Paris

 

Paris – Edward Rutherfurd

I’m reading all of Edward Rutherfurd’s novels in order.  This, I believe, is his eighth. It’s also his best. By far. Rutherfurd uses places as the titles of his books – “London”, “Ruska”, “New York”, etc. In addition to telling a story of people who live in the particular place, he also educates his readers on the history of said location.  For those who are familiar with many of the works of legendary author James Michener, the style of Edward Rutherfurd is very similar.  The drawback to this type of novel is that it’s really hard to tell a good story (or stories) when also giving a history of a place that can sometimes last over 10,000 years.

The method for Rutherfurd is usually to begin his novel a long long long time ago, introduce us to some characters, put them in a major point of history, and ensure that his characters breed so that future chapters can continue with later times in history with all of the relations of the people we were first introduced.  These books always come up with a very helpful, and very necessary, family tree of the four or five families that we read about over several millennia.

The downside to this is that it can be awfully difficult to digest such a huge number of characters over thousands of years.  This was my biggest gripe of all of Edward Rutherfurd’s previous novels.  The good news is that he does something slightly different with this novel, and it works beautifully.  We don’t begin our story until about 1875, and about 80% of the narrative takes place between 1875 and 1945.  Occasionally, he’ll interrupt his story and we’ll be transplanted several hundred years prior for a somewhat brief story of the elder relatives that lived long ago along with key points of history.  This is incredibly helpful, as we can still learn about the rich history of Paris without having to plod through thousands of years.

There have been times in this author’s works where he’ll start a section of his book with a header with a year, say ‘1565’.  He’ll give us about 2 pages worth of material, and then before we know it, we’re now in ‘1591’.  As a reader, you’re like, “Whoa.  Slow down a bit.”  I mean, we just about get settled with some new characters, and before we can exhale, we’re already reading about their grandchildren.  Fortunately, to my recollection, he only does this once in this novel.  Again, it was incredibly refreshing to basically stay with the same people over 70 years.

Another minor gripe that I have about these types of novels is that the author is, obviously, devoted to telling the history of the location.  This means that there are many times when a section of this book consists of two people sitting at a dinner table, and all they do for several pages is converse about the history, the government, the agriculture, etc.  So not a lot of action, but a lot of history.  This is prevalent in this book, but it does seem to be much more “natural” than what we’ve been exposed to in previous Edward Rutherfurd novels.

Some parts of the history of Paris get a lot more attention than other parts.  There’s a good chunk of the second world war here, but surprisingly very little about the first.  The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 is basically ignored, but there’s a good bit about the building of the Eiffel Tower in the years that immediately followed.  There’s also a lot about the French Revolution and the many schisms between Catholics and Protestants.

The many French names of the various historical places and events tended to be a bit overwhelming, but it never deterred from the main story.  I can’t honestly say that I have any sort of huge desire to visit Paris and see what I read about in this book, but this was still an excellent story. Rutherford manages to juggle storytelling, history, and genealogy better than most, and better than he ever has before.

The Language of God

 

The Language of God – by Francis S. Collins

One of the curses (or blessings) of shopping in the year 2023 is that it’s too easy to make an impulse purchase.  If someone recommends online somewhere, it only takes a couple of clicks before your online shopping cart is full and ready for purchase.  Back in the olden days, when you had to get in your car and drive to a store, you had a bit more time to think about whether or not you should make your purchase.  I mention this because this particular book is definitely not a book that I would have bought had I been browsing in a book department at a brick-and-mortar store.  It’s a well-written book and all, it’s just not really a topic that interests me that much, and had I not been quite so impulsive, I probably would have, and maybe should have, skipped it.

This book, from what I can tell, is simply a testimony of a scientist.  It could have been written by just about anybody, and it doesn’t really seem to make that much of an impact on the world of the general reading population.  It does state it’s a “New York Times Bestseller”, but I’ve come to take that moniker with a grain of salt.  Scientists, generally, don’t believe in God nor have faith.  This is a story of one who does and his journey to said faith.  This isn’t a long book, but there’s an awful lot of scientific nomenclature here, so it was hard for me to really stay interested.   There weren’t really any “ah-ha’s” in this book.  It’s simply a scientist pontificating on why he’s a Christian.

What might raise a few eyebrows is that the author is a staunch evolutionist. “Evolution” is a mighty bad word among the dogmatically devout, so I imagine that the author’s beliefs just might upset enough people to cause a tad of a stink.  Personally, I’ve never had a problem with God co-existing with evolution, so such musings don’t really excite me either way.

I have to be completely honest and state that there was too much of this book that I simply had to skim. It simply wasn’t that interesting for my taste.  Again, the fault isn’t the author nor the book.  I’m sure there are many who would love to read a book such as this.  I would just caution everybody (including myself) to pause a few seconds before filling your library up with books that you might not be that crazy about upon closer examination. 

Destined for Joy: The Gospel of Universal Salvation

 

Destined for Joy: The Gospel of Universal Salvation by Father Aidan (Alvin) Kimel

This was one of the heaviest books that I’ve read in quite some time. The author, Father Alvin Kimel (a retired Orthodox priest) has one of the most extensive websites on the internet on Universal Salvation. For those who may not know, Universal Salvation is the belief that one day, eventually, all will be saved and reconciled to God.  This book is essentially a cherry-picking of the masses of material out there that Father Kimel has collected.  If you’ve read everything on his website, my guess is that it essentially contains all that is in this book.  However, I’d be willing to bet the most mere mortals wouldn’t have the time nor the stamina to consume all of Father Kimel’s writings, musings, and collections.

He's a very deep writer. At times I felt as though I wasn’t reading a book, but rather taking a semester-long advanced college course. It’s not that he simply covers a lot of bases, but his writing style is extremely learned and many of the chapters made me feel like an 8-year old who barely knows how to add and subtract and suddenly found themselves in an advanced Trigonometry class.  Don’t misunderstand me, the topics and chapters are very good, it’s just that the average reader won’t be able to consume this volume, say, over a long weekend.

Here is just a small sampling of some of the words Father Kimel uses in this work that made me thankful I had a dictionary handy:

tautologous, polity, locus, radix, inculcate, colloquial, impenitent, proleptic, polysemy, exegete, lexical, preterition, paradigmatic, anchorite, adamantine, shewings, merveyle, sunder, puissant, and nonextant.

Some of these words aren’t even IN the dictionary.  Anyway, if you’re familiar with the definitions of such words, it’s probable that you’ll have an easier time than I did when it comes to finishing each chapter in a somewhat timely fashion.  When one, such as myself, though, has to consistently stop and consult a dictionary on numerous occasions, it tends to slow down the journey somewhat. I also had to reread several sentences throughout to ensure I understood what was being written.

We then come to the fact that Father Kimel quotes numerous long (and longer) passages from many of history’s finest theologians.  So we get to read many selected passages from the works of Isaac the Syrian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, George MacDonald, Basil of Caesarea, John of Damascus, Robert Farrar Capon, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Gregory of Nyssa and Origen of Alexandria.   In fact, there’s an entire (very long) chapter on the Fifth Ecumenical Council in 553 A.D. and provides extensive evidence that, whereas Origin and his Universalist musings have widely been stated to have been condemned, Father Kimel gives us detailed information that this was not, in fact, the case.

My biggest critique of this book is that when Kimel refers to all of these theologians and their writings, he’ll quote extensively from their work, sometimes multiple pages worth for each referral.  These quotations are in small print, and one must ensure their brain stays attuned when reading through such heavy material.  I feel Father Kimel may have done the reader a better service to his readers by giving a summarization himself of each point and not quote his sources in such a tedious fashion.  

His goal, however, is to leave no stone unturned and he succeeds amazingly.  The author is not one who I would want to get into an argument with trying to prove the point of infernalism or an annihilationism.  Kimel covers an awful lot of real estate in this book. The chapters don’t necessarily progress in any sort of linear fashion, but the material is so well-written (and extremely encouraging) that we really don’t mind.

I just might argue that if you could only have one book that supports the hope of Universal Salvation, this is probably the book that you would want.  Of course, it would be helpful to have all of the articles on Father Kimel’s website as well.   You may just need a few decades to adequately read and digest them all.