A few books this Monday evening!

35. Jesus is Lord – Christology Yesterday and Today by Donald Macleod. A wonderful little book looking at the person of Christ and exploring various beliefs on the person and work of Christ throughout the past two millennia. This book is less of a focused study and more of a collection of multiple articles both positively proclaiming the orthodox view on the person of Christ while at the same time critically examining various views that do not seem to align with such. This is not a work for popular consumption – definitely written with an academic bent and at times slow reading. Still, I delighted in this! While I may not be the target audience, I appreciated the fact that each chapter stood alone and addressed a particular concept or theologian. The author clearly holds a high view of Christ (a Nicaean one) and is diligent in rooting out the inconsistences and sly ambiguities of those who deny certain attributes of Christ while paying lip service to orthodoxy. This is a good work for any who would like to understand why Christians so firmly believe Jesus to be in very substance God. While it can be a bit heady at times, I still think the brevity of this work alone (less than 200 pages!) makes this an attractive book to dig into. Some of the later chapters focused on more modern theologians and I greatly appreciated seeing how even now the person, work and purpose of Christ are still being studied as scholars and theologians seek to understand who is this Jesus who lived on this earth a little over two thousand years ago. Heartily recommend to anyone who wants to understand the orthodox Christian view of Christ and isn’t afraid to get nerdy doing so! Also? For me at least, this book was balm to my soul. Not mere scholastic study or intellectualism, this work provided encouragement for me as I meditated on Jesus Christ and who he is and what he has done and is doing for me. This is not a dead Christ I serve, but indeed very God, the Lord and Creator of the universe.

36. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. A riotously funny book, this is one I haven’t read in near twenty years…and guess what? Still great!! Adams has one of the most absurd senses of humor I have ever encountered in fiction, as well as one of the most creative minds. They fuse in this wonderful little book that most have heard of, but sadly all too few have read. There are so many laugh-out-loud moments in this and I shan’t spoil by attempting to summarize them here. Just know, while this is a sci-fi book, it’s not just a sci-fi book. It’s really more of a comical commentary on life, the universe and everything. Y’know. I delighted to read this and surely I will read this again, but this time in less than twenty years time.

37. Foster by Claire Keegan. I thought I would love this one more than I did. Brooding and darkly beautiful, this short story is widely acclaimed and I can see why. Though I think the texture of this tale is often beautiful – so many little details that paint the story in hues rich and deep – the story itself is teased out so sparingly that I struggled to connect with the person and relationship at the heart of it. There is both light and darkness in this book and at times the veil drawn over the story makes it hard to distinguish what is actually going on. I will freely confess that is an authorial choice and likely I can also be a bit dense at times. So any faults of this story I will lay at my own feet and claim a lack of understanding. But at the end of the day, it wasn’t a story that I loved and that is all I can say. Yes I loved the look at small-village Irish life. But the characters themself (even the child!) all felt so cold and stark that by the end of this short tale, I felt no different than when I started. Perhaps it is just me.