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Recent Reads: Literature to Memoir to
History - Oh My!
By Kent d Curry
April 11, 2005
Girl Meets God—Lauren
F. Winner
I finally got
around to reading the best selling spiritual memoir of the last three years and
I’m glad I did. Winner is witty, candid, and probing as she explains what it’s
like to grow up without God, then finding Him drawing her closer, first through
Orthodox Judaism and then into structured Anglicism. And while she’s selective
in what she emphasizes (making this reader a bit non-plussed by her keeping
certain sins submerged until the end), it’s still the fascinating journey of an
educated outsider trying to make sense of God and then Christianity.
Shepherding a Child’s Heart—Tedd
Tripp
This is the best
book I’ve ever read on parenting. (And though its focus is on parenting
children, it also includes instructions on dealing with teenagers.)
Pastor/psychologist Tripp points out through examples and education how not
to focus on a child’s actions, but rather their heart, for that’s where the
sin/disobedience/pride created those actions. So when two kids are fighting over
a toy, it’s not about who had it first or about creating peace, but about a
selfish or greedy heart that needs correction. Deal with that heart and the
action recedes/disappears. The prose is clear, the instruction is biblical, the
results are convincing.
Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling—Ross
King
If you have even
the slightest fascination with great art or the Sistine Chapel, then read this
book. Michelangelo was asked to accomplish an impossible task, using the
toughest method of painting ever invented (which he may never have tried
before), in a plague-ravaged Rome on a stringent budget with few allies under a
war-mongering Pope. Oh, did I mention the competing artist in the next room?
King artfully weaves the different threads of 16th Century Italy through the
life of history’s greatest artist for a compelling story.
Shadow Divers—Robert
Kurson
Part scuba
adventure, part mystery, part history—all riveting. A sunken German U-boat is
discovered off the coast of New Jersey in 1991. No one, not the Germans, the
Americans, nor history, knows why it’s there or what U-boat it is. Competing
scuba groups race to discover the truth of this unknown treasure. A wonderful,
sobering story on the power of human perseverance in the face of stunning odds.
The Power and the
Glory, The End of the Affair, The Heart of the Matter—Graham
Greene
If you’re too
busy to read literature, then your life is incomplete. Try this troika of
(unrelated) novels, as Greene, an estranged Catholic, creates fascinating, often
riveting, situations for struggling characters all feeling and fighting the love
of a God continually drawing them.
Power details a “whiskey priest” in Mexico attempting to minister
through his failures while the government seeks to exterminate every practicing
priest.
Affair pits an atheist writer’s surety in facts against the
possibilities of miracles through the lens of adultery.
Heart is set in West Africa, where a principled police inspector
discovers how far sin will yank someone once they decide to take that first step
away from fidelity. None of these stories offer pat morals or easy Christian
answers, but they do reveal challenging situations that force every reader to
rethink their stance on grace, forgiveness, and God’s love, as well as “good”
Christians vs. fallen Christians versus sinners.
ninetyandnine.com
© 2005, Kent d Curry
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Kent d Curry is an
executive editor of ninetyandnine.com. No one knows why. |
