Mulier Fortis tagged me with yet another book meme.
1)
Which book do you irrationally cringe
away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews?
Henry Nouwen – Once going to a retreat house I went to their book store
and found books like Hitler’s Pope, Gary Wills stuff, a bunch
of dissident garbage plus a lot of books by Henry Nouwen.
Sure it is irrational guilt by associations but there are
lots of books to choose from.
2) If you could bring
three characters to life for a social event
(afternoon tea, a night of clubbing, perhaps a world cruise), who would
they be and what would the event be?
Well the event would obviously be a world cruise since you then would
get to spend the most time with them. Just off the top of my
head the characters would be Gandalf (great to have around for smoke
rings), the noble dark-elf ranger Drizzt Do’Urden,
and Chesterton’s Innocent Smith.
3) (Borrowing shamelessly
from the Thursday Next series by Jasper
Fforde): you are told you cant die until you read the most boring
novel on the planet. While this immortality is great for a while,
eventually you realise its past time to die. Which book would you
expect to get you a nice grave?
Well I have no idea what the most boring novel on the planet.
Such a novel wouldn’t get much publicity if it was truly
boring. Even badly written and poorly researched novels like
The Da Vinci Code don’t commit the sin of being boring. Now
if you have a category of books that would be quite purgatorial than I
think it could be any of Fr. Andrew Greeley’s bodice ripper novels.
4) Come on, weve all
been there. Which book have you pretended, or at
least hinted, that youve read, when in fact youve been nowhere near
it?
I never pretend to read something.
5) Youre interviewing
for the post of Official Book Advisor to some
VIP (whos not a big reader). Whats the first book youd recommend and
why? (If you feel like youd have to know the person, go ahead and
personalise the VIP).
Orthodoxy, if he doesn’t like it I probably would not have wanted to
work for him anyway.
6) A good fairy comes and
grants you one wish: you will have perfect
reading comprehension in the foreign language of your choice. Which
language do you go with?
Too obvious – Latin. Then I could start a new blog with one
of those cool Latin names.
7) A mischievous fairy
comes and says that you must choose one book
that you will reread once a year for the rest of your life (you can
read other books as well). Which book would you pick?
Well I don’t know exactly why such a fairy would be labeled
mischievous? If a book isn’t worth reading yearly it probably
is not a good book. There are already several books that I read
yearly. Orthodoxy, Everlasting Man, Theology and Sanity, The
Hobbit and the LOTR series. Than there are other books that I seem to
have on two or three year cycles.
8) I know that the book
blogging community, and its various challenges,
have pushed my reading borders. Whats one bookish thing you
discovered from book blogging (maybe a new genre, or author, or new
appreciation for cover art-anything)?
One thing I love about St. Blogs is that book recommendations from
various bloggers has opened me up to multiple books that I would
probably never have read. For some dumb reason I had the idea
that Dean Koontz was a second-rate Stephen King till I heard such good
things about the Brother Odd series and his other books; boy was I
wrong. From fiction to theology I have been introduced to a
bunch of great books.
9) That good fairy is
back for one final visit. Now, shes granting you
your dream library! Describe it. Is everything leather bound? Is it
full of first edition hardcovers? Pristine trade paperbacks? Perhaps a
few favourite authors have inscribed their works? Go ahead-let your
imagination run free.
Well I would like to have a room with a dedicated library with walls of
shelves with leather bound books instead of having satellite libraries
all over the house. Though a dream library would also have
one of those big Print-On-Demand machines so I could dial up any book I
wanted. I would really like the library to have a secret
passage and when you grab the right book opens up to
another library!
10 comments
Number 1: The Drama of Athiestic Humanism by Lubac… but worth it none the less…
I will spend my purgatory time trying to wade through Fr. Greeley’s formulaic sexy Irish babes novels.
Great answers! Hope it wasn’t too much of a chore!
4) Come on, weve all been there. Which book have you pretended, or at least hinted, that youve read, when in fact youve been nowhere near it?
I never pretend to read something.
We all most definately have not been there unless he means by “hinted” simply having the book on our shelves. But even then I disagree. I remember a friend looked at my bookshelf and said, “Ooo! Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason!” I immediately corrected him, “Don’t get too excited. I’ve never touched it and probably never will.”
Question 9 brings to my memory two wonderful libraries: Henry Higgins’ library, balcony & all, & the pre-renovation Pawtucket Public Library, which made reading a royal treat when I was young–it was, to me, an ornate palace of books. (It, too, had a balcony, complete with a glass floor, for reference materials.)
I think your instinct on Nouwen is sound; he can be avoided. He did write a few good books, but I think especially of his Sabbatical Journey (journal of the final year of his life) as potentially harmful; he praised the dissident theologians Matthew Fox and Edward Schillebeeckx, and speaks glowingly of having attended the “wedding” of two of his male friends.
And his Inner Voice of Love is just plain boring. I remember one sentence where he went to farcical lengths to avoid the masculine pronoun for the Deity: “God is faithful to God’s promises.” Oy.
Very interesting.
BTW, this is totally off-topic, but I just now realized that you weren’t on my blogroll (it only took me 10 months to notice since I redesigned the site). You are now added. 🙂
“God is faithful to God’s promises.” Oy.
I’ve heard this kind of verbal gynastics at Mass more than once. What are these liturgists/clergy/choir directors thinking?
What are these liturgists/clergy/choir directors thinking?
Unconciously, I think they are thinking that even if Our Lord comes to us flesh and blood in the Mass, it’s not very interesting. So since everyone has to sit around for an hour anyway, let’s entertain them.
oops! I still had the circus mass entry in my mind when I wrote that. Wrong combox.
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