What to Read Next

June 25, 2007 by Rufus McCain at 5:01 pm

Now that the Korrektiv Summer Reading Klub is preparing to go on summer vacation following our arduous seminar on Lost in the Cosmos, here are some ideas for what to read next:

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4 Comments Filed Under: Earth, reading klub, Walker Percy

Comments

angelmeg says

June 26, 2007 at 1:07 am

Okay, now I officially hate you.

I won’t have time to read anything that isn’t assigned (or necessary research for my final) between now and Thanksgiving, and you just showed me at least ten books I really really want to read.

You are a bad bad man.

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cnb says

June 26, 2007 at 3:12 am

A good selection of books. I suppose it would be too soon to choose another book by Percy?

Michael D. O’Brien’s novel Strangers and Sojourners might be a dark horse in the voting, but it is a superb novel. I don’t know that I’d choose it for a discussion group, as it’s rather quiet and reflective and wouldn’t provide much fodder for abstract discussion, but it’s very beautifully written and the story is memorable.

In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say that it’s my favourite “Catholic novel”, and I’m counting Greene, Waugh, Chesterton, O’Conner, and Percy, among others, in the pool. I love the book.

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Rufus McCain says

June 26, 2007 at 5:35 am

Sorry, a.m., I’m only the messenger. My only suggestion is that you could try time travel. Travel forward to the summer vacation following the completion of your gradual degree and read the books then.

I agree, cnb, Strangers and Sojourners is a beautiful beautiful book. Father Elijah is good, too, but the polemical axe-grinding mars it somewhat, maybe. The span of Strangers and Sojourners, covering several generations from the beginning to the end of the 20th Century, is similar to Updike’s In the Beauty of the Lilies, which I liked a lot, too; but O’Brien’s book is much more of a piece and profound in it’s allegiances than Updike’s.

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cnb says

June 26, 2007 at 6:46 pm

I’ve not read Updike’s In the Beauty of the Lilies (nor anything else by Updike, for that matter), but perhaps I should.

I’ve read all six volumes in O’Brien’s “Children of the Last Days” series. Like you, I have some reservations about Father Elijah, but generally I enjoyed it, and the same is true of the series’ final volume Sophia House. But Strangers and Sojourners I consider far and away the finest of the set. I said as much to Michael O’Brien when I met him briefly a few years ago. He was pleasantly surprised; I gather that judgment is in the minority.

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