New Books!

If you've been to our house, you know how evident our love of books is.  Recently, three new volumes have come into my library - let me introduce them to you.

The first is Per Pettersen's "Out Stealing Horses", a charming tale of growing up in a Norway complicated by Nazi's, personal tragedies, and incipiant love.  This is one of the most calming books that I have ever read.  My immediate reaction was, "I want to live here - I want to be satisfied in this way."  Fiction has never interested me, although lately through the good graces of the Trinity Book Club, I have learned to see beyond what I thought was contrived, and to see the art.  A recent reading of Faulkner's "Absolom, Absolom!" convinced me of that.  This book, however, simply touches those things that we all know, and with which we are familiar.  I saw myself, and my own experiences in the commentary of the main character.  Pettersen has an uncanny knack for writing a convincing geography into which his characters are placed and move.  Rather than focusing on a single moral, or verity, he explores several.  Childhood is like that, as we taken in more and more of the world.  I recommend this one highly.

I have been wanting to purchase this one ever since it was first published a couple of months ago, but it has been difficult to find - selling out at several stores.  I am not a fan of Crumb's, and by that I don't mean that I don't like him, rather that I have not followed him, particularly.  Familiar with his work, I wanted to see what he would do in his "The Book of Genesis Illustrated".  As an armchair biblical scholar and theologian, and as a priest I have more than a glancing interest in this book.  Of special note is the translation by Robert Alter, who has, in addition to his translation of "The Five Books of Moses" also completed a translation of the "Psalms."  This professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley has provided Crumb with a readable and lively text, absent the implied images of the King James Version.  Crumb's work is to supply the reader with an alternate visual as the text is read.  In glancing through the copy I recently obtained, I realized that I had simply not read a great deal of the book - Crumb's drawings grabbing my attention and interest.  I'm going to have to do something with this at Trinity.

Finally, I saw a copy of Orhan Pamuk's new book, "The Museum of Innocence", in a bookstore in Austin, and had to have it.  I have been a fan of this author for several years now, "Istanbul", "Snow", and "My Name is Red" being among my favorites.  The structure of this book is for savoring, as you enter his world in Istanbul, and as you meet family, and involve yourself in the events that structure the world that is his Istanbul.  When I read Pamuk, I am reminded of Umberto Eco, but as an arbiter of a non-western cultural reference.  Pamuk either sends me off to the dictionary, Wikipedia, or a history book.  Reading his work is never a solitary experience.  I've only just begun this book and will have to report more later - but as of now, I'm finding it addictive.