"Book"
054
NAB (Not a Book -- but it got numbered anyhow ... hmmm ... maybe because it is book-related??)
This is Audible
for October 9, 2012, included an interview with Jasper Fforde on the release of The Woman Who Died A Lot in the Thursday
Next Series. Apparently, there will be at least one more Thursday Next book, Dark Reading Matter ...
Also the author of The
Oil Kings was interviewed. I have
the book through a sale at Audible ($3.95 or $4.95 sales are great!) -- but
haven't listened to it yet. I thought it
went back to the early days of oil but it is about the deals Nixon made with
the Shah of Iran directly. When Ford
became president no one understood these deals and the result was an oil morass
... it is on the list of "listen to soon" books when I am in the
right frame of mind to take in factual details ... should be an enlightening
listen.
Book 055
I had borrowed this book back in December through OverDrive,
I didn't get around to listening to it but at the point when OverDrive told me
the book was going to expire in three days and gave me the option to renew it,
I hit "renew." However,
someone else must have put it on their hold list before the three days were up
and I finally got to re-download the book "now."
I had looked through the pdf that came with the book. It is a "study guide" and the
author hopes that you will be using the guide in a group not just on your
own. I'm not part of a group and I
really did not take the time to answer any of the questions but being familiar
with the questions, which cover topics in the book in a way that lends them a
little more depth, I found that I think the book was a bit more enjoyable with
that added knowledge or thought.
So, what is this book?
Well, a book with a study guide sounds like it could easily be boring,
right? I think that might be one of the
reasons I put off listening to it the first time I had it to listen to. This time I decided to just dive into it and
see what I thought. If it was boring I
could just turn it off and go on to something different.
Well, Chasing
Francis: A Pilgrim's Tale by Ian
Morgan Cron turned out to be a book I enjoyed very much!
The book's description says that a pastor just melts and
loses his faith one morning right there in front of his congregation and the
church board asks him to take leave. He
turns to an "uncle" and discovers St. Francis ...
I figured this was going to be a preachy novel. In the preface, the author says that he and
InterVarsity Press talked about the book -- how the author wanted to present
St. Francis and his teaching and how the publisher thought it should be done as
a novel.
Not an easy task to "teach" without being preachy
in a novel. Yet, I believe Cron achieved
it.
As a novel, I fell in love with the characters and felt I
would like to try to add some of St. Francis' teachings to my own life. I know I can't do all of it but some of it.
I must admit, though, that part of my liking for this novel
is the pastor character's view of the modern / post-modern Christian
church. I am so "happy" (bad
word in this instance but I'm not sure what other word to use) to discover I am
not the only one to feel such disillusionment with the evangelical Protestant
church. Happy is such a bad word because
there is nothing happy about the situation except to find there are others who
feel that way and maybe something will happen to change things. I hope so.
And the author and character may be right -- bringing some of St.
Francis into the church may help -- a lot!
And even if you are not a "Christian," nor have any
religious leanings at all, you may discover some aspects of St. Francis'
teachings to be helpful to you too. He
had views about art, beauty, nature, people in need and so much more -- that
could help us all if we could embody even a tiny fraction of it ...
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