The Book Shopper

A Spiritual Education Made Easy

If you desire a spiritual education from an expensive liberal arts college or seminary and cannot afford one, now you can!

For a mere $7 you can order the 170-page book catalog from Eighth Day Books in Wichita, Kansas. Then after reading the descriptions of the approximately 1300 entries you will sound knowledgeable in religion, philosophy, history and literature. Imagine the scholar you will become if you actually read some of these books. Here's a run-on list of the different categories and some sample titles from each:

Of Books, Culture and Learning – Shop Class as Soulcraft An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford; Devices of the Soul: Battling for Our Selves in an Age of Machines by Steve Talbott; Standing by Words: Essays by Wendell Berry; The Presence of Grace and Other Book Reviews by Flannery O'Connor. The Spiritual Life – Prayer: A History by Philip and Carol Zaleski; The End of Suffering: Finding Purpose in Pain by Scott Cairns. On Spiritual Direction – In the Fire of the Burning Bush: An Initiation to the Spiritual Life by Marko Ivan Rupnik. Athletes of Prayer – A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs: A Reference Guide to More than 700 Topics Discussed by the Early Church Fathers, edited by David Bercot. Theology and Patristics - St. Augustine: Confessions by Serge Lancel; Justinian the Great: Emperor and Saint by Asterios Gerostergios. Ecclesiography – Medicine and Health Care in Early Christianity by Gary B. Fregen; Religion and the Rise of Western Culture by Christopher Dawson. Biblical Studies and Sources – The Historical Reliability of the Gospels by Craig L. Blomberg. Liturgy and Worship – In Tune with the World: A Theory of Festivitity by Josef Pieper. (Are you getting a sense of what an amazing collection of books this catalog is?) Eastern Christendom – In the Image and Likeness of God by Vladimir Lossky. Luminous Lives ( or The Saint Section) – Saint Thomas Aquinas/Saint Francis of Assisi by G.K. Chesterton; About 20 books about Thomas Merton. Ways of Seeing (or The Art Section) – Art and Scholasticism with Other Essays by Jacques Maritain; The Limits of Art: Two Essays by Tzvetan Todorov. Philosophy and Religion - The Complete Works of Aristotle:  The Revised Oxford Translation edited by Jonathan Barnes; Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith edited by Francis C. Collins. The Modern World Science and God – Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self by Marilynn Robinson (author of Gilead and Housekeeping); Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science by Ronald L. Numbers. C.S. Lewis and Friends – C.S. Lewis: A Complete Guide to His Life and Works edited by Walter Hooper; Understanding the Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism edited by Rose A. Zimbardo and Neil D. Isaacs. Books of Timeless Interest – Books about and by: Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Czeslaw Milosz, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Walker Percy, Flannery O'Connor and Murray Browne.

 

Civil War Bedtime Stories: A Review

Finding the right book to read before bedtime is always a little challenging. Knowing that I will read for only a couple minutes before dozing off, I don't want anything long or complicated. Nor do I want to read a book with much of a narrative because taking one and two page bites from a book doesn't do justice to the storytelling or storyteller. But certain books can work well that way.

Currently this has not been the problem as I read n' snooze through The Untold Civil War: Exploring the Human Side of War by James Robertson (and edited by Neil Kagen). The publisher National Geographic graciously provided me a copy in advance of Robertson's visit to the Carter Library & Museum here in Atlanta last month, but Christmas time is a busy time and I missed the event. Robertson is a well respected Civil War historian most noted for his biography of Stonewall Jackson.

This gorgeously printed book (like a National Geographic magazine) is so big and heavy that it wouldn't fit on my nightstand, but that is my only criticism. In between the almost 500 photographs and images, the book contains 132 brief stories about 800 to a 1000 words in length, covering some of the nuances of the Civil War. Even a self-proclaimed Civil War buff such as myself (type in “Civil War” in the blog's search box) has learned many things about The War Between the States that I previously knew little about such as: the mail service, the not-so pleasant aspects of camp life, and the recruitment by the Confederacy (yes, it is true). Robertson and Kagen include anecdotes about the generals (Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, George Pickett), but important noncombatants as well (Frederick Douglass, Louisa May Alcott, and Julia Ward Howe).

 The Untold Civil War is an impressive, mammoth collection of stories, photographs, maps, and quotes. It even includes the musical notation of “Taps” (written during the 1862 Pennisular Campaign) thus making it a worthy addition to any buff's library or nightstand.

Photo credits: Both photos are courtesy of and  copyrighted by the National Geographic.The mail wagon photo is an Army of the Potomac's II Corps mail wagon photographed at Brandy Station, Virginia in 1864. The troops shown at the right are the  men of Company E, Fourth U.S. Colored Infantry Regiment who fought in Petersburg, the Bermuda Hundred and Forts Fisher and Harrison.

Birmingham Book Store

Late last year I drove over to Birmingham to visit my daughter and she insisted that we check out Jim Reed Books/The Museum of Fond Thought located in the historic downtown district. She knows what I like.

In business since 1980, the store boasts a collection of about 50,000 books, magazines and posters along with another 250,000 undocumented items. It's a great place to browse down memory lane. Many of the books that fill the shelves I hadn't seen in a while, but I recall as being quite popular in their heyday. (How soon the bloom of popularity can fade.) I ended up purchasing a copy of Jim Harrison's 1984 novel Sundog. When I am in a reading rut, I always turn to Harrison to get out of it. His novels are spirited and meaningful without being pretentious (kind of like Reed Books).

It is worth stopping by Reed Books when you're in Birmingham, if for no other reason than to get on their mailing list. Since I signed up, I now get weekly, quirky, emails from the owner Jim Reed promoting the store, which includes a list of items people purchased throughout the week (Kind of like the MARTA book club). Reed, who is also a writer, edits the Birmingham Arts Journal.

Best Local Reading of 2011 (That I Attended) & January 2012 Calendar of Events

Before saying a final farewell to 2011 –- as we recycle our dead trees (they gave their all, so you could have Christmas) --- it’s time to recognize the “Best Local Reading of the Year of 2010” or more specifically, the “Best Local Reading of the Year (That I Attended), ” which does narrow the field considerably. My rating criteria are rather simple and subjective:

• Did I learn something that otherwise I would not have learned, even if I read the book?

• Did the author and the audience seem to engage with each other?

• Did I come away with a little buzz (or buy the book) after the reading?

Some of this year’s candidates include well known authors such as Sarah Vowell, Charles Mann (technically his reading was a slide show), Thomas Lynch, Brian Dettmer (art exhibit), Tayari Jones along with Lang Whitaker, Ned Stuckey-French, Barry Brown, and Gordon Elwell. I realize it it is not much of a list for a blog that “muses about book-related events,” but what can I say? It's a challenge for anyone to get out to some literary event at least once a month, so when you are rewarded with something worthy of the effort, it deserves some recognition. 

This year’s Best Local Reading of 2011 (That I Attended) goes to Andisheh Nouree's appearance at Eddie's Attic last August for his book Americapedia: Taking the Dumb Out Freedom (co-authored with Jodi Lynn Anderson, and Daniel Ehrenhaft). Basically the afternoon was a romp and it included Nouree singing a medley of “America” themed music. Moreover, who can resist having a much-needed beer (hence the buzz) when hearing about the shortcomings of the American political system during the budget gridlock. (The book's raisons de'tre is to help people get informed and then get involved.) 

Nouree joins previous winners, which includes the four poets (Kevin Young, Thomas Lux, David Bottoms, and David Kirby) from last year, who read from the University of Georgia Press Anthology Seriously Funny. Other winners were the late E. Lynn Harris (2009) and Chandler Burr (2008).

January 2012 – Atlanta Calendar of Book Events

If your New Year's resolution needs  more refinement -- more than just using fancy sounding phrases like raisons d'etre in a sentence -- then examine the following book related events for the month of January. I purposely don't put the times in the announcements, so you will have double check each website before heading out. All events are in Atlanta unless noted otherwise and the ($$) indicates their is a small admission fee required.

Monday, January 9. Janny Scott author of A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother. Georgia Center for the Book at Dekalb Public Library, Decatur.

Thursday, January 12. Heather Donaghue author of How My Life Changed After the Blair Witch Project and Went to Pot. ($$) Pizzeria Vesuvius (an A Cappella Books event)