Recent Book Deals!

I have found four interesting books for very cheap lately and I wanted to brag a little bit.

1. Anne Rice - Christ the Lord:the road to Cana

Price 5.00 at Chapters. I love the Bargain section. Its even a hard cover!








2. Aldous Huxley - Island

Price .50 cents at the Salvation ARmy. The spine hasnt even been cracked and I found a pair of bigfoot slippers in the same trip.






3. Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Price .50 cents at the Salvation Army again







4. Al Murray - The Pub Landlord's Book Of British Common Sense.


Price .50 cents at the Salvation Army again. I really believe in bathroom readers and this little book is a gem in that catagory.

Hey Nostradamus!

AUTHOR: Douglas Coupland

DATE: November 2010

NOTES: This was my first Coupland novel. It was donated to our house book shelf by a good friend and his girl after the last Regina Folk Festival. Both of its original owners are x-Christians. I mention this because it seems to have a bearing on why it was donated to me.

I should begin by saying that I really enjoyed this book. Usually I am a very slow reader but I finished this read in less than a week. Coupland writes in a similar style to my other favorite authors Nick Hornby and Michael Chabon. What I mean is that he writes minimally with a real focus on his characters and their voices. He writes the way his characters would talk (this book was mostly first person accounts). By doing this you feel like you get to know the characters personally.

An interesting feature of this book is that Coupland was able to write around a central event from four very different voices. The event was a Columbine like school shooting in which the first speaker, Cheryl, is a victim. Cheryl ends up recounting her short life story from the after-life. In this first section we find out that Cheryl belonged to a small Christian group at her high school and that she had secretly married her high school sweetheart to bypass the moral barrier of premarital relations. We also learn that she was pregnant and that she did not whole heartily buy into the predominant feelings of the group regarding faith. She gives the impression that she and Jason were somehow above the group. Cheryl becomes an icon in the aftermath of the massacre because she had scrolled, "God is nowhere - God is now here" on her binder, by doing this Cheryl effectively became a martyr, although she herself claims that it was nothing more than an exercise in mindless scribbling.

Jason is Cheryl's secret husband and he gains post massacre fame because he is falsely suspected of being the mastermind behind the shootings. The reason that Jason is suspected is circumstantial and I don't want to give it all away but I will say that Cheryl's murder is thought to be the motive. Although Jason is legally cleared he is still suspected by the public and this fact coupled with the death of his unborn child and wife has an understandably detrimental impact on his life. We meet up with Jason ten years after the shooting as he records his story on pink bank receipts.

The third speaker is connected to the massacre through her relationship to Jason. Heather becomes Jason's partner after a meeting at Toys R Us (Jason is buying toys for his sons which he conceived with his dead brothers wife on the night of his brothers tragic death so that she could claim them as his brothers [the plot thickens]). Heather and Jason create an imaginary world with characters based on toys and animals in which Jason is able to communicate vicariously. Eventually Jason disappears under suspicious circumstances and the Heather spends much of the remainder of her chapter consulting a medium who claims to hear the characters voices. You will have to read the book to see what that bit is all about.

The last character in the book is Jason's Dad, Reg. Reg spends the majority of the book as a strict fundamentalist Christian. He accuses Jason of Murder after the school shooting and he announces that because Jason's "brothers sons" are twins that one of them is more than likely without a soul. Nearing the end of the novel Reg undergoes a pretty significant change and the reader ends up feeling sympathy for him. Again I will let you read the book to discover what I mean.

Like I said, the book was well written and captivating. I think Coupland is sympathetic to his characters and the world he creates feels realistic. I think that one of his motives for writing this book was to communicate a sort of non-faith that is tempting to readers in my age group. Coupland does not say that there is no God but he does create an atmosphere of scepticism in his novel. The reader is lead to ask where God is during tragedy. Each of the characters struggles with faith and it seems that Coupland encourages the questioning as an end. The characters in the novel who have firm beliefs are painted as naive and in some cases dangerous. It is hard to explain but the novel just leaves you feeling sad and a little bit lost. I think that this was what Coupland wanted so I would say that he achieved his goal.

Over all this was a good read and it has sparked some really good conversation with people I know.

The Great Divorce

AUTHOR: C.S. Lewis

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TIME: October 2010
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NOTES:


I have always been a fan of C.S. Lewis. Unfortunately I was not raised on the Chronicles of Narnia but in my adult years I have had the pleasure of discovering them with my lovely wife Sarah. As a young Christian I was very strongly influenced by Mere Christianity. I have also read The Screwtape Letters, A Grief Observed and the first two installments of the Cosmic Trilogy.

I really enjoyed this little pocket reader and as with all Lewis books it was both entertaining and educational. It was entertaining in that Lewis takes the reader on a bus ride from the grey streets of Hell all the way to the forrests surrounding Heaven. In Heaven the residents appear solid while the vistors are wraith like shadows. The solidness of Heaven is painful to the wisps of Hell. Lewis imaginitive rendering makes for a fun read.

During the journey from Hell to Heaven the reader is privy to several conversations between the ghost like people of Hell and themselves as well as their discourse with the solid people of Heaven. These conversations act in much the same way that Dickens' Christmas ghost's act on Scrooge. The reader is invited to consider where they may fit in the scenes and therby where they may require change.

One of my favorite conversations comes early in the book. I will share a small sample below:


Dick: Do you really think there are no sins of intellect?
Spirit: There are indeed, Dick. There is hide bound predjudice, and intellectual dishonesty, and timidity, and stagnation. But honest opinions fearlessly followed -they are not sins."

As this conversation goes on it becomes clear that the Spirit has been mislead by a type of intellectualism that says that all things are equally true if they are truly believed. Some may call this type of thinking, when applied to spiritual matters, "universalism". The problem for the Spirit is that he is being confronted with an objective truth in the form of the foothills of Heaven and his perfected Heavenly friend but his intellectual pride prevents him from submitting himself to that one truth.

SIDE NOTE: Lewis himself has been accused of universalism because he wrote a "Talmerine" (sp?) into Heaven at the end of the Last Battle. I can now see how Lewis' theology can allow for this type of thing. In the case of the Spirit he is given one last chance to see the truth even though he was mislead all his life. So, it is noble to follow a belief heroically but it is foolish to hold that same belief when confronted blatantly with a truth that makes that belief false. For the Talmerine is submission to Aslan once confronted with him in person acted as his choice between truth and falshood.

The book carries on to show people confronted with their own false humility, lust, pride, malice etc. Each time the Spirits are given a choice. Some choose to walk to the great mountain while many others opt for the grey streets of Hell. This allegorical style is very affective in that it gives the reader several moments in time to reflect on. In a way each segment is, for the reader, an opportunity to choose between Heaven and Hell as they are confronted with their own sins.

The title of the book is significant because Lewis wants to 'draw the line'. Speaking of the "Marriage" of Heaven and Hell lewis writes:

"The attempt is based on the belief that reality never presents us with an absolutely unavoidable 'either-or'; that, granted skill and patience and (above all) time enough, some way of embracing both alternatives can always be found; that mere development or adjustment or refinement will somehow turn evil into good without our being called on for a final and total rejection of anything we should like to retain. This belief I take to be disatrous error."

So, in "The Great Divorce" Lewis paints Hell as a small crack in the floor of Heaven. A person, based on their beliefs, choices, and loyalties must choose to accept their invitation to Heaven or to be finally cast into the crack of Hell. This decision is made on a road filled with grace and mercies up to and including a view of Heaven itself and a personal invitation delivered by a trusted friend but in the end it is a true choice with final concequences.

A QUOTE TO START OFF WITH.

I was looking for a good Hornby quote for my header and I came accross this gem. It is to good not to post but to long for a subtitle:

"Books are, let's face it, better than everything else. If we played cultural Fantasy Boxing League, and made books go 15 rounds in the ring against the best that any other art form had to offer, then books would win pretty much every time. Go on, try it. “The Magic Flute” v. Middlemarch? Middlemarch in six. “The Last Supper” v. Crime and Punishment? Fyodor on points. See? I mean, I don’t know how scientific this is, but it feels like the novels are walking it. You might get the occasional exception -– “Blonde on Blonde” might mash up The Old Curiosity Shop, say, and I wouldn’t give much for Pale Fire’s chance against Citizen Kane. And every now and again you'd get a shock, because that happens in sport, so Back to the Future III might land a lucky punch on Rabbit, Run; but I'm still backing literature 29 times out of 30."

-Nick Hornby