Friday, May 09, 2014

Books read in 2014: No. 19 -- Epic

by John Eldredge

Started: May 8
Finished: May 9

Notes: My mother's pastor, also a writer, gifted me this book recently as he felt it would be of interest to me. The author here takes the story of the Bible, specifically the Gospels, and makes a claim of sorts that all of us are living in the greatest epic story of all time, that created by God, and that each of us are characters with goals within the broader tale. The author apparently makes comparisons between this epic tale of Christianity with multiple pieces of epic literature and film. Whether or not I agree with the author concerning spiritual matters is beside the point as far as I'm concerned, but as I writer I'm interested in what he has to say. And who knows? Maybe he will sway my thinking one way or the other.

Mini review: Not a bad little book. A little simplistic for my taste, but it still does a good job comparing the story of the Bible to those of Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, John Milton ... the obvious choices ... but also to the movies "Titanic" and "The Matrix" and other film and literature.

3 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

Definitely an interesting concept.

Adventuresfantastic said...

I haven't seen this one, but Eldredge has broken some of his longer books up into shorter, more focused volumes. Not sure if that's the case here or not. This is one of his main themes.

I've read most of Eldredge's other works. He really speaks to where I live (internally, not geographically). I especially liked Wild at Heart, and Fathered by God, which I read a few years after we adopted our son, showed me that I was getting at least a few things right.

Jason M 'RBE' Waltz said...

I knew I knew that name. Thanks Keith, for reminding me of Wild at Heart, the only book of his I've also read. I agree Charles, an interesting concept, though not one to jump high on my reading schedule.