Jon Reading Books > Recent Status Updates

This book feels like a late Winter day. Or maybe that's just because I'm reading it in late Winter.

2 Chronicles: The first named appearance of Satan (that I can recall, anyway) as a servant of God who commands the taking of numbers.

I don't recall him mentioned specifically by name in any of the prior books. Interesting just how strong a presence he has to modern Christians considering his lack of screen time in the actual freaking Bible.

I wonder if Milton anticipated his impact on the religion. Doubtful.

1 Chronicles: True to its name, it's a chronicle the various genealogies of the Israelites who came out of Egypt. The driest, most monotonous mess of nonsense I've encountered in the Bible thus far--beating out even the Pentateuch.

It has almost no relevance to modern day readers and, at best, serves only to catalog events already described. Worthless for my reading purposes.

I'm going to need a break pretty soon.

2 Kings: Prophets magicking things. Queen Jezebel sleeps with the fishes. Er, dogs. Those blasted Assyrians roll on through Israel. Then those blasted Babylonians roll on through Judah, once against dispersing our heroic (?) Israelites into the wind. And God is pretty mad at everyone throughout because they do evil by not listening to him.

1 Kings: Solomon's got 700 wives and concubines. Seems reasonable.

This book sees depiction of civil war and religious schism among Israel and Judah. The more human civilization changes, the more it stays the same, I suppose. Makes you wonder if we'll ever get past this kind of thing that's been happening now for 3,000+ years.

What began as utter confusion has developed into an intense amusement in Bronte's character writing.

I don't have any strong feelings about this story yet aside from really enjoying the characters. But I'm enjoying myself.

2 Samuel: The ambiguity of David and Jonathan's deep, mutual affection provides the potential for a homosexual relationship between the two. Quite the interesting possibility that adds depth to David's backstory.

I enjoyed David's humanity and fallibility in this section. I find myself disregarding God's direct intervention and instead viewing David's misfortunes as typical political machinations common to monarchy.

Ruth: Small book. Alright.

1 Samuel: I liked this one. We're moving further away from the Pentateuch's tendency to instruct worship over telling a story.

One noteworthy occurrence is God getting angry with Saul for his refusal to commit genocide against the Amalekites.

Hey, I've heard of David. In fact I've seen a few statues of the fella.

RIP Jonathan. (That's my name too.)

Heathcliff's dog has the same name as mine ("Juno"). Ominous.

What's the difference between adding someone as a friend and just following them? I'm not sure I understand the difference and I can feel myself making a social media faux pas before too long.

(Pokes with stick) C'mon... Do somethin, book

Book of Judges done. A more structured read when compared to previous books.

I find the idea of a book about the Israelites defending their newly gained territory with the appointment of military "Judges" (warlords?) compelling.

Samson and Heracles similarities.

The Israelites swaying from the disciplines required by their covenant with god seems to be a notable recurring theme.

No long, monotonous lists!

Joshua, in general, was probably the easiest read I've had since the beginning of Genesis or the beginning of Exodus. I was coming near to enjoying myself until it devolved once again into an lengthy list, this time of the lands conquered by Joshua. If we could get past this type of cataloging I think I'd be enjoying this read much more than I am. These names and lands mean almost nothing to me.

Everyone's a little bit psychic, qnd our protagonist has zero agency whatsoever.

I guess Murakami is my thing now

I like Haruki Murakami.

Books of Moses are now in the rearview, thank god (heh).

Since I decided to read and review this, I decided also to write my review alongside my read since the Bible is so long. I'm already at 7 pages and nearly 3,000 words, but only 15% done. Whoops.

Not sure what Goodreads' review character limit is, but this will probably be pushing up against it at best.

I don't understand why it's not against the rules to type a 3-4 sentence "review", then link your own website and ask people to go there for the "full review".

I am not enjoying myself. Hopefully it's just the old testament, but I have a feeling it's not.

Genesis and Exodus in the bag, Leviticus up next.

I'm looking forward to never having to read this again, but I'll give it as fair a review as I can.

"Her heart raced with joy to sleep with War"

Fagles is awesome.