Jostein Gaarder: The Solitaire Mystery, Sophie's World, Through a Glass, Darkly

Jostein Gaarder was born in 1952 in Oslo, Norway.  He made his literary debut in 1986 with a collection of short stories, which was soon followed by two young adult novels. In 1990 he received the Norwegian Literary Critics' Award and the Ministry of Cultural and Scientific affairs' Literary prize for The Solitaire Mystery. Sophie's World, A Novel About the History of Philosophy (includes an index), Gaarder's first book to appear in the English language, occupied the number-one spot on Norway's bestseller list for three years. Now published in more than thirty countries, the novel has also enjoyed number-one bestseller status in Great Britain, germany, and France and has appeared on bestseller lists in many countries, including Italy, spain, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Japan, Argentina, and the United States. Mr. Gaarder, who taught high school philosophy for eleven years in Norway, is now a full-time writer. He lives with his wife and two sons in Oslo.

I have read The Solitaire Mystery three times and Sophie's World twice and will be reading Through a Glass, Darkly again after I read Vita Brevis and The Christmas Mystery. All three are excellent, extraordinary page-turners and altogether unique. I need to locate and read.

Books I Have Read Before Starting Beyond Sixty

Here is a long list of some of the books that I have read prior to starting this blog of Beyond Sixty that I wish to include at this time for coordination.  They are all worthy to be in the shelves of my library. There isn't any order to the list.

Narrative of My Captivity with the Sioux Indians by Fanny Kelly
Fanny Kemble's Civil War by Catherine Clinton
Southern Cross by Christine Leigh Heyrman
A Consuming Fire by Eugene D. Genovese
The High Cost of Holiness by W. Phillip Keller
His Way to Pray by W. Phillip Keller
Changes by John Michael Talbot
Mere Discipleship by Lee C. Camp
No Death, No Fear by Thich Nhat Hanh
In The Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson
Praying the Scriptures by Judson Cornwall
Sold by Patricia McCormick
Three Simple Rules by Rueben P. Job
Quiet Strength by Rosa Parks
Holiness, Truth and the Presence of God by Francis Frangipane
The Three Battlegrounds by Francis Frangipane
Beyond the Worship Wars by Thomas G. Long
Monastic Wisdom by Hugh Feiss
The Circle of Seasons by Kimberlee Conway Ireton
Facing East by Frederica Mathewes-Green
The Intentional Life by Cardinal Basil Hume
The Way of a Pilgrim translated by RM French
Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross
The Rule of Saint Benedict edited by Thomas Moore
Tintern by Esther de Waal
The Spiritual Life by Evelyn Underhill
What the Spirit is Saying to the Churches by Henry Blackaby
The Power of the Spirit by William Law
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
The Confessions of St. Augustine translated by John K. Ryan
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Notes from Underground, Poor People, The Friend of the Family by Fyodor Dostoyesvsky
The Existence and Attributes of God by Stephen Charnock
Christ in the Camp (Civil War) by J. William Jones
Captivating by John and  Stasi Eldridge
Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper
As A Man Thinketh by James Allen
God's Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson
Tell Me The Truth About Love by W. H. Auden
The Imitation of Christ by Thomas A. Kempis
A Year of Sundays by Little Rock Scripture Study

Ellis Peters and The Brother Cadfael Chronicles

What a fascinating world of the 12th century that Ellis Peters created with  The Brother Cadfael Chronicles; mysteries that involve  the medieval monastery of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, at Shrewsbury.

The author snares me into these chronicles with the delightful way she presents to the reader the paced life of the medieval monastery, including description of weather and nature for the seasons, and the activities of Brother Cadfael in the herb gardens. I would have read them just for the historical setting, without a mystery of murder, but the way the mystery unravels with the telling of the story is always rewarding.

A Morbid Taste for Bones
One Corpse Too Many
Monks-Hood
St. Peter's Fair
The Leper of Saint Giles
The Virgin in the Ice
The Sanctuary Sparrow
The Devil's Novice
Dead Man's Ransom
The Pilgrim of Hate
An Excellent Mystery
The Raven in the Foregate
The Rose Rent
The Hermit of Eyton Forest
The Confessions of Brother Haluin
The Heretic's Apprentice
A Rare Benedictine
The Potter's Field
The Summer of the Danes
 The Holy Thief

Published in 1992 was Ellis Peters' Shropshire. She traces the history and tells of her connections with the town of Shrewsbury which was the setting of the Brother Cadfael novels.

Robin Whiteman is the author of several books based on Ellis Peters' Cadfael Chronicles: Cadfael Country, The Cadfael Companion, Brother Cadfael's Herb Garden and Brother Cadfael's Book of Days. 

Thirteen of the tales were made for a TV series starring Sir Derek Jacobi as Brother Cadfael and are available in VHS which I have with the collection of the novels.

Desire of the Everlasting Hills by Thomas Cahill

Desire of the Everlasting Hills is the third volume in the Hinges of History series by Thomas Cahill. This unique presentation of Jesus and his times is for believers and nonbelievers alike (for Jews and Christians, it is intended by the author as an act of reconciliation). With the same lively narration and irresistible perceptions that characterize How the Irish Saved Civilization* and The Gifts of the Jews*, the author invites readers into an ancient world to commune with some of the most influential people who ever lived.

About The Hinges of History series:

"In this series, The Hinges of History, I mean to retell the story of the Western world as the story of the great gift-givers, those who entrusted to our keeping one or another of the singular treasures that make up the patrimony of the West.  This is also the story of the evolution of Western sensibility, a narration of how we became the people that we are and why we think and feel the way we do. And it is finally, a recounting of those essential moments when everything was at state, when the mighty stream that became Western history was in ultimate danger and might have divided into a hundred useless tributaries or frozen in death or evaporated altogether. But the great gift-givers, arriving in the moment of crisis provided for transition for transformation and even for transfiguration, leaving us a world more varied and complex, more awesome and delightful, more beautiful and strong than the one they had found."    -----  Thomas Cahill

For me, Thomas Cahill's ability to retell these periods of history is a gift for Western history.

*These two books were mentioned in an earlier post of September 2016.

The Lord of the Journey edited & compiled by Roger Pooley and Philip Seddon

This was a book I selected to read during 2016 and just finalized it today. The Lord of the Journey was indeed a Reader in Christian Spirituality. There were over 250 authors, who display the myriad aspects of the Christian experience: from Augustine to John Bunyan, Martin Luther and Jean Calvin, John and Charles Wesley, Ignatius of Loyola and Charles Simeon, John Donne and Soren Kierkegaard and a host of others, known and unknown. These authors are evangelical, orthodox, catholic and ecumenical, writing in verse and in prose, in histories, memoirs, biography, letters, prayers and hymns. This collection illustrates the variety and depth of the Christian experience and presents the life-stages of the Christian pilgrimage.

From the Introduction: "At the heart of Christian faith lies the deep conviction that we can know and love God because God first loved and knew us. The one true existent God we believe, has been so poured out, so make known to us in Christ and the Spirit, that we can respond with mutual personal knowledge and in the intimacy and awe of love. At the heart of a true Christian spirituality, lies the conviction that the beginning of the Christian life is only a beginning, even if it has touched the End; that not merely outward appearances but hidden bases of false living are to be challenged; that not just ideas but experiences are to be shaped by the Spirit. In short, there is a future: there is a journey, a pilgrimage to be undertaken in Christ who is the Beginning and the End, the Way, the Truth and the Life. Knowledge of and joy in God increasingly take over as the central desire, fed by prayer, Scripture and sacrament; and it does so in the context of the church, that community of believers with whom we experience both mutual solidarity in joy and suffering as well as frustration with the personal and institutional imperfections that remain epidemic. And we begin to see that love of God is exercised in loving our neighbours, in witness and service. Christian spirituality is our longing to enter, experience and express the love and the knowledge of God more and more in ourselves, in the community of faith, and beyond." 

This is a worthy book to journey with through any year.

Sacred Rhythms by Ruth Haley Barton

This is a Formatio book from InterVarsity press about being transformed by Christ and conformed to his image. InterVarsity believes that each of us is made with a deep desire to be in God's presence and the Formatio books help us to fulfill our deepest desires and to become our true selves in light of God's grace. And this one, Sacred Rhythms by Ruth Haley Barton could not have come across my path at a more appropriate time. I took a deep sigh when I read the chapter titles "Longing for More: An Invitation to Spiritual Transformation," "Solitude: Creating Space for God,"  "Scripture: Encountering God Through Lectio Divina," "Prayer: Deepening our Intimacy with God," Honoring the Body: Flesh-and-Blood Spirituality," Self-Examination: Bringing My Whole Self Before God," "Discernment: Recognizing and Responding to the Presence of God," "Sabbath: Establishing Rhythms of Work and Rest," and "A Rule of Life: Cultivating Rhythms for Spiritual Transformation."

The last chapter includes a Thomas Merton quote from Thoughts in Solitude:

"Ask me not where I live or what I like to eat . . . . Ask me what I am living for and what I think is keeping me from living fully for that."

When God is Silent by Barbara Brown Taylor

This little book "When God is Silent"  is the 1997 Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching that Barbara Brown Taylor delivered at Yale Divinity School during the Fall Convocation. The original audience included seminarians, clergy, professors, and lay people. Her focus is on the task of preaching in a world where people thirst for a word from God. How do we as Christians hear this word from a God who often seems to be silent? How do we speak with truth and restraint of the incarnate God? And how do we listen to the Word of God spoken in the midst of silence? It offers three sections: Famine, Silence, Restraint. She ends these lectures with this thought:

"In  a way that surpasses understanding, our duty in this time of famine is not to end the human hunger and thirst for God's word, but to intensify it, until the whole world bangs its forks for God's food.  That is what the famine is for, according to scripture. That is why God has hidden God's face: to increase our sense of loss until we are so hungry and lonely for God that we do something about it --- not only one by one but also as a people who are once again ready to leave our fleshpots in search of real food."

There are many re-reads ahead of me starting next week.