I'll start us out. For my lighter summer fare, I'll admit to enjoying historical fiction along the lines of Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl.

For my more serious reading, I've been reading The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic (a very successful author in his lifetime, but one who has fallen out of general knowledge now). This book is about a young Methodist pastor starting out in his career and the challenges to his faith that he faces. Judging from the title, I'm thinking it might get rather dark.

I've also been enjoying a book with a compilation of prayers from several sacred scriptures, including the Bible. My husband and I have been enjoying reading these as devotional thoughts and finding out the core, universal values that seem to be woven in all of the great faiths.

I also just finished our book club selection for this month, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith by Barbara Brown Taylor. I found it amazingly insightful and beautifully written. I kept having to read large passages aloud to my husband.

Lacking a place to suggest book reviews, I would request that someone review and report on the book: "Who Watches? Who Cares? Misadventures in Stewardship" bu Douglas Hackleman.

This is a must for anyone interested in the multiple times that the SDA leaders have led the church and its holdings into bankruptcy. The Harris Pine Mills, always a growing, revenue-producing factory, was given to the SDA church by the owners and shortly thereafter went belly-up. This story was repeated in many other situations: The Davenport affair where the church fostered and promoted a pyramid scheme from which the leaders prospered; the Adventist Health System that lost tremendous amounts of money by poor oversight; the "new" literature evangelist venture into developing video stories to the tune of millions that never produced a single video while the promoter continued to ask for, and receive more monies. There are more, and to this date, there is no assurances and controls in place to prevent such future occurences. Many of these perpetrators should have served jail time, but were excused and any coverage was contained from the majority of members.

This deserves the attention and coverage of everyone interested in the future of the SDA church. Please, have someone report on this book in detail. (No, I do not wish to report on it myself.)

Elaine: this book was just recently (7/7/08) reviewed on this website: http://spectrummagazine.org/reviews/book_reviews/2008/07/07/church_accou....

Is this review not adequate?

I recently read "Murder in the Vatican" by Lucien Gregoire. This is actually two books in one: "The Revolutionary Life of John Paul" and "The Vatican Murders of 1978." The book is, of course, about Pope John Paul I, who died mysteriously after one month as pope. This is a somewhat irreverent work, which is critical of Christianity in general, and the Roman Catholic Church in particular. But if you like true crime books with a religious twist, this might be one to at least consider reading. But be forewarned: it is especially critical of the Old Testament, and it is somewhat frank with regard to sexuality. It also contains a lot of dirt. It makes SDA 'corruption' seem insignificant. But if you like "The Great Controversy" and suspect modern papal intrigue, this book will feed your paranoia! If you read it...you will know too much!

Rich, mea culpa! I totally overlooked the review; in fact, it prompted my ordering and reading it. No excuse--may "Old-timer's disease"? The review was excellent, thus my immediately ordering it.

It's a good idea to put in a spot somewhere on the site to suggest reviews though. You can always use the Contact Us form or email me: daneen at spectrummagazine.org.

Daneen, I read The Damnation of Theron Ware about a year ago on the recommendation of a friend. It's a fascinating book. I found it very comforting to read about people struggling with the same themes we struggle with today. It's not really a dark book - just fascinating - and it explores what can happen when one looses one's intellectual innocence. The morality is harsher but the themes are very present day.

Currently almost finished with Ladies of Liberty by Cokie Roberts. All the gossipy details preserved from the wives of the founding fathers - amazing to learn how much nastier political attacks were in the early years of our country.

Just finished God Grew Tired of Us by John Bul Dau, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. Unbelievable what they went through. Also, Malachy McCourt's History of Ireland, trying to learn more about my Irish roots.

Before that, Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America by Steven Waldman - very interesting. Born Gay: The Psychobiology of Sex Orientation by Glenn Wilson and Qazi Rahman - should be read by those who think being gay is a choice. Ten Miles From the Nearest Sin by Norma Bork - a novel about sexual abuse in an Adventist setting. The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson - hilarious! What's So Great About Christianity by Dinesh D'Souza. Grace (Eventually) by Anne LaMott. And Come Be My Light by Mother Teresa.

I'm looking forward to getting good ideas for my next reads here!

Herman Hesse's "Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game." A heady brew of art, philosophy, aesthetics and utopianism. Compared to this, all his other novels,esp., "Demian," "Steppenwolf," needless to say, are light reading. I recommend these, as well for the richness of their characters and ideas.

"Memories of My Mother" by Jimmy Carter; The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch, and "Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament" by John H. Walton.

Currently ordered from Amazon are: "Putting Jesus in His Place" by Robert Bowman and "The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion" by Mircea Eliade.

I recently read:

A Christianity Worth Believing -- This gift from Doug Pagitt is an emergent theological treatise and personal memoir wrapped up with good stories and tied with a lighthearted bow.

Along with:

The New Christians -- If you wonder what the emerging church is all about, Tony Jones offers history, stories, and discussion on the church as it emerges.

There is a new website to promote these books (along with Soul Graffiti by Mark Scandrette) as well as a national tour.

I also recently read:

The Fidelity of Betrayal -- Peter Rollins challenges us to consider giving up faith as we know it for faith as it could be.

Along with:

What Would Jesus Deconstruct? -- John Caputo's answer, the Church!

Rollins recently commented on deconstruction in a podcast interview. “A lot of people talk about deconstruction like this. They say, ‘Well we’ve got to deconstruct and then once we’ve deconstructed, we can rebuild.’

“And I want to stop at that point and say, ‘No. We never cease to deconstruct. Deconstruction is not like knocking down a building so we can clear a space to build something new. Deconstruction is like the heat that keeps our ideas fluid and molten and moving and dynamic.’” (transcribed by Johnathan Brink)

Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution by Karl Giberson and The Man Who Loved China by Simon Winchester.

Both are great!

Read recently for the second time "A Long Way Gone", Memoirs of a Boy Soldier - by Ishmael Beah

This is a story of a child about 12 years old and how he is abducted into the war in Sierra Leone - he is turned into a indiscriminate killing machine by the use of drugs and brain washing -at 15, he's brought to a rehabilitation center sponsored by UNICEF and partnering NGOs - where he is rehabilitated due largely to their kindness and the constant repetition of the words "it was not your fault" which allowed him to forgive himself and start a new life. However, two thoughts kept going through my mind as I read. Actually listened on my IPOD

1. If we were to take the time to try and rehabilitate our children - that many times are lost and in jails due to abuse - in the same manner as UNICEF - would it work? Is there something we are missing in our justice system? And

2. When you hear the killing machine this child became - almost a wild animal - reasoning and negotiations would not be possible with such an army - how would you bring peace to such a group? What methods of saving a country with such an army would work?

We listened to it on a family vacation (son Eric 18) and he thought it was a good book also.

Ellen

This summer’s reading was the summer of nothing current.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle…Barbara Kingsolver The health message gains social consciousness and meets the green revolution. If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. The book chronicles her family’s year of seasonal and local eating in a way that will seem very familiar to many SDAs, albeit from a different perspective. My entire family enjoyed this one.

Boomsday…Christopher Buckley From the author who brought us the movie “Thank You For Smoking”. A satirical and caustic look at the catastrophic events likely to occur when the full force of the baby boomers retirement hits the general populace. Mildly interesting and occasionally funny, but in the end disappointing.

Interpreter of Maladies. Jhumpa Lahiri A collection of short stories highlighting the American experience through the eyes of Indian/Bengali immigrants. Fascinating and beautifully written. My daughter says her new collection Unaccustomed Earth is also great.

Stormy Weather… Carl Hiassen The ultimate beach read from the master of the species. No one has captured the south Florida wacko better than Hiassen. His stories are filled with characters so weird and disgusting that they have to be real. As a former teacher and boy’s dean from Forest Lake Academy, I can attest that he is dead nuts accurate on the backwoods, Okeechobee redneck. The best part of reading Hiassen is the inventive way he kills the bad guys. A completely gratuitous, guilty pleasure, time waster.

Marilyn Stokstad's Art: A Brief History for an upcoming class.

Stop Me if You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes by Jim Holt

If you want watch a delightful and informative diavlogue with the brilliant Mr. Holt, check out this bloggingheads.tv episode.

Ron, I love Carl Hiassen. And I just finished No Way To Treat A First Lady by Christopher Buckley which was quite funny and Florence of Arabia which was kind of funny but mostly depressing. It was about a woman sent over to a Middle Eastern country by a CIA-like agency in order to stir up the women. The situation of the women was way too close to the depressing truth to be enjoyable I'm afraid.

I have just finished reading Russell Bank's Cloudsplitter, one of the most interesting books I have ever read. It is an intriguing mix of history, psychology, drama, and singlemindedness. The book is about John Brown, the abolitionist, who was more than willing to die for his convictions. At times it gets pretty wild, to say the least.

Finding many lacks in my education, I'm using retirement as an opportunity to remedy some of them. Right now I'm in the middle of a huge volume "Music in Western Civilization" by Paul Henry Lang. It's from the 40s, and traces what is known of western art music from antiquity through the early 20th century.

There are many allusions and expressions I don't understand, including to classics that I've never read (the Harvard Dictionary of Music is sometimes a help, sometimes not). I have just finished the section on JS Bach, which is, appropriately, in the middle of the book. One thing that impresses me is the degree to which the development of western music is entangled with the Church, and another how entangled it is with drama and literature. Yet another is the fact that purely instrumental music with all its expressive power, is a fairly modern invention! Apparently until around the 14th or 15th century instruments were used only to accompany singing.

Tough going, I hope edifying. My friend VB told me that the only music literature class he had as an undergrad at Southern consisted of the teacher assigning readings from this book for students to read to the class. They didn't get very far--only to Machaut.

One of my aspirations is to someday read some of the great Greek and Latin classics (in translation, please), but I don't know if I'll ever get there. A more immediate aspiration is to finish writing up Ed Specht's monumental work on Geometry. I've become something of a custodian of the project, along with a colleague at Andrews, and am trying to read the last chapter and make corrections.

Don

Don, your studying the history of music sounds most intriguing! Of course, J.S. Bach is my choice of the all-time greatest musician, par excellence!

If you wish to study the Greek classics (English translations) a good place to begin are lectures from The Teaching Company (I've taken several on the Greeks). As a first step, you are introduced to them with a lecture on each which gives you an idea of which ones you wish to begin reading. The Teaching Company is somewhat like Cliff's Notes for short synopses.

As soon as I complete "Argumentation and Persuasion" (I listen while driving), awaiting me next is "Reason and Faith: Philosophy in the Middle Ages."

Elaine: been there, done that :-). Zarefsky is a great teacher! I've listened to that course twice. The other one's good too, but I'm an incurable medieval 'geek' so I would like it. Since you like TeachCo you might also like the Modern Scholar series from Recorded Books. I've done a half dozen of theirs and not one is bad. Peter Kreeft from Boston U is especially good. The one I'm in the middle of now is 'The Catholic Church in the Modern Age'.

Thanks for the suggestions, Rich.

I have more than two dozen separate Teaching Company sets and have found every single one to be very informative and the lecturers are all the very best. Unfortunately, each week with their sales catalog or online postings, there is another sale made!

I've listened to the longest ones: Great Authors Literary Tradition (7 cases) and Modern Novels, and hosts of others. Maybe I'll give your suggestion a try.

Correction to my last dissertation--it would be more accurate to say that until the 14th and 15th centuries, vocal and instrumental musics were interchangeable--music written for voice was often performed on instruments. Not that anybody here cares, just a bit of pedantry from an old prof. Don

Elaine,

You are quite right about Bach. I was a bit slow coming to him, as I think a lot of people are. As I live in one of the great musical capitals of the world (Bloomington, IN) I have opportunity to go to a lot of concerts, mostly free. On at least one occasion, probably more, I have experienced a concert full of baroque music, and then, at the end some of the old man's music is performed and it's like a light comes on.

Last September my wife and son and I traveled to Germany and we went to Leipzig and to Bach's church, the Thomaskirche--twice, no less, to attend "Motet" which is really a religious service, complete with sermon--really the equivalent of the English evensong.

The first time we went, the congregation sang "If thou but suffer God to guide thee". I had never tried singing it in German--meine Deutschensprache ist nicht viele gut, but it was surprisingly easy with the words in front of me. The second time, a day later, we sat in the choir part of the church, about 10 feet from Bach's grave, and the choir sang (like angels) one of his cantatas from the gallery on the west end. I feel very privileged to have gone to that place where this man worked, whom we now see 300 years later as "the Great Master", as Warren Becker used to say.

There's a wonderful tribute by William F. Buckley Jr on the occasion of JSB's 300th birthday, in 1985--if you haven't read it you should do so. It's at

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_v37/ai_3760862

Wow, but the world hit the jackpot in 1685! Bach, Handel, and Scarlatti, all born that year!

Don