GreggTownsley.com

What I Read in 2006

A chronology of what I’ve been reading since January 2006, with a few comments where deserved or needed…

The year starts out with a pile of half-read books on my bedside reading table and desk. Personal essays, martial arts, history, philosophy and religion. Typical of my reading since the day I began reading in middle school, it’s an eclectic pile of books. Some wired and some wierd.

Where is all this headed, you might ask? As always, only God knows if the great divine is at all interested in such things. Pick among the books on my list–these and others to follow, or take a look at previous years–and you’ll sense the guts and the growth of what it means to be Gregg. You’ll also find a couple of good reads, which is the purpose, of course, of posting such a list publicly. Not that what I’m writing is any more good to you than what you’re reading already, but still…

I believe that books are an important part of our forever, individually and together, which is why I make it a point to read two or three non-fiction narratives a month. The more I read, the more I’m me.

As always, the more recent reads, good or bad, are listed first…

James Kugel, The Bible As It Was (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997)

The book to buy when reading the Pentateuch. Kugel covers the landscape of considerations, ancient and modern, with perhaps the most detailed bibliography of its kind. If you’re wanting to read the Bible and truly understand how it’s been read, believed and applied over the last fifteen centuries or more, this is your book. This is my third read of Kugel–I always have it by my side when preaching or teaching from the first five books of the Bible–and it’s still a treat.

John Shelby Spong, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture (San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco, 1991)

A second or third read for me, this year in preparation for the kick-off of my Through the Bible in One Year course at the Forest Grove United Church of Christ, Spong does a yeoman’s job of covering the origin and use of scripture within the Christian tradition. He is particularly good at sounding the alarm over the misuse of scripture and its oppressive use toward the church’s minorities, but also at bringing contemporary scholarship (however radical) to bear on familiar and contemporary questions.

A must read, if you can handle it. Reading Spong, and I think I’ve read everything he’s written thus far, will change your Christian perspective. Warning! The changes may not always be for the better, so to speak.

Lesslie Newbigin, A Walk through the Bible(Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999)

A quick and capable read through the considerations you and I make (or need to make) when we read the Bible. The book’s best contribution is that it covers the span of Protestant Christian scripture–”orthodox” versions anyway–in little less than 85 pages.

Joseph Smith, Doctrine and Covenants / Pearl of Great Price (Salt Lake City, UT: Church of Latter Day Saints, 1975)

I don’t know why I’m reading this stuff, save a fascination with the world’s scriptures (and that doesn’t sound sacred enough), but this was interesting. Unlike our Pentecostal friends, who are just as sincere in their belief that they’re hearing from God on issues of faith and practice, these people write their revelations down. And while some of them are most interesting–like the LDS reversals on celestial (read “plural”) marriages and the admittance of blacks to the priesthood–all of them will catch your attention for their mention of individual people in specific circumstances who need to hear a fresh word.

Reading Doctrines and Covenantswas reminiscent of my days in the early Charismatic movement, though parts of the book are clearly beyond use and redemption. Sorry LDS friends, I give it a 4 for the tune and a 9 because some of you continue to dance to it. Respect anyway is very much due.

Sherlock Bristol, The Pioneer Preacher: Incidents of Interest, and Experiences in the Author’s Life (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1989)

I picked up this book while looking for examples of the garb of early American preachers and was surprised as to how useful it was. While it didn’t really address the wide variety of dress present among frontier Protestant clergy, it did paint a wonderfully human picture of the clergy.

Bat in hand, some of those long-ago dudes and dudettes cleared the frontier of wrong doers. And while they butchered a few million Indians along the way–okay, so Small Pox and other diseases had a lot to do with Indian genocide–fact is you have to admire the willingness of the few to take on such a difficult challenge. Clergy among them.

If it wasn’t for these complex people–marred by the perspectives and prejudices of their time, just like us–none of us would be here.

Norman Weis, Ghost Towns of the Northwest: Known and Unknown (Caldwell, ID: Caxton Press, 2002)

Did you ever wish you could buy a ghost town? I have. And while I can’t explain why–what would that accomplish anyway?–this book helped the hunger. Like I have the money anyway…

Weis covers the known and the unknown in his trek to cover thirty or more long ago cities in the five Northwestern states: Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana. Particularly appreciated was his treatment of Granite, Oregon where I hope to journey this spring with a dear Washington friend.

Mary Roach, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company, 2005)

A fun book, read on a plane between somewhere and somewhere else (I can’t remember), Roach’s book asks the question “what happens when we die?” An exhaustive and entertaining investigator, Roach concludes the obvious: who knows? In the course of her discussion, she recites the weird and the ludicrous, like early and recent university (!) studies on the weight of the human soul.

I need to pick-up her previous best seller, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers before I’m done with this leg of the journey.

Al Franken, The Truth (with Jokes) (New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2005)

Franken’s latest book ( I think), a rant on how Bush beat (or didn’t beat) Kerry, on Jack Abramoff’s downfall and the current administration’s home and foreign strategies. As always, a much needed balance to the rest of what the media reports (sorry Nancy). He is much missed on Air America!

Dana Lindaman and Hyle Ward, History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U. S. History, (New York, NY: The New Press, 2004)

What a great book! If you want to get a handle on American history from diverse and varied perspectives, this is your book. I particularly enjoyed the review of historical events and topics that I had heard of before, but never really read in depth about. What the book contributes is the ability to follow those events from a Cuban perspective (in the case of the Cuban Missle Crisis), or a North Korean point of view (in the case of the Korean War), and so on. Especially refreshing–and I have to express some surprise here–were the contributions from text books in France and Russia. While Vietnamese and North Korean perspectives were jaded and in service to politics and party, others were surprisingly balanced and helpful.

I had one good and by that I mean riveting history course in college. Had this book been available then, my whole experience of American history would have been different. I’m going to send copies of this book to a number of my family and friends.

Edward S. Barnard, editor, Story of the Great American West, (Pleasantville, NY: Reader’s Digest Association, Inc., 1977)

Nice treatment of the American west. An historical panorama–both with respect to writing, photos and illustrations–the book begins with the European exodus to the new world and ends with the beginning of the cities. In-between? Just about everything. What a fun read, picked-up in a used book store in Forest Grove of all places.

David Phillips, editor, The West: An American Experience, (Chicago, IL: Henry Regnery Company, 1973)

Same source as above, this coffee table book is full of black and white photos covering the western expansion. Great photographs by more than a handfull of photographers, with a discussion of their contribution to photography and the processes they used under, what had to be at times, a difficult and dire experience.

Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist, (Madison, WI: The Freedom from Religion Foundation, 1992)

“An elementary read,” my local atheist friend said, as we discussed the free thinking books I had been reading. “I’m not sure you’ll like it.” He was right; it is a simple read. But an easy addition to anyone’s reading in the free thinking tradition. Barker was an evangelical preacher and song writer whose musicals are still in use by some conservative Christian churches. While the book suffers from a lack of intellect at times–sorry Dan, but the questions you discuss and the comparisons you draw are sometimes more complex than you present them to be–his journey is interesting and heartfelt. And some of the pictures he presents are too real to be true, at times, had I not lived them myself. On the downside, the book plods along; it took me a good six months to complete.

Larry McMurtry, Telegraph Days, (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2006)

Alright, I caved. I don’t usually read non-fiction, but I’m on such a western jag right now–what with my new-born enthusiasm with Single Action Shooting Society (SASS) and the Cowboy Fast Draw Association. The SASS stuff affords me the opportunity to dress up like a cowboy, and shoot like one, too–don’t laugh–and McMurtry? Well, McMurtry allows any reader to recall the best of western movies, Lonesome Dove, and to wile away the free time at our Nevada Faithspring meeting in Fernley, where the little boy in me recently performed a shameful act. I bought my first fast draw rig. The book and the boy made me very happy!

Marvin Meyer, The Gnostic Discoveries: The Impact of the Nag Hammadi Library, (San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row, 2005)

Meyer does what other books on Christian gnosticism fail to do. Her surveys the manuscripts (including a blurb on the recently discovered Gospel of Judas, gives you their history as scholars currently understand it, and lends a critical eye toward their usefulness in contemporary Christian scholarship and faith. Speaking more to the former and less toward the latter, Meyer’s book isn’t a necessary addition to the interested Christian reader, and perhaps not to the student or scholar interested in ancient Christian origins. But it’s a logical read for those of us who have read pretty much everything else. Recommended.

C. G. Jung, and edited by Aniela Jaffe, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, (New York, NY: Random House, 1963)

Second time through this wonderful book written by Aniela Jaffe, one of C. G. Jung’s disciples and analysands. While current arguments focus on how much Carl Jung actually had to do with this book, it’s worth multiple reads as it 1) portrays the whole of Jung’s life in as autobiographical fashion as possible–Jung was disinterested in talking too much about his life in his latter days, being more interested in wrapping up what he perceived to be his life works–and 2) presents more of Jung’s views on religion than perhaps any other of his works. I was needing to get a handle on a couple personal issues at the time and wanted to walk in richer and more reflective shoes.

Larry McMurtry, Crazy Horse: A Life, (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1999)

Who would have guessed that Larry McMurtry had a small historical piece in him? Why anyone who reads McMurtry’s western novels I suppose. This very brief history of Crazy Horse–about whom a national monument is being carved out of rock–shows good awareness of other treatments and is an easy read. The Sioux warrior who became a reluctant leader at the Battle of Little Bighorn is presented as a quiet, sensitive man who wanted as little to do with conquering cowboys as he did with his own people save to do a little good…

Duane Schultz, Quantrill’s War: The Life and Times of William Clarke Quantrill, (New York, NY: Saint Martin’s Griffin, 1996)

As the back cover says, “The definitive biography of Civil War legend William Clarke Quantrill.” And the book clearly is. I’ve always been interested in the events leading up to and after the Civil War. Quantrill’s history touches many western heros, most notably Jesse James. Well researched and interestingly written, Schulz’s book should be on your bookshelf if you’re interested in the history of the wild west, so to speak, and will have you wondering who the good guys and bad guys really were and alternately read it with D. T. Suzuki’s book mentioned below…

Soyen Shaku, translated by D. T. Suzuki, Zen for Americans, including the Sutra of Forty-Two Chapters, (New York, NY: Barnes and Noble, 1993)

Anything D. T. Suzuki puts his hand to I like to read. Originally printed as a collection of sermons in 1913, entitled Sermons of a Buddhist, the sutra itself was a wonderful reintroduction to noteworthy and grace-filled Buddhist concepts. And at times, where else are you going to turn to?

John Steinbeck, The Pearl, (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1973)

Certain books are made to be read on airplanes. Steinbecks brief novel reminds us as to what is valuable in our lives and how much trouble comes when we seek more than what we have. Like my reading of Mice and Men a couple of years ago, all I can say is “wow!” A part of my catch-up program to books I should have read when I was younger, how come I didn’t read this in high school?

Jon Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, (New York, NY: Doubleday Books, 2003)

My youngest son turned me on to this one, just when I thought I was done reading about Mormonism. Krakauer is the author of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, and is a frequent writer for outdoor magazines. This is his first, I think, foray into some serious history writing and is a capable contribution to the contemporary dialogue about Mormon fundamentalist cults. Great read. Not nearly as well-balanced as some of the other books I’ve read on Mormonism–Krakauer wants us to understand just how dangerous fundamentalism of any kind is, and is, by application then, a nice contribution to current discussion.

Peter Onuf, editor, Jeffersonian Legacies (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia, 1993)

For reasons I can’t recall, as this read has taken me a while, I was searching around for something to read on Thomas Jefferson, having finished Ye Will Say I Am No Christian, (see below). This is a compendeum of chapters originally presented as lectures on Jefferson’s life. Most of the selections have a revisionist bent to them, and there has got to be material out there not nearly as dated. But all in all, a good contribution to one’s personal library on Jefferson if one has one. Okay, so I’m in the minority here in the suburbs, but you get the point…

Bruce Braden, editor, You Will Say I Am No Christian: The Thomas Jefferson / John Adams Correspondence on Religion, Morals, and Values (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006)

Wow! What a wonderful chair to sit in as one listens in on two clearly intelligent and intellectually honest men discussing faith and values. Best book of the year award goes to Bruce Braden, and more so, to the intellectual fathers of our country who were, among other things, intellectually adroit and entertaining. In recent years, only Bill Clinton came close to this kind of brilliance and breadth.

John Eldredge, Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul, (Nashville, TN: Nelson Books, 2001)

A Sherwood pastor friend gave me this. And despite my initially thinking that I wouldn’t bother reading it, I’m glad I did. Pastor Brad is good guy, but he’s not beyond pushing me a bit toward his kind of thinking. What I didn’t expect was an evangelical Christian well versed in the men’s movement and conversant with contemporary culture. Nice contribution, despite its built-in limitations.

Chad Orton and William Slaughter, Joseph Smith’s America: His Life and Times, (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Books, 2005)

I thought I was done with my read of LDS literature and life, but then a student’s mom handed me this new work by the people at Deseret Books. Very nice read! Basically written for the church’s faithful and those that might be, the book takes an honest look at the church’s most towering figure and frontier times in the context of everything else that was happening. Helpful sidebars and inserts put the man in his context: the invention of the saxophone, for instance, and New England abolitionism, Napoleon conquering Europe and so on.

It was a delightful read, and for the most part a very complete and honest one. If I was troubled at anything, and I’m pushing things here as I found most of the issues dealt with in the book more complete or honest than some of the secular and/or academic sources read this year, it was the authors’ ignorance or reticence of the masonic interests of the early LDS pioneers, a source of interest to scholars. All in all however, a wonderful book even for non-mormon readers.

Donald Yanella, Ralph Waldo Emerson, (Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers, 1982)

An absolutely abysmal book on one of the seminal thinkers in American religion, Yannella’s treatment of the man and his message was insufferable. Perhaps the most obtuse book I’ve read in years, Yannella’s attempt to summarize each of Emerson’s works in a literary and historical context was a complete waste of time, which is why I’m leaving the last fifty or so pages of the damn book unread. Whew…

Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian (and other essays on religion and related subjects), (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1958)

An impassioned and well reasoned argument by an outstanding American skeptic / philosopher. Great essays on Thomas Paine, religion and morals, and the question as to whether religion, and in particular the Christian Church, has made a useful contribution to self or society. I’m impressed that Russell and others could be so honest in their appraisal of Christian reasoning and effect when similar apologists on the religious side of the argument could be so stiff-necked and knuckle-headed.

David Ferry, Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse, (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992)

History’s oldest book, I’m told. A comment by someone in my circle of friends prompted that I read the epic warrior tale. Beautiful poetry and a faithful treatment–like I can read Sumerian, you know?–of a story that reads like a contemporary short story. The ending of Gilgamesh reminded me of one of my favorite Hebrew scripture books, Ecclesiastes and deepened my appreciation of how wise and cognizant of each other ancient cultures were.

Randel Helms, Gospel Fictions, (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1988)

I got Helms book as a gift from Prometheus Books a couple of years back. An excited secretary at the church I was serving walked into my study exclaiming, “this sounds like you!” A leading humanist press, many of the volumes published by Prometheus Books are skeptical in tone and Helms’ book is no exception.

A professor of English at Arizona State University, Helms does a better than adequate job of presenting the mainframe of mainline research and ideology regarding the Christian gospels and is to be commended for that. But while I agree with much of what Helms says–that the Christian scriptures have as their focus the conversion of sinners and the conviction of those already saved–Helms’ tone is at times difficult. Like much of the Prometheus catalog, Helms argues too much and agrees with too little. However…for the religionist who wants a real eye-opener and is willing to suffer through the truths and perspectives his or her pastor has been silent about too long, Helms book is a good start.

George Kirby, JuJitsu Nerve Techniques: The Invisible Weapon of Self-Defense (Lubbock, TX: Black Belt Books, 2001)

I’m such a skeptic in these matters that I might be the last guy to get on the pressure point bus. I mean if nerve and supposed “meridian” strikes were all that, you’d see them practiced by in the UFC, right? Fact is, you don’t.

George Kirby is perhaps my most favorite Ju-Jitsu writer. In this his latest volume, Kirby adds a third book in his series on American jujitsu defense tactics with this comprehensive treatment of pressure-point self-defense. A better and more balanced treatment of a controversial subject in the martial arts can’t be had. The best parts of Kirby’s book include well explained technique breakdowns (for Ju-Jitsu folks, anyway), pletny of photos, and more than nine pages of comprehensive charts comparing traditional oriental points, nerves and muscle groups.