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Powell's Staff:
Five Book Friday: In Memoriam
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Every year, the booksellers at Powell’s submit their Top Fives: their five favorite books that were released in 2023. It’s a list that, when put together, shows just how varied and interesting the book tastes of Powell’s booksellers are. I highly recommend digging into the recommendations — we would never lead you astray — but today...
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Brontez Purnell:
Powell’s Q&A: Brontez Purnell, author of ‘Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt’
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Rachael P.:
Starter Pack: Where to Begin with Ursula K. Le Guin
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Customer Comments
sheef93 has commented on (2) products
If Nuns Ruled the World Ten Sisters on a Mission
by
Jo Piazza
sheef93
, April 11, 2015
Jo Piazza ("Celebrity Inc.," "Love Rehab") has written long and well about the glamorous and the wealthy (and the intersection between the two). The former gossip columnist has turned her eye on a seemingly-anti-glamorous contingent, modern-day nuns. "If Nuns Rule the World" may not be a scholastic tome or academic treatise, and it may come across as skin-deep heroine-worship, but Piazza has undeniably selected ten wonderful case studies of the benefits of a purpose-driven life. INRtW is a light, breezy book (around 250 pages) that can be easily digested in tidy chapter-sized bites. Her introductory chapter describes the world of the modern nun - freed from the cloisters, the penguinish habits, and the stereotypical vocation of beating terrified schoolchildren with yardsticks. Today's nuns are educated and dedicated to solving the world's real problems by living among the afflicted, whatever the afflication may be. In a saying that the religious might recognize, if you're going to be a shepherd, eventually you're going to smell like sheep. These nuns believe in the crazy notion that in order to improve the lives of the downtrodden, you must live and fight side by side with them rather than living above like so many other religious figures do. And perhaps it comes as no surprise that today's nuns aren't exactly fully endorsed by today's Catholic leadership . . . a group that, shall we say, is not exactly balanced in gender composition. Piazza finds ten nuns who have found their calling nonetheless, and Piazza tells their stories in ten brief but moving chapters. These nuns range from the defiant - taking on global inattention to torture and sex trafficking to denying the reality of age by running Ironman Triathlons at the tender age of 83 - to the compassionate - caring for children born in prison as well as their mothers, or ministering to young women exercising their legal rights to have abortions - to the brilliant - using the church's status as a prominent investor to push corporations toward adopting more ethical business practices. These nuns may come from different starting points, but they each found the same path to the Church. And they love it, in spite of its flaws. Piazza makes the compelling case that these ten nuns are solving problems through investing their lives in the solutions. These are not women who pay lip service to anything. If these nuns ruled the world, actions might be valued a little more highly than a PR slogan.
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Fifth Gospel
by
Ian Caldwell
sheef93
, April 08, 2015
Ian Caldwell has written my favorite novel of the year - "The Fifth Gospel" sets a high water mark for intellectual thrillers not through its ingenious mystery/solution, but also through its thorough exploration of the complex interplay between faith and truth. "The Fifth Gospel" will surely be compared to Dan Brown's juggernaut, "The Da Vinci Code." Both novels delve into the deepest mysteries of the Catholic Church and Christian belief - Brown takes on the Holy Grail, while Caldwell focuses on the Shroud of Turin. But while Brown writes a perfect airplane book, focusing on short chapters revolving around taut action scenes seasoned with some enjoyable tidbits and arcana about the Grail, Caldwell has written a less thrilling but infinitely more emotionally powerful novel . . . which somewhat paradoxically makes it more thrilling. Caldwell surpasses Brown in one key area - while Brown's hero, Professor Langdon, is an emotional cipher who's really there to solve clues and get into scrapes, Caldwell's protagonist is a simple man of the cloth who gets under your skin and stays there. Father Alex Andreou is an unusual man in many respects - he is a Greek Catholic priest working in the Vatican. Greek Catholic priests are allowed to marry, and Father Andreou has a young son, Peter. Yet he is working in the Vatican, where the Roman Catholic priests have slightly different obligations in the area of celibacy. So he's an outlier, but he's nevertheless a popular instructor of the Gospels. Father Andreou and Peter are struggling, as Alex's wife Mona abandoned them a few years ago in a fit of depression. Raising a son as a single parent in the Vatican is a unique experience, to say the least. Despite these domestic struggles, in the opening chapters, he is called on a dark and stormy night by his brother, Simon, whom he finds standing over the dead body of Ugo Nogara. This is troubling, not only because Simon and Ugo were extremely close, but also because Ugo had been working like mad to open an exhibit on the Shroud of Turin that threatens to blow the socks off all those who see it. For those who don't recall, the Shroud of Turin is the legendary funeral cloth of Jesus - it bears a likeness of a crucified man who has an uncanny resemblance to the popular understanding of what Jesus looked like. However, a few years ago, carbon dating appeared to dash any hopes that it was actually Jesus's burial shroud - the cloth was reported to be several hundred years too young. But Ugo claimed to be able to explain that problem, which was explosive enough, but he also claimed that the Shroud had other more powerful lessons to teach. And so Father Andreou gets caught up in both a murder investigation and an exploration of what Ugo had discovered about the Shroud. What follows is a deep exploration of the meaning of the Gospels, where to look for legend and where to look for fact, and a deeper understanding of the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Caldwell has done his research, but this book is never boring. What is refreshing about "The Fifth Gospel" is the depth of the faith of all the parties involved. In our modern, cynical age, we all too often dismiss the Church and its officials as obsolete at best, power-seeking conservative hypocrites at worst. Caldwell's characters are men and women of deep faith, conviction, and intellect, and without the undying support of their faith in God and the Church none of them would make it through the novel's crisis unscathed. All the action builds to a fantastic climax of discovery, confession, and forgiveness at the very center of modern Catholicism. I can't recommend this novel highly enough - and a perfect holiday read.
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