Karl's Reading List

I have officially decided to give up my Bookerworm quest. I still intend to at least try to read the majority of the books, but after truly disliking some of the Booker books, I have also decided not to bother pushing through ones that I begin to get 'funny' feelings about. This is also tied a bit to my faith; I want to grow in my sensitivity to the voice of God, and that does at times meaning walking away from worldly things. I'm sure this will be an ongoing conversation I have with God, but for now, this plot is to acknowledge which books I have begun and subsequently have decided not to finish, along with a (much smaller, as I want to at least give books a chance to surprise me) number I have decided not to bother with in advance. I will also give brief reasons why these books have made this list, rather than my actual 'completed books' list. Ironically, although I felt to give up on the books I'm going to list below, most of them weren't as bad as som...

Published by Collins: London and Glasgow, 1963. I had the wrong idea about what this book was to begin with. Not drastically wrong, but just wrong enough that there were points I began questioning whether I was reading what I thought I was reading. What I thought I was reading was the book that inspired the movie Bridge on the River Kwai. I've never seen that movie, but I know it was popular when it came out, and it is one I'd like to see eventually. It turns out, though, that Bridge is a fictional story based around the building of an actual bridge on an actual River Kwai by British prisoners-of-war, and that Miracle is the non-fiction account of one of those prisoners. The bridge itself is only mentioned briefly. At points it is quite intense, as many prisoner-of-war stories (and, sadly, especially prisoner-of-war stories set in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps) can be. And this intensity is added to by the way the author describes the spiritual journey of the prisoners in ques...

Published by Chatto & Windus: London, England, 2002. Translated by Esther Tyldesley. When I started the Alphabet Soup challenge, I knew that some letters would have a few less options to choose from, and felt that X would probably be the hardest. As I approached this letter I did occasionally glance ahead, and would see one or two books at most on display at any one time. In the end, when I went to get a book out for X there was only one fiction book currently in the library by an X author. Skimming through it I was unimpressed, so I browsed through non-fiction for only the third time in this challenge.  The Good Women of China is a collection of biographical stories told by Xinran, who for eight years ran a radio programme in China called Words on the Night Breeze dedicated to telling the stories of Chinese women. Fifteen such stories, including Xinran's own upbringing, are presented here, including some so traumatic that she was never able to share them on air.  The f...

Published by Inter-Varsity Press: Leicester, England, 1987. I picked this little book up from a pile my mum was giving away, then found it in my reading pile when I couldn't sleep a few nights ago. The authors, Bill and Shirley Lees, tell of their time as missionaries in Borneo, along with their call to the mission, some of their courtship and family stories.  Within the book, Shirley mentions an earlier book that she wrote, Drunk Before Dawn, which apparently tells the history the mission they were involved with more thoroughly. That allows this book some freedom to focus on particular themes and topics rather than needing to be tied to a larger arc. In some cases this would be an issue, but Is It Sacrifice? is very easy to read. The chapters are short and interesting, and the authors end each of them with a few questions to think about, as well as including a recommended reading list of other books on the theme of the chapter (some of which I might hunt out). Some parts of the bo...

With Andrew Quicke. Published by Hodder and Stoughton: Great Britain, 1981 (1980). This is another one of those incredibly challenging faith biographies that Elise and I seem to enjoy. Although not as well structured as some of the books (I would call it more of a 'memoirs' than a traditional 'biography'), the life story of Jackie Pullinger and her work in the Walled City of Hong Kong is both fascinating and immensely challenging. Jackie felt a call to missions from a young age, but after being rejected by a number of mission organisations, had some unexpected but inspiring advice from a friend who was also a minister: "If God is telling to you go - you had better go...If you had a job, a ticket, accommodation, a sick fund and a pension, you wouldn't need to trust Him...Anyone can go that way whether they are Christians or not. If I were you I would go out and buy a ticket for a boat going on the longest journey you can find and pray to know where to get off....

Published by Overseas Missionary Fellowship (IHQ) Ltd: Singapore, 1991. Based on an Indonesian original. The subtitle of this book is Cleopas Lumbantobing, Challenger of Demons, Evangelist, Educator and Peacemaker, and is not only a biography of that individual, but also of Ingwar Ludwig Nommensen, a German missionary (and later Bishop) to the Batak Highlands of North Sumatra, Indonesia in the late 19th century. Cleopas was born the third son of a raja (chief) and was prophesied of by the local batu (witch-doctor) as being someone who was destined to overthrow his father's kingdom, "and the very foundations of Batak tradition...He will lead our people astray into a strange new teaching." (prologue) The batu told Cleopas's father to kill him (thus the title of the book), but instead the raja sent his son and first wife away. When Cleopas grew up he became a Christian through Nommensen's teaching, and for the rest of his life served as a missionary to his own peo...