty and clouds floating by with a reminder that you are in a special place. And you don't even know the plane is there. That's Chabon.

Then there's the story. The plot and the personalities are real, though clearly fiction. But their fiction carries within them the truth of humanity, or at least the slice of humanity that Chabon is interested in. As in his more recent book The Yiddish Policeman's Union even fantastical ideas become carriers of life and messengers of truthful reality.

You think I love Chaon's book? You bet I do!

A Tree of Smoke

It's been a while again since I have talked about some of what I am reading. Currently at the top of the stack is the National Book Award winner, A Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson. In short, which the book is not, the book is about the Vietnam War. Well, not so much about the war as about its inherent insanity. We are introduced to psychological operatives from the CIA, a couple of brothers from Phoenix, a missionary widow, and some Vietnamese whose allegiance we are not quite sure of.

In sections about each year of the war starting with the assassination of JFK we are carried into the whirlpool that defined a decade- and then some. Amazon.com says about the novel

It's crowded with the desperate people, always short of salvation, who are Johnson's specialty, but despite every temptation of the Vietnam dreamscape it is relentlessly sober in its attention to on-the-ground details and the gradations of psychology. Not one of its 614 pages lacks a sentence or an observation that could set you back on your heels.

It is an amazingly written book. The prose flows and, yes, each page has one of those sentences that make you stop in wonder that someone could think that up and make it fit. You get pulled into the whirlpool that is both the book and the war. The insanity of that war and those who played around with it for better or worse is at once intriguing and a stomach-turning wish that it weren't so true.

As I have said more often than not in these posts, truth is sometimes far too important to get lost in facts. This book proves it. It also proves that much of what we know is nothing more than that tree of smoke, a figment of imagination that takes reality and sucks all the life out of it while being nothing. Grief is the emotion of this book and it does it well. So well you are glad to get to the end- and wish it could go on forever.

Perhaps it does.

A Chilling Thought

I have been a fan of sci-fi author Orson Scott Card since he snuck up behind me as I was reading his classic Ender's Game and pulled one of the biggest out-of-the-blue endings that I still am stunned by over 20 years later. I have read all but one of the Ender and Ender's Shadow series of novels as well as many other that Card has written.

One I missed a year or so ago when it came out was Empire. While I can't call it one of Card's best novels, it certainly fits into his overall work. It is set in a near-time future when a civil war is attempted in the United States. There are some stereotypical characterizations of liberals and conservatives and the extremes of both. On the surface it appears to be taking the liberals to task more so than the conservatives. The ending was not as big a surprise as Ender's but it was an interesting one. (No spoiler here.)

Then I realize that Card has done a quite decent job of portraying what happens when a society and culture like ours gets so deeply divided along those political lines. The insanity of extremes is seen on both sides and those in the more rational middle are often caught there in situations beyond their control. It then becomes their job to bring things to a hopeful conclusion. Whether they are able to do that is the unanswered- and perhaps unanswerable- question.

Card then adds an afterword in which he explains some of his fears and concerns about the United States in these divided and divisive times. He is arguing strongly for those in the more moderate middle of both sides to wake up before it is too late and the extremes on both sides succeed at a perhaps even unhealable divide.

That's where this is a chilling book. He makes it all sound so possible even as we argue with its possibilities. But we have lived with this deepening divide in the United States for many years now. The current campaign, especially the Democratic side but to a lesser extent on the Republican, shows how divided we can become and how we can play with and feed those divides. McCain has trouble with the "true believers" on the Right. Clinton and Obama are fighting over issues of race and gender though neither are often mentioned that bluntly.

We have too many divides; too many litmus tests for correct thinking; too many disparate groups wanting their way to be The Way. It is into such a place that we walk with great fear for we may turn to one who seeks to unite us when the truth he that one may only be seeking self-aggrandizement. So far no one like that has shown up and no new civil war seems at hand.

But if we remain this deeply divided, it may not take much.

Literally Living the Laws

A surprisingly good book is The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A. J. Jacobs. When I first heard about Jacobs' attempt to literally follow all the commands of the Bible, I was not impressed. It seemed like a gimmick. Then the book came out and got some decent reviews. Finally someone who is not really connected with any faith said they read it and found it interesting.

So I gave in and read it. First, it is generally categorized as "humor." I'm not sure it deserves that genre. It is funny, and Jacobs' witticisms are good. But it is much deeper than humor. It is a book that truly in its own way is a challenge to literalism in any of its forms, while, at the same time, coming to a positive appreciation of what a degree of literalism can do.

It starts fairly simply, as one would expect, as Jacobs begins to explore the world of faith, his own life has been that of a secular Jew. He seeks out a committee to help him consisting of all types of people with different points of view. He even has a "pastor out to pasture" which I kind of liked identifying with.

But you know that Jacobs is being serious about his quest. He is attempting to be as honest to the texts and laws as he could. Whether it's his former uncle on Israel or snake-handling Christians in the American south, he tries just about anything to find out what this thing called faith is all about.

In many ways the result is kind of like the old AA statement- "Bring the body, the mind will follow." No, he doesn't become a bearded, fringed Hasid at the end of the book. But he has found more about faith - and his own faith - than he would have guessed.

It is a good book. A year of following the Bible literally proves that it's harder than you think. It also proves that literalism is never completely literal. We all choose, we all interpret and guess. But Jacobs proves there's more to faith than following laws- but there's also more to faith than ignoring laws as well.

Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants

I waited several months to get the book, In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan from the local library. I started as # 15 on the hold list for one four copies. It is a huge national bestseller, possibly indicative of our American un-ease (or dis-ease) with our eating habits and choices.

It is a follow-up to a truly remarkable book The Omnivore's Dilemma in which Pollan described in great and mind-rattling detail the different industrial food chains based so much on corn, soy and oil. Now he gives us all a way to look at it differently.

First he takes on what he calls "nutrtionism" or the reductionist approach that has taken food and made it into nutrients that can be separated, added, studied, and quantified. He challenges that approach which has been in control for over 30 years and has given us the food and culture independent way of eating, produced fast food and lots and lots of "food products" with laundry lists of ingredients and promises of greater health. All the while we get let healthy food wise.

Then he gives some directions and ideas summarized in the seven words in the title of this post. In short he says:
Eat food. He then defines real food and tells us to watch out for any food that has more than 3 or 4 ingredients listed or that claims to be "Healthy!"
Not Too Much. We eat portions that are far too large, partly in order to get the nutrients, partly spurred by artificial tastes and smells and end up with far more calories than we need. Stop eating when you are 80% full, slow down, eat with people in community are some of his ideas.
Mostly plants. No, he is not a vegetarian but he does speak of the importance of plant (not seeds alone or meat based) food. He says we do need a wide-variety since after all we are omnivores. But unfortunately the industrial food chain has caused us to eat more food products, even the meat we eat.

This is of course a very short summary. I am old enough to remember when some of what he advocates was the way most of us ate. We don't do that anymore. For those of us who can make those choices, it is important to consider. Unfortunately, since I assume I am not all that different from the average person in this, it will take a huge shift in thinking and much discipline or even some periodic times of being "hungry" as we adapt to a more natural and healthy approach.

For that reason I am encouraged that the book has been such a best seller. It is a national conversation we need to have.

Darwin, Christians, and Hitler

As I was surfing the web the other day I came across an article on Salon.com on novelist James Carroll's book Constantine's Sword and the new documentary made from it. It is a book about anti-Semitism and the Catholic Church's complicity in it for centuries (or even millennia.) The article by Andrew O'Hehir in his "Beyond the Multiplex" column said at one point:

Carroll believes that Christians, and especially his fellow Catholics, must come to grips with the past. They can't claim to be a force of morality and integrity until they face the church's painful history of anti-Jewish libel and persecution -- and face it in what he terms a spirit of "repentant change."

As one who has been a student of this issue for nigh unto 40 years now (and a Christian who was born Jewish and more than painfully aware that in the anti-Semitic world even my daughter, 1/4 Jewish, would be singled out for hatred. That in spite of my 44 years as a Christian and her lifetime as one.)

Then came the next paragraph:

The culmination of Christian anti-Semitism, of course, arrived under the Nazis, ...

That line made me want to break my silence on the recent anti-evolution film with Ben Stein, Expelled. What makes the film controversial, as I understand it, is linking evolution with the Nazis. Without Darwin and evolution the Holocaust would never have happened.

Wrong! Sadly and greatly wrong. It makes it sound like the genocidal mania of the Final Solution is based on some liberal, secular idea. Hitler may have been the ultimate secular, and he was anything but liberal but his whole approach was based on an idea that has been around almost as long as the church.

Anti-Semitism of the same virulent and homicidal approach was around long, long, long before Darwin. It was around long before Newtonian science. Long before Copernicus took the earth (and us) out of the center of the universe. To make such a silly and reductionist claim about evolution is nothing short of bad history and a gret big form of denial.

The article goes on:

Carroll's objects of contemplation are various and his approach is always sober and reflective. He finds the roots of anti-Semitic violence in the Emperor Constantine's sudden conversion to Christianity, which came in a vision as he was crossing a bridge over the Tiber.

Ben Stein couldn't say that without getting into trouble. James Carroll, a Catholic and former seminarian can say it.

I am not getting into any argument about creationism vs evolution. I find it a silly, reductionist waste of good energy. But when the argument seeks to change or worse ignore history it is in danger of losing the war to win the battle. Yes, I know that Hitler would have used anything and anyone to justify what he was doing. But he knew what he was doing when he is reported to have said that he was about the finish what the church had been trying to do for centuries- get rid of the Jews.

And much of the church was found wanting when it came to standing up and saying "No!" After all, the government is for our protection. Those Jews must have been doing something wrong or the government wouldn't have taken them away.

Oh how scary!

I hope that Carroll's documentary gets a far wider showing than it will. Anti-Semitism is one of those powerful core sins of western civilization, just as racism is our American core sin. Anti-Semitism is not dead and gone. It is not based on Darwinian evolution. Yes, the Nazis utilized evolutionary thought to justify what they were going to do. But that isn't what drove them. Historically, for six times the length of time since Darwin, the world that the Nazis built on has been driven by anti-Semitism.

Why I Don't Like the Hummer

I was reading the book, A Whole New Mind the other day. Part of the idea behind it is that in our world today we have moved into more of a synthesis of right- and left-brain thinking. For example, functionality isn't always enough. Design is also part of it.

As I was reading it suddenly dawned on my why I hate Hummers as much as I do. I see one and I almost automatically get angry. I don't get that way with other gas guzzlers like BIG luxury cars or Ford Explorer SUVs. Show me a big luxury car and I might even stop to admire it. Only the Hummer gets me almost livid. It is a visceral reaction. There is one that parks here at my apartment building and I can barely look at the thing.

And the answer was in that simple word, design. I have a hunch that the design says several things that I don't like. One is that it is really a mini-tank. I thought at first that it had to do with being a military vehicle. But then I remembered both the Jeep and the Volkswagen. No one would ever accuse either of those as being in your face military. But an armored vehicle stripped to be a consumer product. That is truly an In-Your-Face attitude.

Which I realized is the second thing about the Hummer's design. It is truly a "Flip-Off-The-World" vehicle. When you look at someone driving one, you see the person as this tiny part of a huge "other" that is saying- by design- I'm the biggest, baddest one on the block. It has that look about it. It's mean and nasty and BIG. There have been cars that are biggest and baddest, but they are nothing, absolutely nothing like a Hummer.

The Mustang or a classic muscle car are different. They have a class about them. They even look fast and powerful sitting still. The Hummer looks BIG. The muscle car says "Let's go for a race, I'll win." The Hummer says, "Stay out of my way. Don't even think about it."

All right, maybe I do have some Hummer envy, although I don't think so. The price of gas and all other things being equal I would take a muscle car, a Mustang, even a Ford F-150 ANY DAY. But not the Hummer. It has designed itself out of my league.

But I see what the book was talking about. Design can be the whole story.

More on The Ashes

I commented the other week on Tim Weiner's amazingly detailed book, Legacy of Ashes which is a history of the CIA. In more ways than we care to admit the CIA has been a bumbling group of wannabe spies who have got more people killed through ineptness and poor planning than any other way.

As I come to near the end of the book, I discover that little changed over the 60 years the Agency has been in existence. They make the same mistakes leading to the Gulf War as they did in other instances, such as Korea. Even when they have been right in their intelligence, though, the politicians in the White House or Congress have often been unwilling to see the truth and make it clear that they want the intelligence to prove their point. Hence when the CIA was saying that perhaps the Soviet Union may not have all the weapons we think they have, the virulent anti-Soviet approach of the politicians said, no, that intelligence is wrong because I believe it's wrong.

But perhaps for me the most telling part of the book is how the politicians in the executive branch went along with all the shady and even downright illegal aspects of it all. Every one, in one way or another gave the clandestine service the go-ahead to do things that are downright embarrassing to us. It doesn't matter whether it was Truman and Korea, Eisenhower and the U2 flights, Kennedy and a plot to overthrow Castro (not including the Bay of Pigs), Bobby Kennedy being THE clandestine supporter in the Kennedy administration, well, on and on it goes.

Jimmy Carter tended to want to raise it to a higher plane and use the CIA to further humanitarian ideals. But he was the same as the others, just for a different cause.

Which brings me to a startling and scary and even anti-American conclusion. Our Presidents and their people are not the liberators on white horses wearing white hats. They all, they all, have their hands covered with blood. They are all humans with clay feet who do things that are less than desirable. Some have done it in more ways than others, the results of some have been more disastrous than others. But no one is innocent, no, not one.

What will happen then with the next election. Well, in spite of hope and experience and age (I think that covers the Three) they will face choices that will lead them, I am convinced, down at least unethical and perhaps illegal paths. Any of them, no, all of them, would, as President, make choices which are seemingly for our best interests but not in the best interests of things like life and world peace.

There are all kinds of different and conflicting conclusions that any of us can draw from this depending on our own political direction and beliefs. But for me as I look at this it has given me a different view. Reading the book I am painfully aware of the human failings of all governments. To expect high ideals at all times is probably naive. But I must continue, as an American, to uphold those. I must recognize that at times the ways of government are not the ways of peace. I must accept, albeit with great sadness and fear, that simply by being a nation among nations we will be making pacts with The Devil.

But under it all can we, as a people continue to try to live the ideas we say we have? Can we make our country the kind of place where these ideals are lived? Can we show that freedom and democracy, even as imperfect as they are, can at least make some small difference? I hope so. I really do.

The Road- Hopeless?

Having said what I have said about hope in the above post, it might seem strange to turn to a book review of a Cormac McCarthy novel. If ever there was an American novelist seemingly infused from start to finish with hopelessness it is McCarthy. And The Road may be the most hopeless of all his books. If he weren't such a great writer no one would be able to take it. But his amazing, peerless prose compels you to turn the page even as you want to close your eyes and dream pastel dreams of hope or bold Technicolor dreams of life.

The Road is a path through a post-apocalyptic world where gray and ash and death are the hallmarks. A nameless man and his son are traveling to an unnamed coast. That's the story. They are in constant fear- and ever-present danger. They see things that no one should ever have to see. They are, we know as we read, in a win-less world. It is a lose-lose-lose world. No one, it appears, will get home safe for there is no home left.

It is a haunting book. Even more haunting than his now famous No Country for Old Men. (That book and movie are still haunting my thoughts. The Coen Brothers movie a perfect capture of the book's power and hopelessness.) But, if it is so hopeless, why does it haunt? Unlike No Country with its narrations and reflections by the sheriff trying to find meaning, The Road depends on the spare narration.

And in that narration we find shards of hope. While the world may have been destroyed by fire, the man and boy talk about carrying "the fire." They never tell us what that is. They both seem to have some intuitive understanding for themselves. But as they travel to water (which kills fire) for safety, they carry the hope in the very thing that destroyed them and the world.

The book becomes a series of bleak miracles that move them to the next one. Until there is only the final miracle left.

In that perhaps, McCarthy is telling us that there is always hope. It may only be in miracles that we can live. Whether they come from some God or gods or who knows what, is beyond the point. When they happen they touch the human heart- and thus is hope born.

Enough to Make One Angry - or Cry

I've been reading A Legacy of Ashes by Timothy Weiner, a history of the CIA. If those in power in 2002-03 had known this much about the CIA, they would have run the other way when they were told that there were WMDs in Iraq. There's an old line that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. The history of the CIA as past behavior would give any intelligent person more than a moment of pausing.

From the word "Go!" the CIA has been fraught with ideological, philosophical, and political in-fighting, preconceptions and a plain old grandiose arrogance. The earliest leaders truly believed their own hype about themselves and what they were doing. They truly and unshakably believed that their way was THE RIGHT WAY and every one else's was worse than wrong- it was bad.

They set up straw enemies to knock down. If they didn't like someone that person became a communist. They believed their own rhetoric and facts? Well, why bother with something so trivial. Their intelligence was based on guesses and ideological biases about what they believed the world just had to be like. They invented information to feed to the President and press and tried hard to make it real.

I would be angry one minute at their style and hubris and just plain old stupidity. Then I would want to cry at how they clearly ruined many people and nations. They caused the deaths of many naive or innocent people. And they did it in my name- in the name of America.

It was not a surprise to me, then, that from time to time little comments were dropped that indicated that these men loved their alcohol. Alcoholism and grandiosity are so intimately related that when you find one you almost always find the other. Now I know that there are people who think that those of us who work with addiction are prone to over-react and find alcoholism under every bush and tree. It can't be that common.

Well, it isn't "common" in the sense that everyone has it. But it is "common" in that where it shows up it has a far greater impact on the world around it than just about anything else. It is powerful and powerfully undermines common sense. Only alcoholics could do what they did and believe it.

Which in the end gave me the deepest sense of fear and relief. Fear that comes from knowing that alcoholics in such places of power can literally blow us out of the sky and believe they were saving us. Fear that they may still be there in some new incarnation doing the same things that the CIA has been doing for so long.

And then the relief that they didn't do worse and that in spite of their best efforts, we survived. Some higher power was certainly protecting our world. It is the only possible answer.

Read this book with fear and trepidation but read it to see how lucky, how very lucky we truly are to still be here.

Some Books

Yes, I am still reading, so I thought I should catch up on talking about a couple of them...

• The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin.

I have always been intrigued by law and legal stories and legal decisions. I was a government major in college and my favorite Gov. course was Constitutional Law. (My Strong's Interest Inventory always showed me on the same interest level as lawyers, musicians, pastors, and writers/journalists.) This insightful book by Jeffrey Toobin is a Supreme Court voyeur's delight. Its coverage of the Court over the past 20 years is rich with detail and tidbits of gossip. It argues, with much merit, that even though she wasn't Chief Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor was the leading justice in many ways and the court deserves to be called "The O'Connor Court."

Abortion plays a major role in the book as part of the conservative revolution that the court has struggled with. But perhaps the saddest is the review of Bush v. Gore that decided the 2000 presidential election. Throughout the book the views of the different justices and the workings of the court make for enjoyable reading- even if it gets one angry at the closed views that so often get more calcified as time moves on.

• Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Chabon is a unique author and storyteller. He has gone from comic book writers in WW II to a parallel universe in Alaska as a Jewish nation to the 10th-century nation of Khazaria. It is not a heavy story, or even all that long. Yet it is a swashbuckling adventure yarn that pulls you along into a fantastic adventure. Chabon shows his chops as a storyteller in this book and that great writers can write in many formats and make it interesting. No, it is not his "Next Great Book" but it is just plain fun.

• Now and Forever by Ray Bradbury

Sci-fi author and American treasure Bradbury puts two novellas together. The first Somewhere a Band is Playing finds a place where life is forever while saving the best of the world. The second, Leviathan '99 pays homage to Melville as the Great White Whale becomes a Great White Comet chased through space. Again, fun and interesting work. The first makes you ponder mortality; the second leads you into a space-age Ishmael and the fact that perhaps we will always have someone chasing a Great Something or Other. It may be in the genes. As always Bradbury takes us to new places in his own special way.

Brief Notes on a Couple Books

I am working my way through two books right now. One is a Pulitzer Prize winner from a few years ago. The other is a highly acclaimed novel from last year. Both are magnificent and filled with language and character and story.

One is the earlier book by Michael Chabon that won him the Pulitzer Prize- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Chabon's use of language, his ability to string words together into powerful, emotion-filled, yet accessible sentences and paragraphs is remarkable. You get absorbed in the story-telling and the lives unfolding before you. What an amazing author.

The other book I am in the midst of is the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. Diaz is no less remarkable and adept than Chabon. But his language is the language of the Latino culture connected with the Dominican Republic. It is a rich tapestry of English, Spanglish, and Spanish that pulls you in and along. You can hear and feel the characters rich and colorful lives. You know you are in the presence of a great writer.

One of the problems, by the way, with libraries is that they are often so, so good at providing the addicted reader with more possibilities than there are hours. Then when one borrows books from ones daughter or buys more than he can ever read in one month- well, you end up jumping from one to another as the library reserve comes in.

What a wonderful problem.

Here If You Need Me

Well, I got back into reading with this truly remarkable book that is packaged as a memoir of a widow who becomes a warden service chaplain in Maine. It is a book that sneaks up on you. It starts out as charming- or at least a charming style. But coming in the back door is the power of life and death and their intimate, unbreakable connection. Every time you think you have the book in hand it takes a different turn with a different insight into something you had not quite thought of before.

Kate Braestrup is the widow of a Maine State Patrol officer killed in an auto accident. Her loving care for him is the beginning of the skillful weaving of death and life and love and loss into a tapestry of wonder and awe. She is a pastor ordained by the Unitarian Universalist Church and serves the Maine Warden Service. That means she is often there for searches for lost hikers or campers or children. That means she gives a caring presence when such a presence is needed by survivors, relatives, or other wardens.

But always in the background is the reality that we all face day in and day out- death and loss and how we find meaning in life that we know ends in death. As such it is disarmingly readable. But you will be made uncomfortable by her bluntness and, if you are like me, pleasantly surprised and relieved that she doesn't take a lot of easy ways out. She just faces it and moves through it as best she- or any of us- ever can.

Chaplaincy like this is a different form of ministry than the local church.

Or is it?

That tension may be at the heart of some of the difficulties the post-modern church is facing. Local churches, especially longer-established and traditional-style churches, are in fact places where ministry is seen as chaplaincy. There's nothing wrong with that. It is an essential part of ministry. How it competes and challenges and is challenged by an evangelical or missional perspective is part of the issue that will probably never be solved to anyone's complete satisfaction.

This book, by taking it out of the parish setting, allows ministry of this type to be observed in its richness, ambiguity, and hope. In the end, even when death seems to have been the winner, well, we all know better than that.

Or if we don't, this book will help you find it.

A Slow-down in Reading

Of all the things that have gone along with the recent move and job change the one that has surprised me is my reading. Or rather my lack of it. As a quick glance at the right sidebar would tell you I love to read. I read and read and read. I grew up reading cereal boxes, dictionaries, magazines, and the encyclopedia. I wander through libraries seeing more books than there are days left to read. An hour in a bookstore is almost as bad as an hour in a bar for a recovering alcoholic.

But when the brain and thought processes get ovewhelmed something has to give. One of the first, oddly enough, is reading. I can't make my brain keep moving when it has been processing so much other information. A magazine- that's not bad. The articles are short and you don't have to concentrate too hard unless it's a professional journal. My significant shift in the sleep cycle has also had an impact. I used to be able to read for about an hour before falling asleep. I could get up at 9:00 and have had good sleep. Now I'm up at six. And exhausted at 10:00 pm.

So the reading has slipped- big time. I am enjoying the hours off- evenings are great. But I am grieving the loss of reading time. I have been through this before of course. ADD gets worse when you are going through such changes- and it usually works itself through. I have a bunch of books on the runway and am looking forward to them. So, even though I have not had the book reviews and responses recently, I promise they will be back. Reading is still the greatest.

Checking In On Books

I haven't checked in on a couple of the books I have been reading. So here's some thoughts to check-in with.

First, the book, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature by Stephen Pinker. I never knew there was so much about linguistics and psychology! I never realized how certain words can be used in certain ways an not in others based on things like subject and object and direction of action. We don't learn those things in school. We learn them by simply learning the language when we are young. That's how we can know when a word is right or wrong without knowing why- or even thinking about it. Pinker does some amazing things- many of which went right over my head, but I got the gist of it. Our language tells us a great deal about who we are. Not a surprising insight, but one I have never explored before.

Then there's former chairman of the Federal Bank Alan Greenspan's memoir, The Age of Turbulence. There are many things that most of us never think about, even when we hear of interest rates, inflation, recession, etc. Greenspan has spent his entire career thinking about those things and he takes the time to talk about it in this book. What is most interesting is to look back at some of the events of the past 50 years and see how economics and economic policy impacted them. From a brief view of Richard Nixon, through a very positive portrait of Gerald Ford and on into the current administration, we see the world from a fiscal conservative's point of view.

I have to admit that I was surprised by many of his insights. His balanced positions, his own personal reflections, his insider's point of view would catch me off-guard and give me "Aha!" moments. It is easy to forget the "good old days" when ideological positions were not part of party platforms and when people could talk across party lines. While that may have been the exception in American history and politics rather than the rule, it was nice while it lasted.

In any case, with Mr. Greenspan we were, I feel, very fortunate to have had someone of his caliber and integrity doing what he did for so long as Fed chair. It is a very worthwhile read.

The Year Before

I just finished reading 1491 by Charles Mann. It is remarkable summary of the history and controversies that continue to swirl around an understanding of what the Americas looked like in 1491. Today is, of course, the traditional date of Columbus Day so I thought I would at least mention this book.

What is most amazing is the depth that Mann develops as he looks at the innumerable discoveries that have been made over the last 40 years in archeology and palaeontology in relation to pre-Columbian America. Much of what I would have learned when younger has been seriously called into question. For example, it appears that homo sapiens was here in the Western Hemisphere long before we thought. It it is also not a matter of scientific orthodoxy that the Bering Sea land bridge was even used or played any role whatsoever in the migration of early Indians to the Americas.

Even more incredible is the growing belief that the native populations, long before Columbus- and at times even ahead of similar advancements in Europe, were landscaping, even terraforming the land to make it more hospitable. It has called into question, for example, the idea that the land was "pristine" or virgin in much of America when Columbus arrived. What it was, however, was a carefully developed habitat that was in most instances cultivated and managed with both respect and awareness of impact.

Mann talks about the controversies that have been part of this whole process and the issues such as the epidemics that wiped out far more people than had been thought- simply because there may have been far more people here than had been thought. He does a very good job of laying all this out. He makes a strong case that this "New World" may have been that in name only. Things were happening here even ahead of European or Asian development.

A wonderful book and one that gives us a lot more to discuss and develop in our own continent and hemisphere's history.

Catching Up On Some Books

I have been reading, as the list on the right continues to grow. Here are some thoughts on the books I have recently completed:

Gilead is an award-winning novel (2005 Pulitzer and National Critics Circle) that is in the form of a series of letters from an aging minister to his young son. It takes place in the early 1950s which allows the Civil War to be but a couple generations past. Marilynne Robinson uses a voice that reflects the ages back in the day when preacher's and their lives were lived like that. It was hard at first to believe it was only from the mid-20th Century. It seemed older than that. But the central character, John Ames, was 76. It really was a world on the edge of a major change- but it hadn't happened yet. The book tends to plod at times, but the insights are interesting and keep you moving forward. It is spiritual in a deeply personal sense, never dazzling, often quite banal. But that is where the spiritual may most be at work in most of our lives.

Losing Moses On the Freeway is Chris Hedges ponderings on the Ten Commandments and what they may mean in our contemporary world. I am discovering that Hedges is a remarkable essayist. He has an ability to put things into words that shatter and slice and open up new paths in our daily lives. No one gets away easy. He makes you think! The first chapter about his time in an inner city church while attending Harvard Divinity School is worth the price of admission. Liberals and conservatives, pro-war or anti-war, Christian or atheist- you will find something to resonate with- and to vehemently argue with. As he deals with each of the commandments in order it is a reminder that they were - and could be - the most impossible to meet commandments possible. Yet it is in the attempt that we learn more about who we are and who God is.

The Canon bu Natalie Angier is subtitled "A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science." It is a that and more. Angier has a way of playing with words that while sometimes forced and silly allows her to deal with the very basics of each of the branches of science in ways that are interesting and intriguing. Creationists and Intelligent Designers won't like it- which is fine by me. What I found in her writing was a deep and profound appreciation for the scientific process, scientific inquiry, and the ever changing, ever developing ways science makes our mysterious world easier to understand- and an even greater mystery of awe and beauty.

In Memory: Robert Jordan

The "Wheel of Time" has stopped for author Robert Jordan. He wrote the extremely popular fantasy series The Wheel of Time, now at 11 books. He was working on # 12 at the time of his death. While the books get tedious if you read them one after the other, they are one of the most remarkable and well-constructed fantasy world series around. He was 58. I guess in the end no Aes Sedai or Dragons Reborn can truly stop the wheel from turning.