Book Notes

So, as usual, I’m late to the party. Apparently it was quite the fashion statement back in December to take up the 50 book challenge. If you’re fashionably late also, the rules basically call for you to come up with 50 extracurricular books to read all year, posting your list of finished books as you go. Seeing as how it’s March already, I’m playing catch up. That’s OK. I’m up for the challenge. I’m going to leave out books I’ve already read this year, except the one I just finished. So here goes: Just Finished: A Time to Kill – John Grisham Books in Progress: Addicted to War: Why the U.S. Can’t Kick Militarism – Joel Andreas The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson The Everlasting Man – G.K. Chesterton The Politics of Jesus – John Howard Yoder On Deck: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith – Anne Lamott The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells V for Vendetta – Alan Moore Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life – Sissela Bok Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf – Edward Albee Interesting that I just finished Grisham’s A Time to Kill, given the courtroom shooting in Atlanta earlier today. And, yes, that's about all that’s interesting about Grisham’s first novel. If you haven’t read it, or seen the movie, A Time to Kill is about a black father whose daughter is brutally beaten and raped by two rednecks in the deep South. The father takes revenge by brutally gunning down the two men (in a courtroom). The rest is a combination of walking one-dimensional clichés as characters, poorly written dialogue, superfluous adverb usage and excessive telling instead of showing. If you can look past its literary sins, A Time to Kill presents some pretty frightening ideas. Grisham obviously sympathizes with the father here. So are we to assume it’s OK to gun a man down in cold blood if he rapes your daughter? Is this what Grisham, the moderate Southern Baptist, is preaching? If so, he’s not far from the territory of other American Christians, many of whom seem to advocate Jerry Falwell’s “blow them away in the name of the Lord” mentality. So what happened to “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well?" I guess we’re not supposed to take that part of the Bible literally. Just the bits about locusts with teeth like lions. Maybe they should start selling Grisham in Christian bookstores. Seems like he’d fit right in.