It's Monday--What Are You Reading? 1-28-13

 

From Last Monday:

The Counte of Monte Cristo

It's an epic story, and I knew it would take a while.  I'm 94% finished, and I anticipate completing it either tonight or tomorrow.

In Short Stories

Dog on the Cross by Aaron Gwyn

A man miraculously survives a fall from the eighth floor of a drilling rig but is ever after plagued by an unwillingness to live. A preacher loses his ability to speak in tongues and begins to fake it. A young man is intent on suppressing his sinful love for his best friend even though he can think of nothing else. A teenage boy struggles with the temptation of a young girl. A grandmother will stop at nothing to make her grandson famous. These are some of the good citizens of Perser, Oklahoma. And in Aaron Gwyn's debut collection, the people of Perser are unpredictable and unforgettable as they struggle with lapses into sin during the week a young faith healer comes to town.
In his careful articulation of faith and doubt, sin and self-delusion, allegiance to the church and self-glorification, Gwyn reveals himself as a writer of great heart and complexity, creating a world that burns with pain, love, and an odd kind of devotion.
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I impulsively purchased this book with my Christmas money when looking for short stories.  The description of the stories and the reviews I read reminded me of the same weird, gothic, quirky ways Flannery O'Connor explores faith in her short stories.  

I live in the "Christ-haunted South," a place where one simply cannot escape the influence of Christianity, for both good and bad.  Although I no longer call myself a Christian, I still connect to Flannery O'Connor's writings and the short stories I've read in this collection (4 so far).  They are an exploration of religion on the human psyche--the good, the bad, and the ugly. 

In My Ears (Audio book)

War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

H. G. Wells wrote The War of the Worlds in 1898, when there was much speculation about life on the planet Mars. The book is considered to be one of the first science fiction novels. In the story, an English gentleman narrates the events of a violent and fast paced Martian invasion.

The frightening images of people fleeing from gigantic tripod machines and the prospect of life under Martian rule have served as a bottomless well of inspiration for popular culture. The novel has served as a template for many derivative or inspired works, including comics, countless books, a tv series, several films, a bestselling musical, and the famous Orson Wells broadcast. Overall, The War of the Worlds has become an early milestone in and inspiration for the invasion genre.

The novel demonstrates Wells’ typical pessimistic outlook on human nature and offers a good deal of criticism on society and people’s ignorance and vanity. The War of the Worlds can be read as an indictment of European colonial actions around the globe at that time – with which the injustice of the Martian invasion can be compared. Wells has since been credited with predicting quite a number of technologies, such as laser-like rays, industrial robot-like machines, and chemical-warfare.