13.9. Book #3 2013

A re-read of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows.

It's a story about the love for a place, about hospitality, about friendship, with a great chapter wherein Mole and Rat have a mystical experience I find lovely.  The chapter is called "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn."


Here's an amazing Van Morrison song based on that chapter.

13.8. Book #2, 2013

Walter Dean Myers's Monster is a movie script interrupted occasionally by diary entries--both written in a notebook during the the trial of his protagonist/narrator, a sixteen year old named Steven Harmon.  Steven is accused of serving as the lookout for a robbery of drugstore that ended in the murder of the drugstore owner.  Myers leaves Steven's guilt and involvement ambiguous to the end.  The novel's moral seems to lie in the potential consequences of a single choice.  The problem is, we never get to know just exactly what choice Steven did or didn't make and whether he was just an unfortunate victim of circumstances or what.

I'm a sucker for YA fiction.  I'm a double sucker for stories about inner city youths.  The Harlem setting is perhaps the best thing about this, and Steven as a wannabe film-maker is a good idea, but the novel written as film script just doesn't work for me.  Steven's character comes through in this style fairly well, especially, though because he occasionally interrupts his script to write a diary entry.  But the other characters quickly become indistinguishable from one another.  It might make a better movie; somebody should make it.

On the upside, I think Walter Dean Myers is a novelist worth reading, and I will read more of his books.  Because I'm also a sucker for stories about basketball players, and he has a couple of those, too.

13.7. Simply Speaking

"I recently observed a man from whom I believe God wanted to rid the strength of the self nature.  It is my perception that although what he says is true and comes from the inward work of the spirit upon his heart, his intellect is so powerful that it overpowers the gentle work of grace without his even knowing it.  Therefore, some of the truth of what he says is lost.  People are won more by the annointing that flows from a heart full of grace--by the weapon of love--than by powerful argument. 

Aren't the truths that you speak analyzed too much by the intellect and further polished by the imagination?  Their effect seems to be lost because they lack simplicity and directness.  Like a song, they sound wonderful; but they do not substantially reach and touch the heart.  There is no annointing. 

Aren't you always looking for something clever or novel to say?  Aren't you really showing off the power of your intellect rather than standing back and letting the simple truth speak for itself? Consider what I have said, and the light will reveal much to you.  Am I speaking to simply? I only want to speak the truth and the truth alone."

 

-Jeanne Guyon, Intimacy with Christ