The LDS version of the scriptures contains tons of cross-referencing footnotes. You won't find any cross references to actual events from modern church history, but wouldn't that be a fun project for a future edition?
I was reading in Alma 35 this week - again, I'm not much of a scriptorian, I mainly just read a few verses as the last thing I do each day - and was struck by a particular verse.
At this point, Alma and Amulek have just finished preaching to the Zoramites. There were a few believers, and after consulting together, the more popular part of the Zoramites decided to cast the believers out of the land. These people then came over to the land of Jershon, to dwell with the people of Ammon.
(For some reason, this majorly ticked off the Zoramites, who demanded that the people of Ammon also cast off these people. They refused, and it set off the series of wars that consume most of the remainder of the Book of Alma. I'm not sure exactly where the Zoramites expected them to go - but that's beside the point.)
This is what it says in Alma 35:9 regarding the behavior of the people of Ammon towards the Zoramites and their castoffs:
"And now the people of Ammon did not fear their words; therefore they did not cast them out, but they did receive all the poor of the Zoramites that came over unto them; and they did nourish them, and did clothe them, and did give unto them lands for their inheritance; and they did administer unto them according to their wants."
After reading this passage, I thought of the people of Quincy, Illinois, who in the winter of 1838-1839 received thousands of Mormons into their city. The Mormons had been driven from their homes in Missouri after an extermination order had been issued by the governor of Missouri. The Mormons were heading eastward to find a new place to settle - which of course, was eventually Nauvoo, 40 miles up the Mississippi River from Quincy. The parallels between the two stories are very interesting.
I haven't done a ton of research on this, so I'm not sure exactly sure of the background of the people who inhabited Quincy, Illinois in the mid-nineteenth century - what would cause them to respond with such charity to these Mormons refugees? We know a little more about the people of Ammon - they too had once been cast out of their land, so they were likely "paying it forward", and as is pointed out continously in the Book of Alma, they were something of a remarkable people anyways.
I don't know how much this sort of thing happens in our day - people nowadays seem to tend to respond negatively to dissimilar people showing up in their towns and cities - the tendency is to tell people to go back where they came from. So it's not an easy thing to do, being charitable.
It's also interesting to note that in 2002, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir performed in Quincy as a way of repaying their good deeds. If that wasn't enough, the church also donated the proceeds from the concert to the city.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
Associate This
The Associate by John Grisham. Every couple of years, I like to remind myself why I stopped reading his books. And this one was a really good reminder.
I was a big fan back in the nineties, when he first came out. I read all the books, watched most of the movies. But the stuff he writes now is so. . . different. In the last couple of books of his I've read, it seems like when the time comes for the crap to hit the fan, he just flushes the crap instead. Sure, it's nice and clean, but not nearly as exciting. Nowadays, he seems far more interested in preaching his ideals on the legal profession than in writing actual thrillers.
The Associate is Kyle McAvoy. A different name, but basically the same character that stars in every Grisham novel. A wet-behind-the-ears kid, fresh out of law school, who has to take on the world and figure out how to outsmart everyone. He's Mitch McDeere, he's Darby Shaw, he's Rudy Baylor.
Kyle is just finishing up law school at Yale and is planning to work for a public-interest firm after graduation when a bad guy surfaces with a video, secretly taken by a cell phone, which reveals the badwy details of a drunken frat party five years earlier. The video contains evidence that a couple of Kyle's buddies had relations with a girl who may have been unconcious at the time. Although the video contains no evidence than Kyle did anything worse than dancing in the nude, he's shaken that the evidence exists.
The bad guy offers Kyle a deal. In exchange for keeping the video and the potential rape allegation under wraps, Kyle must accept a position in New York City with the largest law firm in the world and steal documents related to a gigantic lawsuit between two defense contractors. High-stakes blackmail!
The first few pages of this book are great, and I admit that I was immediately sucked into the plot. The pace slows as the book progresses. The bad guys patiently wait for the chance to have Kyle make a move. Meanwhile, Kyle spends most of his time trying to figure out how to outsmart them while also being the hardest working first-year associate at the firm.
I don't know that the bad guys were actually super hard to outsmart. They actually seemed a little lame to me. When Kyle started his job, they demanded a look at his company-issued laptop and phone. He refused to do so, and they never bothered him about it again. Seems like pretty lame surveillance to me.
***SPOILER ALERT (IF YOU CARE)***
Somehow, Kyle manages to hire a lawyer, who notifies the FBI. They organize an operation to catch the bad guy when Kyle brings stolen files to him. But the bad guy somehow gets wind of it and disappears. And that's it. They don't catch him. So, who was this bad guy? Who was he working for? Why did they want the files? Where did he get the cell phone video? How did he know the FBI was coming for him?
NONE of these questions get answered. Grisham suggests a bunch of possibilities, but I guess decides to let the reader ponder them eternally. It seems like maybe he wrote himself into a corner and said, "Ah, screw it, I can't figure this out either. The end."
***END OF SPOILER ALERT (IF YOU CARE)***
I'm not the only one who feels this way. Reviewers on Amazon were furious about this one. They can't figure out why he would just decide not to write the end of the book. There won't be a sequel, because who would buy it? Most people seem to think that Grisham is so rich he doesn't really care about pleasing the reader anymore. Others are speculating that The Associate was (gasp) ghostwritten.
I'm glad that I checked this out at the library. Some folks actually paid full cover price to read it.
I was a big fan back in the nineties, when he first came out. I read all the books, watched most of the movies. But the stuff he writes now is so. . . different. In the last couple of books of his I've read, it seems like when the time comes for the crap to hit the fan, he just flushes the crap instead. Sure, it's nice and clean, but not nearly as exciting. Nowadays, he seems far more interested in preaching his ideals on the legal profession than in writing actual thrillers.
The Associate is Kyle McAvoy. A different name, but basically the same character that stars in every Grisham novel. A wet-behind-the-ears kid, fresh out of law school, who has to take on the world and figure out how to outsmart everyone. He's Mitch McDeere, he's Darby Shaw, he's Rudy Baylor.
Kyle is just finishing up law school at Yale and is planning to work for a public-interest firm after graduation when a bad guy surfaces with a video, secretly taken by a cell phone, which reveals the badwy details of a drunken frat party five years earlier. The video contains evidence that a couple of Kyle's buddies had relations with a girl who may have been unconcious at the time. Although the video contains no evidence than Kyle did anything worse than dancing in the nude, he's shaken that the evidence exists.
The bad guy offers Kyle a deal. In exchange for keeping the video and the potential rape allegation under wraps, Kyle must accept a position in New York City with the largest law firm in the world and steal documents related to a gigantic lawsuit between two defense contractors. High-stakes blackmail!
The first few pages of this book are great, and I admit that I was immediately sucked into the plot. The pace slows as the book progresses. The bad guys patiently wait for the chance to have Kyle make a move. Meanwhile, Kyle spends most of his time trying to figure out how to outsmart them while also being the hardest working first-year associate at the firm.
I don't know that the bad guys were actually super hard to outsmart. They actually seemed a little lame to me. When Kyle started his job, they demanded a look at his company-issued laptop and phone. He refused to do so, and they never bothered him about it again. Seems like pretty lame surveillance to me.
***SPOILER ALERT (IF YOU CARE)***
Somehow, Kyle manages to hire a lawyer, who notifies the FBI. They organize an operation to catch the bad guy when Kyle brings stolen files to him. But the bad guy somehow gets wind of it and disappears. And that's it. They don't catch him. So, who was this bad guy? Who was he working for? Why did they want the files? Where did he get the cell phone video? How did he know the FBI was coming for him?
NONE of these questions get answered. Grisham suggests a bunch of possibilities, but I guess decides to let the reader ponder them eternally. It seems like maybe he wrote himself into a corner and said, "Ah, screw it, I can't figure this out either. The end."
***END OF SPOILER ALERT (IF YOU CARE)***
I'm not the only one who feels this way. Reviewers on Amazon were furious about this one. They can't figure out why he would just decide not to write the end of the book. There won't be a sequel, because who would buy it? Most people seem to think that Grisham is so rich he doesn't really care about pleasing the reader anymore. Others are speculating that The Associate was (gasp) ghostwritten.
I'm glad that I checked this out at the library. Some folks actually paid full cover price to read it.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Holy Crow, Batman!
I've been reading more books than usual this summer. A couple of camping trips have helped, also waiting for the scout meetings to get out, and sitting by a child as he makes the transition to sleeping in a toddler bed. Anyways, I feel compelled to let you know what I've been reading. I'm not sure why.
The Mist of Quarry Harbor by Liz Adair. I picked this little number up over at the Goodwill, for a buck. It's published by Deseret Book, and yes, all of the main characters are LDS.
The main character is Cassie Van Cleeve. She's smoking hot, completely self-sufficient, and single as the book opens. It's important to note that she's not single because no one's interested. She has to fend off a pesky marriage proposal within the first 20 pages of the book. Later, a casual FHE basketball game leads to fisticuffs between her two suitors. She eventually makes a choice, although her emotional and mental abilities in the face of a little romance reminds one of Bella Swan.
But that's not the main part of the book. Cassie's questionable judgment when it comes to men eventually lands her on an island in the Puget Sound, where she begins searching for clues to her husband's mysterious past. It's a decent mystery, although not really a page-turner. There's a lot of boat talk, which can get a little boring if you're not a boating enthusiast. Most readers should be able to figure the big twist out before it is revealed in the book.
The writing is a little awkward in places and the dialogue often doesn't sound like something a person would say in the 21st century. At one point when Cassie needs to leave, she says that she had "better get to whistling." Another character frequently exclaims, "Holy Crow!" And one of the strangest parts of the book was when the author attempted to chastely describe Cassie's wedding night. It was quite vague, to the point where you weren't sure if she was talking about sex or describing an alien abduction.
As an LDS person, you kind of have to suspend your disbelief a little bit for the book to make sense. Which I guess is fine, because it's fiction. The character of Cassie isn't really internally consistent. Right off the bat, we're told that she went through three sets of missionaries before she was sure she wanted to join the church. And then a few pages later, she's diving into a marriage with a guy without any due diligence whatsoever. The author probably realized this and danced around it by making Cassie a member of only six months, thus not yet eligible for a temple marriage. Because if you're not getting married in the temple, it's okay to just go for it.
But without the random marriage, there's no mystery, and no book. So if you read it, just sit back and don't think too hard about it.
The Mist of Quarry Harbor by Liz Adair. I picked this little number up over at the Goodwill, for a buck. It's published by Deseret Book, and yes, all of the main characters are LDS.
The main character is Cassie Van Cleeve. She's smoking hot, completely self-sufficient, and single as the book opens. It's important to note that she's not single because no one's interested. She has to fend off a pesky marriage proposal within the first 20 pages of the book. Later, a casual FHE basketball game leads to fisticuffs between her two suitors. She eventually makes a choice, although her emotional and mental abilities in the face of a little romance reminds one of Bella Swan.
But that's not the main part of the book. Cassie's questionable judgment when it comes to men eventually lands her on an island in the Puget Sound, where she begins searching for clues to her husband's mysterious past. It's a decent mystery, although not really a page-turner. There's a lot of boat talk, which can get a little boring if you're not a boating enthusiast. Most readers should be able to figure the big twist out before it is revealed in the book.
The writing is a little awkward in places and the dialogue often doesn't sound like something a person would say in the 21st century. At one point when Cassie needs to leave, she says that she had "better get to whistling." Another character frequently exclaims, "Holy Crow!" And one of the strangest parts of the book was when the author attempted to chastely describe Cassie's wedding night. It was quite vague, to the point where you weren't sure if she was talking about sex or describing an alien abduction.
As an LDS person, you kind of have to suspend your disbelief a little bit for the book to make sense. Which I guess is fine, because it's fiction. The character of Cassie isn't really internally consistent. Right off the bat, we're told that she went through three sets of missionaries before she was sure she wanted to join the church. And then a few pages later, she's diving into a marriage with a guy without any due diligence whatsoever. The author probably realized this and danced around it by making Cassie a member of only six months, thus not yet eligible for a temple marriage. Because if you're not getting married in the temple, it's okay to just go for it.
But without the random marriage, there's no mystery, and no book. So if you read it, just sit back and don't think too hard about it.
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