Jdhomrighausen's 14 in 14

Here goes.

Creating categories is a delicate balancing act. I read a lot of non-fiction, and this challenge is a good way to make me lump together books on a common theme. It is also a way to force myself to weed out my collection, give books away, and find books by random criteria that I may have neglected on my shelves for some time.

I mostly read philosophy and religion, but I have been prone to psychology, history, and popular science.

Some of the categories I've established are recurring. For example, under "Teachers of the Faith" I am doing Benedict XVI for 2013. Next year I will do some other great Christian writer.

1. Books with a Red Cover
Aiming for 5.

1. A Natural History of Latin by Tore Janson
2. Edicts of Asoka by N. A. Nikam
3. The Rabbi's Cat by Joann Sfar
4. My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
5. The Big Kahn: A Sequential Drama by Neil Kleid
6. Drosilla and Charikles: A Byzantine Novel by Niketas Eugenianos

2. First name of the author begins with: A
This category just might last me until 2040.
Aiming for 5.

1. Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
2. Oresteia by Aeschylus
3. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

3. Rereads of last year's books and continuations of last year's authors
See my reflections from last year for more info:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/159211#4436967
Aiming for 10-15.

1. Father Brown Mysteries, The - The Blue Cross, The Secret Garden, The Queer Feet, and The Arrow of Heaven: A Radio Dramatization by G. K. Chesterton
2. The Two Towers: Being the Second Part of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
3. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
4. Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories by H. P. Lovecraft

4. Books I will give away after reading

A necessary category. Aiming for 20 books.

1. Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages by Phyllis Rose
2. The Rabbi's Cat by Joann Sfar
3. Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
4. My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
5. Scripture Matters: Essays on Reading the Bible from the Heart of the Church by Scott Hahn
6. Grendel by John Gardner
7. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
8. The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th-Century America by Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz

5. Doorstops

A brave category, for books 500 pages or more or audiobooks 20 hours or more. I will shoot for two.

6. Ancient Cultures and Mythologies: Anglo-Saxons

Aiming for 10.

1. Grendel by John Gardner

7. Teacher of the Faith: John of the Cross
Last year I focused on Benedict XVI.
Aiming for 5.

1. St John of the Cross: His Life and Poetry by Gerald Brenan
2. John of the Cross: Doctor of Light and Love by Kieran Kavanaugh
3. The Dark Night of the Soul: A Psychiatrist Explores the Connection Between Darkness and Spiritual Growth by Gerald G. May

St. John of the Cross: An Appreciation by Daniel A. Dombrowski

8. Penguin Classics
Aiming for 10.

9. Something I know little about: Science
Specifically I would like to get through some biology/paleontology books.
Aiming for 5.

1. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

10. Philosophers and Schools of Thought: Stoicism
Last year for this category I read some Gifford Lectures.
This year: ancient Stoicism.

Great categories. Hope you have another wonderful year of reading!

11. Group Reads on LT

Aiming for 5.

1. The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
2. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

Thank you mamzel!

welcome! hope your reading is wonderful.

12. Great Artists and Artistic Schools: Ancient and Medieval Christian Art
I'm using "artists" in the broad sense to include musicians, dancers, playwrights, etc. Aiming for 5.

1. Heaven on Earth: Art and the Church in Byzantium, ed. by Linda Safran
2. Illuminating the Word: The Making of the St. John’s Bible by Christopher Calderhead
3. The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art by Thomas F. Mathews
4. Christ the Miracle Worker in Early Christian Art by Lee M. Jefferson

13. The Bible and its sections
Last year this category was more random. This year I've systematized it.
Aiming for eight books on some methodology, collection of texts, or other subdivision on the Bible. I'll subdivide this category into two: one Old Testament and one New Testament.

Good to see you here and here's to having a great reading year next year!

>6 JDHomrighausen: My copy of Les Miserables is a huge book that comes in over 1,000 pages. So does that count as one doorstop or two? ;)
You have created some creative categories here.

> 19

It counts as a book I am too intimidated to try. Perhaps if I'm on a desert island or biking 1000 miles with an audiobook....

Interesting, I'm particularly looking forward the first three categories.

Good luck with the doorstops and the giving books away category! It's so difficult to give books up.

Rabbitprincess, I have a large stack of books I know I don't need to keep. Putting my thoughts on them into book reviews makes it easier - if I ever need to remember the book I can come back to what I wrote on it. :)

Love the randomness of your categories, you look like you have shaped your challenge to help you meet your reading goals.

14. Classics of Western Spirituality
Aiming for five.
Published by Paulist Press, this series edits and comments on key writings of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic mystics:
http://www.paulistpress.com/Products/CategoryCenter/COWS/classics-of-western-spi...

I think you have come up with a nice way to tackle your challenge and I am with you (and a couple of other 2014 challengers) with a door stopper category..... one needs a special place for those big books!

I know right? I can only have Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years on my shelf for so long.

I've been patiently waiting for all 14 of your categories to be revealed. Looks like you have planned for an interesting 2014 reading year.

Hey! I didn't know you were here till you said so on Club Read. I love these categories.

Well, day one of the new year has already given me a bounty of books!

Father Brown Mysteries, The - The Blue Cross, The Secret Garden, The Queer Feet, and The Arrow of Heaven: A Radio Dramatization by G. K. Chesterton

Last year I started listening to audiobooks, which completely changed the way I read, especially fiction. I picked up what I thought was an audiobook of I, Claudius and it turned out to be a BBC radio drama. I was hooked. This dramatization of selected Father Brown mysteries was no disappointment. The Colonial Radio Theatre did a great job. I am ready to try more!

The Two Towers: Being the Second Part of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Continue to be stunned. I want to re-read these in paper format last this year (I'm listening on audio). My favorite part was Sam and Frodo's dialogue on the nature of stories and literary immortality.

“It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.”

Aww, I really want to reread LOTR now! Luckily it's one of my categories for this year's challenge...I will have to start it sooner rather than later!

> 31

One of my categories is "doorstops," books that are 500+ pages. I guess I could fit it in there. But this is such fun reading that it doesn't feel long.

I love Father Brown!! I have the complete stories and am due for a reread. Audio would be a fun way to experience them.

A Natural History of Latin by Tore Janson

I don't feel like reformatting my review, so I'll link you to my blog:

http://jdhomie.com/2014/01/03/book-review-a-natural-history-of-latin/

This will not be a regular occurrence. My blog concerns ancient languages and only reviews about that topic will go there.

Edicts of Asoka by N. A. Nikam

Asoka, the most famous of the Mauryan kings of ancient India, is well-known for inscriptions he placed all over India about the morality and the teaching of dharma. He was for Buddhism what Constantine was for Christianity, a king who founded his dynasty by co-opting a religious tradition to give him imperial credibility. So his inscription can be seen either cynically (as mostly political rhetoric) or idealistically (as the writings of a king motivated by pure intent). I prefer to stick somewhere in the middle. Judge for yourself – one of his inscriptions:

Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, honors both ascetics and the householders of all religions, and he honors them with gifts and honors of various kinds. But Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, does not value gifts and honors as much as he values this — that there should be growth in the essentials of all religions. Growth in essentials can be done in different ways, but all of them have as their root restraint in speech, that is, not praising one's own religion, or condemning the religion of others without good cause. And if there is cause for criticism, it should be done in a mild way. But it is better to honor other religions for this reason. By so doing, one's own religion benefits, and so do other religions, while doing otherwise harms one's own religion and the religions of others. Whoever praises his own religion, due to excessive devotion, and condemns others with the thought "Let me glorify my own religion," only harms his own religion. Therefore contact (between religions) is good. One should listen to and respect the doctrines professed by others. Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, desires that all should be well-learned in the good doctrines of other religions.

This particular edition of the edicts assumes Asoka to be the most benevolent Platonic philosopher-king to ever walk the earth. Also, they arrange the edicts thematically, which makes them more accessible for the general reader but more confusing for the historian who does not want the primary source pre-digested for her. I would prefer their introduction have been less adulatory and more critical.

(P.S. This book had a red cover!)

Berossos and Manetho: Native Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt by Gerald Verbrugghe and John M. Wickersham

This book collects all the fragments by and about Berossos and Manetho, two historians in the early Hellenistic age who wrote about their own cultures for a Greek audience. I read this for my Hellenistic Age, which is so far one of the most fascinating courses I’ve taken at university.

Berossos was a Babylonian priest who later moved to Egypt, perhaps to be a “fellow” at the library of Alexandria. He wrote many works, all in Greek. The most important one is his history of Babylonian culture, beginning with the start of the universe and incorporating Near Eastern king-lists and mythological tales. He also texts on astrology. Manetho, an Egyptian priest, also wrote a massive history of Egypt for Greek audiences. His is the primary literary (e.g. not hieroglyphs on temple walls) source that we have about ancient Egypt.

Although coming from different cultures, it makes sense that their writings are collected in one volume. Both wrote in Greek. Both integrate Greek thought into their work, often giving Greek equivalents for whatever deities in their pantheon they were speaking of. One wonders in both cases how much they had to interpret (perhaps distort) their history to be sensible and palatable to a Greek audience.

Also, both have their primary writings lost to history, coming down to us only in fragments and paraphrases from later authors that Christian scribes saw more fit to copy. Early Jewish and Christian historians took interest in both of them, so much of what we have of Berossos and Manetho comes from Josephus and Eusebius. Both of these men in turn used Berossos and Manetho to both bolster their account of the historicity of the Bible (sometimes stretching their sources a bit) and polemicize against the two men when their accounts didn’t match biblical chronology.

The editors speculate on why their texts did not survive – especially in the case of Berossos. One reason they give is that their histories just weren’t as interesting to a Hellenistic audience. Near Eastern king lists are not the best bedside reading. But given that for many parts of Egyptian and Babylonian history this might have been all that was left, what more could they do? From one perspective, it is better to be accurate than fascinating. But if you want your text to survive and be copied, best to add titillation.

As a long-time sucker for anything of the ancient near east (really, anything ancient), I enjoyed this book immensely. I can only fantasize what we might discover if we came upon complete manuscripts of either of these mens’ works. Verbrugghe and Wickersham have done a great job introducing the fragments and speculating on how they relate to broader cultural changes in the Hellenistic world.

(This goes in the Ancient Egypt category.)

Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages by Phyllis Rose

Rose, a literary scholar, examines the marriages of five famous Victorian authors: Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, and John Ruskin. (As a side note, I find it interested that two of these men are never read today, while three still draw readers. Why?) All of these marriages were miserable in their own quirky ways. Rose explains that she was going to write a chapter of Charles and Emma Darwin, but their marriage was so happy and loving it would have been too boring to write about.

One of Rose’s main points is that human relationships and desires are far too idiosyncratic to all fit the monolithic model of marriage. Why, she asks, are we so willing to create our own life narrative and self-identity in every area of our life but marriage? This is especially true for the Victorians. Yet some of the people Rose examines just seemed to be misadjusted by their own neuroses. For example, Charles Dickens crudely shoved his wife aside at mid-age simply for not being good enough any more. This was after she bore him ten children, which apparently was her fault. Or art critic John Ruskin, who never consummated his marriage because a naked woman’s body disgusted him too much. Sometimes it’s not the institution of marriage that’s the problem, but the people who enter into it without self-examination.

A really good book - highly recommended - and this coming from someone usually not interested in the Victorian era.

(Category 4: books to give away!)

Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I mentiond above my Jesuit friend who was dying. Knowing I was taking a course on Islam, he gave two books by Hirsi Ali to me on his deathbed. So my expectations were high. After all, my friend was an intelligent person, not someone to cave in to religious fear-mongering or knee-jerk distrust of anything non-Christian. So I was surprised to find a remarkably unfair and simplistic book looking at the situation of Islam in the global realm.

One thing cannot be denied: Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an amazing woman. She grew up in a rigidly conservative Muslim family in Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia, always on the move because her dad was a political target. Her family was incredibly dysfunctional, and all her siblings in one way or another were left unable to function in the adult world. When her dad sent her from Kenya to Canada for an arranged marriage to a distant relatively, Hirsi Ali escaped, finding political asylum in Holland. There she found a culture where (as she puts it) questions were encouraged over dogmas, women were valued as more than just baby incubators, and positive change and innovation took place over oppressive and rigid tradition. She became a member of Parliament until moving to America, where she is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. All this before hitting 40 – wow.

So understandably, much of Hirsi Ali’s career is devoted to exposing radical Islam on a global scale. She wants her audience to feel that global Islam is a dangerous threat, that the line separating violent Islamists from civilian Muslims is dangerously thin.

This is where I must part with her. She always speaks of Muslims in the singular: “all Muslims” are conditioned to be violent, “Muslim women” are oppressed, etc. There is no problem that tribalism, extreme sexism, violence, and a lack of free speech are a part of the Islamic world. But she fails to qualify her statements. I have known half a dozen Muslim women, whose families come from three different Islamic countries, and only one of those six had the kind of upbringing Ali had. So already we can see that not every Muslim in the world is brought up in a family that fails to educate her, value her, etc.

Oh, and as for violence – I wonder what Hirsi Ali would make of John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed’s book What a Billion Muslims Really Think, in which they find that Muslims worldwide are not as radical as people like Hirsi Ali like to think. I’m also reminded of Reza Aslan’s point about “Muslim Rage,” that it has more to do with political agendas and regimes than being Muslim. Hirsi Ali does not argue from statistics. For example, she cites a few cases of honor killing (a young Muslim woman murdered by a family member to protect family honor from her sexual transgressions) in the U.S., then argues that honor killing must be a major problem among American Muslims. This reminded me of Richard Dawkins’ arguments that religion is intrinsically evil: find a few infuriating cases, get the reader angry, then jump to a broad conclusion. Basically, arguing from anecdotes.

Her statements about the veil were equally ridiculous. She says that the headscarf and veil “represent the mental and physical restrictions that so many Muslim women have to suffer.” Yes, in some (perhaps many) Muslim cultures, women are under immense social pressure to wear the veil, and may be legally or physically punished if they show their hair in public. But What a Billion Muslims Really Think shows that most Muslim women worldwide prefer some form of hair covering. My friends tell me that they feel more secure, more valued for their personality and intellect because men are not staring at their beauty. There’s just more ambiguity than Hirsi Ali wants to see.

So, no I would not recommend reading this book for a good portrait of global Islam. Hirsi Ali is far too much of an ideologue with all the attendant lack of self-criticism. Though she made some good points, she would have been more effective had she tempered them with some ambiguity.

(Category 2: author's name starts with A - although this is also category 4 since I am giving it away!)

Guess I should pull Parallel Lives off my shelf where it has been patiently waiting for a couple of years.

I have to agree with your review of Nomad. Her first book was so much better. Why don't you post your review?

>37 JDHomrighausen: Looking good, a little bit of literary gossip is great from time to time, it helps to have some hindsight that you can't have otherwise :)

>38 JDHomrighausen: What a Billion Muslims Really Think is definitely going on the TBR list, thanks for the great review.

My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok

I do not know what the Master of the Universe has waiting for us. Certain things are given, and it is for man to use them to bring goodness into the world. The Master of the Universe gives us glimpses, only glimpses. It is for us to open our eyes wide.

Having read Potok’s most famous book, The Chosen, I knew this would be good. This novel follows the life of a fictitious Jewish artist who is trapped between the world of his conservative Hasidic family and the secular, ‘sinful’ world of art. Asher Lev can’t figure out his dilemma: if God gave him the ability to do great art, then why does it lead to such immoral results? Why must his portrayals of two stock tropes of Western art — nudes and crucifixion scenes — horrify his parents?

I looked at my right hand, the hand with which I painted. There was power in that hand. Power to create and destroy. Power to bring pleasure and pain. Power to amuse and horrify. There was in that hand the demonic and the divine at one and the same time. The demonic and the divine were two aspects of the same voce. Creation was demonic and divine. Creativity was demonic and divine. Art was demonic and divine. The solitary vision that put new eyes into gouged-out sockets was demonic and divine. I was demonic and divine. Asher Lev, son of Aryeh and Rivkeh Lev, was the child of the Master of the Universe and the Other Side.

Potok, who was himself a rabbi, seems to be asking the questions of his own life. It reminded me quite a bit of biblical narratives, of Jews living in the Persian, Greek, and Roman worlds. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? Lev does so by keeping his Jewish customs. He continues his prayers, his dress, his synagogue attendance, and living in his community. Yet he also destroys his community’s care for him by painting “Brooklyn Crucifixion,” featuring his mom as the crucified one caught between his father’s sternness and his own libertine artistic life. I didn’t get the feeling that Potok himself provides an answer. I like the book more that way.

I have become alien to him. In some incomprehensible manner, a cosmic error had been made. The line of inheritance had been perverted. A demonic force had thrust itself into centuries of transmitted responsibility. He could not bear its presence. And he no longer knew how to engage it in battle.

(Fits the "books with a red cover" category -- also giving it away when finished!!)

I have read The Chosen and Davita's Harp, both outstanding. I have Asher Lev on one of my piles to read. Thanks for the encouragement to pick it up soon.

John of the Cross: Doctor of Light and Love by Kieran Kavanaugh

You should never seek your satisfaction in what you understand about God, but in what you do not understand about him.

One of the best classes I have taken in college is Mysticism in Catholicism. For a quarter-long (10-week) class, we covered a LOT, from St. Paul to Thomas Merton, with centering prayer instruction thrown in. But we never got around to St. John of the Cross.

Fast forward to now, when I am dating a gal who is fluent in Spanish. I turned her on to St. John of the Cross, a 16th-century Spanish mystic, Carmelite reformer, and poet. So we’ve been doing some reading about him.

John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes, came from a poor family. His father died when he was a small child, and because his father was disowned by his family, his mom was unable to get any of them to help her make ends meet. After being educated by the Jesuits out of charity, he joined the Carmelites, then later the Carmelite reform (the Discalced, or shoeless). Imprisoned in a tower by his ecclesiastical rivals in the mainstream Carmelite order, he was tortured and starved for months on end. This experience propelled him to write his mystical poetry. Like the biblical Song of Songs or the English John Donne, San Juan’s poems combine erotic imagery with mystical union. He has many minor poems, but the three most famous are “The Living Flame of Love,” “The Spiritual Canticle,” and “The Dark Night.”

The last poem is perhaps the most well-known contribution San Juan has made to the mystical lexicon. Christian mystics had spoken of the purgative stage of union with God before — a stage where the soul is emptied of images and concepts, a stage that is painful but necessary for closer union with God. So “la noche oscura” is not a dark or depressing time. In fact, San Juan sees the dark night as a very illuminated time. In the dark night, we come to God as God is, freed from concepts and intellectualizations. It feels dark because we are not used to such immediate contact with God. It should be called the bright night, not the dark night!

This book provides a good overview of this and other aspects of John’s path to God. But it is hardl a complete guide. Kieran Kavanaugh, a Carmelite of fifty-plus years, has made his life’s work the creation of standard editions of John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila’s works. He has admitted to not having much Spanish background, but he co-translated the works with Spain-born fellow Carmelite Otilio Rodriguez. So while this book is good to understand the theology of San Juan, Kavanaugh seems unaware of other key aspects of the man’s poems, such as their literary merit. So while I enjoyed this book, and it is a useful summary of San Juan’s lengthy and tedious prose works, it is not the last book one should read!

John of the Cross is a witness to the enormous human ability “to taste and see the goodness of God” and affirm that God exists in the incomprehensible mystery of communion among persons. He found the record of God’s self-revelation replete with images, metaphors, and narratives about the divine relationship to us and chose those same figures to express his own experience and teaching, but he did so as an act of praise that places his reader in the presence of the living God.

(Note: I changed my "Teacher of the Faith" category from Dante to John of the Cross so I could explore him further.)

Two plays by Aeschylus —

Persians, trans. by Philip Vellacott and Janet Lembke with C. J. Herington
Seven Against Thebes, trans. by Philip Vellacott and Anthony Hecht with Helen H. Bacon

I’ve been meaning to write reviews on these for some time, but I am going to not put too much energy into it. Suffice it to say that these were interesting but tough plays, though reading them twice made them make more sense. I wanted to read all the Greek tragedies this summer, but had to set it aside for other projects.

I enjoyed all the translators, especially the “Greek Tragedy in New Translations” series, which pairs a distinguished poet with a classicist to make translations excelling in accuracy and beauty:
http://www.librarything.com/publisherseries/Greek+Tragedy+in+New+Translations

(For category 2: authors whose names begin with A)

Game-changer: I just changed my Jung category to group reads. There are so many great group reads on LT. I just listed six that I want to do soon. So many books! The feels!

>45 JDHomrighausen: Haha, I hope you enjoy the group reads! :) They'll probably be a bit lighter than Jung, anyway!

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins



As a religious studies major, I am pretty illiterate in science. My girlfriend, a molecular biology major, is far more literate in my field than I am in hers. I am taking on myself to read popular science books so I can understand her.

I have to admit I was initally reluctant to read this book. I read The God Delusion for a class called "Darwin and God," and I wrote a paper analyzing Dawkins' rhetoric. When it comes to religion, he is very polarizing and tends to draw big conclusions based on 1-2 examples. He has also said stupid things about feminism. In general I see him as someone who is not very aware of his own privilege, and is perhaps given to mansplaining. But I decided to give him a second chance, in the hope that he would be a better author within his own field.

Dawkins dives into the debate in evolutionary biology between individual and group selection, arguing for a third type known as gene selection. He characterizes genes as “selfish” in that they seek to propagate themselves and guide their organisms’ (“survival machines”) behavior in ways that maximize their own continuation. After setting out the basics of genetics and explaining his theory, he applies it to his area of expertise, ethology (animal behavior), looking at examples of altruism at the level of individuals, kin, and intra- and inter-species interaction. In his last famous chapter, he coins the term “meme” and speculates about how the idea of genetic replication and evolution might apply to cultural evolution.

I don’t know enough about evolutionary biology to assess this book, but I can say that Dawkins is really good at explaining examples without math. His discussions of optimal clutch size, evolutionarily stable strategies, parent-offspring and offspring-offspring conflicts for resources, and the battle of the sexes stick in my mind! Sometimes his descriptions can verge on poetic:

A society of ants, bees, or termites achieves a kind of individuality at a higher level. Food is shared to such an extent that one may speak of a communal stomach. Information is shared so efficiently by chemical signals and by the infamous ‘dance’ of the bees that the community behaves almost as if it were a unit with a nervous system and sense organs of its own. (185)

For people with a better understanding of biology than mine, please explain: how has Dawkins’ theory stood up over time? Is the “selfish gene” still a viable hypothesis?

As for memes, Dawkins talks about this topic in The God Delusion as well. In that book as in this, he describes beliefs about God and the afterlife as cultural parasites that linger in peoples’ minds because they explain complicated questions with simple, intuitive answers. Just as biological fitness is not related to an individual’s or species’ beauty or morality, so memetic fitness is unrelated to whether or not a meme is accurate.

Still, I can’t help but think the concept of a meme is a hollow idea. It’s a nice-sounding idea, but I kept thinking: what does it actually explain? What does it predict? I don’t think Dawkins delivers on this. I could be wrong, but my understanding is that anthropologists haven’t found the idea useful for explaining culture.

Overall, a good book, as long as one realizes it is probably dated and tries to ignore Dawkins’ weird tangents on God and the working-class.

(Goes under category 9 on science and 11 on group reads!)

>47 JDHomrighausen: Very interesting review! I have shied away from Dawkins in the past, but this book sounds like one that won't make me grit my teeth (maybe).

Christina, I feel likewise. I read this for an LT group read -- don't think I would have read more Dawkins otherwise.

Heaven on Earth: Art and the Church in Byzantium, ed. by Linda Safran

While sight is invoked most often in the chapters that follow, the other senses augmented the experience of the Byzantine church-goer or pilgrim: the holy books were read aloud, hymns were sung, icons or relics were touched or kissed, scented oils were used for anointing, and the smell of incense exorcised evil spirits and accompanied veneration. From differing but overlapping perspectives, the eight chapters that follow consider how Byzantine religious arts functioned in their settings and in society, and how they responded to and shaped the circumstances of their creation — in short, how art and architecture contributed in significant ways to the experience of the faithful. (8)

Byzantine art, while majestic and regal, is often accused of being bland. No creativity, just repetitive images of saints and biblical scenes. After taking a class on the topic, I am still unsure, and still trying to make sense of the deeper aesthetic of Byzantine art. Safran’s edited volume, one of the books of my class, brings together eight major scholars of this art to connect that art with the religion that inspired it. All of the chapters in this volume were originally talks given in connection with a Smithsonian Institute lecture series in 1991. I decided to finish the volume to see what lay in store for me. Here I’ll focus on the three chapters I enjoyed most.

Eric D. Perl’s chapter, “…That Man Might Become God: Central Themes in Byzantine Theology,” expanded on the central theme of theosis, or deification, the idea that humanity can become God or Godlike. He explores how theosis expressed itself in the Byzantines’ strongly incarnational Christology, its negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysus’ “divine darkness” and the hesychasm, and the liturgy, where God reveals himself to us through the senses. I was left with a strong sense of the Christian paradox that while God becomes human, allowing for the overwhelming sensuality of Byzantine devotion, God is also beyond all the forms of art, scripture, and liturgy.

Theology is liturgy in thought, liturgy is theology in action. (53)

In “The Responding Icon,” Anna Kartsonis explicates the multiple meanings of icons for Byzantine Christians. Icons were not just images of holy figures. They were representations of those figures, embodiments of them on earth. Byzantine literature is abound with stories of people being healed after touching icons of Jesus, Mary, and saints. Icons are themselves incarnations of heavenly bodies. I see this as the Byzantine equivalent of the Roman dogma of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist: a way to bring Jesus into concrete contact with the faithful. This kind of presence, which in folk miracles can veer on the superstitious, was one of the fuels in the Iconoclasts’ fire.

The image interrelates the prototypical event (the historical Crucifixion), its numerous representations (visual, verbal, ceremonial), and the faithful, who as beholder, witness, and participant responds to its reenactment and re-creation. In the process, the pictorial representation — the icon — remains both constant and flexible in communicating the interrelation and interaction between the prototype, its representation, and the faithful. (75)

Lastly, Robert Ousterhout’s chapter, “The Holy Space: Architecture and the Liturgy,” argues that Byzantine architecture was not monotonous repetition, but subtle variations on a theme designed to be decoded by the faithful. Byzantine churches, he points out, were like Byzantine liturgy in that they evoked heaven. Icons and mosaics were placed in the culture in a way too suggest transcendence: saints at the human level, biblical figures up higher, Mary and the angels at the penultimate level, and Christ Pantokrator at the high point of the dome. The Hagia Sophia, that massive and massively atypical example of Byzantine architecture, is an apt example of the evoking of heaven:

The sense of weightlessness, despite the huge mass of the building, led Prokopios to conclude that the great dome was not supported from below but suspended by a golden chain from heaven. … More than anything the architecture of Hagia Sophia was meant to transform the ceremonies it housed, the place them on a level different from common existence, transforming them into more symbolic, heavenly drama. (90-91)

By way of conclusion, I’ll share a story. I have a friend who attends Gregorian chant mass. Last month I attended at her invitation. Much of the afternoon, I felt bored: why the endless dragging out of syllables, the ceaseless repetition of incantations? Afterwards, she explained to me that the chant is supposed to evoke the angels praising God in heaven, and the chants’ length evokes the eternal bliss of God’s presence. It clicked. Perhaps Byzantine art is the visual equivalent of Gregorian chant. It seems dull at first, but only because it operates on a deeper rhythm than we expect. While Safran’s book does not make those connections — I wish there were a chapter specifically on aesthetics — it does have moments of insight. And as art history, it was solid and enjoyable.

(For category 12: Ancient Christian Art)

Illuminating the Word: The Making of the St. John’s Bible by Christopher Calderhead

In this glossy coffee-table sized book, Calderhead delves into the story of the St. John’s Bible, the first illuminated manuscript of the Bible in over 500 years. After ink first touched page on the St. John’s Bible in 2000, it took over a decade to get the whole thing done, with a team of calligraphers, illuminators, biblical scholars, art historians, and theologians working together. The original is housed at St. John’s Abbey in Minnesota, but there are 299 high quality facsimiles in libraries and churches around the world, and lower-quality facsimiles available on Amazon for $40.

When I worked in archives this summer, I got to see the St. John’s Bible a lot, and there’s a lot of depth in it. Although the project is very traditional, the illuminations are not. They draw on imagery from Native American, Tibetan, Jewish, and Muslim traditions, even including scientific imagery and prehistoric cave paintings. One of the illuminators, Aidan Hart, is actually an anomaly for being a very traditional Orthodox icon painter.

Calderhead does not hesitate to describe the clashes in the creation of the manuscript. Everyone bickered with everyone, in part because everyone was doing something very new. Biblical scholars on the advisory committee had to learn to speak less academically when telling the calligraphers and illuminators what was going on in a parable. Illuminators would propose radical artistic designs that the advisory committee didn’t like. Calligraphers would make mistakes and struggle to fix them.

Donald Jackson, the head calligrapher for the project, describes himself as not being a religious man. But, he points out, if Christians believe that God’s Word is truth and beauty, then why are so many modern editions of the Bible so aesthetically unpleasant? Rather than small text, thin bleed-through pages, numbers and notes every which way, why not a text that reminds us of its beauty at first sight? It’s a convincing argument. People who came to the library to see the St. John’s Bible engaged it differently – not as a collection of doctrinal prooftexts, but as a spiritual encounter. The St. John’s Bible reminds us of the sacramentality of scripture.

(Category 12: Ancient and Medieval Christian Art)

The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art by Thomas F. Mathews

Mathews’ book is one of the first books I’m reading for my senior thesis. It’s REALLY good. Mathews examines the earliest Christian art for how it appropriates the imagery of Roman culture. His main thesis is refuting the “Emperor Mystique,” the received theory from scholars such as Andre Grabar. Grabar that explains early Christian art entirely in terms of Christians replacing the emperor with Christ. Rather, Mathews argues, the visual language of early Christian art borrows from many different motifs in Roman culture. Each chapter of this book examines a trope or type-scene in early Christian art, reviews the “Emperor Mystique” interpretation, then argues that the image is better interpreted in another fashion.

In chapter two, “The Chariot and the Donkey,” Mathews examines images of Christ processioning into Jerusalem on a donkey. Rather than an imperial association, he argues, these images most resemble Roman gentleman coming back from the hunt. Rather than imperial garb, Christ wears the simple robes of a genteel philosopher. He is riding on an ass, which was the transport of Dionysus in Roman art. The ass, Mathews argues, is significant because of its associations with pagan imagery. But in Christian art, it is reinterpreted, because in the Christian worldview animals are collaborators in the human endeavor. Even an ass can help God as a mount – not just a bull or a stallion.

Chapter three, “The Magician,” starts with the fact that the earliest Christian art of the third and fourth centuries does not focus on the resurrection or the cross. Instead it focuses on Christ as a miracle-worker. Christ often holds a wand, an implement that, then as now, is a tool of a magician. Magic was often used in the ancient world as a form of healing, such as in the cult of Asclepius. Christians in their art portrayed Jesus as not only any healer and miracle-worker, but a better one than any of the Roman gods. Far from imposing imperial imagery, the Christ miracle-worker is a peaceful, intimate healer, as when he healed the hemorrhaging woman. Not only was Christ depicted as a wand-wielding magician, but so were Moses, Daniel, and Peter!

Chapter four, “Larger-Than-Life,” examines large mosaics of Christ in church apses. Christ is often depicted on a throne, in a powerful guise. Mathews argues that the visual language of power in this art, however, is not imperial but godly. He examines Christ’s throne, arguing that it is not the throne of the emperor but the throne of Jupiter in Roman art. Christ’s other physical features, such as his long hair, halo, and beard are actually borrowed from the imagery of Jupiter. The message is not that Christ is the new emperor – Roman emperors existed for centuries after Constantine – but that he is the emperor of the gods. Also, in these mosaics of Christ enthroned, his disciples were often sitting around him. Mathews argues that this is the imagery of the philosopher and his disciples. Christ is wearing a philosopher’s robe. The bishop, whose seat was underneath the apse where this image would be, was taking part in the authority of Christ as philosopher-god.

The next chapter, “Christ Cameleon,” tackles a more controversial topic: Christ’s highly effeminate depiction in churches and sculpture. Many images of Christ portrayed him with long hair, no beard, and a boyish face. Some even portray him with breasts. This genderbending imagery was most associated with Dionysus and Apollo. Gnostic texts especially, but orthodox ones to a lesser extent, portrayed many of the feminine qualities of Jesus, such as his role as nurturer of souls. Christ could also be portrayed variously as young or old, signaling that his being transcends the limits of his body’s gender and age. Perhaps, Mathews argues, some of this feminine Christ imagery represented how women experienced God.

In chapter six, “Convergence,” Mathews tries to find an organizing principle for all of early Christian art. He settles on the idea of a procession. Early Christian worship processions were big events: they would walk around a city, very publicly. This was reflected in the art. Mathews writes, “The world view of early Christian art is a vision of the confluence of humankind toward an omega point in Christ. The mosaic figures that circle the beholder’s head in the dome, or stream down the walls of the nave, symmetrically organized image of Christ with attendant angels and saints” (173). Everyone was in these mosaic processions, from commoners to saints to emperors. But even though Emperor Theodora and his wife Justinian famously follow Christ in the church at San Vitale, Ravenna, Christ is still the leader of the procession, wearing not an emperor’s crown but a grapevine-wreath given to athletic winners and Roman gods.

Icons are one of the most famous and long-lasting styles of Christian art, tracing back to the fifth century at least. In chapter seven, “The Intimate Icon,” Mathews traces this style back to Roman icons of gods, which were popular in home shrines and private devotion. For example, he argues that Marian icons borrow from images of Isis, as the famous “Christ Pantokrator” icons borrow from Serapis.

Mathews’ book is titled “The Clash of the Gods” because he interprets early Christian art as religious apologetic. Early Christians saw their god, Christ, as specifically defeating and besting the gods of the Roman pantheon. Even though sometimes Mathews overstates his point, I enjoyed this book because it gave me a glimpse of early Christianity that differs from the textual tradition of the Church Fathers. I’ll finish with a quote:

“Historians never ask how images of Christ affected the way people conceptualized him. Not in an abstract sense, for images take us well beyond the world of ideas, but how they grasped him, how they felt about him, how they related to him, and what kind of a person they thought he was. (11)

(Category 12: Ancient and Medieval Christian Art)

Christ the Miracle Worker in Early Christian Art by Lee M. Jefferson

Jefferson’s book, originally written as a doctoral dissertation, surveys the popular motif of Christ as miracle-worker in Christian art between the third and fifth centuries. He asks the question: “What was the purpose of depicting Jesus as a healer and miracle worker?” (2). Most of his analysis deals with fourth-century catacomb paintings and sarcophagi reliefs. He argues that these images “provide comfort for the living, often in a burial context,” and that they “reassured Christian audiences of the superiority of Jesus in a pluralistic religious environment and the security of the life beyond” (4). After his introduction, reviews depictions of magic and miracles in both non-Christian (chapter 2) and Christian (chapter 3) sources. He then examines images of Christ healing (chapter 4), Christ raising the dead (chapter 5), the “nature miracles” of Christ (chapter 6), and the staff of Jesus (chapter 7).

Jefferson’s book is powerfully indebted to Mathews, as he not only continues to find non-imperial sources for the iconography of Jesus, but he also responds specifically to the images Mathews discusses in chapter 3, “The Magician.” Jefferson moderates Mathews’ strict focus on pagan sources by identifying some of the image-types of Jesus as coming from a Jewish background rather than a pagan background. For example, the implement of Jesus that Mathews interprets as the wand of a pagan magician, Jefferson argues is the staff of Moses. However, sometimes Jefferson overstates his case, as there is no reason the imagery can’t echo both cultures, as early Christianity itself did.

For my project, the most relevant parts of Jefferson’s book are his analyses of Christ as healer and as resurrecter. In examining Christ the healer, he argues that “non-Christian imagery was appropriated to portray rival deities as inferior to Christ” (88). He compares three major motifs of Christ as healer (the healing of the paralytic, the woman with the issue of blood, and the healing of the blind) to Asclepius. He argues that while Christ does not look like Asclepius, he is performing similar actions, and needs fewer implements to do so – as if he is a far better healer (and more of a human one, given his clothing) than Asclepius.

In his chapter on Christ as resurrecter, Jefferson cites early Christian apologists such as Justin Martyr who compared Jesus to Herakles and Orpheus. They read these two figures Christologically, as they too were deified men who performed great acts of heroism. Herakles in particular was seen as a figure of “divine aid and strength” (112) and a resurrecter of Alcestis. Jefferson speculates that “Hercules and other figures from the pagan pantheon represent well-known tales that Christians could recognize as compatible with a funerary environment and not as idolatrous threats … Early Christians could exhibit images of Hercules or Orpheus and project Christian themes. Both figures embodied charity and were able to exert a level of control over the dead, and they both enjoyed a heroic apotheosis” (115-116). In the catacombs, some of the earliest Christian art we have left, we see Christians working out the visual lexicon of their new religion. We see Hercules in particular in the Via Latina catacombs.

For my project, Jefferson is useful because he provides a framework through which to view Hercules in early Christian art: the framework of simultaneous appropriation and interreligious polemic. Early Christians saw the parallels between Christ and pagan gods, but rather than denying those parallels, they used them to their advantage.

(Category 12: Ancient and Medieval Christian Art)

I'm really enjoying your reviews of these books on early Christian art! Best of luck with your thesis.

Grendel by John Gardner

One of the things that intrigued me about Beowulf was the change in how Beowulf related to the three monsters whom he killed. As the epic wore on, it seemed he had more in common with the monsters, and the monsters were easier to sympathize with. But while the dragon is even vaguely relatable, Grendel, the first monster, is described in the most inhuman and distancing terms possible. Gardner’s short book retells Beowulf from the point of view of this Grendel. Gardner asks the question: why do humans need monsters? What do they do for us? Monsters, far from being undesirable, are necessary to sustain humanity. We need enemies. That is perhaps the most frightening monster of all.

This book has some great quotable moments.

“Ah Grendel! … You improve them, my boy! Can’t you see that yourself? You stimulate them! You make them think and scheme. You drive them to poetry, science, religion, all that makes them what they are for as long as they last. You are, so to speak, the brute existent by which they learn to define themselves. The exile, captivity, death they shrink from – the blunt facts of their mortality, their abandonment – that’s what you make them recognize, embrace! You are mankind, or man’s condition: inseparable as the mountain-climber and the mountain.” (62)

Spoken by a pagan priest:
“O the ultimate evil in the temporal world is deeper than any specific evil, such as hatred, or suffering, or death! The ultimate evil is that Time is perpetual perishing, and being actual involves elimination. The nature of evil may be epitomized, therefore, in two simple but horrifying and holy propositions: ‘Things fade’ and ‘Alternatives exclude.’ Such is His mystery: that beauty requires contrast, and that discord is fundamental to the creation of new intensities of feeling. Ultimate wisdom, I have come to perceive, lies in the perception that the solemnity and grandeur of the universe rise through the slow process of unification in which the diversities of existence are utilized, and nothing, nothing is lost.” (115)

(Fits category 4 -- books I will give away after reading)

The Big Kahn: A Sequential Drama by Neil Kleid

I picked this up for my girlfriend at a friend’s comic book shop, since she is really into Judaica. Of course I ended up reading it myself. Kleid’s book begins with the funeral of a beloved rabbi, a pillar of his local synagogue. The family learns that he was actually a con man, not a Jew at all, a man who became a rabbi initially for the money but over time came to it as a way to atone for his sins. His family is forced to face the difficult question of defining authenticity: is truth something you can fake until you make, or is it deeper than that? Is being Jewish about a lineage, a formal conversion, or is it defined solely by one’s relationship with God? The most fascinating part of this book for me was seeing how Rabbi Kahn’s two children changed as a result of learning about their father’s false identity. The book does not pose an answer to the above questions, but shows how two characters come to different conclusions that both make sense and change their lives permanently.

(category 1: books with a red cover)

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

My mom loves this book and has taught it to her “introduction to literature” students for 15+ years. So I figured it was time I read it. Paton, a white South African author and anti-apartheid activist, pens a novel about forgiveness and reconciliation under apartheid. The main character is a rural black parson who travels to Johannesburg, portrayed as the big city of slums and sin and social decay, to find his lost son and daughter.

He learns that his son has been caught by the police, charged with murder for killing a white man. This white man happens to be one of the biggest opponents of apartheid in the country. The rest of the novel follows the trial and the slain man’s father, who experiences a moral conversion as he reads his son’s writings. He eventually uses his wealth to build a dam and other infrastructure in the rural area where he and the parson both live.

I had mixed feelings about this book. I have a close friend who is black, and one of her biggest frustrations is literature written by and for white people about individual whites whose compassion crosses color lines. We see that in this novel, and those narratives of compassion are important. But individual compassion is not enough – we must change infrastructures, laws, societies. Those things do not get fixed in this book. Now, is Paton depicting the reality of apartheid and how it seemingly will not change? Or is he ignoring a key aspect of how apartheid will end? Is the ending a reconciliation, or just another white savior complex run amuck?

“Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved with the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or valley. For fear will rob him if he gives too much.” (80)

“Yet men were afraid, with a fear that was deep, deep in the heart, a fear so deep that they hid their kindness, or brought it out with fierceness and anger, and hid it behind fierce and frowning eyes. They were afraid because they were so few. And such fear could not be cast out, but by love.” (276)

(category 2: first name of author begins with A)

93. The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th-Century America by Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz

I had never read a book about American religious history before, so this was a fascinating a short read. This book tells the story of Matthias, a self-proclaimed prophet in the Second Great Awakening whose career ended in scandal: marriages broken up, his alleged murder of his foremost disciple, the complete abandonment of his own wife and children. In a time or urbanization and evangelical reforms that gave women a more powerful role in the family and challenged hierarchical social structures, Matthias sought to reassert a traditional family order of patriarchy and social order. A disturbing story of how a mentally ill but charismatic person can gain sick power over others. The authors do a good job of bringing in background to help explain it. Also, the ending was a huge surprise – I won’t spoil it!

(category 4: books I will give away after reading)

You've read some interesting books this year. Here's to a great 2015 reading year!

Thank you!

This year's category challenge, like last year's, was a rub. Mostly because of school. University takes away time for fun reading.

Anyway, here's my 15 in 15:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/185756