Book Review: Paladin of Souls

Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Read this right after the first book Curse of Chalion. I liked this one a whole lot more, mainly because I loved that Bujold focused the sequel on Ista, mother of who had been considered mad and is now bitter towards the gods. This story is The Sermon of the Cups, explained in the first book) expanded in the form of Ista’s pilgrimage. I particularly enjoyed Liss’s characterization of a courier girl who becomes Ista’s handmaiden, and breaks all the rules in how a handmaiden is supposed to act. I also loved the interaction between Ista and the gods, which was equal parts exasperation and intimacy. This is a beautiful tale of growth and submission, done from a fortyish woman’s point of view. Lovely!

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Review: Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me

Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me by Karen Swallow Prior
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As of late, I’ve been struggling with the question, “Is God speaking to us today? If so, how?” I know He speaks through the Bible–some would say that it’s the only way he speaks. But is that true? Are there other ways he can speak through?

Karen Swallow Prior believes so. In her memoir “Booked”, she lists 8 books and several poems that influenced her faith. Most of the books are classics; the most recent are Charlotte’s Web (the only book I fully read on her list) and Death of a Salesman. She also didn’t have any books from authors of color. But the books she mention are still interesting, and I’ve got many on my to read list.

I think the book worked best when she was in “teaching mode”. I was most struck by how she dove into John Milton’s Areopagitica and used that to form her reading philosophy of how books should be “promiscuously read”: the best way to counteract falsehood is not by suppressing it, but by countering it with truth. Pretty cool coming from an anti-censorship tract. I also enjoyed her chapter on Jane Eyre (dealing with identity), and her chapter on Gulliver’s Travels; having always grown up on the child-sanitized version, I didn’t even know it was originally adult satire…nor did I know about all the innuendos.

The memoir sections took a while for me to warm up to, particularly in the Charlotte’s Web chapter, where she talked about horse raising. And towards the end, it felt like she was running out of things to pull out of her life to put in the book. Perhaps it would have been good for her to include other people stories along with her own. Or maybe used the rest of the book to deal with harder questions–she did this with the last chapter: The Poetry of Doubt, but I felt it could have been expanded…

It felt like my original question: “Is God speaking to us today?” wasn’t answered as I wanted (the answer I came away with was: yes…through classics). Still, it got me to thinking what influenced me in my faith over the years. For me, it wasn’t just books: my faith in God has been shaped through graphic novels and movies, songs of all types and short stories. Even webcomics, I’ve found, can strike me as profound when I’m struggling with a certain issue. And when it’s backed up by Scripture, it makes me giddy. So yes, God is still speaking to us today. At least, from my point of view.

I’m glad I got Booked. At the very least, it gave me some old classics to put on my reading list, and if there was ever a way I could go to a class taught by Prior, I’d do it. This gets 3 books out of 5, and extra points for the phrase ‘promiscuous reading’, even though it is from Milton.

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