2012 Books I Read

My 2012 reading list in reverse order...

I must admit that I've not yet finished Wanderings. It's a "cannot fall asleep tonight" special.

• Surprise of the Year: Ender's Game (read before I heard about the upcoming movie)
• Guilty Pleasure: Robert Parker's Jesse Stone series
• Disappointing: Myth of the Rational Market - the writing doesn't live up to the title; the author is more intent on making a point than sharing history, ending up doing neither terribly well.

1. Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
2. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
3. The Alchemyst - Michael Scott
4. Trouble in Paradise - Robert Parker
5. The Myth of the Rational Market - Justin Fox
6. Rutherford B. Hayes - Hans Trefousse
7. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
8. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne
9. The Godfather Papers and Other Confessions - Mario Puzo
10. Che Guevara: In Search of Revolution - Calvin Miller
11. Omerta - Mario Puzo
12. Murder on the Links - Agatha Christie
13. Wanderings: Chaim Potok's History of the Jews
14. The Naked Gospel - Andrew Farley
15. The Secret Adversary - Agatha Christie
16. Night Passage - Robert Parker
17. Zachary Taylor - John Eisenhower
18. The Millionaire Next Door - Stanley & Danko

Screwtape Letters 29-31

• Letter 29: How to kick a man while he is down
• What do you do advice for one surrounded by stress filled (dangerous, even) situations?
• Cowardice - it works, but it's a bit of a dead end, doesn't lead to other vices. It does leave the patient with shame, which is a nice touch.
• Courage leading to Pride - this is a nice idea, but is dangerous. Love the pride, but you have to flirt with [the virtuous] courage in order to produce it. 
• Cynical Hatred - use the violent emotions inherit in the times to develop hatred for his enemies. To reinforce, let the patient excuse his hatred as 'acceptable, because it is on others' behalf'. Keep the patient blind to the forgiveness, lest he be tempted to forgive his enemies as he is distinctly taught to do.
• "In peace we can make many of them ignore good and evil entirely; in danger, the issue is forced upon them in a guise to which even we cannot blind them."
• The bad can lead us towards the good.
• COURAGE is the testing point of every virtue. Do I have the courage to do what I ought? A coward may be sweet, nice, gentle, friendly... but he will not be good.
• DESPAIR is the loss of hope, the absence of faith. It is a sin less visible but more deadly than others.
• Letter 30: Do or feel?
• The 'act' is of the highest importance. You may feel weak and full of fear, but doing your duty (whatever that may entail) is the high calling, regardless of how you feel.
• Emotions are valuable, and have their place in God's creation. In the personal interaction between God and man (generally in the form of prayer), emotions play a very real part. However, life is lived through our actions, and the Kingdom of God is effected by those actions.
• How to damage the tired soul?
• S/T distinguishes 'moderate fatigue' verses 'absolute exhaustion', preferring the former. 
• Continual, moderate fatigue doesn't overwhelm us. We continue on, establishing a time frame (I can handle this situation for this period of time), relying upon deliverance rather than endurance, establishing a sense of rights (and how ours are being trampled). 
• Develop Expectations
• Be Disappointed
• Feel Injured
• "Up to a certain point, fatigue makes women talk more and men talk less. Much secret resentment can be raised from this."
• There is confusion in the various realities of the 'real', be that physical, emotional, or spiritual. We struggle to know what is real and what is opinion, perception, physically apparent, etc. 
• Letter 31: The Cleansing
• Regardless of the lingering on this end of life, the delay we seek in the face of death, at the moment of death is instantaneous liberation. 
• This exchange (from this world to the next) is natural and intended. 
• "The gods are strange before mortal eyes, and yet they are not strange," as we were created to behold them.
• The delights, temptations, virtues and vices of this world go strangely dim, in the light of Jesus' glory and grace.

Screwtape Letters 25-28

• Letter 25: Rhythm vs Novelty

• the horror for us of enduring the same old thing
• We love change; we love permanence. These things are contrary, and are balanced through rhythm.
• Novelty, on the other hand, is the continued desire for the 'new', without the balance for the old. The continual desire for the new puts us at odds with the familiar, and distances us from the reality of our lives.
• The demand for novelty "diminishes pleasure while increasing desire", passing from innocent sources of pleasure to those forbidden
• Be careful of what we are chasing (the 'new' for the sake of the 'new'), as well as what we are cautioning ourselves against (the old, familiar, permanent, because it is old, familiar, permanent)
• When trying to determine whether or not to do something, keep it simple: is it kind? is it pure? is it loving? Steer clear from is it couth? is it relevant? is it fashionable?
• "We have trained them to think of the future as a promised land which favoured heros attain - not as something everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is"

• Letter 26: The selfishness of being unselfish
• Opening paragraph: a bit confused. Maybe Lewis is saying that by ignoring today's issues under the codeword of charity, you are just delaying the inevitable (that said issue must be addressed), and that you are giving opportunity across time for unhealthy seeds to grow between you and the other. Or maybe he isn't???
• Unselfishness -vs- Charity, which look similar. The latter is actually for another person's benefit; the former may be solely for your own. 
• The battle of who can be more unselfish, beyond reason... leading to frustrated discourtesy, as each party refused to be out-unselfished, an "elaborate and self-conscious unselfishness"
• From AeB: I'm inclined to think that this issue is much more 'British' in cultural context than 'American', although I may just be fooling myself.
• Letter 27: The Forbidden Question: Is it True?
• When we acknowledge (to God) our distraction away from God, we are in a good position to return before Him. Our movements towards and away from God are of ultimate importance to Him. If a sin in us awakens us to our state, and motivates us to repentance unto life, then in its own way, said sin has been turned on its head for the purpose of good.
• In the battle of daily prayer, keep it simple. Do not over-spiritualize.
• The challenge of the value of praying to an all-knowing God... why bother?
• God "does not foresee the humans making their free contributions in a future, but sees them doing so in His unbounded Now. And obviously, to watch a man doing something is not to make him do it."
• In reading from those who have come before us, we ought to focus on the eternal question "Is it true?", rather than the intellectually stimulating questions "Is it contextually appropriate, culturally sensitive, applicable to our frame of reference...."
• Screwtape's advice: Cut generations off from each other. Prevent the passing of wisdom, and the learning from mistakes.
• Letter 28: Ultimate Importance
• Our misperception: death is the ultimate evil; survival the greatest good.
• If Wormwood cannot overcome the active faith and reliance upon the Enemy of his patient in his youth, then be patient, and allow "the long dull monotonous years of middle-age prosperity or middle-aged adversity [to be] excellent campaigning weather", to dreary the patient's soul away from the Enemy.
• "Prosperity knits a man to the world". Are you finding your place in this world, or is this world finding its place in you?
• Youth has the godly advantage of a lust for life and a acknowledgement that nothing is permanent in this life. Age can forgo both of those opportunities, trading living for security, and clinging to each day, masked as 'maturity'.