So, I have an impulse buying problem with books – especially when they’re second-hand or on sale. I was at the Antique Arms Show last weekend and what do I come away with? Two Tom Clancy books. I go to Value Village today and what do I come away with? Five more books – and three of them is more Tom Clancy.

I must have had a great first impression, because after reading just one of his books I now own five. *shrug*

So here are my latest acquisitions:

The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy– Clancy’s first novel which skyrocketed him to fame. I own the movie which is SO EPIC, and if “the book is always better” I expect the epic-ness to increase exponentially.

The Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy – I haven’t seen the movie of this one, but I heard it deviated from the book way more than the other movies did. Contrary to popular opinion, Morgan Freeman does not automatically render everything awesome, I guess. Anyways, I’m sure the book is still awesome.

The Cardinal and the Kremlin by Tom Clancy – Yay! I have no idea what this is about!

Executive Orders by Tom Clancy – The quote on the spine from the L.A Times simply says “… A colossal read.” Gee, y’think? I couldn’t have guessed that just by looking at it. You know, it and its 1358 pages.

Submarine: A Guided Tour Inside a Nuclear Warship by Tom Clancy and John Gresham – Okay, so I’m totally a geek for getting this, but for two dollars I figured “Why not?”

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley – I wanted this ever since I saw Demolition Man in the summer and found out that a lot of the stuff in the movie was borrowed from this book… And Demolition Man was an excellent movie so I figured this book might be pretty cool too.

Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee – So, it looked interesting, and plus something told me that I had heard of it before. Apparently it’s a really well-known play based on the Scopes “Monkey” Trial. Well then. Also, it was made into a movie starring Spencer Tracy and Gene Kelly? What? I love Gene Kelly! How interesting…

I wish I could read these books as quickly as I buy them. I don’t know when I’ll get around to reading these cause I still have a handful of books I own that need reading too, but I’m excited for them anyways!

So earlier I said I wasn’t a huge fan of Ted Dekker’s writing style, which still stands, but there were still a few lines from Red I deemed worthy to write down in the Notebook of Bookdom. They’re the exact opposite of subtle, which I absolutely loved.

“These zombies floated through life as if nothing would ever matter in the end.”

“The smell of rotting flesh was more a scent of wholesome humanity than a stench.”

The first quote is when Thomas, the main character, is in traffic looking around at the other drivers. He just tells it like it is – our current culture in a nutshell.

The second quote to me was brilliant. Basically it’s set in the alternate world where the effects of sin and atonement are physically seen. In this instance, sin and rebellion are evidenced by dry and diseased skin, while healthy skin, resulting from bathing in the lakes given by Elyon (God), represents atonement…or something like that.

Anyways, so if you just substitute “rotting flesh” with “sin” you get this:

“The smell of sin was more a scent of wholesome humanity than a stench.”

…which, to me, I see is the exact attitude so many people have today. People scoff at those who hold any specific moral standards and say you’re “closed-minded” or something ridiculous, while they experience all the desires humanity offers and creates.

Oh! It’s just like Vronsky and his friends from Anna Karenina:

“But there was another sort of people, the real ones, to which they all belonged, and for whom one had, above all, to be elegant, handsome, magnanimous, bold, gay, to give oneself to every passion without blushing and laugh at everything else.”

[emphasis added]

“Wholesome humanity.” What a contradictory statement! It’s so un-subtle and brilliant. I love it.

Another great thing about reading is that it increases your vocabulary (“Elementary,” said he). What I like to do when I read (which could contribute to how slow I am at it) is take notes and write down cool quotes and words I don’t know so I can look them up later. For example, C.S Lewis uses a lot of Latin phrases that I can only hope were common in his day because I sure haven’t heard of them.

So here’s some words and phrases that I learned (I looked them up on Google and Wikipedia), and maybe you’ll learn something new too!

Foetid -having a foul odor

Mendacity -the tendency to be untruthful

Absit omen – ‘may there be no evil omen’; may no harm result

So I was pretty impressed with myself for finishing this book in a week, I haven’t done that in awhile. Some people could read this in a matter of hours, but I’m a somewhat slow reader.

Anyways, this book is the second in Ted Dekker’s Circle Trilogy, with the first installment being Black, which I read back in October. Obviously after reading the first I wasn’t in a huge hurry to find out what happened next. Dekker’s story is very interesting, verging on really cool, but I just am not a fan of his writing style and I can’t quite say why. I think it’s because if I were to write a book I could see myself writing in a similar way.

Anyways, Black was pretty good, but I’ve got a few problems with Red. First of all, it never says what specifically is wrong with the Forest People’s way of conducting the “Great Romance.” It did say a few things like, “Sometimes the Great Romance felt more like a set of rules than actual romance,” which implies that the Great Romance had become more of an outward ritual for some, instead of an actual condition of the heart. However, I felt that not enough time was devoted to talking about what had gone wrong with the it, so when Justin comes along the reader is unsure if he’s good or bad.

So Justin comes along and starts preaching against the Great Romance and speaking of peace with the Horde. Maybe Dekker wants the reader to be unsure about Justin up until the end, just like Thomas and Rachelle, but I wasn’t impressed with the method. I understood what Ted was trying to convey because I’m a Christian and know what he’s alluding to, but I don’t know how a non-Christian could even make sense of what was going on. The history and theology of the Great Romance and Justin’s teachings just weren’t given enough face time for the whole thing to read smoothly. For me, anyways.

Then again, I have one more book to go; maybe more will be explained in White.

Again I am reminded just how much I really love C.S Lewis. Love, love, love. This book is a collection of essays much like Fern-Seed and Elephants: and Other Essays on Christianity, only the subjects are more political. Here we get to see what Lewis thought of political and social equality, modern education, satirical cartoons, etc. So far it reveals Lewis to be quite the conservative, which rocks. I’ve only read about halfway, so I’ll give a brief description of each essay I’ve read or a quote from it.

The Necessity of Chivalry – “The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost a maidenlike, guest in the hall, a gentle, modest unobtrusive man.”

SO. I’ve lost track of when I’ll finish the Bible, so I decided to go ahead and add another book so I’ll be reading two. Currently in the Bible I’m at 2 Samuel 24, otherwise page 317 out of 1081, which is 29% done. I’ll just kinda read it and when I finish, I finish. It’s too hard to schedule cause some parts I want to spend more time reading and other parts I don’t. Anyways, here are some notes:

….if I can find them amongst all my Firearms Safety Course notes….

….had to throw that in there…

Oh yes, here we go:

So, Judges is full of a bunch of unsung heroes, cause Israel kept being retarded and worshipping other gods over and OVER again, so they always got carried away and captured by the other nations that they didn’t drive out of the land like God told them to over and over again, and thus they repented and got delivered over and over again. So here’s a few names of the men God used to deliver Israel that you don’t often hear about: Othniel (3:9), Ehud (3:15), Shamgar (3:31), and Ephriam (12:1). Of course Samson, Gideon, Barak and Deborah are in there as well. Oh! And Jael, the woman who drove a stake through the head of Sisera (4:21). How intense is that? Pretty intense.