What I Have Been Reading
I have been on a reading binge the last couple of weeks. I think it may have started when I received The Last Town on Earth as a birthday gift from my son. That novel is a gripping, suspenseful tale set in a small timber mill town in the Pacific Northwest during the great influenza epidemic of the last century. The residents of the town, in an effort to save themselves from the rampant and deadly epidemic, decided to allow no outsider to enter their town until the epidemic had spent itself.
As I read the novel, I watched people try to save themselves by sacrificing contact with other communities while fighting against the push of individual desires and the pull of the common good. The conflicts between good and evil, courage and fear, reason and emotion, and opposing loyalties had me sighing and saying to myself, “Yes, that’s the way it is.” Like good fiction generally does, this book held a mirror before me and asked me how far would I go to protect me and mine. A great read! I recommend it.
The life all around me by Ellen Foster, is a another book by popular author, Kaye Gibbons. I had read an earlier Ellen Foster book so thought a sequel might be as entertaining as the first. Wrong! I finally quit reading at the half-way mark. The writing style is too confusing and requires more concentration than I can muster.
Next, my daughter gave me Larry Crabb’s Shattered Dreams to read. The title was real and alive to me because I have been with a lot of people when their dreams had been shattered. Thinking I knew something about shattered dreams ‑ not so much my own, but of others ‑ what new perspective might I gain from this book?
Like the author, I have watched and waited for God to make an appearance in human suffering, especially the kind of suffering that comes with shattered dreams.
A bright young man had a promise-filled future until he slipped into the chasm of mental illness. A high school graduate, headed for college collided with a drunk driver and immediately became a human vegetable. The seven-year-itch redefined “family” for two small children. Hearing the doctor say, “It’s cancer.” Getting a pink-slip at age 50. Infertility. Bankruptcy. Each of these circumstances authored a story of shattered dreams.
“Why didn’t God do something in those situations to rescue the sufferers? He could have done something, but he didn’t.” These two questions asked by the author hooked me and pulled me deeper into his book. Thinking I might find a new version of the old bromide, “Some things are not meant to be understood,” I was pleasantly – no, profoundly – surprised by what I read.
Closing the book after reading the last chapter, I realized that I had just read a book that earned a spot on my List of Books That Influenced My Thinking and Life. As an old Quaker once said, “It spoke to my condition.” So it did.
Right now I am reading a biography, The Most Famous Man in America. A man of the Civil War Era, but not a political or military figure. Of all things, a preacher – Henry Ward Beecher. Brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and son of the Rev. Lyman Beecher, a key figure in the Second Great Awakening that was marked by revival meetings that sought renewal of salvation experiences and gave birth to the social movements of abolition, temperance, and women’s rights.
Henry was a prankster as a child, not very good in school, and eventually a rebel against his father’s hyper-Calvinism. A model worthy of imitation? I haven’t finished the book yet, but maybe.
More likely, a help to me as I write some stories about a fictional Rev. McMasters.
As I read the novel, I watched people try to save themselves by sacrificing contact with other communities while fighting against the push of individual desires and the pull of the common good. The conflicts between good and evil, courage and fear, reason and emotion, and opposing loyalties had me sighing and saying to myself, “Yes, that’s the way it is.” Like good fiction generally does, this book held a mirror before me and asked me how far would I go to protect me and mine. A great read! I recommend it.
The life all around me by Ellen Foster, is a another book by popular author, Kaye Gibbons. I had read an earlier Ellen Foster book so thought a sequel might be as entertaining as the first. Wrong! I finally quit reading at the half-way mark. The writing style is too confusing and requires more concentration than I can muster.
Next, my daughter gave me Larry Crabb’s Shattered Dreams to read. The title was real and alive to me because I have been with a lot of people when their dreams had been shattered. Thinking I knew something about shattered dreams ‑ not so much my own, but of others ‑ what new perspective might I gain from this book?
Like the author, I have watched and waited for God to make an appearance in human suffering, especially the kind of suffering that comes with shattered dreams.
A bright young man had a promise-filled future until he slipped into the chasm of mental illness. A high school graduate, headed for college collided with a drunk driver and immediately became a human vegetable. The seven-year-itch redefined “family” for two small children. Hearing the doctor say, “It’s cancer.” Getting a pink-slip at age 50. Infertility. Bankruptcy. Each of these circumstances authored a story of shattered dreams.
“Why didn’t God do something in those situations to rescue the sufferers? He could have done something, but he didn’t.” These two questions asked by the author hooked me and pulled me deeper into his book. Thinking I might find a new version of the old bromide, “Some things are not meant to be understood,” I was pleasantly – no, profoundly – surprised by what I read.
Closing the book after reading the last chapter, I realized that I had just read a book that earned a spot on my List of Books That Influenced My Thinking and Life. As an old Quaker once said, “It spoke to my condition.” So it did.
Right now I am reading a biography, The Most Famous Man in America. A man of the Civil War Era, but not a political or military figure. Of all things, a preacher – Henry Ward Beecher. Brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and son of the Rev. Lyman Beecher, a key figure in the Second Great Awakening that was marked by revival meetings that sought renewal of salvation experiences and gave birth to the social movements of abolition, temperance, and women’s rights.
Henry was a prankster as a child, not very good in school, and eventually a rebel against his father’s hyper-Calvinism. A model worthy of imitation? I haven’t finished the book yet, but maybe.
More likely, a help to me as I write some stories about a fictional Rev. McMasters.
posted by John | 11:45 AM
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