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nickjones

Inklings

I'm addicted to books. According to Umberto Eco I am building an anti-library, meaning I own way more books than I have read. I love good fiction, literature, theology, Biblical studies, philosophy, children's books, and lots more.

Currently reading

Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God
Danae Yankoski, Francis Chan
The Kingdom New Testament: A Contemporary Translation
N.T. Wright
The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace
Kenneth J. Collins
Progress: 244/331 pages
House of Leaves
Mark Z. Danielewski
Progress: 50/662 pages
The Hound of the Baskervilles (with Illustrations by Sidney Paget)
Sidney Paget, Arthur Conan Doyle
Progress: 35 %
The Dead Zone
Stephen King
Progress: 52/402 pages
Holiness
J.C. Ryle
Help! I'm a Small Church Youth Worker: Achieving Big-Time Success in a Non-Mega Ministry
Rich Grassel
Progress: 57/115 pages
How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels
N.T. Wright
Progress: 69 %
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Arthur Conan Doyle
The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade - Thomas Lynch Richard Bernstein said that, "Mr. Lynch emerges as a cross between Garrison Keillor and one of the Irish poets." This seems like a good description to me, though my experience with both is fairly limited. Lynch puts his poetry skills to good use, turning phrases, intertextualizing, crafting and coining new verbs ("kevork...the verb form of kevorkian, which proceeds from the infinitive "to kevork" should observe the usage guides applied, in practice, to the other high-volume verb of our generation--a verb I never, as a matter of style, deploy whenever lesser words will do, in the hopes that it, unlike certain antibiotics, will maintain its punch--to wit: "kevork off" or "go kevork yourself" or "go kevork yourself" or "take that you mother-kevorker" on in the rhetorical "are you out of your kevorking mind?") Filled with reflections on life and death, birth and burial, abortion and euthanasia, Lynch contemplates our society's values and mores. In a society and values usefulness, what do we think of the dead? "The dead...ought to get off their dead ashes and be good for something beyond the simple act of remembrance." Lynch calls to our attention that a culture that does not value the dead will not value the living either.