I realized today that I had had a book on my currently reading list for just over a year. And so I gave up on four books in my Goodreads list. I may come back and pick some of these up again later, but I am not going to finished them now. So I thought I would leave a few notes about them here. I picked up all of these on sale, but none of them are currently on sale.
Fragile Things: Short Fiction and Wonders by Neil Gaiman – I love Neil Gaiman. I am not particularly a fan of short stories. There were a few here that were really good. But a lot of them that were really depressing and about unlikable characters. I made it about 65% through the book before I realized I didn’t want to listen to the book any more.
Reading the Christian Classics: A Guide for Evangelicals – I picked this up because I thought it was a guide to reading Christian Classics. In other words I thought it would be guiding the reader through some of the Christian classics. Instead it is a collection of essays about how to read Christian Classics. There was much more skepticism about the Christian Classics because of their pre-reformation (Catholic) theology than I was really comfortable. Clearly we need to read the classics with an eye to their own context. However, I think the level of theological skepticism in the book seemed to excessive since our faith has passed through them to us.
The Courage to Be by Paul Tillich – a friend is a huge Tillich fan. And I do not think I have read any actual whole books by Tillich. So I picked this up as an introduction to him. I will probably come back to it. But it didn’t engage me. I started it on audiobook. I will probably try again in print.
Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book by Walker Percy – I really liked Love in the Ruins and The Second Coming. But I gave up on Moviegoer and now Lost in the Cosmos. Lost in the Cosmos is written as a satirical self help book. I don’t particularly like self help books. I can see the satire, but what I don’t like is the actual form and structure of self help books. And this has all of what I don’t like about self help books.
I should also probably give up on Rowan Williams’ On Augustine. This is a fairly dense book of essays about Augustine. I was expecting more biographical content. I am not sure my background on Augustine is really sufficient to get this. I need to read another good biography of Augustine before coming back to re-start this. If anyone has a favorite Augustine biography let me know.