The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb

At 793 pages of small print, this novel should have been edited down by at least 200 pages, and Lamb was repetitive enough that the story wouldn't have been harmed. It is told in the first person by a teacher whose wife witnesses the Columbine killings. Her breakdown and legal troubles provide the main action while the husband quietly struggles with his own issues. He uses liquor to ameliorate the pain of a troubled marriage and career and financial problems. In spite of its length The Hour I First Believed is a good read.

God According to God; a Physicist Proves We've Been Wrong About God All Along by Gerald L. Schroeder

Like Fritjof Capra in The Tao of Physics, Gerald Schroeder, an MIT trained physicist, takes today's quantum mechanics and relates it to the wisdom of the ancients. Schroeder teaches Jewish studies in Israel and taps into his interpretation of what God is through Biblical translation and interpretation. For instance, he says that God's famous answer that "I am what I am" really translates "I will be that which I will be." This would mean that God is not a "never changing" being but one who is dynamic.

Schroeder believes that the universe is made of "mind stuff" and that mind is inherent in every atom. This belief is not uncommon among physicists. "If the discoveries in physics over the past century are correct, then that physically condensed energy of the big-bang creation is totally the expression of metaphysical wisdom (cited in Gen. 1:1) or information (J. A. Wheeler) or idea (W. Heisenberg) or mind (G. Wald). Physics not only has begun to sound like theology, it is theology." (p. 156)

Schroeder falls a little short of the ultimate implication of all this: that the Creator and the Created are One. But he states very explicitly that the wisdom of God is the substance of which everything is made. God According to God is a very readable and fascinating book filled with a new and engaging theory of what the Bible really says about God.

The Courtier and the Heretic; Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World by Matthew Stewart

Two of the most prominent philosophers of the 1600s were Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz.

Spinoza was the heretic who was booted out of his Jewish community and generally referred to as an atheist. Really more of a mystical pantheist, Spinoza propounded an idea of God that was too different from that of his peers and he was thus an outcast. He led a quiet and proper life in The Hague earning his living by grinding lenses for microscopes and telescopes.

Leibniz was the German courtier, very social and usually looking for court appointments to provide him with a living. He met Spinoza in 1676 and seems to have spent the rest of his life both fascinated by Spinoza and struggling to "correct" the man's theology.

Stewart's description of these two philosophers is lively and entertaining, and the differences between their theologies is interesting. But what really grabbed me was the differences in their personalities. Spinoza quietly adhered to reasoning he felt to be true; Leibniz would bend to social pressure. Spinoza focused purely on knowing Truth, at least to the extent that it can be determined by reason. Leibniz was also in love with reason, but he focused more on worldly affairs. Leibniz traveled a lot in his goal to reunite European Christianity; Spinoza pretty much stayed put. I thought it ironic that huge numbers of people turned out for Spinoza's funeral in spite of his life as a relative hermit and the opprobrium brought on by his theology. There were few, if any, people at Leibniz's funeral; he had long since fallen out of favor with the court and seemed to be thought of as a pesky old man. The lesson I took from this was that it is better to be true to your own nature than to play courtier (popularity) games.

You might also conclude that it's better to die young, but I think I'll pass on that one.

Paradoxology; Spirituality in a Quantum Universe by Mariam Therese Winter

The title is a made-up word that combines paradox and doxology, but little is said about paradox in this book; instead, it is basically a song of praise to God. It is very lyrical and contains a some lovely poetry written by the author. However, I have reservations about her use of the word "quantum," because the tie to physics is somewhat tenuous. Winter has definitely done her homework and knows about wave/particle duality, nonlocality, and the shift from a Newtonian based reality to a quantum one. But it seems to me that she is just stepping into a spiritual consciousness that was being presented at Universalist and Unitarian churches back in the 1950's.

Becoming Finola by Suzanne Strempek Shea

A thirty-something young woman travels to a small village in Ireland and becomes enmeshed in the life of the community. There she finds her true love, only to have his fabled ex-girlfriend (Finola) return to sort out things with the ex whom she had abandoned very suddenly. This is a nice story, but I felt it was a little overwritten in places. Perhaps it's only because I know Suzanne is now a teacher of creative writing at Baypath College, but it seems to me that Becoming Finola has a little artistic self-consciousness that wasn't in her earlier novels.

A Good Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O'Connor

Beautifully written short stories are tinged with darkness in this collection. The title story has nothing to do with romance; it is about evil men doing evil things. O'Connor leads with this story of evil, and the mood of subsequent stories rises just a little. But in spite of the overall sadness, the stories are compelling and highly readable.

What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman

This is a silly little murder mystery not worth writing about.