Currently reading
I am trying to go through AT LEAST 12 books in 12 months for 2012.
This is a great feat for me, because I normally read really slowly, and hardly ever finish books (or start them, for that matter). I think I read 4 or 5 books last year because I was very interested in the topics.
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January:
Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices - Brian McLaren
This book would have been better if I had read it a year ago. I’ve spent far too much time looking into the ‘Ancient Practices’ over the past year that this introduction didn’t really do it for me. That is what it is, an introduction to the ideas of liturgical worship & prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, etc for people who are more likely to have been brought up in an Evangelical background (which I was) or at least spent their formative-christian-years in Evangelicalism (which I did). Still decent enough, but wasn’t really timely for me. I’m not a huge fan of McLaren’s books anyway - but that is beside the point. 5/10
February:
The Mountain of Silence - Kyriacos Markides
Loved this. I would actually read this again in the future. Don’t really have a whole lot more to say on it. 9/10
March:
New Seeds of Contemplation - Thomas Merton
So far, it has been not the usual reading material for me. I find it a bit difficult to understand and take in, and so I have to read it more slowly. I’m not used to reading things like this. Currently at chapter 5, will probably finish long before the end of March unless I take it really slowly.
March 21st:
Gave up on New Seeds of Contemplation.
Just finished
To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland - Sean O’Callaghan
Was a fairly interesting read. Found the first couple chapters less interesting than the rest, as it is really the background to the Irish being sent to the West Indies - not particularly interesting to me at first, but necessary to get the wider picture.
Had already known that many Irish were sent down here as indentured servants but never really read on it before. 7/10
Next on the list: (as of right now, anyway)
The Gurus, The Young Man and Elder Paisios - Dionysios Farasiotis (a pseudonym, but I am sure that it is the same writer as Mountain of Silence) If I ordered this today it wouldn’t be here until next month.
Plantation Slavery in Barbados: An Archeological and Historical Investigation should be on its way here, doubtful that it will be something I’d want to read in a month. Might take more time than that. We’ll see how it looks.
Some potentials from the Wishlist:
A History of Barbados: From Amerindian Settlement to Caribbean Single Market
We Shall See Him As He Is: The Spiritual Autobiography of Elder Sophrony
Against the Protestant Gnostics
Dragon’s Wine and Angel’s Bread (Ponticus Evagrius)
Potentials from the book shelf that were never read (or never finished)
Walden - Thoreau
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