what are you reading?

Welcome to Wondercafe2!

A community where we discuss, share, and have some fun together. Join today and become a part of it!

Register Log in
Has anyone read "The Secret Chord" by Geraldine Brooks. My book club has done several of her books and I always enjoyed them, finding them well researched and well written. We didn't do "The Secret Chord" but I read it on my own and wasn't disappointed. It is Biblical fiction focusing on the life of David as seen by the prophet Nathan. Much of it covers events found in the Hebrew scriptures (the books of Samuel, Kings, Chronicles and some of the Psalms), but it also expands it to explore his possible relationship with his family of origin, King Saul and his family, Jonathan, his wives and children. This was particularly interesting to me as a few years ago I drafted out a book about King David's Wives, particularly Michel. I found Geraldine Brooks interprets the brief references to them found in the Bible quite differently than I do.
I liked the book.
Then a friend noticed it in my house. She had read it for her church's book club. She hated it. In her view it was just a lot of made-up stuff to disgrace a Biblical hero. "No where in the Bible does it say that David's father and brothers picked on him." "No where in the Bible does it say ... "
I got the impression that she considered it blaspheme and people who read it and enjoy it are at risk of denying everything they were taught in Sunday School or always believed about 'the shepherd boy who become king'.
Has anyone read it? What did you think?
Is there any place for Biblical fiction (ie books like this, or "The Red Tent")?

I don't think I'll let her read my book about David's wives. I also took liberties with Scripture.
 
Of course there is. Nothing is off limits for the human imagination. If she doesn't like it, that doesn't mean it should not exist. I detest the very concept of sparkly lover-boy vampires but I just ignore Twilight.
 
Seeler said:
Has anyone read "The Secret Chord" by Geraldine Brooks. My book club has done several of her books and I always enjoyed them, finding them well researched and well written. We didn't do "The Secret Chord" but I read it on my own and wasn't disappointed. It is Biblical fiction focusing on the life of David as seen by the prophet Nathan. Much of it covers events found in the Hebrew scriptures (the books of Samuel, Kings, Chronicles and some of the Psalms), but it also expands it to explore his possible relationship with his family of origin, King Saul and his family, Jonathan, his wives and children. This was particularly interesting to me as a few years ago I drafted out a book about King David's Wives, particularly Michel. I found Geraldine Brooks interprets the brief references to them found in the Bible quite differently than I do.
I liked the book.
Then a friend noticed it in my house. She had read it for her church's book club. She hated it. In her view it was just a lot of made-up stuff to disgrace a Biblical hero. "No where in the Bible does it say that David's father and brothers picked on him." "No where in the Bible does it say ... "
I got the impression that she considered it blaspheme and people who read it and enjoy it are at risk of denying everything they were taught in Sunday School or always believed about 'the shepherd boy who become king'.
Has anyone read it? What did you think?
Is there any place for Biblical fiction (ie books like this, or "The Red Tent")?

I don't think I'll let her read my book about David's wives. I also took liberties with Scripture.
Click to expand...

I read it ... thought it could disturb people with concrete thoughts about stuff of essence ... Gone With The Wind? God and love are like that except when considering knowledge of wisdom ... would they need a separate domain ... as they are not part of the humanoid affinitive ... thus denied and out there! Sets the Ephraim for explicit faith and sects beyond what's established ... as we found none of the above yet! Though some claim to ... and thus illusions ... false science? They didn't see it in virtue ... of overwhelming passions to defeat part of all that is! An expression of eternal-like flights ... kind ;ve wayward and something rabbi's would talk about while walking about ...
 
Reading Systematic Theology --- Tillich ... leaves one with a sense of chaos! A basis for modern theology some say ... confusing the masses ... as the church fathers stated the common people shouldn't know sacred knowledge ... thus the shadowy reads ... and only the mire Shadow knows what it says due to the strange composition ... alien tongues pop up!
 
Like P3 - I read & enjoyed The Red Tent many years ago.

On the weekend I picked up a copy of Barbara Brown Taylor's "An Altar in the World" - just barely started it last night, but looking forward to continuing.
 
Reading Spong's book on the mother of God as wisdom ... insubstantial essence that would bug existential idealists ... who missed the essential part ... thus the bung when dealing with barrels ... Canon's on non-sense? Monkey business ...

Few leaders are rational on the meaning of pragmatism ... so why should I be an advocate of powers other that liter Urge ... beats S-urge of people escaping the edge of sanity in the wrong direction. If labelled crazy be true to it! The world seems to be successful at it ... if you've had a turn around to look it over as encyclopaedic loss!

Tis a natural choice to take one away from here ... a world of brute force ... no gentility, atoll without the satyr?
 
Reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and some background on his mentor Karl Barth (who I listened to his US lectures some time ago).

The stuff is astounding as some of the other material I've read about the rise and fall of national socialism ... as a contrary to theological material or essence. It parallels the tracks of psychopaths left in the snow job created ... something opposing the sands storms of some ancient myths to outline the motivation of some gods in the Egyptian sense of an alternate essence!

As usual as I use words from different fields of observation ... perhaps little will be understood and thus I too recess in sacred silence ... heiros (heiress) gamma? Could be that dark lady in The Shack ... a really deeply disturbing thing to some confidence men ...

Kind 've like Mos essence (Mariah) in the face of god ... source of wild pyres in the dark ole night of sol ... with the headless singularity ... a quiet valle ...
 
Just breezed through:
The Annihilation Score by Charles Stross. Followed Mo O'Brien as she tried to deal with a Superhero plague...and squee one of the COOL Old Ones makes an appearance. I'm wondering with all of this buildup however is Charles gonna do CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN?

The Drowned World by J G Ballard. Its the end of the world; the world is heating up and the ice caps have melted. Delirious and heatstrokey prose. Reminded me of the movie Apocalypse Now.

Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. My first xperience with this author. Hard science with poetry and explorations of human nature. A generation ships travel to Tau Ceti. This author is amazing how he can juggle so many different concepts.

I think books are too slow. I need some direct book to mind interface.

LA DI DAH!!!
 
Inannawhimsey said:
Just breezed through:
The Annihilation Score by Charles Stross. Followed Mo O'Brien as she tried to deal with a Superhero plague...and squee one of the COOL Old Ones makes an appearance. I'm wondering with all of this buildup however is Charles gonna do CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN?

The Drowned World by J G Ballard. Its the end of the world; the world is heating up and the ice caps have melted. Delirious and heatstrokey prose. Reminded me of the movie Apocalypse Now.

Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. My first xperience with this author. Hard science with poetry and explorations of human nature. A generation ships travel to Tau Ceti. This author is amazing how he can juggle so many different concepts.

I think books are too slow. I need some direct book to mind interface.

LA DI DAH!!!
Click to expand...

An un penned incident as pegged? That could nail down the unknown ... an ideal of Hebrew penetration of the darkness on a desert night ... then there were thieves ... Ali'B aba ... tis a compounding act with natural Vege 'ns ... a get together under the shrubbery i.e. in the Shadow? May be more tuit than appears ...

When confronted by the God of Passions do the humans lose it and are thus flawed ... does the as is have a crackly separation? Wrong spot ...
 
"The Whisperer in Darkness" by H.P. Lovecraft. One of his s-f/horror stories about weird aliens lurking in the dark hills of Vermont. It's set within his Cthulhu Mythos horror cycle but the barebones plot would qualify it as an alien abduction story if it came out today. Even has humans conspiring with the aliens a la the X-Files (in fact, it would make a great episode of that series if you stripped out the Mythos references).

Finding it hard to get engaged by anything right now so I'm falling back on old favorites like Lovecraft to make sure I don't completely lose my interest in reading.
 
Mendalla said:
Finding it hard to get engaged by anything right now so I'm falling back on old favorites like Lovecraft to make sure I don't completely lose my interest in reading.
Click to expand...
I go through periods like this with reading myself. Sometimes I can identify a reason (stress, etc). Other times I have no idea why.
 
A lot of the time during a depression I don't really notice until I try reading and notice I can't read; that's when I go "oh hey, I'm depressed"
 
The depression of reading something negative in your emotional state ... something you didn't wish to know ... but should be faced ... and thus we move on ... one step at a time into de sans ... that beyond us as yet as eternal field?

Some are hung up in isolated space ... absolutes? Thus the many ringer theology ... floods of debelles ... nd creation stated there would be two gross populations ... vast expanses in the shadow on Eide Eire side ...

And still no curiosity uncovered in a bulk that has no interest in alien god space ... lens allows a peek ... in what Einstein called space time composite ... Q' want eM that IDe-a? Many do not relate to such stretch ... ankh? Lan's 've debelles and de vales ...
 
Finished "Whisperer" and considering what to read next. Perhaps "The Dunwich Horror", another tale of horrible goings-on in the backwoods that hews closer to traditional horror tropes ("demon" worshipers bearing strange children) even if it eschews the Christian imagery that is usual in such tales for Lovecraft's own Mythos (e.g. the "demon" is an extra-dimensional alien known as Yog-Sothoth).
 
Last night came to a' fini of The Preacher .. by a Swedish author ... proper at projecting doubts about institutions ...

Does one have to open the circle to see as a "c" what sod there in a small pool?
 
Really enjoying "Where'd you go, Bernadette?" by Maria Semple. Satire - and I'm finding parts of it quite hilarious. So a good easy read for summertime. :-)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top