Harry Potter and the...

I like reading Harry Potter. I will ever remember reading book 6 in two sittings. Two, because I got a copy at 12:30 at Wal-Mart, read until 3am, went to sleep, got up, went to the DMV to register my new car, finished the book, and heard my name called about 10 minutes later.

I shed a couple solitary tears in the DMV that day, as the ending was both tragic and beautiful.

The title for the final book has been announced. All that's left is the months and months until the book is released.

The new title? Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows.

Tagged

Ah, the sweet smell of descent into the blogging version of spam. Except instead of you wasting my time by filling my mailbox with it, I waste your time by making you read it. Bwah-ha-ha, says I.
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1) One book that changed your life:
In the Likeness of God - There aren't any really good candidates, but the more I think of the gap between what the Body of Christ should be, and what it looks like now, the more sense this makes to me.

2) One book you've read more than once:
What's so Amazing About Grace? - I choose this one because it is a good reminder of what I want to be.

3) One book you'd want on a desert island:
Taking a cue from George MacDonald - Wooden Ship-Building.

4) One book that made you laugh:
Mort. Though I really enjoy just about any Discworld novel.

5) One book that made you cry:
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. I remember reading this for the first time, crying almost uncontrolably when Gandalf died.

6) One book that you wish had been written:
Just Friends: How to Tell What She Really Thinks Without Looking Like An Ass

7) One book you wish hadn't been written:
I Kissed Dating Goodbye. I'm against anything that can be used to give a guy hope where none exists. This did that effectively to me.

8) One book you're currently reading:
Moby Dick. I'm revisiting classics I never read before.

9) One book you've been meaning to read:
The Cost of Discipleship. I keep starting, not finishing, and restarting it.

10) Tag five others:
Travis-And/Or-Michelle, Christy, Sole Comfort, Romanós, Ken Lund

Grace

Borrowing from Phillip Yancey's What's So Amazing About Grace? "Grace can be dissected, like a frog, but the thing dies in the process." He asks if we who have a good theology of grace risk becoming graceless?

The Human Body

In the Likeness of God is a compilation of two books written in collaboration by Phillip Yancey and Dr. Paul Brand. I have reflected to an extent on how interesting our bodies are, but Dr. Brand spent many years as a surgeon treating leprosy. His thoughts on the amazing systems that have to work for our bodies to function normally have kept me up too late at night, often reading for hours after I should be asleep.

The reminder that our bodies are collections of individual units of cells that have become so uniquely specialized and cooperative that I can sit here, recalling information I read when light bounced off of a page, registered on thousands, millions of cells in my eye designed only to send out an electrical signal when light or perhaps only a specific wavelength of light strikes them, my brain - a collection of further individual cells - interpreted the electrical signals from my eyes and turned that into information to be stored away, which I now recall and send to my hands, with muscle cells in both arms contracting and relaxing in the precise order that allows my fingers to be leveraged into the positions of keys on a keyboard: while my kidneys, intestines, back muscles, heart, lungs, diaphram, stomach, eyelids, and a host of other organs do their job without me even thinking about it.

Computers seemed complex just a week ago. Now I find myself reminded that I am "fearfully and wonderfully made." The most elaborate supercomputer is dull by comparison.