A serious pile-up

Dora often laughs at me for always reading several books at once rather than finishing one and only then going on to the next. The situation is extreme at the moment: I am in the middle of fourteen books simultaneously, in the sense that I have started to read them, found them worthwhile, and intend to continue when I can. So to try and find a way through the quagmire I am going to list all my current part-finished reads to see if there is any kind of pattern to be found. Maybe you can see one where I can't. Maybe you can tell me there's one I simply must finish, or another I shouldn't bother with.

In approximate order of how near I've got to finishing them...

"The Shack", by Wm Paul Young. Seems to be many people's favourite read in Christian fiction this year. I sped along through the more novelistic part at the beginning, then slowed markedly when the hero arrived at the Shack, very strange things started to happen, and the book took a markedly more theological turn.

"The Normal Christian Life", by Watchman Nee. Having first discovered this thirty years ago and found it formative reading, I recently re-acquired it and realised, to my amazement, that I only ever read the first half back then. It is Spirit-inspired, mind-blowing writing, and I intend to write about it properly here soon.

"Quicksilver", by Neal Stephenson. Science, adventure and plague in seventeenth-century England, featuring everyone you've ever heard of from that period. It's over nine hundred pages, and that's just the first volume. How did he ever find time to write it? Doesn't he have a proper job?

"The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead", by Stephan Hoeller. Dense stuff. Spirit-expanding stuff. I was enjoying it, but now I can't find it.

"The elements of New Testament Greek", by Jeremy Duff. A book I would like to have got to the end of and really digested. I bought it when I realised how English translations of the New Testament are so often mistranslations caused by the historical-Jesus assumption.

"Real World Haskell", by O'Sullivan, Goerzen and Stewart. I would like to be fluent in Haskell even more than I would like to be fluent in Greek; and at the moment, it seems slightly more likely to happen.

"Global Warning: the last chance for change", by Paul Brown, the Guardian's environment editor. Another big book, about a big topic, but a very accessible one. Can we still come through climate change in one piece? The author thinks so.

"Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning", by Chris Bishop; "Bayesian Data Analyis", by Gelman et al; "Highly Structured Stochastic Systems", by Green et al. If I could get this stuff nailed down I really would be able to see the wood for the trees.

"Thank God for Evolution", by Michael Dowd. Dowd is a recovering fundamentalist who has been bitten by the "great story" of evolution -- so much so that he and his wife gave up their home and have spent the last seven years travelling around America in a van to spread the word. This is possibly the most enthusiastically-written book I've ever come across. I sense that he and I are wrestling with some of the same pairs of opposites. I also notice that he has written a fast-selling book endorsed by five recent Nobel Laureates, whereas I'm still struggling to get above three hits a day on this blog.

"The Essence of the Gnostics", by Bernard Simon. A chance find the other day. Full of sweeping assertions unaccompanied by any supporting references to original source material, which is a shame, because some of the assertions are quite enlightening.

"Jesus and the Eyewitnesses", by Richard Bauckham. I really tried hard to read this, and still feel I ought to, but the author lives on such a different planet from me that I find it extremely difficult to do so; he fails even to mention (I think; there's no index) counter-evidence that seems compelling to me. The book doesn't belong to me and I ought to give it back.

"Meditations on the Tarot", by Anonymous. I actually have finished this several times, and am part way through it again. I expect I always will be. The alternative would be not to read it any more, which I cannot imagine ever happening.

And those are just the books I've got started on; there are as many again waiting for me to make any headway with them at all.

At least this explains why I seem to have very little time to watch television, which must be good for my brain, even if the books aren't.

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Update, May 23rd: Two steps forward, one step back. I have found my copy of "The Gnostic Jung". I have finished "The Normal Christian Life" (but then encountered another little book stitched into the back of it). And I have remembered another book I'm in the middle of: Joanna Macy's "World as lover, world as self", which I am more likely to get on with finishing now, having seen "The Age of Stupid" yesterday evening. If you haven't been to see it yet, rush out (by bike or on foot) and do so immediately. Then rush straight to your country's seat of government, grab your representative by the collar, and yell "Do something! Our children's lives are more important than your damned career!". Then put your representative down, and stand over him/her until you have verified your instructions have been carried out in full.