Posts about books that I’ve read.
This is a book about a book. It recounts how C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity came to be written and its remarkable longevity and influence over the past 75 years or so. Professor Marsden of Notre Dame does a splendid job, and anyone who is a fan of C.S. Lewis’s book — and of course, as you … [Read more…]
This is a collection of a hundred or so pages’ worth of the comic strip of that name, which is a mashup of sixties advertising clip art with Jesus setting straight various average Joe and Jo Anne types. It’s okay: The first time you read the strip, it’s novel and funny, and some of the … [Read more…]
Let’s cut to the chase: In this collection of hundreds of mostly short, fairly pithy sayings, there is no doubt about the best one. It’s number 43 in book XIV: “Yuan Jang sat waiting with his legs spread wide. The Master said, ‘To be neither modest nor deferential when young, to have passed on nothing … [Read more…]
This book is short (132 pages plus notes); the author says that it is drawn from a longer, earlier work by him, Money, Possessions, and Eternity. It is also straightforward and unabashed in its message: While faith is what gets us into Heaven, it’s works that determine how and to what extent we will be … [Read more…]
I got this book after reading a glowing recommendation for it by Eric Metaxas, who has written a foreword for it in a new edition just published (I wasn’t able to get that version on interlibrary loan, alas). Metaxas compares the book to C.S. Lewis’s work, and author Thomas Howard himself most graciously includes Lewis … [Read more…]
Walker Percy is one of my favorite authors, and this book was given to me by Professor Michael DeBow, one of my favorite people, who picked it up in St. Francisville, Louisiana, at the annual Walker Percy Weekend there. Percy is a Southern Catholic existentialist — an interesting combination. This book devotes a chapter each … [Read more…]
I generally like N.T. Wright — I have favorable posts on other books he’s written on this blogsite — and I enjoyed his biography here of St. Paul. The book is readable and of manageable length (432 pages plus notes). It’s straightforward in its organization, basically following Paul’s life, and necessarily discusses Paul’s letters and … [Read more…]
As Robert Lamberton writes in his introduction to this translation, “The Theogony and Works and Days stand alongside the Iliad and Odyssey at the beginning of the European literary tradition.” And there are instances in which each prompts some comparison with the Bible. For Works and Days: In his introduction, Lamberton notes that this poem … [Read more…]
I read this 1912 novel after reading Michael Dirda’s somewhat tardy but glowing review of it 106 years later in the March 29 Washington Post (“G.K. Chesterton, our guardian angel of foolery and faith”). Dirda noted that April Fool’s Day and Easter fell on the same day this year, making it appropriate to write about Chesterton, … [Read more…]
This is another fine translation by Professor Alter, about whom I wrote on this site in posts of his Psalms and Wisdom books translations. With regard to I and II Samuel, he thinks they shared a common author, who was a genius and who gives an unflinching portrait of a complex David (ruthless, shrewd, self-possessed). … [Read more…]