Anyone reading any good books that they'd like to recommend? Any you'd suggest avoiding?
Right now I'm reading "Justinian and Theodora" by Robert Browning. It's a pretty fair look from a secular point of view, and I've been enjoying it. It's obviously not going to be like reading a prologue entry (cf Nov. 14th), but then it's not anti-Christian or anti-Byzantine either.
Philokalia Vol 1 (a wee bit at a time!)
Blind Man's Bluff (submarines during the Cold War)
The Two Towers (refreshing myself after the movie)
--I'm in the middle of Justinian the Great, the Emperor and Saint by Asterios Gerostergios. It's very good.
--Demons, by Dostoevsky. My annual Russian novel for the winter. Excellent, but rather prophetically scary, escpecially when the nihilist/socialist declares that it will require 100 million heads to establish the "new society."
--Talks with Father Paisios. Good, but another example of a less than competant translator taking a book from Greek to English. That problem has ruined more reading for me...
--The Meaning of History, by Nicholas Berdayev. Fascinating approach to Tradition as the true approach not only to the Christian Faith, but of history generally.
--Orthodox and Wesleyan Spirituality. Dissapointing. An interesting topic gets the life sucked out of it via academic analysis of various "data."
Chrysostomos
cparks, can you tell me a little bit more about Orthodoxy and Wesleyan Spirituality? Those type of books interest me.
-Death to the World. I bought this book from St. Herman Press. This book is excellent and the best one I have found that describes the current state of our postmodern society. It was written by two monks who I believe use to be in the punk subculture. As a young person, I found the excellent and I could really relate to what it said.
cparks, can you tell me a little bit more about Orthodoxy and Wesleyan Spirituality? Those type of books interest me.
I wish I could, but this one is so painfully dry, I haven't gotten through much of it. However, maybe there will end up being something interesting there. What interests me about Wesley is the "point of contact" between his spirituality and Orthodox spirituality. He doesn't seem to fit the general Augustinian mold. Beyond that, I know little. Sorry.
Chrysostomos
The Psalter (Psalms of David), The Book of Common Prayer.
The New Testament, Revised Standard Version.
The Orthodox Liturgy: The Development of the Eucharistic Liturgy in the Byzantine Rite by the Revd Canon Hugh Wybrew: a historical guided tour of the church building and the Liturgy from the beginning (partly conjecture) though the end of the Byzantine Rite's development in the 1300s.