It Is NOT Wrong to Want to Make Out With a Book This Good ...

So we read Mary Doria Russell's "The Sparrow" for book club this month. It was a hard sell for me. The woman who recommended it -- who I affectionately refer to as "That Weird Hippie Chick" -- gave this wacky, sci-fi synopsis, I rolled my eyes, doubted I would find time to read a book about Jesuit missionaries and space travel ... and then my friend J., who is also in the book club, told me she had bought and read it and gave it her endorsement.

Fiiiiiiine. I'll read That Weird Hippie Chick's lame sci-fi book. Uuuuuugh.

IT. WAS. AMAZING.

I haven't had a book keep me up until 3:30 a.m. -- because i had to know what happened next -- in ages. And this book did just that. Last night. I'm groggy. I'm achy. It was so worth it.

Thoughts on the book:

- I'm not usually turned on by theology, but this book packaged it amazingly well -- inside characters that were fully-developed and a in the context of a kick-ass plot.
- Even the best of intentions and preparations do not guarantee positive results. There simply aren't any guarantees at all. We just do our best and are hopeful -- and maybe that hope is a little naive and misplaced, but I'd rather be naive than hopeless.
- Even if we make promises to god, that doesn't at all bind him to us contractually. There was a quote in the book -- which I'm going to botch here because I don't have it in front of me -- that was something like: "God doesn't miss a thing. He knows even when a single sparrow falls -- but the sparrow still falls." It was very poignant ... and had me rethinking my stance on Dostoevsky's "no god would allow the punishment of innocents" ontological argument.
- I liked the idea the book put forth that the spaces left behind by god, where god receded, that's where creation takes place.
- One of the more brutal messages of the book was, simply: God will not protect you. Yet this didn't at all portray faith and the faithful in a foolish light. The opposite, in fact.

And Then ...

- So if it's not protection that's sought -- and I really think it IS in a lot of cases, this blind hope for divine favoritism -- then WHY? God is simply not our friendly, flowery body guard -- that's obvious enough just in watching the evening news. I'm constantly baffled/intrigued by what it is that people want/seek/expect from god.
- I think that if there is a god, we surprise him -- both positively and negatively, with our capacity for goodness as well as our capacity for evil.
- As a writer, I would love to tackle something like this. It's nothing I've ever attempted, and wonder if it can be done with the light hand and voice I'm aiming for. The setting of my novel -- a small town in the Bible Belt -- is ripe enough for it. Interesting ...