Catching Up

Jeremy here. I've been so busy reading I haven't had time to post, so I wanted to at least get title, numbers, a one-sentence description, and a review up before I forget them all.

1. Queen of Dreams, Chita Divakaruni. The second-generation daughter of Indian parents struggles with her mother's apparent divinatory powers, her divorce and with her thirteen-year-old daughter, and post 9/11 reconceptions of what it means to be an American. Well-written and insightful but with an unsatisfyingly abrupt and arbitrary ending. 352 pgs.

2. Duma Key, Stephen King. After a construction accident, an ordinary middle-class guy relocates to a mysterious Florida Key and realizes the power for his art to affect reality. An interesting premise, and some heart-stopping moments around page 400 or so, but we'll say 592 pages could have been 200 easily. Once you get famous, evidently you don't need an editor anymore.

3. All Shall Be Well, All Shall Be Well, All Manner of Things Shall Be Well, Tod Wodicka. A wonderful and quirky book about a man who embraces living in the medieval period as much as possible - we learn why as the book unfolds. Hildegard von Bingen, homemade mead, ethnic identity, and freeform jazz. Read it. 272 pgs.

4. People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks. I realize that if a book has anything to do with religion in any tangential way, I can justify it as research. I've actually recommended this one to several of my textual criticism friends - the main character is a book conservator dealing with the (historically real) Sarajevo Haggadah, a Jewish prayer book illuminated in a curiously Christian manner and saved during World War II by a Muslim curator. As she finds relevant artifacts in the book (a bloodstain, a butterfly wing), short stories within the text reveal more of the book's history and its constant interconnection with these three monotheistic faiths. Very nice - and it can go in my bibliography somewhere. 384 pgs.

5. Capote in Kansas, Kim Powers. Buffy asked me whether she should read this book, and I didn't have an answer. It's strange in a way that invites me to sit down and think about it more so that I can answer that question meaningfully, but I'm not likely to do so. Maybe one of you should. At any rate, it explores the fact that Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, and Truman Capote, the author of In Cold Blood, grew up as friends in the same town, and the influence they may have had on each other's work, as well as issues of their sexuality, of death, o race, poverty and violence. All the great themes here, folks - read it and perhaps we can have a conversation. 304 pgs.

And for my theology colloquium:

1. Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers. Famous German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, the "father of modern theology," was hanging out with his Romantic friends (he was roommates with Schlegel for a while), and they said, "Fritz, you're a fascinating and charming, intelligent, art-loving guy. What's all this religion crap about?" Schleiermacher wrote this book in response. Nice and lyrical in a way that the later analytical Schleiermacher isn't - religion is "lying on the bosom of the earth" and being caught up in rhapsodic perception of the interconnectedness of all things. I think Schleiermacher has a lot to say to many "cultured despisers of religion" today - if you ignore most of the problematic last chapter. 200 pgs.

2. David Tracy, Analogical Imagination. It may seem strange for a Mennonite theologian to be drawing on a Roman Catholic for most of his work. But I do. Tracy outlines a method for Christian theologians to engage meaningfully in a pluralist society without giving up the very important pieces of their identity, centered around the idea of the "classic" and how it speaks to the questions of existence we all have. This guy will help me write my dissertation (not really - but through his book). 467 pgs.

Keep on goin', fellow readers!