Resurrection by Tucker Malarkey

It's just after WWII, and Gemma Bastian, a young woman who lives in London and served as a nurse during the war, is trying to find her way in a deeply scarred society. When her father, an archaeologist working in Egypt, dies under mysterious circumstances, she finds herself embroiled in the turgid religious politics of the middle east and the Roman Catholic Church as she learns her father had been trying to recover the gospels discovered at Nag Hammadi.

This is an interesting concept for what turns out to be a fairly uninteresting historical romance. Malarkey has a great ear for dialog, and I felt immersed in Egypt as it must have been near the end of British occupation. I also found her main characters to be both sympathetic and intriguing in their flaws.

Unfortunately, what this book really lacks is any real tension. Even though it centers around a series of murders, there is never a pervasive sense of danger or risk. All of the violence occurs "off camera", and there is no strong figure of menace. There are several "villains", but they don't have much depth of character or intellectual gravitas. In fact, all of the major conflicts in the story just kind of wilt away thanks to the self-destructive quality of the oppositional characters.

Even more than the lack of tension, I was most disappointed by the lack of intellectual debate that the story promised from the beginning. Malarkey set up a great debate about the gnostic gospels and their role in the early church, but she failed to deliver on this promise. Even though she set up at least three other characters who could have carried on a debate with the protagonist and her allies, only one bothered to make any fuss at all, and that was little more than a counter-productive whimper about the role of faith in salvation.

I don't recommend this book, but I do think I will read more of Malarkey's books. I think her dialog, flair for historic detail, and interesting characters show a lot of promise.

Recommendation: Skip it.

The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus by Marvin Meyer

This translation of the Gospel of Thomas, one of the Coptic texts found at Nag Hammadi, Egypt in December 1945, is very scholarly, and contains tons of historical notes that try to put the sayings in context.

For those who don't know, this gospel is one of the non-canonical (also called heretical) gospels that circulated among early "Christian" groups before the formation of the Catholic church. At some point, early Christian leaders chose which gospels to include in the New Testament, and labeled all the rest as false or heretical. There is also a lot of evidence that portions of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and even John were excluded from the Bible.

These other texts largely disappeared (although bits and pieces of them were found over the years.) Some say this shows the early church ruthlessly suppressed these other texts, but it may just be that they were already falling out of favor and faded away in the light of the canonical texts.

The Gospel of Thomas is gnostic, and preaches the way to heaven is from within, not from the church. Jesus is not portrayed as the son of God, but rather a wise holy man. It may be that gnosis strikes a more relevant chord in today's world than it did in the early days of the church.

However, I think it would be a mistake to look at the Coptic gospels as being somehow keepers of lost truths. There's nothing to say these texts are more or less true than the canonical gospels. They say much more about the people who used them than they do about the life or nature of Jesus or the true nature of God. What these "lost" gospels reveal is just how rich the early church was with beliefs and customs from older and often alien cultural influences. Clearly, Christianity didn't grow in a vacuum.

Recommendation: Buy it.

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore

When I saw this book on the shelf at the Borders Express, it reminded me of Monty Python's Life of Brian. However, this book is fairly conservative in comparison. While it is undoubtedly considered heretical by many people, I think it uses humor to raise legitimate questions and possibilities about what the young Jesus's life may have been like. I also found the book to be fairly well researched.

The lead character in this book is Levi, called Biff, who is an everyman who accompanies Jesus through his childhood journeys as he tries to understand what it means to be the Messiah. Along the way, Jesus and Biff encounter middle-eastern and eastern religions and Moore shows how they influence Jesus's understanding of God. Up until the last part, which deals with the Passion, Moore uses understated humor to relate the challenging lives his lead characters all lead in the Bronze Age world of Roman-occupied Israel. He drops the humor for the last section, wisely (I think) choosing to play it straight for the heavy stuff.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and recommend it to anyone who is willing to read it with a grain of salt.

Recommendation: Buy it.

Why We Suck: A Feel Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid by Denis Leary

I didn't get very far into this book before I had to give it up. Leary warns the reader to put the book down and go read something else in the introduction. I wish I'd taken his advice.

It isn't that Leary isn't funny - sometimes he's hysterical - nor is he as offensive as he'd like to think. It's just that no one can possibly stomach this level of griping for very long. Essentially, this is one long, angry rant about why everyone else sucks (hence the title.)

While I agree that people are often self-involved, ignorant, arrogant, and oblivious, I still don't want to read hundreds of pages of someone whining about it.

Unless you're a complete masochist, skip this book!

Recommendation: Skip it.

Boomsday by Christopher Buckley

As someone who grew up in Generation Next, Generation X, the Whatever Generation, or whatever you want to call us - the generation after the baby boomers - I can tell you I've been annoyed by them more than once. Talk about your bunch of entitled whiners. The boomers are now starting to retire in large numbers (their generation was born from 1946-1964, so the oldest boomers hit 65 in 2011), and that's going to put an enormous strain on the Social Security system.

In this humorous novel, Buckley (who also wrote Thank You for Smoking) talks about the chaos that ensues when a Gen X'er is sick of having to carry the irresponsible boomers' financial burden and launches a culture war on the Internet that spills over into the presidential elections.

Buckley's brand of humor, which looks at the out-of-control spin that permeates American society with a satirical eye, is often laugh-out-loud funny, but it always has a poignant message just beneath the surface.

If you're in the mood for some biting social commentary, this is your book.

Recommendation: Borrow it.

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

This novel tells the story of two young boys and what happens when a mysterious carnival blows into their small town a week before Halloween. At first, the boys are enchanted and sneak out in the early hours to watch it set up. Soon, though, they discover something horribly sinister is at work.

Bradbury's prose is lush with imagery, which usually works to convey mood and meaning at a much more visceral level than more mundane styles, but sometimes it can overwhelm and obfuscate the story. Not to worry, though, this is a simple story with a profound message. It's well worth reading.

Recommendation: Buy it.

From a Buick 8 by Stephen King

This is Stephen King at his best: a tale full of suspense, tension, and great characters. In the late 70's in a rural Pennsylvania town, a stranger abandons an old Buick 8 at a gas station. The state police are brought in, and immediately find the situation's even weirder than they first surmised. They tow the car to their barracks and keep it there, locked up in an old shed, for decades where it becomes a kind of preternatural background noise in their otherwise normal lives.

Recommendation: Buy it.