Notes to Readers: 1. Please go to the “What’s New” section to see updates on some of my new projects. 2. Next week I’m planning on blogging about John McCain and in two weeks my topic will be on Barrack Obama.
I’ve been doing a lot of interesting reading recently, and I wanted to share some thoughts with you, dear reader. The Shack, a novel by William P. Young, has gotten a lot of buzz recently. Multiple people have asked me if I’ve read it. I was in a secular bookstore and saw a stack of Young’s books on the counter. I asked the clerk about it, and she estimated that her store had sold 80 copies of The Shack just in the previous week. By way of comparison, sales of my book Nixon and His Men—not just in one store but nationwide—have only amounted to, um, never mind. There have been three different weeks where I’ve seen The Shack on a Top Ten list of Science Fiction and Fantasy book sales. In short, lots of people are buying this book.
The Shack has an overtly Christian theme: a man experiences a horrible tragedy then spends a weekend with God talking about it. I found it intriguing. I didn’t agree with all of the author’s thinking, but it was an interesting and challenging story about what Christian forgiveness really means.
Another book I’ve read in the last month was The Last Casualty, a novel by Cyn Mobley. It’s the story of an ex-SEAL who stayed in the Navy and became an Episcopal priest. Because of a man’s dying confession, the ex-SEAL is drawn into one final mission. There’s a beautiful woman involved, but not the way you think. And our SEAL has unresolved issues with his father. The first person narrative worked well. There were plot twists and mysteries that slowly became resolved—it was all a nice bit of story telling. There were several typos, but overall, I really liked it. I’m sure I’ll read more by Mobley.
Finally, I’m currently reading Andrew Levy’s The First Emancipator. This is the true story of a plantation owner named Robert Carter who knew many of our Founding Fathers, like Washington and Jefferson. Carter was richer than any of them, and in a way he sacrificed more for freedom than they did: Carter freed all his slaves. The book is not quite as fast paced as a novel, but it covers several interesting things in detail like how Baptists in Virginia were persecuted in this era, how much many slave owners wished they could do away with the slave system, and just how complicated the matter of freeing slaves really was. Though I have taught history for several years, this book opened my eyes to a lot of things.