The Queue

Only two more thin volumes 'til I've exhausted the tales of Barsoom, of the ageless Earthman John Carter, Warlord of Mars, & his incomparable Martian princess Dejah Thoris; of their noble children Carthoris & Tara; of the Warlord's boon companions Tars Tarkas & Kantos Kan; of the Master Mind of Mars & the false goddess Issus; of the Twin Cities of Helium & sinister Zodanga; of the rival hordes of the Tharks & the Warhoons. I shall be sad to say "good-bye," but I know that one day I shall return to Burroughs's dying Mars & its many races, to the dry ocean beds full of banths & great white apes. Plus, there are the same author's tales of Tarzan, Venus, & Pellucidar yet to encounter.

Rediscover Catholicism opens with a clumsy analogy of Christ's redemption of this fallen world: A plague is sweeping the surface of the earth & threatens to wipe out all of Mankind. A boy's blood is tested & found to be the perfect basis for a vaccine, the catch being that all the boy's blood will be required, killing the boy. Will the boy's father sacrifice his boy to save a world of strangers? Clumsy, because no outside agent came to God the Father & asked Him to sacrifice His Divine Son—He alone is salvation's Author; 'twas not another's idea—& the Father was Himself never personally imperiled by Mankind's sinfulness, as the boy's father in the analogy is imperiled by the plague. Let us hope that the argumentation throughout the balance of the book will be more holy & less holey.

Recently
Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Swords of Mars
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Synthetic Men of Mars

Currently
Matthew Kelly, Rediscover Catholicism: A Spiritual Guide to Living with Passion & Purpose

Presently
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Llana of Gathol
Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter of Mars
Rice Broocks, God's Not Dead: Evidence for God in an Age of Uncertainty
Sir Ernest Shackleton, South: A Memoir of the Endurance Voyage
Richard Price, Clockers
Sir Richard Francis Burton, translator, "Sinbad the Sailor" from The Arabian Nights
Ted Morgan, Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led American into the Vietnam War
Norman Stone, The Atlantic and Its Enemies: A Personal History of the Cold War

Lately Neglected
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill
Edmund Burke, The Evils of Revolution
F. J. Sheed, Theology for Beginners