Glittering Images (Church of England Series #1) by Susan Howatch (Second Reading)

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Takeaway: One of the best examples of how fiction is important to give form to important ideas.

Almost exactly two years ago, while on vacation I first read Susan Howatch. That first reading started me down a path which helped shift me theologically, I am now much more Anglican (or at least sacramental). I have found a spiritual director and been meeting with him for nearly 18 months. And I have started thinking of the spiritual life much more as an ongoing work in progress than I did previously.

Glittering Images is the start of a six novel series set in the 1930s (first four) and the 1960s (second two) and then a spin off trilogy set in the 1980s (that I haven’t read yet).

Charles Ashworth is a young professor and Anglican priest who is sent by the Archbishop of Canterbury Lang (actual person) to spy on the Bishop Jardine of Starbridge (fictional town). Bishop Jardine, as many of Howatch’s characters are, is based on a real bishop. And as the original bishop did, Jardine has spoken out about the need to liberalize England’s divorce laws.

Charles Ashworth attempts to investigate Jardine’s personal life to see if there is anything to the rumors about Jardine’s womanizing. What follows is a mix of straight melodrama, serious theological discussion, and some of the best fictional portrayals of spiritual difficulty I have read.

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The God Of The Mundane: reflections on ordinary life for ordinary people by Matt Redmond

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Summary: God is God of all of us, not just the extraordinary that get the world’s attention.

I think I am in a season where I want to re-read books that have impacted me.  As I am drafting posts today, three of the four books I am writing about are books that I am re-reading. (My original review of God of the Mundane.)

Re-reading a book a couple years later is something I try to do regularly because often good books have more content than can be absorbed in a single reading. And several years later, you are in a different place and different things are impactful.

This time I suggested that my small group read this book together for discussion. The length is perfect as a discussion book, there are 15 chapters in less than 100 pages. Even slow readers can read 2 or 3 chapters in 20 or 30 minutes.

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5 Most Read Reviews in Feb 2015

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The most read review of the month was not of a book but of the Scribd ebook/audiobook subscription service.

I am a fan of the service, although it does not work with my Kindle Paperwhite, which is my prefered device. But it does have a lot of audiobooks, which is what I have been using it for more than anything else.

The second most read review was about the areas that I think Scribd needs to improve. A few of them have already had updates since I posted (and I have updated the post where the improvements made a difference.

Lifehacker mentioned Scribd as one of the five best audiobook services last week.

Continue reading the main Scribd review or the areas for improvement

Summary: A readable, recent introduction for those new to Anglicanism.

The Anglican Way is a fairly recent book that is still spreading by word of mouth. I saw last week that it was the best selling Anglican book on Amazon.

If you are interested in the concept but don’t want to read the book, you might be interested in McKenzie’s podcast of a five week teaching of the main content of the book. I listened to all of it and while there was certainly overlapping content, the podcast had enough new material and questions from the audience that it was well worth listening to.

Continue reading the full review of The Anglican Way by Thomas McKenzie

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Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor

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Summary: We need to be able to see God in the Dark as well as the light.

Barbara Brown Taylor is a beloved memoir writer. I know a number of people that she speaks to deeply. But this is the second book of hers that just didn’t connect.

Learning to Walk in the Dark is about embracing the dark parts of life as well as the light, about seeing that God loves us when we can’t figuratively or literally see anything around us.

Thematically I think Taylor is right, but I couldn’t finish the book. Much of the book seems very literal. Taylor talks about being terrified of the dark as a child. She talks about the beauty of the night in the country, about being alone in a dark cabin for the night. Almost all of her stories of darkness are about literal darkness. But she then tries to make the connection to spiritual darkness and the connection, at least for me, seems to fall flat.

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Inferno by Dan Brown

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Inferno is the fourth book in the Robert Langdon series by Dan Brown. The first two books in the series were made into successful movies starring Tom Hanks. In this book, Robert Langdon is once again called on for his vast knowledge of symbols and iconography so that he might once again follow the clues and solve a dark mystery. Never knowing whom to trust, Langdon relies heavily on what he knows about specifically Dante and his masterpiece, Inferno, in order to hurry and beat a mastermind at his own game. While the first two books (Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code) in the series take place in Europe, the third book, The Lost Symbol, occurs mainly in Washington D.C. and New England. The third book was supposed to be made into a movie also but was supposedly passed over because its story resembled too closely that of National Treasure. In this book, Inferno, Langdon spends all of his time once again in Europe. Just like in his other books, there are many twists and turns and Langdon’s quest take him to a number of different famous and historic locations in Italy and a few other countries in Europe. Whereas The Da Vinci Code fed on our interest in conspiracies, this book addresses our ever growing population problem and our fears about epidemics becoming more widespread as our world has become more and more globally connected. The movie for this book is set to come out in the fall of 2016 and will once again star Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon.

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Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy by Donald Miller

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Donald Miller has always been unlike any Christian author I have read before. He rocked my world in Blue Like Jazz.  He inspired me to get off my rear end and start living my life in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. I’ve always been a big fan of Miller being an open and authentic writer plus an avid student of life.  His latest book, Scary Close was released this month and it’s unlike anything he’s written before.

I thought Miller was an honest writer before but he takes honesty to a whole new level in Scary Close. This book is raw, transparent, uncomfortable and beautiful.  Miller has always been an avid observer of people and situations. He eagerly seeks out opportunities to learn and study successful people whether it’s in business, family or in life. In Scary Close, Miller becomes a student of himself as he strives to learn why his past relationships went wrong, where he wasn’t being honest with himself, and learning how to let go of the romantic epic ideals he had in his own mind.

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Disquiet Time: Rants and Reflections on the Good Book by the Skeptical, the Faithful, and a Few Scoundrels

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Summary: 45 Reflections on how the bible pushes us toward disquiet.

I am not a devotional guy. I rarely read devotionals and I even more rarely find them helpful. It is not that I am against them as a concept, but that they just don’t work well for me. I read too much and am too disorganized to find short devotional reading useful.

But every once in a while I try again. I have been occasionally using Disquiet Time as a devotional over the past three months. I have read a chapter two or three times a week most weeks before bed. This is one of the better devotional books I have read, in part because it is attempting to disquiet and not quiet.

The main focus of the book is to ask a WIDE variety of writers to reflect on what is disquieting about scripture. And the results are quite diverse and almost universally good. Amy Julia Becker (blogger at CT and author) talks about how we all cherry pick verses. Karen Swallow Prior (English Professor and author) writes about how our bibles tend to leave out or hide all of the sh*t in scripture. Caryn Rivadeneira (church staff and author) talks about the scandal of being made in God’s image.

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Art of Work by Jeff Goins

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Bookwi.se Note: Officially Art of Work will not be released until March, but if you go here, the author will send you a free paperback copy of the book if you pay shipping.

Many of us struggle to find our identity in our work. We struggle with the gap between what really interests us ““ where our passions lie, and how we earn a paycheck. In many instances, we work to pay the bills so that we can pursue our true interest. Others know their current career path is not their passion, but cannot pinpoint where their true passion lies. Are we living to work or working to live? Are we spending our work hours doing something that fulfills us? Are working at a career that is exactly what we were created to do, or have we pushed our dreams aside to face the reality of a 9 to 5?

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Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey

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Elizabeth Is Missing is Emma Healey’s first novel about an older woman suffering from dementia. The story is from Maud’s point of view and gives the audience an idea of what life might be like to have one’s mind slowly deteriorate due to dementia. To help illustrate the point even more, Maud spends most of her time obsessing about the disappearance of her friend, Elizabeth. She finds it extremely difficult to follow the clues when she can’t remember what the clues are or even what they mean when she finds them.

There is very little background information about this book and its author, Emma Healey. Emma Healey finished her master’s in England in 2011 and published her first novel, Elizabeth Is Missing, in 2014. I learned that due to the death and decline of her own grandmothers that Emma was inspired to write about dementia in fiction. When I mentioned this book to others, no one had heard of it, instead everyone referred to the book Still Alice, which was made into a movie last year and starred Julianne Moore. While I have not read the book or seen the movie, I have read that Still Alice is also the first person perspective of someone in a decline due to dementia, specifically Alzheimer’s Disease. Because I enjoyed Elizabeth Is Missing, I might see if I can get my hands on Still Alice as well.

I feel like this book especially appealed to me because my own grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s, and so I already understood what it was like to be a family member of someone with dementia. What captivated me about this book is that it gave me some insight into what my grandmother might have been feeling. The confusion that becomes second nature to someone with dementia is heart breaking. To think that someone with my mental capacity today could get to the point where someone doesn’t remember what they were doing only five minutes before or even the faces of her own children is frightening. I would like to say that the novel gave me a greater compassion and apathy for people suffering from dementia. The novel also has caused me to ponder what I would do if I were Maud’s daughter, Helen. My first reaction is that Maud is a person who plain and simple needs to be in 24-hour care for her own safety. While at the beginning of the novel, Maud doesn’t seem so badly off, as the story progresses, her dementia progresses and it is apparent that she can no longer be trusted to take care of herself. Through interactions between Maud and her daughter, it is apparent that making the decision to have your mother live in a nursing care facility is neither plain nor simple.

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