Two books for my homework

Found at the antiques market this morning. (Well, what would you do if you got a notice that the power would be off for several hours?)

20 Things You Should Read (Book Review)

20 Things You Should Read (From 20 writers who challenge us to live extraordinary lives). Compiled by David Edwards, Margaret Feinberg, Janella Griggs, Matthew Paul Turner.Tyndale House Publishers, 2006.

In Dante's visit to heaven, he sees images in the form of something like candles, that turn out to be the spirits of believers. Some of them, including Thomas Aquinas and St. Benedict, speak to him and try to answer his questions about faith. Near the end, in Longfellow's translation, Dante says:

From that time forward what I saw was greater
Than our discourse, that to such vision yields,
And yields the memory unto such excess.

Even as he is who seeth in a dream,
And after dreaming the imprinted passion
Remains, and to his mind the rest returns not,

Even such am I, for almost utterly
Ceases my vision, and distilleth yet
Within my heart the sweetness born of it...

Dante admits a huge and understandable reluctance, shared with the reader, to leave this experience behind, even with faith that someday he will return. In the meantime, David Edwards et al offer a few more voices from the Christian "cloud of witnesses," which might have made up extra Cantos if Dante had been able to stay longer.

On my shelf I have a thirty-year-old Penguin paperback called Part III: The Christian Testament Since the Bible.  In spite of that heretical-sounding title, it's simply a compilation of great writings from the Christian tradition, with little or no commentary or explanation. I also have a book by Terry Glaspey about books that Christians should read, which tells you about the books, but gives only brief excerpts. 20 Things tries to hit a middle ground: each writer is given a short introduction, and then it's turned over to them for several pages apiece. The decision to include only the chosen twenty may raise a few eyebrows: G.K. Chesterton, but not C.S. Lewis? Karl Barth, but not, say, Francis Schaeffer? However, twenty it is, and every single excerpt is worthwhile, even Karl Barth. Like a conversation between the spirits in Paradiso, themes and thoughts are repeated. Ideas of faith and salvation jump out like online "word clouds." Even contradictions seem to recede in the constant emphasis on simple and pure love of God.

In fact, the writers included are so powerful that they make the additional material seem a bit lacking, almost coarse by comparison (although I think it improves throughout the book). Pop culture references and phrases like "They were undoubtedly amazing multitaskers back then" are aimed at the "twentysomethings" who are assumed to be the target audience of the book. It's a bit of a jump from Dante's "tour guides" Virgil and Beatrice. But it does help to have at least some introduction to less-familiar writers.

I can say I read the whole thing; but can I possibly say I did justice on one reading to St. Augustine, John Calvin, Frederick Douglass, and A.W. Tozer? This is a book I'll be going back to.

Mama Squirrel's Want-to-Read List for 2016

My GoodReads challenge for 2016 is 40 47 books, and there are 50 on this list. Most of them are books I already own, with a few to hunt down at the library or elsewhere. Some of them I started awhile ago but didn't finish.

Tales Before Narnia: The Roots of Modern Fantasy and Science Fiction
Anderson, Douglas A.

Tales Before Tolkien: The Roots of Modern Fantasy
Anderson, Douglas A.

Northrop Frye A Biography
Ayre, John

Life and Leisure in Ancient Rome
Balsdon, J.P.V.D.
Read parts of it, didn't finish

History in English Words
Barfield, Owen

Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning
Barfield, Owen

Home Economics
Berry, Wendell

A Place in Time: Twenty Stories of the Port William Membership
Berry, Wendell
Finished

The Theology of Dallas Willard
Jr., Gary Black

The Cost of Discipleship
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich

Purpose in Prayer
Bounds, E.M.

Telling Secrets
Buechner, Frederick

The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate that Changed Our Understanding of Time
Canales, Jimena

The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Their Friends
Carpenter, Humphrey

Orthodoxy
Chesterton, G.K.

When Children Love to Learn: A Practical Application of Charlotte Mason's Philosophy for Today
Cooper, Elaine (re-reading)

Atlas of the Roman World
Cornell, Tim J.
Finished, more or less--it's not a book you can easily read cover to cover

How We Think
Dewey, John

Twenty Things You Should Read
Edwards, David B.
Finished

Selected Prose
Eliot, T.S.
Finished

The Praise of Folly and Other Writings
Erasmus, Desiderius

Earth Hell and Heaven: In the Art of William Kurelek
Friesen, Ilse E.

Spiritus Mundi: Essays on Literature, Myth, and Society
Frye, Northrop
Started, haven't finished

The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed
Gordon, Karen Elizabeth

A Christian View of Hospitality: Expecting Surprises
Hershberger, Michele
Finished

The Singing Bowl
Guite, Malcolm

How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry
Hirsch, Edward
Started, haven't finished

Eliot and His Age: T. S. Eliot's Moral Imagination in the Twentieth Century
Kirk, Russell
Finished

Bird Lady - A Lifelong Love Affair with Birds
Le Geyt, Elizabeth
Started, haven't finished

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present
Lopate, Phillip

The Golden Thread: A Reader's Journey Through The Great Books
Meyer, Bruce

Three Works: A Dream of John Ball/The Pilgrims of Hope/News from Nowhere
Morris, William

The Housekeeper and the Professor
Ogawa, Yōko
Finished

Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity
Pearcey, Nancy
Started, haven't finished

The Second Coming
Percy, Walker
Finished

MFA in a Box
Rember, John
Finished

The Passionate Intellect: Dorothy L. Sayers' Encounter with Dante
Reynolds, Barbara

Emile or On Education
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques

Unto This Last and Other Writings
Ruskin, John

Our World-God's Visible Language: Visible Creation as Testimony to an Invisible Creator
Salloum, J E

The Black Dwarf
Scott, Walter

Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination, and Spirit: Reflections on Creativity and Faith
Shaw, Luci

Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson (edited by Phelps, William Lyon)

Virginibus Puerisque
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Started, haven't finished

Liberal Hearts and Coronets: The Lives and Times of Ishbel Marjoribanks Gordon and John Campbell Gordon, the Aberdeens
Strong-Boag, Veronica
Started but it had to go back to the library--I will be taking it out again

A Secular Age
Taylor, Charles

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Verne, Jules

New and Collected Poems
Wilbur, Richard
Started but didn't finish

The Spirit of the Disciplines : Understanding How God Changes Lives
Willard, Dallas
Started, haven't finished

The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams
Zaleski, Philip