From one book to another book to...

I am sure that most peoples' choice of reading material is linked from one book to another. For example, I know that when I like a series, I will attempt to read the next book or two in succession. But I am not really thinking in terms of series. I am trying to figure out how to follow the influences in my reading.

I want to track the books that help me choose the book I really think I need to read next. For example, recently I read selections in Watch for the Light, all of Kidd's Firstlight and then picked up Running to the Mountain by Jon Katz. If you had read all of these books you would not be surprised that Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain is now in my reading stack.

The first three books, especially Katz and Kidd owe their existence to Merton. The famous monk is a major influence in the lives of these other authors. This doesn't mean that Merton is about to make a difference in my life. It just means that I would like to see why he is so inspiring.

Sometimes three books suggest one author to me. The opposite is true of Mary Collins' Women at Prayer. This is a short book that I am reading because of the subject matter - prayer. However, by the time Collins is finished, I have three books that I would like to read, fortunately I own two of them. The third, Awful rowing toward God by Anne Sexton will take an ILL to get it.

Well I have written all this down. Now the question is: Will I find this information if I need it?

I have been racking my brain for the last book for the Book a month Challenge. The theme is light and could be light reading, festivals of light, the science of light, titles with light in them or even something else. I don't know why it was so hard. I definitely did some light reading this month and I often read something during Advent about light.

However the book I have ended up with is A Widening Light: Poems of the Incarnation. I have been reading this book since some time in November so it should have popped into my brain before this. Luci Shaw has put together a wonderful compilation of religious poetry. I found poems by people I knew like C. S. Lewis and Madeline L'Engle and many poets that I had never encountered before.

These are amazing poems; they are well written, thoughtful and thank goodness not sappy. My mental definition of religious poetry is always rhyming and not very deep. Not flattering, but that is what is stuck in my head. This is not at all true of this anthology.

This is an excellent book to end the year on. I once again want to thank Katie for her idea. It did help focus my reading a bit this year. I am not sure I will do another book challenge this year, but I will probably start one for work during our next fiscal year. We shall see... the best laid plans.

Not that anyone is reading this blog besides myself, but I wrote all this while waiting for the election results and then did not react at all to the election. HURRAH!!! HURRAH!!! HURRAH!!! Now on to the October BAM challenge.

Last month's challenge for BAM was books that haunt. I really don't like ghost tales; I am definitely not into horror and so, I was trying to come up with a book that haunted me in other ways. I got to the end of the month and had not read anything new that I found haunting. I read a bunch of books in October - 12 according to my list at Good Reads, but they were so memorable that I thought I could use them.

So I looked over my list and realized that two books that I read tie to a subject that has haunted me since childhood. I recently read both The Book Thief and We Are on Our Own. Both of these books are about the Holocaust. A topic that probably haunts lots of people.

I can't remember when I read A Diary of a Young Girl, but I think that is the first book that I read that showed me the horrors of World War II. I can still see (in my mind's eye) the movies we saw in high school history class.

I am of German descent, supposedly. None of my immediate relatives were in Germany at the time of the Holocaust. However, this connection has bothered me a lot. Would I have behaved differently than many of the German people living then?

The Book Thief is a very different take on this part of history. Death is telling the story and Death sees us very differently than we would like to be seen. This is an amazing story. Zusak is young, I think, but he has an old mind. To conceive of all this and to get it on paper. Just phenomenal.

Main characters are Liesel, Max, Rudy, Hans and Rose. They are all well imagined. I am still thinking about Liesel and her books. I have read lots of books about WWII. most centering firmly on the Holocaust. This is less on the actual death camps, but the atrocities are still there. Thanks to the way Zusak writes, I will be haunted by this book for a long, long time.

The other haunting book about WW II that I have recently read was We Are on Our Own by Miriam Katin. This book preoccupies my mind for several reasons. One, it is a story about WWII that is not familiar to me. I had never thought much about those who tried to escape. What Miriam and her mother went through was very difficult.

Two, the drawings of this "graohic novel" are very evocative. Most of the GNs I have read have been black and white, and very clear. These drawings are in colored pencil and are less clear. As one reviewer stated - they look like a child's memory. Really true.

However, I am mostly disturbed by where Katin's experiences put her with her religion. She has been left haunted herself - without a clear belief system. This is hard for me to imagine.

Hopefully all this explains how I was haunted for the October BAM challenge.

I am looking forward to November and the topic of giving.