Like Matt, I’ve gotten a bit behind on logging what I’ve read. So here goes.
The Epic of Gilgamesh. This was required reading for a class I’m taking in non-Western mythology. It is the Penguin Classics edition by Sandars, and did a pretty good job of putting the text into readable English. The story is deceptively short: the epic itself takes only 58 pages of the 128-page book. There is an excellent introduction with the history of the epic and its discovery, but for a critical edition, the lack of an index was disappointing (and annoying, when discussing the book in class).
The Arcanum by Thomas Wheeler. A supernatural thriller in which Arthur Conan Doyle, Harry Houdini, H.P. Lovecraft, and Marie Laveau try to recover the lost Book of Enoch while Aliester Crowley lurks in the shadows. I shall review the book by way of analogy. Wheeler’s The Arcanum is to Charles Williams’ War in Heaven as the movie Van Helsing is to the movie Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart by Noel Carroll. This is the book I’ve been looking for. An intelligent examination of the horror genre: what horror is, why it is effective, and why we read it. Some of the philosophical musings went right over my head, but I think I’ll read this book again some day.
Lost Horizon by James Hilton. There is a micro-genre of stories about people having philosophical awakenings after their experiences in the first World War, and this was recommended to me as one of the best. A hijacked airplane is flown to a remote village in Tibet called Shangri-La. The four passengers on the plane adapt to Shangri-La in different ways, and the main character, Conway, develops a special relationship with the High Lama. Some of the philosophy seemed a little woo-woo New-Agey, but the story was interesting — especially the ambiguous ending — and certain passages about the escalation of violence in society seemed almost prescient.
A New Kind of Christian by Brian McClaren. This is the first book of McClaren’s trilogy about pastor Dan Poole, and consists mostly of conversations between Poole and his daughter’s high school science teacher, Neo. Poole is a fictional character, but the the evolution of Poole’s thoughts about the church and Christianity are meant to mirror McClaren’s own process. I had mixed feelings about this book; some of the questions it raised were ones I’ve had myself. And I appreciated much of what was said about Christianity in a post-modern culture. However, I thought the book spent a lot more time talking about what is broken, and less about what we should be doing. In that respect, I enjoyed a more recent McClaren book, A Generous Orthodoxy, which I felt was more positive in tone.
One other thing that occurred to me while reading the book was a question of who the book was for. It just seemed that someone would already have to be open to certain aspects of pomo theology to move past the first couple of chapters. But the book raised enough good points that I think I’ll continue with the next two volumes in the series: The Story We Find Ourselves In and The Last Word and the Word After That.