Hello and Happy 2011 to everybody!
I don't really want to do a reflection of 2010. I haven't the energy nor the will for that sort of thing. But I will do what I did last year, and list the five books that had the biggest influence on me. So here they are, in the order I read them:
5. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
Alright so I have read this once before, in high-school. I liked it then, but I thought it was even better now. I ended up reading quite a bit of C.S. Lewis this year, including The Great Divorce, Surprised by Joy, and for good measure, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Even today he seems to me to be one of the most brilliant Christian thinkers of the 20th century. I found him far more convincing because he came to his faith through atheism, and he fought in one of the bloodiest wars in history, so he kinda has "street cred" in my mind. Religion and matters of the spirit weren't all just ivory tower musings to him. He saw suffering and he experienced spiritual joy--in short, he really lived. He has perhaps been the most influential writer for me this year, just for his style of writing. But his sheer imaginative power when it comes to Christianity amazes me and is what makes him great. Someone wrote that he wouldn't have been the writer he became if he didn't become a Christian. I believe this is true. This one book can't be taken in isolation from the rest of his works on religion. What it does do is sum up his ideas in a concise way, while further elaborations on his theme can be found in his other books. So Mere Christianity stands as an symbol for his body of work, and for me the introduction to it.
4. The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality by André Comte-Sponville
This book was the first book about atheism that I read, and a first serious consideration of it. I found it easy to read because he is open to dialogue with religious and spiritual thinking people, and he makes a great case for a spiritual life sans Dieu. On that note, he provides robust challenges to the idea of God, and my own views. It is such a unique book, a great counterpoint to C.S. Lewis (as you can read about in my summer posts), and a refreshing alternative to the "New Atheism" of Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris.*
3. The Sins of Scipture by John Shelby Spong
Like Mere Christianity, this book acted as a doorway to Spong's work. But I found this book to have the biggest impact on my thinking. In this book he, an Episcopal bishop, puts the Bible on trial, and puts it in its place: not God's mouth, but in history. From there, he proposes that the biblical passages that we today view as prejudiced, arbitrary, destructive, and evil, should be jettisoned from the Bible altogether. He brings to light the Bible scholarship that has been going on since the 19th century that has largely been inaccessible to the public. But the most remarkable part of this book is that while he is attacking many aspects of Christianity, he is able to keep his faith intact. He is using his criticism not to demolish his religion as militant atheists would want to do, but to make it better and help it express its original purpose. I won't say any more on it, because I summarised it a while ago on my blog. It's very well researched and written, and I encourage all to read it.
2. True and False by David Mamet
I think I read this book in 2 or 3 days. He believes that acting schools and techniques and systems are all bullshit. Perhaps he's right, but I don't agree with him. I think what did stick in my mind was when he said that all of these illustrious theatre schools have people come to them, and once the actors are out on the other side and have made a big splash in the world, the schools take the credit for the actor's accomplishments. Thus the schools' reputations are further garnished, when in all likelihood the actor was a genius before she went into the school, and if she was worth her salt, would make it big without the school's help. I don't agree with this. I believe in school, and I wouldn't be here otherwise. However, what Mamet says has helped to weaken the inferiority complex I have had about my own school, because it is not National Theatre School, or Julliard, or Yale. The chances of me being noticed by a big time talent scout might be greater in some other place, but there is no guarantee that I would be a better quality actor just by going to one of these other places. I think the point Mamet makes, or at least what I drew from it, is that so much depends on the individual's talent and drive. We can blame our learning issues on the school, or the teachers, or the classmates, and to some degree these things do have an effect. But of course, the fault, dear Actors, "lies not in our stars, but in ourselves if we are underlings.” The root cause of it is in ourselves. There is more in our control than we think. This book helped to remind me of that.
1. A Fair Country by John Ralston Saul
I just wrote a long and boring post about this book, so I won't go into much detail here. If you really want to know more, just suck it up and read the post, k? I will say that I think Saul is onto something about the correlation between Canada's identity and Aboriginal way of life, and has pointed me in a very good direction to better understand my country and participate in its life.
So that's that for now. Just a recap, really. Perhaps I'll say something about 2011 later. But for that's it for not.
À bientôt!
Liam
*That being said, I would still like to read what Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris are saying. I want to see how my views stand up against the champions of New Atheism. It would be hypocritical of me not to read them, and who knows? they might even shed some light on the subject!
