My Books: Shelves #1 and #2

I thought it might be an interesting exercise to take a look at the books I've got on the shelf at home. (of course, I could be wrong. It might be extremely boring. If so, my apologies.) It's been a while since I've done an "inventory" anyway. I own a whole big ol' bunch of books, but I have half of them at home (the "non-religious" books) and the other half at the office (the "religious" books).



So these are from the "non-religious" category. I have a 5-shelf bookcase in the bedroom (one of those $45 Walmart "put it together yourself with the wood-colored cardboard in the back" deals), as well as books stuffed into the nightstand next to my bed.


This is what's on the top two shelves of the bedroom bookcase:

Culture Warrior by Bill O'Reilly (autographed, a gift from my parents)

Forever Red by Steve Smith

Me Talk Pretty One Day--Sedaris

The Little Prince--Saint-Exupery

In A Different Voice--Gilligan

Flight of the Old Dog--Brown (love this book!)

War and Peace--Tolstoy (yes, I actually HAVE read it in its entirety)

e.e. cummings: a selection of poems

The Hunchback of Notre Dame--Hugo

Black Like Me--Griffin

Emma--Austen

A Tale of Two Cities--Dickens

For Red Sox Fans Only!--Wolfe

Faithful: A Chronicle of the Red Sox 2004 Season--King (yes, Steven King...BIG Sox fan!)

Flowers For Algernon--Keyes

I Got a Job...and It Wasn't That Bad--Jim (a collection of comic strips...HILARIOUS in its understatedness)

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn--Smith

The Dialogues of Plato--do I REALLY have to list the author of this one? =)

Finn Family Moomintroll--Jannson (a gift from a friend...and apparently written for children on acid trips)

Night of the Hawk--Brown

The Pelican Brief--Grisham

Our Town--Wilder

Frankenstein--Shelley

Native Son--Wright

A Prayer for Owen Meany--Irving

It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It--Fulghum

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten--Fulghum

Snow Falling on Cedars--Guterson

Where The Red Fern Grows--Rawls

The Green Mile--King

The Death of Ivan Ilyich--Tolstoy

The Autobiography of Malcolm X--um....who else?

Bang the Drum Slowly--Harris

The Hunchback of Notre Dame--Hugo (dang it...a duplicate!)

Up From Slavery--Washington

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings--Angelou

Contact--Sagan

The Color Purple--Walker

The U.S. Constitution

Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer Detective--Clemens

The MLA Handbook

Of Mice and Men--Steinbeck

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead--Stoppard (GREAT play...but ya gotta have a firm handle on Hamlet to "get it")

Concise Readings in Philosophy--Halverson

The Idiot--Dostoyevsky

Anna Karenina--Tolstoy

Fatal Terrain--Brown

Dr. Zhivago--Pasternak

The Philosophy of Aristotle--hmmm...who could possibly have written this?

In Cold Blood--Capote

Invisible Man--Ellison



AND...last, but not least on the first two shelves of my bookcase...

Wobegon Boy, by Garrison Keillor

(which apparently makes for good bathroom reading...)

Tomorrow, the next two shelves!

LH

Well hello there, Mr. Maier!

In a very interesting sequence of events, the following happened:

• About 10 years ago, a pastor lent me her copy of Paul Maier's A Skeleton in God's Closet, which I began reading that night at 10 PM and finished at about 3:30 the next morning. Couldn't put the thing down.
• Since the book is about the importance of the resurrection (and is a good read to boot), I began making the reading of the book an annual Lenten discipline.
• I host a book club (Logos and Latte) at my church on the first Monday of each month, and back in the fall decided to name A Skeleton in God's Closet as the selection we'll be discussing on April 2. For reasons both selfish (I'd be reading it anyway) and in the interest of the congregation (we'd be discussing some really important Easter-type questions right before Easter).
• James Cameron decides to produce a special on some bits of half-assed research that airs on the Discovery Channel at the beginning of March, suggesting that the bones of Jesus may have been found...which is the basic premise of A Skeleton in God's Closet...which, incidentally, is a work of fiction written by the 2nd Vice-President of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, so you can be sure that it all comes out right in the end. Of the book. Not the James Cameron Discovery Channel special.
• Yesterday, on a whim, I decide to bring my copy of A Skeleton in God's Closet home from the office with me, since I have nothing going on at the church in the evening and think I might be able to do some reading.
• Still yesterday at about 9 PM I check my email and see a message from a cousin of Sweetie's, letting me know that Paul L. Maier, author of A Skeleton in God's Closet, will be giving a lecture on the portrayal of Jesus in pop culture at Concordia University, about 20 minutes from my house, at 10 AM the next day (today).
• At 9:05 PM I send an email to as many book club participants as I have addresses for, letting them know about the lecture too, but knowing that with about 13 hours advance notice, there's not much chance anyone will be able to come.
• This morning at 10:00 I'm sitting in the second row of the balcony in the auditorium where Paul Maier is lecturing, listening to a very interesting talk, and taking notes on a couple of items he mentions about both The DaVinci Code and Left Behind, two books the book club will be tackling over the summer (editor's note: book selection doesn't necessarily indicate agreement with the book. Particularly in "Left Behind's" case, I'm strongly suggesting folks either check it out from the library or buy it used, so as not to fill LaHaye and Jenkins' pockets with more money from the garbage they've written. And, I'm following up the next month with Barbara Rossing's "The Rapture Exposed" to help continue the de-programming process.)
• This morning at about 11:15 I walk up to Paul Maier, book in hand, to thank him for his talk and to ask if he'd autograph my copy of A Skeleton in God's Closet.

And that's how I ended up with the latest entry into my autographed book collection. (Way cool!)

LH