12) Falling Angels, Tracy Chevalier

Book number twelve (I'm falling behind here!), Falling Angels by tracy Chevalier.

Rating:
3/5 stars

Review:
I will read anything that Ms. Chevalier writes, simply because The Lady and the Unicorn and The Girl With a Pearl Earring were such great books. I was expecting something similarly wonderful, but I didn't enjoy Falling Angels as much. I think that, to the author's defense, two reason why I didn't like it were 1) it was set in the early 1900s, as opposed to the medieval or renaissance periods, which are my eras of choice, and 2) the correlation between the story and the art/artist to which it was referring was opaque. A little background - Chevalier writes most remarkably about a piece of art, and the artists lives as they are lived around the time that art was produced, or what circumstances caused the art to come into being. With The Girl With a Pearl Earring, it was about Vermeer and his famous painting, with The Lady and the Unicorn, it was about the tapestry making industry and how these tapestries came into being. Falling Angels didn't seem to touch on any specific piece of art, though I'm sure a little research and less laziness on my part would have led to a deeper understanding and appreciation for the subject matter she was attempting to address in this novel.

11) The Weight of Glory, CS Lewis

The Weight of Glory by CS Lewis.

Rating:
5/5 stars

Review:
I just love CS Lewis. He is probably my overall, all-time, absolute favorite author in the world. This book, The Weight of Glory, is a collection of essays:

• The Weight of Glory
  
• Learning in War-Time
  
• Why I Am Not a Pacifist
  
• Transposition
  
• Is Theology Poetry?
  
• The Inner Ring
  
• Membership
  
• On Forgiveness
  
• A Slip Of The Tongue
  

"The Weight of Glory", the essay for which the book was titled, is by far the best. I want everyone I know to read it, it impacted me so much. It is worth buying the book just for that one essay.

If you only read 2 essays in the book, read "Is Theology Poetry?" as well. "On Forgiveness" is also great. "Why I Am Not a Pacifist" nearly defeated me, it is very long and somewhat scattered. All in all, a solid collection. I just wish it included "Myth Became Fact," another of my favorite Lewis essays. But you'd have to buy God In The Dock for that.

10) The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood

Book number ten, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.

Rating:
4/5 stars

Review:
A friend and I coined a new term to describe this book - Huxwellian, if you will forgive us our corny lit-major humor. A tale of days to come, days that could come, if we're bad, if we trust our government, if we give up our rights little by little, if we stop voting and stop reading. Dystopia could happen. And it won't star Kevin Costner. (sorry, last corny joke, I promise). It is hard to describe the plot of this book in a short snippet, but suffice it to say that it is about a dystopic monotheocracy with a decidedly misogynistic theme. Women are reduced to either being breeders (handmaids), non-sexual life companions (Wives), or domestic servants (Marthas) after an attack that leaves the US government crippled. This book is written in memoir/diary style, told first-person from the point of view of "Offred", a handmaid for a wealthy commander and his wife, Serena Joy. Handmaids are not permitted their real names, but given patriarchal names denoting the household for which they breed.

Needless to say, this book depressed me like "Brave New World" or "1984" do whenever I read them, but it was still a very good book. Well-written, if you will forgive her over-use of adjectives and under-use of plot details and background info, and her abuse of her characters. It all fits into the subject of the book, I guess, but it is still hard on the reader.

9) Price of Dreams, Nancy McKenzie

Book the ninth, Prince of Dreams, by Nancy McKenzie.

Rating:
3/5 stars

Review:
I hate to say it, but Nancy McKenzie's books don't really improve with age. Or, rather, my age. The first Arthurian legend fiction books I ever read were her Child Queen and High Queen, they are still among my favorites, and I have them to thank for my introduction into fantasy fiction. That said, I read them when I was 14. Of course I've reread them many times, and I was thrilled when I saw her publish another book - I had been keeping an eye out for years. But The Grail Prince wasn't all that good. It was sort of a disappointment to me, and probably my fault for putting her on a pedestal. In retrospect, it was around the same caliber work as Child Queen and High Queen. Luckily, Prince of Dreams, despite the dorky title, is better than Grail Prince. It still has that nagging unfairness to women which dogged Ms. McKenzie's pen in Grail Prince - she doesn't write men as convincingly as women, she has them act horribly and yet we're still supposed to like them since they are the protagonists. I guess that's enough shredding from me. I probably won't reread this book, but you could still catch me with my dog-eared copy of Child Queen at the local coffeeshop.

8) Passion for Jesus, Mike Bickle

Book number eight, Passion for Jesus by Mike Bickle.

Rating:
4/5 stars

Review:
Bickle is the leader of the International House of Prayer (IHOP) movement, and a somewhat prolific author on the subjects of prayer and the church. I'm studying this book with a group currently, so I've been reading it and mulling over it for a few months now, and it is quite good. If you want grow in intimacy with the Lord and in an understanding of His heart and experience His deep love for you personally, I highly recommend this book!

7) Night, Elie Wiesel

The first of my books that are also a part of Oprah's book club, Night by Elie Wiesel.

Rating:
5/5 stars

Review:
Well, how do you not give a book about so poignant a subject a high rating.... This was Wiesel's seminal work, a powerful, moving, evocative, haunting and horrifying first-hand recollection of his days in concentration camps during the Holocaust. I'd be lying if I said this was a good read, because it really bothered me, but that's as it should be, I think. This isn't "The Diary of Anne Frank" - it is at times graphic and at all times frightening and morbid and despair-inducing. How could people treat other people with such inhumanity?

So, yeah, read it, but have something happy to read after, unless you like cherishing such subject matter in your thought life, because it will stick with you.