A-Z Bookish Questionnaire

Posted on July 9, 2014 by Barbara Harper

I saw this at Carrie‘s, who saw it at Amy‘s, and thought it looked like fun. All links behind book titles are to my reviews.

Author you’ve read the most books from: Probably Elisabeth Elliot.

Best sequel ever: I had to sit and think about this one for a long time. I don’t know if I’d say this is the best sequel ever, but I do like the sequels of the Mitford books, especially In This Mountain. It’s not quite as light and cheery as the others, because Father Tim struggles with retirement, his wife’s fame while his work (and importance, so he thinks) seems to be declining, depression, and a serious setback with his diabetes. But I love how he works through it and comes out of it. Then again, I also like the sequels to the Narnia series, Little Women, the Little House books, Anne of Green Gables (especially the book of the first year of Anne’s marriage), and others.

Currently reading: Just Jane by Nancy Moser (a fictionalized account of Jane Austen’s life), How to Read Slowly by James W. Sire, Women of the Word by Jen Wilkens, and listening to The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes via audiobook.

Drink of choice while reading: Decaf coffee or Decaf Diet Coke.

E-reader or physical book? I prefer physical books, but now that I have gotten used to using the Kindle app for my iPad mini, I enjoy it, too. Can’t beat the free or inexpensive books for it – my library has grown exponentially.

Fictional character you probably would have actually dated in high school: Hmm. I don’t usually think of the characters I read about in that way, and so far I’m not coming up with anyone high school or college age that I would have been interested in back then. Except maybe Laurie in Little Women as played by Christian Bale in the film – though he really wasn’t my type.

Glad you gave this book a chance: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. I read descriptions about several of his books, but they just didn’t sound interesting to me. But when so many who read a different book of his for Carrie’s Classic Book Club loved it, I thought maybe I should give him a chance. Loved this and plan to read more in the future.

Hidden gem book: Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. It’s been a long time since I’ve read it and I probably should again, but it was rather a plain book that I didn’t know anything about when I started, but I loved it.

Just finished: I Will Repay by Baronness Orczy and The Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer.

Kinds of books you won’t read: Anything sexually explicit or with too much bad language, horror books, mysteries that are creepy or too scary.

Longest book you’ve read: Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. All 1440+ pages of the unabridged version.

Major book hangover because of: I’m not sure what a book hangover is supposed to be. If it means one that continues to impact or speak to you after you’ve read it, that would be the Bible.

Number of bookcases you own: 3 tall ones, 2 short ones, and I have at least 4 boxes of books in closets.

One book you have read multiple times. Oh, my. Many, for many reasons. If I had to choose just one….well, let’s make it one nonfiction and one fiction. 🙂 Fiction: Little Women – fun to read at different stages of life and see it through different characters. Nonfiction, besides the Bible: Through Gates of Splendor.

Preferred place to read: Sitting sideways on the couch in the family room.

Quote that you like, from a book you’ve read: Oh my, again. I usually have multiple quotes marked in every book. To go with a recent one: “I believe there is scarcely an error in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God,” A. W. Tozer in The Knowledge of the Holy.

Reading regret: The only book that comes to mind that I have regretted reading (I think that’s what this question is asking) is one that we picked up at a library visit when my kids were little. When my son asked about it, I just felt a check in my spirit about it, but we got it anyway. When I looked at it when we got home, it was a pretty awful (both in writing and in subject) New Age book encouraging kids to disobey and drop everything they’d ever believed, complete with a “spirit guide” coauthor who had his own afterword in the back. 😦 It did open up a discussion with the one son who had shown interest in it. The only others that just came to mind were some unsavory ones my dad had around the house in my preteen years (he was not a Christian at the time and I wasn’t yet, either). 😦 It pays to be careful what you read, because those things do come back to your mind.

Series you started and need to finish: The Mysterious Benedict Society, Sherlock Holmes (working on the latter.)

Three of your all-time favorite books: This is another hard one. I’m going to invoke my executive privilege as owner of this blog and name 3 nonfiction and 3 fiction. 🙂 Aside from the Bible and the ones I mentioned before as having read multiple times, By Searching by Isobel Kuhn, Climbing by Rosalind Goforth, Evidence Not Seen by Darlene Deibler Rose. For fiction: Jane Eyre, Les Miserables, and A Tale of Two Cities.

Unapologetic fangirl for: The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series, especially the audiobooks read by Katherine Kellgren. Clever writing, rollicking good fun, but not without some pathos. I hope, when the series ends and we finally find out how the children got left in the woods to be raised by wolves and what their connection is to some others in the story, that it’s not going to be something I’d have a problem with.

Very excited for this release more than all the others: Besides the next in the above-mentioned Ashton Place series (I don’t know when it might be), a new one in Jan Karon’s Mitford series due out in September: Somewhere Safe With Somebody Good.

Worst bookish habit: My husband would probably say buying and keeping too many books. 🙂 I honestly can’t think of one. I like to take good care of them. Unless it’s the urge to get ahead of the story, but I generally don’t like to read or skip ahead any more. I like to read it as it unfolds even if it drags a bit in places.

X marks the spot: If this means bookmarks, I tend to use just whatever scrap of paper is at hand, though I have some nice bookmarks in my desk drawer (I just don’t think to go get them). If it refers to marking quotes or points I want to remember, I use the little Post-it notes sticky tab strips. But I do mark my books with a pencil as well – most of them, anyway.

Your latest book purchase: Physical book: Women of the Word by Jen Wilkins; Kindle app: Hidden Places by Lynn Austin.

Zzz snatcher book: If this means a book that has kept me awake reading it – it has been a while since that happened. I tend to fall asleep if I read past bedtime. But the ones with the potential to are Dee Henderson’s books, the last one being Unspoken. I’ve got her newest one on my shelf but have been trying to save it as a reward after I finish some of my reading challenge lists.

Let me know if you do this, and I’ll come by and see what you have to say.

Book Review: I Will Repay

Posted on July 7, 2014 by Barbara Harper

When I mentioned to someone that I liked The Scarlet Pimpernel, about an Englishman who disguised himself and rescued those slated for the guillotine during the French Revolution, this person (sadly, I’ve forgotten who) told me the author, Baroness Orczy, wrote several books about The Scarlet Pimpernel’s adventures and she really liked I Will Repay. So I put I Will Repay on my TBR list, and recently took advantage of its being free for the Kindle and only $2.99 at Audible.com (at the time of this writing) to get both and use their “Whispersync” connection to go back and forth between text and audio, depending on my circumstances.

The story begins with a heated argument between young Vicomte de Marny and the older Paul Déroulède. Between rage and too much to drink, de Marny insists on a duel. Déroulède easily wins the duel, but de Marny tries to fight further. When Déroulède puts up his sword to disarm him, de Marny charges at that moment right into Déroulède’s sword and dies.

The young man is carried home to his invalid father and 14 year old sister Juliette. They are told by the young man’s friends that he died “in fair fight,” but the father, described as “almost a dotard,” makes Juliette swear that she will somehow avenge her brother’s death. He adds to the oath the torment he says that her brother’s soul will undergo until she exacts her revenge (though, of course, in reality nothing we say or do after a person has died has an effect on the state of their soul). Juliette, grieving, young, and impressionable, agrees to this oath and lives under the weight of it for the next ten years.

By this time the French Revolution is well underway. Juliette’s father has died and Déroulède has become a favorite of the people, probably due to the bourgeois ancestry which had kept him from being fully accepted by the aristocracy despite his wealth. Juliette tricks her way into becoming a guest in his home, but it takes several weeks for a plan to come to mind to deal with him. In the meantime, she finds qualities about him that she likes, and he falls in love with her rather quickly. Thus she is torn between her feelings and her oath to her father on her dead brother’s body. “That awful oath, sworn so solemnly, had been her relentless tyrant; and her religion – a religion of superstition and of false ideals – had blinded her, and dragged her into crime.”

When I first started the book, I was a little dismayed because I’ve always thought the whole tradition of duels was rather silly, and I was afraid the ensuing romance would be fairly silly, too. However, I was greatly surprised by the depth of the novel as well as the unexpected twists and turns the plot took. I had an idea how the story would ultimately end up, but it didn’t go any of the routes I thought it would. This is one audiobook that I looked for ways to listen to beyond the usual, even carrying it around with me while I dusted.

In a conversation with Sir Percy Blakeney, aka the Scarlet Pimpernel, Déroulède describes Juliette as a saint and an angel and says he has fallen “madly, blindly, stupidly, hopelessly” in love. Sir Percy responds,

“And ’twill be when you understand that your idol has feet of clay that you’ll learn the real lesson of love,” said Blakeney earnestly.

“Is it love to worship a saint in heaven, whom you dare not touch, who hovers above you like a cloud, which floats away from you even as you gaze? To love is to feel one being in the world at one with us, our equal in sin as well as in virtue. To love, for us men, is to clasp one woman with our arms, feeling that she lives and breathes just as we do, suffers as we do, thinks with us, loves with us, and, above all, sins with us. Your mock saint who stands in a niche is not a woman if she have not suffered, still less a woman if she have not sinned. Fall
at the feet of your idol an you wish, but drag her down to your level after that – the only level she should ever reach, that of your heart.”

I disagree that you have to sin together to really be in love, but I do agree that a couple needs to understand that they’re both sinners and that they’ll need grace to live with one another, that true love happens when that happens, not when we’re in a state of near worship. And indeed, Déroulède finds later “She had ceased to be a saint or a madonna; she had fallen from her pedestal so low that he could not find the way to descend and grope after the fragments of his ideal.” What happens then I will leave for you to discover.

And even though this is not a religious book per se, it does contain spiritual truth when more than one character has to learn that “‘Vengeance!’ which is not for man…[is] God’s alone.”

All in all I really enjoyed this novel. I don’t know that I’ll seek out any more of the Scarlet Pimpernel’s adventures any time soon. I like a good swashbuckling adventure every now and then, but I don’t like to make a steady diet of them. Still, these books are as good a source as any of this kind of tale, so the next time I am in the mood for one, perhaps I’ll look up another in the series.

Some readers will want to know that the word “demmed” for “damned” occurs a handful of times.

The full text of I Will Repay can be found online through Project Gutenberg.

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

This also completes one of my selections for the Back to the Classics Challenge hosted by Karen at Books and Chocolate.

Book Review: The Knowledge of the Holy

Posted on July 2, 2014 by Barbara Harper

I read The Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer some ~~years~~ decades ago, but The Cloud of Witnesses Challenge inspired me to pick it up again, and I am so glad I did.

“True religion confronts earth with heaven and brings eternity to bear upon time,” Tozer begins. He writes that the church has lost its view of the majesty of God and their awe of Him, and that in turn is having an effect on what kinds of Christians it is producing (if that was true at the time of the book’s publication in 1961, how much more is is true now!) “No people has ever risen above its religion…no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God” (p. 1).

“A right conception of God is basic not only to systematic theology but to practical Christian living as well. It is to worship what the foundation is to the temple; where it is inadequate or out of plumb the whole structure must sooner or later collapse. I believe there is scarcely an error in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God” (p. 3).

“The one mighty single burden of eternity begins to press down upon him with a weight more crushing than all the woes of the world piled one upon another. That mighty burden is his obligation to God. It includes an instant and lifelong duty to love God with every power of mind and soul, to obey Him perfectly, and to worship Him acceptably. And when the man’s laboring conscience tells him that he has done none of these things, but has from childhood been guilty of foul revolts against the Majesty in the heavens, the inner pressure of self-accusation may become too heavy to bear.

The gospel can lift this destroying burden from the mind, give beauty for ashes, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. But unless the weight of the burden is felt, the gospel can mean nothing to the man; and until he sees a vision of God high and lifted up, there will be no woe and no burden. Low views of God destroy the gospel for all who hold them” (p. 4).

Tozer’s purpose, then is to help people think about God “as He is in Himself, and not as…imagination says He is” (p. 16), at least as much as we can know about Him from His Word, for we could never comprehend Him totally. He does so in readable everyday language rather than that of a theologian.

“The study of the attributes of God, far from being dull and heavy, may for the enlightened Christian be a sweet and absorbing spiritual exercise. To the soul that is athirst for God, nothing could be more delightful” (p. 19).

After a chapter on the Trinity and on what an attribute is, Tozer then discusses some of God’s attributes one by one, from omniscience, self-sufficiency, and self-existence to His justice, love, mercy, grace and several others. As He discusses each one, he also discusses how they relate to each other.

“I think it might be demonstrated that almost every heresy that has afflicted the church through the years has arisen from believing about God things that are not true, or from over emphasizing certain true things so as to obscure other things equally true. To magnify any attribute to the exclusion of another is to head straight for one of the dismal swamps of theology; and yet we are all constantly tempted to do just that” (p. 123).

“We can hold a correct view of truth only by daring to believe everything God has said about Himself. It is a grave responsibility that a man takes upon himself when he seeks to edit out of God’s self-revelation such features as he in his ignorance deems objectionable. Blindness in part must surely fall upon any of us presumptuous enough to attempt such a thing. And it is wholly uncalled for. We need not fear to let the truth stand as it is written. There is no conflict among the divine attributes. God’s being is unitary. He cannot divide Himself and act at a given time from one of His attributes while the rest remain inactive. All that God is must accord with all that God does. Justice must be present in mercy, and love in judgment. And so with all the divine attributes” (p. 124).

“God is never at cross-purposes with Himself. No attribute of God is in conflict with another” (p. 136).

“Both the Old and the New Testaments proclaim the mercy of God, but the Old has more than four times as much to say about it as the New” (p. 140). (Interesting! Especially as people seem to think the NT is more “merciful” than the Old.)

“When viewed from the perspective of eternity, the most critical need of this hour may well be that the Church should be brought back from its long Babylonian captivity and the name of God be glorified in it again as of old. Yet we must not think of the Church as an anonymous body, a mystical religious abstraction. We Christians are the Church, and whatever we do is what the Church is doing. The matter, therefore, is for each of us a personal one. Any forward step in the Church must begin with the individual” (p. 180).

It’s not unusual for me to think of God as He is or to think high thoughts of Him: that comes with having regular times in the Word of God and hearing His Word proclaimed by faithful preachers. Yet too often my response is something like “Wow, that’s neat!” or a quick prayer of thanks as I go on to the next verse or go about the tasks for the day. Having this sustained time of focusing on what He says about Himself and Who He is has been both humbling and uplifting. I highly recommend this book to everyone.

I wanted to say just a word about reading what some friends have called “deep” books. It’s actually been a long time since I’ve read this kind of book, and I’m thankful to the The Cloud of Witnesses Challenge for encouraging me to get back into them. It works best for me to read a little bit from a book like this after my regular devotional time. It’s not that I couldn’t pick it up at odd times during the day and get something out of it, but personally I just get more out of it by regularly plodding through in the morning before my attention is diverted. For some people other times of day work best. Mere Christianity was a little easier to do this with because the chapters were very short: the chapters here were longer, so some days I was only able to read a few pages at a time. Someone encouraged me once that just fifteen minutes a day in a book will eventually get you through it, and get you through more in a year than you’d think. Neither of these books was hard to read or understand.

I’ll close as Tozer does:

Thus far we have considered the individual’s personal relation to God, but like the ointment of a man’s right hand, which by its fragrance “betrayeth itself,” any intensified knowledge of God will soon begin to affect those around us in the Christian community. And we must seek purposefully to share our increasing light with the fellow members of the household of God.

This we can best do by keeping the majesty of God in full focus in all our public services. Not only our private prayers should be filled with God, but our witnessing, our singing, our preaching, our writing should center around the Person of our holy, holy Lord and extol continually the greatness of His dignity and power. There is a glorified Man on the right hand of the Majesty in heaven faithfully representing us there. We are left for a season among men; let us faithfully represent Him here (pp. 183-184).

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Book Review: The Book of Three

Posted on July 1, 2014 by Barbara Harper

The Prydain Chronicles by Alexander Lloyd are well-known children’s classics, but somehow I had never heard of them until the last few years. I saw them mentioned favorably at various blogs, so when I saw the first three books either on sale or free (I forget which) for the Kindle app, I got them.

The first in the five part series is The Book of Three. Young Taran lives with a retired soldier named Coll and an old “enchanter” named Dallben. He has ambitions to do great, heroic things, but in the meantime he is made Assistant Pig-Keeper. The pig he is charged with keeping is not just any old farm pig, however: this one, called Hen Wen, is a white oracular pig: she can tell prophesies and help information come to light. Taran fails at his first major responsibility when Hen Wen runs away. He sets out to find her even though he has been told not to leave the farm.

While searching for the pig, Taran is startled to see the dreaded Horned King, the champion of Arawn Death-Lord ride by with his soldiers. One throws a sword at him which wounds him, but not fatally. After running for his life and passing out, he awakens to find his wounds being treated by none other than Prince Gwydion in disguise.

Gwydion and Taran face unexpected battle and are captured. Taran escapes but is sure that Gwydion has died when the castle where they were held collapses. He decides he must go to warn the king of the advancing army of the Horned King. Along the way he is joined by a minor king named Fflewddur Fflam who is moonlighting as a bard and whose harp strings break whenever he stretches the truth, Princess Eilonwy, who talks a lot and has been learning magic, and Gurgi, sort of between man and beast who refers to himself in the third person and speaks in rhymes (“crunchings are munchings,” his reference to food,””sneakings and peekings,” “smackings and whackings,” etc.).

In his quest Taran has to come face to face with his own shortcomings and learn that heroism is not only not easy, but it isn’t always displayed in mighty public acts.

The books are somewhat loosely based on Welsh mythology (with which I am not familiar). The author grew to love the land and language of Wales when he was stationed there during WWII while in the army.

A few of the notable quotes from the book:

“Neither refuse to give help when it is needed,… nor refuse to accept it when it is offered.”

“It is not the trappings that make the prince, nor, indeed, the sword that makes the warrior.”

“I have studied the race of men. I have seen that alone you stand as weak reeds by a lake. You must learn to help yourselves, that is true; but you must also learn to help one another.”

I enjoyed some of the humor in the story, such as this exchange:

“By all means,” cried the bard, his eyes lighting up. “A Fflam to the rescue! Storm the castle! Carry it by assault! Batter down the gates!”

“There’s not much of it left to storm,” said Eilonwy.

“Oh?” said Fflewddur, with disappointment. “Very well, we shall do the best we can.”

I have to admit it took me a while to get into the story, and I didn’t like it at first. I didn’t really care for the princess: I hate when girls continually take things said in innocence and twist them around to mean something else and get offended by them, and the princess here did that quite a lot. Then again, she is young as well, so possibly her maturing will come about in one of the next books. I thought the idea of an oracular pig was silly, and the story seemed to resemble The Lord of the Rings a little too closely in the beginning with the undead Cauldron Born soldiers a little too similar to the Ring Wraiths, and Gurgi sounding very much like Gollum. As the story went on, however, Gurgi developed into quite a different personality than Gollum and the story took on its own direction and feel.

I do like coming of age “quest” stories where the protagonist has to reach beyond his abilities and learn about himself and life in the process, and this story fits that bill nicely. The author says in his after-word, “Most of us are called on to perform tasks far beyond what we can do. Our capabilities seldom match our aspirations, and we are often woefully unprepared. To this extent, we are all Assistant Pig-Keepers at heart.”

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Book Review: The Sign of Four

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Barbara Harper

The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle is the second Sherlock Homes novel. It was originally published in a magazine as The Sign of the Four and later published as a novel. Later publications shortened the name to The Sign of Four.

Sherlock and Watson are visited by a Miss Mary Morstan. Her father had disappeared ten years earlier and she began receiving a valuable pearl from an anonymous source every year for the last six years. She’s just received a note saying she is a wronged woman and requesting a meeting. She can bring two friends as long as they are not police. Sherlock and Watson agree to go. Mary shows them an odd paper found among her father’s things that appears to be a map with four crosses and four names, three of them English and one Indian.

When they arrive at their destination they are greeted by one of two twin brothers who were sons of an associate of Mary’s father. I’ll leave what he told them and what they found there for you to discover if you read the book. 🙂

Hearing that Holmes engaged in drug usage caused me to hold his stories at arm’s length at first, but Wikipedia explains that the drugs he uses are not illegal at the time. He uses them when he is extremely bored or when he feels his brain needs the stimulation. This book introduces the habit and Watson’s disapproval, which he finally works up the nerve to express to Holmes. According to Wikipedia, in later stories Watson is eventually able to “wean” Holmes off of them. The drug use doesn’t play a major role in this book, but it’s there, mainly at the beginning.

This book also delves more into Holmes’s pysche and personality, which I found as interesting as the mysteries. We saw in the first book that Holmes had a brilliant intellect and developed his skills for deductive reasoning and crime solving almost to the exclusion of others, even to the point of not knowing that the earth revolved around the sun or caring since it didn’t affect his work. Some years ago I saw an documentary on Einstein which showed him to have a horrible relationship with his wife. I almost wondered then whether becoming a genius in one area required one to be out of balance in other areas. I don’t know – I’ll have to explore that idea further if I read about any more geniuses. 🙂 But it appears to be true in Holmes’ case: if he is not solving a crime or developing a skill which will help in the future, he’s utterly bored and doesn’t know what to do with himself. This book humanizes him a bit and we see him as more than just a brilliant intellect.

Part of my interest in reading Holmes’ stories is spurred by some modern adaptions of them, mainly the BBC television production of Sherlock starring Benedict Cumberbatch, which depicts Holmes as a modern London city-dweller and adapts the stories in the current culture and technology. I’ve only seen the first three episodes and have been advised that the fourth (or actually the first episode in the second season, concerning Irene Adler) is best avoided. But I’ve enjoyed the three I’ve seen and thought they were quite well done. They don’t follow the original stories exactly but there are enough similarities to make the modern Sherlock as much like the original as possible within a modern framework.

But even though the TV series touched off my reading of the Holmes books, they are interesting enough that I want to continue to read them for themselves. For this book I listened to the audiobook ably narrated by David Timson. The text of the story can be found online here.

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

What’s On Your Nightstand: June 2014

Posted on June 24, 2014 by Barbara Harper

The folks at 5 Minutes For Books host What’s On Your Nightstand? the fourth Tuesday of each month in which we can share about the books we have been reading and/or plan to read.

Since last time I have completed:

Loving the Church by John Crotts, reviewed here.

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky via audiobook, reviewed here. This is the August selection for Carrie’s Reading to Know Classics Book Club list, if you want to try to give it a whirl before then. 🙂

Wow, not very much, considering one was an audiobook! Not sure what happened to my reading time in June.

I’m currently reading:

The Book of Three by Alexander Lloyd, first book in the Prydain Chronicles.

The Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer

How to Read Slowly: Reading for Comprehension by James W. Sire. Not that I want to actually decrease my reading speed or that I have problems with comprehension, but I’d like to retain more of what I read, so I am hoping this will help.

The Sign of the Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, second of the Sherlock Homes novels, via audiobook.

Next up:

Why We Are Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be by Kevin DeYoung, Ted Kluck, and David F. Wells

Undetected by Dee Henderson

I will Repay by Baroness Orzcy, part of The Scarlet Pimpernel series

Possibly Girl in the Gatehouse by Julie Klassen and Just Jane: A Novel of Jane Austen’s Life by Nancy Moser, two of my alternates from the TBR Challenge list, rather than the one remaining nonfiction book I have left there. The nonfiction has been beneficial, but I am missing stories. 🙂

Carrie’s Chronicles of Narnia Reading Challenge. is in July, but I haven’t decided whether I’ll do anything for it yet. I finished the Narnia series last year and am not ready to start it over again. There are several Narnia-related non-fiction books I’d like to read, but I am reading so much other non-fiction this year I am not feeling inspired at the moment to choose another one. I hate to miss out on it, though, as I have participated for the last few years, so I may decide to jump in before it’s over.

What have you been reading?

Book Review: The Brothers Karamazov

Posted on June 23, 2014 by Barbara Harper

Dostoyevsky is one of those people I’ve thought about reading for a long time, but his works tend to be pretty chunky volumes. However, I did read somewhere not long ago that his books are actually fairly easy to get into, so when I saw his The Brothers Karamazov on Carrie’s Reading to Know Classics Book Club list, that seemed like the perfect opportunity to give him a try. This book is the selection for August, but I kept thinking it was coming up in July and I wanted to get a head start on it, so I started listening to the audiobook some weeks back and just finished it a few days ago. I wanted to go ahead and write a review wile it was still fresh in my mind.

The first of the title brothers is Dmitri, also called Mitya, the oldest (about 28 when the book begins), passionate, impulsive, tempestuous. He has a running feud with his father over his inheritance and over a woman who is called Grushenka.

The second is Ivan, brilliant, logical, skeptical. He can’t reconcile the idea of God with the suffering he sees in the world, particularly that of children, and feels that if there is a God, He is malevolent. He comes to find out that the logical conclusions of his philosophies have natural but unforeseen consequences.

The youngest is Alexei, also known as Alyosha, about age 20, who lives at the monastery (Russian Orthodox) while training to become a monk. He is kind, reasonable, thoughtful, compassionate, a peacemaker and has a genuine love for people.

It’s widely believed that there is a fourth illegitimate brother called Smerdyakov. His mother was a retarded homeless girl who died in childbirth. He is found and raised by the senior Karamazov’s servant, Grigory, who raises him. He becomes a servant in the Karamazov household as well. He is epileptic and has a mean, warped streak.

The father of this brood is Fyodor (the three sons all have the middle name Fyodorovich, which means “son of Fyodor”). Fydor is wealthy but debauched, wicked, and greedy. He has had little to do with any of his sons’ upbringing, and they all hate him except for Alyosha.

It is not much of a spoiler to say that Fyodor is killed: the author refers to his coming death early on and hints at a terrible event: it’s not much of a stretch to connect the two and realize that Fyodor is going to come to a bad end. And, indeed, he does: he is murdered. One of his sons is arrested for the murder and the evidence seems pretty certain against him (again foreshadowed by the author as he often comments that this or that happened “as so-and-so testified later.”) But the evidence isn’t conclusive, leaving the reader to wonder for a while who actually killed him. Besides being a major factor in the plot, Fyodor’s murder is also a major catalyst in the lives of his sons for different reasons.

Amidst all the action there are several philosophical discussions, notably between Elder Zosima, Alyosha’s mentor, and various people, and later between Ivan and Alyosha, touching on the nature of God, free will and whether it is a burden, moral responsibility, and other subjects.

I am heavily indebted to SparkNotes for getting much more out of this book than I would have from a surface reading/listening. I liked reading the chapter analysis and summaries at intervals (but I have learned from past experience not to look at the plot overview or character analysis there until finishing a book because they reveal key details of the story). The chapter analyses did help me see the connection between the philosophical discussions and the action: those discussions weren’t isolated rabbit trails: they were integral to the story (possibly the main points of the story), and the action played out the truths discussed. For instance, I hadn’t connected Alyosha’s ministrations to a dying child (Ilyusha) to his earlier discussion with Ivan, but SparkNotes pointed out:

Ivan looks at the abstract idea of suffering children and is unable to reconcile the idea with his rational precepts about how God ought to be. His solution is to reject God. Alyosha, on the other hand, sees an actual suffering child and believes that it is God’s will for him to try to alleviate the child’s suffering to whatever degree he can. His solution is to help Ilyusha. Again, Dostoevsky shows how the psychology of skepticism walls itself off, in elaborate proofs and theorems, from having a positive effect on the world, while the psychology of faith, simplistic though it may be, concerns itself with doing good for others. This very subtle response to the indictment of God presented by Ivan in Book V brings the philosophical debate of the novel onto a plane of real human action, and shows the inadequacy of Ivan’s philosophy—which Ivan himself would readily acknowledge—to do good in the real world.

As with many older classics, this book can seem a little tedious and wordy by today’s standards. Newer stories start off with action that grabs you and makes you want to know what happens next or causes you to care about a character right away: older books have a lot of explanation and description first. The first style is usually more exciting; the latter takes a little more patience but does usually pay off in the end.

This story that has more layers than one would think at first, and it is causing me to think and make connections long after I’ve finished it – a hallmark of a classic. I didn’t agree with much of the theology, but the overall theme of a quiet faith lived out in everyday life with love and service towards one’s fellow man appealed to me.

I also enjoyed reading more of Dostoyevsky’s background at Wikipedia and SparkNotes.

I usually like audiobooks for classics, for several reasons, but in this case it was probably not the best way to go. For one thing, the multitude of polysyllabic Russian names and nicknames was hard to distinguish at first, but after a while I was able to distinguished who was who (whom?) Secondly, there were a few sections of philosophical discussion that were hard for me to follow just by listening while driving, fixing hair, etc.: those would have benefited from being able to go over them on the printed page a couple of times. Nevertheless I thought the narrator, Constantine Gregory, did a good job telling the story.

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

This also completes one of my selections for the Back to the Classics Challenge hosted by Karen at Books and Chocolate.

Book Review: Loving the Church

Posted on June 18, 2014 by Barbara Harper

I first noticed Loving the Church by John Crotts a few years ago when Carrie reviewed it. It struck a chord with me because I have seen a general trend in recent years of people leaving the church, primarily because of all its problems or imperfections or its lack of meeting their needs. When I commented to Carrie that I would probably get the book, she offered to send me her copy. And I am ashamed to say it has been sitting in my bedroom neglected all this time, mainly because I tend to gravitate toward fiction rather than nonfiction, even though this is a topic important to me. But the TBR challenge provided a good opportunity to get to some of those books I hadn’t yet, and I knew this was one I wanted to include.

Crotts begins the book with a fictional group of people coming together at a coffee shop. None are rebellious or malcontents, but all except one are not attending what we would call a conventional church for various reasons: one is involved in a fulfilling ministry, one attends a house church because it keeps his family from being split up into different groups, one has been deeply wounded by the way the church responded to her when she found she was pregnant while unmarried, one has sacrificed some depth of preaching for a high tech church with a lot of singles that he can identify with and where he can possibly find a wife. As this group discusses church, they decide to continue to meet together to study what the Bible says about the church.

They turn up here and there throughout the rest of the book, but the majority of the book is a straightforward discussion of exactly what the Bible says about the church and why believers should attend.

After a brief chapter on the trend away from church over the last few years, Crotts shares from the Bible why the church is valuable. A few of the concepts he discusses are that Jesus loved the church and gave His life for it: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25-27), and that the church is the “pillar and ground of the truth” (I Timothy 3:15) and described as the bride of Christ. ( Search for the word “church” in a Bible search engine to discover many more. I don’t remember if he includes this one, but one of the most intriguing to me is that “now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God,” Ephesians 3:9-11. Somehow through the church God displays His wisdom to those principalities and powers.) It’s abundantly clear that the church is important to Christ.

Crotts then goes on to define the church and discusses the difference between what we call the universal church (all believers everywhere) and the individual local church. Some say that the verses about the church refer to the church universal, but the epistles were written to specific local assemblies which were called churches. “A local assembly…is not just some tiny part of the universal church, like the pinkie toenail in the universal body of Christ. It is better understood as a local expression of the body of Christ – complete in itself” (pp. 44-45).

Crotts also discusses the description and function of the church from the Bible, the headship of Christ, the purpose of elders and deacons, the giftedness each member provides to minister to the others in the assembly.

Of the several quotes I marked, here are a couple that stood out to me:

The goal of mutual ministry within the church is maturity in Jesus. This is described as “the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God” (Ephesians 4:13). The combination of unity and the knowledge of Christ shows that Paul is not maximizing superficial togetherness by minimizing doctrinal content. Voices calling Christians to forget about doctrinal differences and just love Jesus do not represent Christian maturity….Community-wide gatherings or projects that merge churches that don’t believe in the Bible, Jesus, or salvation with churches that do, are a hollow shell of what the Lord intends when he commands us to be in unity around the truth. No matter how sincere the motives of people organizing such events, in the end, the truth becomes watered down instead of strengthened, and unfortunately, weak doctrine turns out weak Christians. In Colossians 1:28, Paul describes the goal of his ministry: “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ” (p. 56)

Don’t you need shepherds to guide you? Jesus thinks you need them! It is terrible pride to assume that you don’t need what Jesus designed for his glory and your family’s good (p. 95).

What I find most refreshing about this book is that it is a discussion and exposition from the Bible, not just opinions or quotes from what this or that author says. It’s very readable but very thorough. I also appreciate that in general he didn’t go further than the Bible. I think he said some place, but I forgot to mark where, that every church in every time and culture will not look exactly the same because the Bible does grant a certain amount of latitude in exactly how to “do church.” Missionaries through the centuries have had to learn that their goal isn’t to replicate a church exactly like the one back home, but they’re to keep to Biblical principles and incorporate them into the culture in which they minister.

The last couple of pages of this book lists negative consequences of neglecting church, among them, “thwarting Jesus’ plan, unconsciously saying that your plan for your Christian life and family is superior to His,…rejecting a chief means He has given for your spiritual growth,…boycotting the place He designed for your service,…missing great opportunities for spiritual influence from like-minded believers,…teaching your children to disobey Jesus by your example” (pp. 129-130).

One thing I wish the author would have included was a brief history of the church. He didn’t really answer the question about house churches except to say that they don’t include the authority structure of elders and deacons that the Bible calls for. I’ve often wondered exactly how the early church in Acts met. Acts 2:41 says 3,000 were added to the church in one day, but Romans 16:5 and Colossians 4:15 refer to churches that meet in someone’s house. They didn’t have mega-churches or large places to meet in that day and obviously some did meet in houses. I don’t know if perhaps the individual house churches were connected to each other or exactly how it worked. I know some who have felt that house churches are more Scriptural, but personally I think that’s where the latitude of Scripture comes in: in Acts the church was a new enterprise and they were under persecution. A 21st century church in a country with religious freedom is going to look a little different. But I would say that making individual churches into little empires is going beyond from the Bible’s intentions.

Some will quibble about the author’s definition of pastors and elders, but I think that can be set aside for the larger purposes of the book (I think that is an area Christians can disagree on and still be friends). I may have disagreed with a minor point here and there, but nothing that I thought important enough to make note of. The only note that jarred me a little was his continual emphasis on Christians helping each other toward Christlikeness by helping them see their sins and blind spots. While that’s true, and overemphasis on that point can lead to nit-picking and fault-finding. That’s an area I admit to having a hard time finding the balance in. I tend to avoid confrontation, but when I feel most stirred up towards it, it is usually due to personal irritation and offense rather than a concern about the other person’s maturity in Christ. Sometimes we see things not so that we can jump in to do the Holy Spirit’s job, but rather to pray for the person involved. It takes a great deal of care, delicacy, and being closely in tune with and filled with the Holy Spirit to confront someone. I think the author would say that as well, and he is not advocating that we all become spiritual policemen. He does emphasize that “love must mark a Christian’s motives and manner in ministering God’s Word to other believers” (p. 58).

I want to close with a brief comment about leaving church because of its faults and failures. The church has always been full of faults and failures because it is full of sinners. Many of the epistles are written to churches about how to correct their problems (which is an admission that they have them!), and in Revelation 2 and 3, Jesus commends and condemns certain aspects of seven churches. One of the things we’re supposed to do in church is help each other towards more Christlikeness, and all the Bible “one anothers” are to be exercised in the context of church (in everyday life, too, but they were given specifically in letters to churches). One of them is “Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye” (Colossians 3:13). There wouldn’t be a need for forbearance and forgiveness unless we failed each other or irritated each other. But because we do, we’re to “Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering…And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness” (Colossians 3: 12,14). There may be times to leave a specific church if it falls away from the truth of the Bible, and in Revelation Jesus said some churches were in danger of their candlestick removed, but the Bible doesn’t portray completely leaving the church as an option.

I don’t know anything about John Crotts other than what I have read in this book, but I heartily recommend it.

For more on this topic, see also previous posts here on Why Go to Church? and The Community of Believers as well as Lisa’s 7 reasons why I still go to church. Incidentally, at the time of this writing Loving the Church is available in a Kindle format for $1.99.

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Reading Challenge Updates.

Posted on June 18, 2014 by Barbara Harper

I keep forgetting that Roof Beam Reader, who hosts the 2014 TBR Pile Challenge, has check-in points around the 15th of each month so we can summarize how we’re doing. I haven’t done one since March, and since that time I have completed (all links are to my reviews):

Wednesdays Were Pretty Normal: A Boy, Cancer, and God by Michael Kelley.

The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis.

Crowded to Christ by L. E. Maxwell.

Walking From East to West: God in the Shadows by Ravi Zacharias.

Loving the Church by John Crotts.

Out of the 12 books I chose for this challenge, that completes 8, and I have started two more, so I am feeling pretty good about this challenge.

And while I am here I may as well update the other reading challenges I am participating in this year:

The Back to the Classics Challenge has a mid-year check-in. I’m happy to say that after completing My Man Jeeves by P. D. Wodehouse, Bleak House by Charles Dickens, and The Brothers Karamazov yesterday, ~~though it will take me a few days to get a review together~~, I’ve completed all of the required books I chose for this challenge and all but two of the optional ones. Here are my completed choices (links are to my reviews):

Required:

A 20th Century Classic: My Man Jeeves by P. D. Wodehouse
A 19th Century Classic: Bleak House by Charles Dickens
A Classic by a Woman Author: The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery
A Classic in Translation (A book originally written in a different language from your own.) The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky.
A Classic About War The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy.
A Classic by an Author Who Is New To You: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Optional Categories:

An American Classic: Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder
A Classic Mystery, Suspense or Thriller: A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle, the first Sherlock Holmes book
A Historical Fiction Classic: I will Repay by Baroness Orzcy, part of The Scarlet Pimpernel series. (Not completed yet)
A Classic That’s Been Adapted Into a Movie or TV Series: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. (Not completed yet)
Extra Fun Category: Write a Review of the Movie or TV Series adapted from Optional Category #4 (Not completed yet).

For the The Cloud of Witnesses Challenge.I completed Mere Christianity and Crowded to Christ. I had planned to read four books in this category of nonfiction books written by a Christian who has passed one. I’m also reading Traveling Toward Sunrise by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman, a devotional which which be completed by the end of the year, and just started The Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer. While it looks like I’ll have no problem completing my goals for this challenge, now that I have started reading this type of book again, I want to continue.

And in the Nonfiction Reading Challenge in which I am aiming to read 11-15 nonfiction books, I have completed 12. But I have other nonfiction books to complete for some of these other challenges, so I’ll be adding more to this list.

It helps a lot that many of these challenges overlap. That’s one reason I decided to participate in them all – otherwise I would have had to choose just one or two. And audiobooks have helped a lot, too, particularly with the classics.

It’s funny how just having these on a list of goals to complete for the year have been driving me towards completing that goal. Sometimes I don’t like that driven feeling, but that’s probably because I gravitate more toward…not fluff, exactly, but lighter reading. Yet I am glad for the impetus to incorporate some reading I would not otherwise get to.

Booking Through Thursday: Objectionable Elements

Posted on June 12, 2014 by Barbara Harper

Booking Through Thursday is a weekly meme which poses a question or a thought for participants to discuss centering on the subject of books or reading.

Today’s question is:

How do you feel about explicit detail in your reading? Whether language, sex, violence, situations and so on … does it bother you? Faze you at all? Or do you just read everything without it bothering you?

I do not like explicit detail in my reading and try to avoid it.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand there has to be a “bad guy” or something wrong in order to have a plot. I know there is adultery and violence in the real world. But we don’t need explicit detail.

Any war story is going to have some degree of violence, but I don’t need details about eyes bulging out or blood spattering or whatever that are there just to titillate or disgust or increase the gore factor. Ditto for sexuality. As one friend once said, sex is not a spectator sport.

Since I am a Christian, I take my cues from the Bible. The story of David and Bathsheba tells us all we need to know of their tryst, but there is nothing in the description that would cause arousal in the reader.

Language is a bit harder. For the most part I avoid profanity or taking God’s name in my reading because I don’t want to fill my mind with it and increase the chances that those words are going to filter into my thoughts and possibly come out of my mouth in an unguarded moment. But if I were going to try to eliminate them completely, I’d have to unfriend some of my relatives on Facebook. 🙂 There are a few “damns” even in some of the classics (like The Brothers Karamazov, which I am reading, or rather listening to now). I think sometimes a story can transcend those elements (like Unbroken), but I’d still rather they weren’t there. A character can be shown to be a profane character without giving us the full brunt of his profane mouth.

In fact, I think it takes much more talented writing to show a profane character or a violent or sexual scene without explicit detail. In one of the most violent scenes I have seen on film, nothing was shown but the victim’s feet. A bit of restraint and leaving some details up to the reader’s imagination are far more effective.

To weigh in on this week’s question or read other responses, go here.