Christ Church Book Club
Christ Church Book Club, 2009-2010
7:30pm, First Tuesday of the Month– An eclectic choice of various books, one main book or excerpt per evening along with reference to other books, for discussion and debate. Refreshments. Open to all and everyone! 1 hour. Coronation Room, Christ Church Parish Hall, 7 Wentworth Street, Windsor, NS. Contact: David Curry 798-2454.
Dates: October 6th, 2009, November 3rd, 2009, December 1st, 2009; February 2nd, 2010, May 4th, 2010
Tuesday, October 6th “The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society” by Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows
(available on-line from www.chapters.indigo.ca for $9.07 or from www.amazon.ca for $15.75)
How Readest Thou? Jesus asks. “The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society” is a delightful, poignant and moving fictional account of, well, a literary society established during the German occupation of the Isle of Guernsey. Among other things – a love story, a story of incredible courage and sacrifice, for instance – it illustrates the power and significance of reading. Other books to be considered in relation to this are “Proust and the Squid” by Maryanne Wolfe, “A History of Reading” by Alberto Manguel, and “The Diviners” by Margaret Laurence.
Tuesday, November 3rd “The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World” by Alistair McGrath
(available on-line from www.chapters.indigo.ca for $23.72 or from www.amazon.ca for anywhere from $15.33 to $35.97, or see me for an excerpt).
Theologian Alistair McGrath provides a useful consideration of contemporary atheism in relation to Christian faith and knowledge. Other books to be considered are “The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism & Its Scientific Pretensions” by David Berlinski, “When Atheism becomes Religion” by Chris Hedges, “God and the New Atheism” by John F. Haught, “The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion” by Marcel Gauchet.
Tuesday, December 1st “The Mind of the Maker” by Dorothy Sayers
(available on-line from www.chapters.indigo.ca for anywhere from $13.56 to $40.95 or from www.amazon.ca for a range of prices for used/secondhand copies or see me for an excerpt)
Intended, as part of a series entitled “Bridgeheads,” to explore social, moral, and theological questions pertinent to the renewing of the thought and spirit of post-WWII society, this remarkable book examines human creativity from the Christian standpoint of our being made in the image of the Trinity and challenges many of our contemporary popular assumptions about the dominance of science as the form of knowing par excellence. Other books to be considered along with this are: John Polkinghorne’s “Quarks, Chaos & Christianity”, Steven Shapin’s “The Scientific Revolution”, John Lukacs’ “The End of An Age “.
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 “The Shack” by Wm. Paul Young
(available on-line from www.chapters.indigo.ca for $8.79 or from www.amazon.ca for $8.00)
This contemporary bestseller has become a minor classic of the spiritual journey. Other books to be considered are John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” and Daniel Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe”!
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010 “Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World” by Timothy Brook
(available on-line from www.chapters.indigo.ca for $19.80 or from www.amazon.ca for $8.00)
Along with Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and “The Merchant of Venice”, and John Darwin’s “After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000”, “Vermeer’s Hat” provides a fascinating and interesting account of earlier “global” worlds.
