Flos Carmeli

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July 30, 2004

Reading List

I have honed my list down. That means that while there are dozens of unfinished books lying about, I've decided to try to focus on only three-to-five at a time. (The variation depends on how many book groups I'm reading for. I've finished the study for one book, so I've only got one group to read for right now.)

Founding Brothers--Joseph Ellis
Time of the Ghost-- Diana Wynne Jones (the bookgroup book)
Lancelot Walker Percy--through the aegis of a correspondent
Two Sister in the Spirit-- Hans Urs von Balthasar
Soul-Making--Alan Jones

Also in the background I am continually reading, studying and writing for the group study on The Ascent of Mount Carmel

The wonderful thing about running several books at a time is that when I am not in the mood or I'm bored, or I do think I really want to finish a given book, I switch off to something else for a time and I can usually return to the abandoned book. I'm surprised at my ability to retain much of what is going on. I'd abandoned Founding Brothers for perhaps as a much as a year now, but when I picked it up with the Quaker proposal to Congree in 1790, I remembered where I was quite vividly. As the book is comprised of six vignettes, my memory of the other two is not so important as of this one. However, I discover that I remember them fairly well also.

So my half-finished books on deck, as it were to fill the slots as they become available (you'll note that other than the book group slots, there are three--Fiction, Nonfiction, and Spiritual) include:

Christian Contemplation and Perfection--R. Garrigou-Lagrange (I'll be working on this for years, the Good Lord willing--it isn't precisely what one would call easy reading)
Michelangelo's Ceiling--Herbert Ross
The Science of the Cross--St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Abandoned for reasons far too complex to relate, but a wonderful, wonderful book--by far and away her most accessible.)

And those I haven't yet started but really want to read

A Woman of the Pharisees--Francois Mauriac (I have distant recollections of liking this)
The Desert of Love--Francois Mauriac
Thèrése Desqueyroux--Francois Mauriac I read this in a college-level French class and have almost no recollection of it at all. It was by far overshadowed at the time by Sartre's Huis Clos and de Maupassant's Boule de Suif and Camus's L'exil et le Royaume. I was mystified and horrified by the existentialist and thought for a time that I saw myself as the protagonist of L'etranger. Time has shown me to be wrong in that supposition.
Elizabeth Costello as well as other works by J.M Coetzee, a writer I've discovered recently and whom I like a great deal.

Okay, enough of this maundering on--you get the idea that I have an extensive (humongous) backlog and an attempt at a system for addressing it.

Posted by Steven Riddle at July 30, 2004 7:05 AM

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Comments

Posted by: Steve Bogner at July 30, 2004 8:02 AM

Posted by: John at July 31, 2004 8:08 AM

Posted by: Don at August 1, 2004 3:36 PM