Finished
The Presence of Grace and Other Book Reviews /Mystery and Manners – Flannery O’Connor
I’m sticking these two together because I basically have the same thing to say about both of them. First thing: I really enjoyed both of these. I mean, I knew I was going to enjoy Mystery and Manners, but I wasn’t too sure about the other book, because, well, I never read book reviews!
Pretty much.
Like I said last week, Flannery isn’t afraid to tell it like it is, which is actually harder than it looks. At least, for me it is. But reading these reviews has inspired me to be more discerning and to think about what I read/see/hear, instead of apathetically taking it all in like I normally do. I know that I am sometimes almost afraid to speak up if something is not that great, because I don’t want to discourage people. But sometimes things are so badly done that it’s almost worse to not speak up (*coughSonOfGodcough*). I’m not saying we should be tearing them a new one, but it’s probably better to be charitably honest instead of lying and fawning all over something just because it’s done by a Christian or has to do with Christianity. I don’t know. I have Many Thoughts about this, and they probably need their own blog post.
Abandoned
The Tale of Genji – Murasaki Shikubu: Welp. It’s official. 11th century Japan is Not My Thing. I kept getting lost and bored with all the staring at moonlight and contemplating blossoms….the only thing this novel made me want to contemplate was the inside of my eyelids.
I’m nothing if not stubborn, so I soldiered on for about 100 pages after I lost interest, but in the end I just couldn’t take it and had to give up. Womp womp.
Up next
A Prayer Journal – Flannery O’Connor : I put this book on hold ages ago and promptly forgot about it until I read this post on one of my favorite blogs, which made me want to read it even more. Well, what do you know. Two days later, I got the magic email of magic that said it was finally in! Serendipity FTW. It’s much slimmer than I expected, but I’m already loving the little bit I’ve read so far.
The Second Coming – Walker Percy : Marie recommended Walker Percy to me last week after I mentioned that I liked Flannery O’Connor, because Southern Catholicism, that’s why. I picked this up at random.
On Such A Full Sea – Chang-Rae Lee : Sometimes I place holds on books and then completely forget about them. And by “sometimes” I mean all the time. I have no memory of requesting this book, but it looks so interesting. Way to go, past self!
From the jacket:
“In a long-declining future America, abandoned urban neighborhoods have been repurposed as secure, self-contained labor settlements of contented workers–descendants of those brought over en masse many years earlier from environmentally ruined cities in China–devote their lives to the cultivation of pristine produce and seafood for the wealthy residents of the elite walled villages that lie outside….Within one of these labor settlements…lives Fan, an almost mythically gifted female fish-tank diver. When the man she loves disappears, Fan shocks her community by leaving the safety of its gated walls to go in search of him, crossing from one world into another, and another, and another.”
Go me! This is totally up my alley and I’m psyched to read it!
What are you reading this week?
The Beginning Of Love 