“Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?” Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)
My wife (happy birthday honey!) would testify that nothing could describe me better…
Tag: From the Archives Page 27 of 28
Since I finished classes a couple weeks ago (and honestly, during study breaks that last week) I’ve been reading pretty much nothing but novels (so much for my “I’m going to take this break to read up some hard-core theology stuff I’ve been putting off” plan…maybe in May).
Well, as part of this binge, I’ve reread a couple of Rex Stout’s, started a reread of a Parker, knocked off 2 well-written novels I will probably never want to re-visit, and have just started a Science Fiction novel, In the Garden of Iden, as recommended by a chat pal.
In many books there’s something you read that makes you say, “Okay, doesn’t matter what happens in the rest of this book, I’m here to the end.” I should probably have an example of this, but really can’t come up with any but the one I’m talking about at the moment. Anyhow, paragraph 2 of chapter 2 in this book is this moment for me:
Also there, in the enormous cathedral, the Infanta Katherine, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, is supposed to have stopped to hear mass on her way to marry the Prince of England. Now, in this cathedral was a silver censer, big as a cauldron, that swung in stately arcs at the end of a chain; and during the Infanta’s Mass the chain broke and this censer hurtled out of the church through a window and exploded like a bomb on the paving stones outside. Some people would have taken this as an omen, but not the Infanta. She went resolutely on to England and would up marrying King Henry the Eighth. This shows that one ought to pay attention to omens.
Ooh, it’s Banned Books Week–that time of the year when librarians can change their posters and make people think of all sorts of scary things that can happen if a book it stomped out. Now, to an extent, I see the point, and can share the concern. But frankly, I bet it’s publicity like this that helps keep people banning certain books.
Well, the Crusty Curmudgeon posted a list of Banned Books, and like him, I’m a sucker for these lists. So here’s the list with the ones I read in bold. I count 18, which means I’m just a little bit naughtier than Scott.
- Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
- Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou–I think I started this one, but can’t say it for sure.
- The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier–read this and a sequel or two as I recall…creepy, intense, but I loved it.
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain–this one goes down as a “YOU MISSED THE FRIGGIN’ POINT OF THE BOOK IF YOU BANNED IT!!!” I love this book, and it grieves me no end that people trash it…
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck–it was a nice book. Like it better than The Grapes of Wrath
- Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling–yup, read ’em all at least twice (well, haven’t read the Order of the Phoenix twice yet…hmmm, know what I’m doing on semester break…)
- Forever by Judy Blume
- Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson. Read it several times, don’t remember a think about it
- Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
- Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman–should probably read it just so I know what the fuss is all about
- My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger–should probably read it just so I know what the fuss is all about
- The Giver by Lois Lowry
- It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
- Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine–looked dumb then, looks dumber now
- A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- Sex by Madonna–oh my, can’t believe I’m admitting in public that I read this. What can I say? I was in college, curious, and my roommate had too much money. So he bought it, brought it back to the dorm and we read it…and got really bored (when we weren’t freaked out)
- Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
- The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle–read this and the sequels several times…don’t see why this would be banned (unless people don’t like Gnostics, which hey, I can relate to…)
- Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
- Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
- In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
- The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
- The Witches by Roald Dahl–not my favorite Dahl, but as I recall it was okay
- The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
- Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
- The Goats by Brock Cole
- Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
- Blubber by Judy Blume–I think it was this book that made me decide that only the books about boys by Blume should be read by boys.
- Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
- Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
- We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
- Final Exit by Derek Humphry
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
- What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee–this falls into the same category as Huck Finn. YOU HAVE TO READ A BOOK BEFORE YOU BAN IT, IDIOTS!
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton–um, whatever. Didn’t really see the point of all the excitement about this one
- The Pigman by Paul Zindel
- Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
- Deenie by Judy Blume
- Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
- Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
- The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
- Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
- A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley–been on my “to read” list for about 15 years
- Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
- Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
- Cujo by Stephen King
- James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl–wha? how is this on a banned book list? Did I miss something?
- The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell–don’t own it, never made anything from it, never felt the slightest bit of interest in doing so
- Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
- Ordinary People by Judith Guest
- American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
- What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
- Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume–tried it, remembered the lesson learned from Blubber and stopped
- Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
- Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
- Fade by Robert Cormier
- Guess What? by Mem Fox
- The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
- The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding–best literary example of Total Depravity, but hated the book
- Native Son by Richard Wright
- Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
- Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
- Jack by A.M. Homes
- Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya. Absolutely don’t see why this would be banned. Called over-rated? Sure. But it was a nice little story.
- Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
- Carrie by Stephen King
- Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
- On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
- Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
- Family Secrets by Norma Klein
- Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
- The Dead Zone by Stephen King
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain–not even going to comment
- Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
- Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
- Private Parts by Howard Stern
- Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford–this has got to be a misprint
- Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
- Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
- Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
- Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
- Sex Education by Jenny Davis
- The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
- Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
- How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell–got to be banned by a petition from PETA
- View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
- The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
- The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
- Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
Man, my Amazon.com recommendations are gonna be messed up for weeks after me doing some searches to confirm what I remembered….
Casting for The Goblet of Fire has been announced: Miranda Richardson as Rita Skeeter–excellent. Richardson never hits a bad note… Brendan Gleeson as Mad-Eye Moody–not bad. Ralph Fiennes as You-Know-Who–very, very cool. And of course, the long-in-the-tooth Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson.
The Mrs. will be geeking out tonight…
Well . . . had some time to kill in a waiting room today, so I read Debating
Calvinism. It’s been sitting on my shelf since it was published, flipped
through briefly, but I hadn’t found the time to read it yet. In retrospect,
not sure I should have.
Don’t get me wrong–Dr. White’s presentations and responses were thoroughly
orthodox, and sometimes I could enjoy the replies to Hunt. But by and
large, I didn’t learn anything. Which is fine–I’d like to think that I’ve
got the basics of Calvinism down by now.
So what about Dave Hunt? Well, never thought much of him–especially after
the original radio interview Dr. White did with him, and hearing some of his
teaching leading up to that monumental waste of paper and ink called, What
Love Is This (insert that lahaye quote here–and what a disappointing
century this will be . . . . ), and then seeing the debate with Dr. Pipa.
I’d have thought that following that disastrous book, and only moderately
better debate, I couldn’t think less of Hunt.
WOW! WAS I WRONG!
Ugh. Horrible. Terrible. Horrific.
I will say this . . . I think one of his quotations from Augustine I found
the kernel of the application for my sermon this week. But that’s not what
he wanted me to get out of it, I was supposed to read it and say, “Whoa, I
don’t want anything to do with a system that is at all related to his
terrible thinker.” Oh well . . .
There are a few select authors that I can say that I’ve read everything they’ve written (or at least published). As of last week, Robert Crais just joined the likes of Douglas Adams, Christopher Buckley, Aaron Elkins, and a few others I can’t think of at the moment.
Robert Crais started off writing cool, Robert B. Parker-ish detective novels. Lots of action, lots of wise cracks, deadly & enigmatic sidekick, etc. Unlike Parker, over time Crais didn’t get lighter on the action and drama–‘tho the wise cracks did become scarce (but in a fitting way due to the subject matter). The plots became more intricate, the characters better… I’m a little worried that the last two Elvis Cole novels have been a bit too serious, a bit too intense–I can’t help but think of Dennis Lehane‘s Kenzie and Gennaro series (which isn’t bad, just not where the series was originally headed, I thought). That doesn’t mean that I don’t have every intention of running down to a bookstore the instant the next book, The Forgotten Man comes out in August (*cough*birthdaygiftidea*cough*).
His two stand-alone novels, Demoltion Angel and Hostage (which I’ve talked about here before), both blew me away, particularly the former. Good to see that he’s not a one-trick pony–even if that one trick is particularly great.
And so far, he stands up to a re-reading. What more could anyone ask for?
Well, I got my copy of Debating Calvinism today. And as it ws reported on www.aomin.org recently:
It’s Big, It’s Thick, It’s Sorta Fluffy
“It is thick (427 pages), but it is typeset rather loosely (i.e., considerably less text on a page than most of the books I am accustomed to reading, or writing), hence my description as ‘fluffy.'”
Hopefully I can do more than look at the title page soon . . .
Well, I know all of my two readers are eagerly awaiting to find out what I thought of Hostage. Kept up the pacing, kept up the suspense …. but, I’m not sure how satisfying the ending was.
I don’t know how he could’ve resolved everything differently than he did without going into melodrama, so he ended it right. But I didn’t fear for a second that anything else was going to happen.
All in all, tho–great read. Crais is capable of better, but it was still pretty good.
1. Someone in IRC just pointed me at ShadowPDF.net, a collection of classic pulps of The Shadow. Takes me back to when I was a kid and listened to the radio shows on tape/radio . . . too cool.
2. Update on Hostage. I was very tempted to pull an all nighter for this one. It’s very different in flavor and pacing than the Elvis Cole series. I’ve stopped missing them, and have been drawn into Chief Tulley’s world. The set up Crais creates in the first hundred pages or so is brilliant. This is all going to go horribly, horribly bad. Which means it will be incredibly fun to read. Only question is how dark Crais will let it go . . . .
my guess is very.
Started Robert Crais’ Hostage last night. I didn’t get very far into it before my arch-nemesis, Sleep, won another round in our ongoing battle.
First stand-alone novel I’ve read by him. I can already tell I’m going to miss Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. Not that it’s a bad book–but any novel that opens up with a double-murder/suicuide could really use some old friends in it to help you cope, y’know?
Ohh, while writing this I read that the movie based on this book started filming a couple of weeks ago. Bruce Willis stars. That could be cool….