by Jonathan E. Ruopp ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 6, 2017
A literary rendering of Bible tales that skillfully balances accessibility and fidelity.
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A dramatic novelization of the life and gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Bible is a dense, challenging read written in a historically unfamiliar idiom and with a legion of characters. Debut author Ruopp set out to compose a more readable version that largely focuses on Jesus’ life and ministry, as chronicled in the New Testament Gospels. Using a novelistic style, the author begins with Old Testament stories, mostly from the books of Genesis and Exodus; even in these cases, he approaches the material with a view to prophecies that foretold the arrival of the Messiah. For the most part, Ruopp’s account closely hews to the substance of the original texts, only slightly departing to fill in some lacunae; for example, there’s a thoughtful imagining of Jesus’ childhood years and the early signs of his spiritual precociousness. Also, the author unobtrusively includes commentary throughout the narrative, as when he helpfully illuminates the anxiety that Joseph experienced at the prospect of a virgin birth, given strict societal rules regarding marriage and pregnancy. Ruopp maintains a tone of formality when it comes to dialogue, but he modernizes it just enough to make it more approachable, as in this slightly reworked quote from the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are you, therefore, when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets, who were before you.” At the close of each chapter, the author furnishes a catalog of textual references for readers interested in the original King James Version language, but this book is more a work for beginners than it is a scholarly resource. The simplicity of the prose and the chronological rendering, which details Jesus’ life up until the Resurrection, should make it a particularly helpful guide for parents and teachers introducing younger readers to Scripture.
A literary rendering of Bible tales that skillfully balances accessibility and fidelity.Pub Date: July 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5127-7421-4
Page Count: 390
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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