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Book Lover's Guide to Great Reading: A Guided Tour of Classic & Contemporary Literature
Follow Terry Glaspey on a tour of the great literary works of the ages. You'll be reminded of favorite classics and exposed to new treasures.
237 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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About the author
Terry W. Glaspey
31 books22 followersTerry Glaspey is the award-winning author of numerous books, including 75 Masterpieces Every Christian Should Know, which won a 2017 Christianity Today Book Award and a 2017 ECPA Gold Medallion Award, as well as The Prayers of Jane Austen, Bible Basics for Everyone, Not a Tame Lion: The Spiritual Legacy of C.S. Lewis, and The Book Lover’s Guide to Great Reading. Terry is in demand as a speaker and has spoken at the C.S. Lewis World Conference in Oxford and Cambridge, Cedarville University, Veritas Seminary, New Hope College, Kilns College, The Proverbs 31 Conference, and the Seasons Conference. He has taught courses for Veritas Seminary, New Hope College, and Kilns College. Terry is a senior acquisitions editor for Harvest House Publishers and lives in Oregon. His areas of interest include writing, the arts, literature, theology, the Bible, and apologetics and enjoys sharing on such topics at a level with which everyone can engage.
Website: https://www.terryglaspey.com/
Website: https://www.terryglaspey.com/
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 6, 2017
"There is nothing wrong with reading for entertainment. That is certainly one of its valid functions, and a noble one at that, because many of the very greatest books are extremely entertaining. But people who read only for entertainment are robbing themselves of one of the true pleasures of reading: that of expanding the mind, the heart, the soul, and the spirit. When we stop learning, we stop growing." (p. 198)
Glaspey begins the book with a list of Christian classics that everyone should read, and follows that with several chapters on secular books with "big ideas" that are important for Christians to read and evaluate. (John Locke, Machiavelli, and Voltaire are just a few suggested authors.) Glaspey calls the gaining of insights from godless men "plundering the Egyptians" (from Exodus 3:22) and challenges his readers to be unafraid to dialogue with these thinkers.
He ends the book with lists of more modern books and lists of children' books. (The latter was not that great. Read Honey for a Child's Heart for a better, more extensive list.) If you are looking for ways to build your library with non-fluffy books, this is a great place to begin.
Glaspey begins the book with a list of Christian classics that everyone should read, and follows that with several chapters on secular books with "big ideas" that are important for Christians to read and evaluate. (John Locke, Machiavelli, and Voltaire are just a few suggested authors.) Glaspey calls the gaining of insights from godless men "plundering the Egyptians" (from Exodus 3:22) and challenges his readers to be unafraid to dialogue with these thinkers.
He ends the book with lists of more modern books and lists of children' books. (The latter was not that great. Read Honey for a Child's Heart for a better, more extensive list.) If you are looking for ways to build your library with non-fluffy books, this is a great place to begin.
July 31, 2013
It doesn't take the reader too long to discover Terry Glaspey proves himself to be a rather untrustworthy guide on this "guided tour of classic and contemporary literature." Under his section of "Great Books of the Christian Tradition," in addition to several dubious mysticism-driven works, Glaspey includes the poems of William Blake and prose of Friedrich Schleiermacher, then he tosses in de Chardin, Bultmann, Barth, and Tillich for good measure. And that's in the first quarter of the book. Glaspey is reticent throughout to make any definitive or resounding claims on anything negative about the books and authors he is recommending/listing. He almost never comes out and says "this author is way off the beam, theologically" or "this book has lots of bad language and explicit sexual content." The sternest he gets is for Sue Monk Kidd ("her later books veer into serious theological heresies and must be read with a great deal of discernment" - in a section on "books to help you grow in your spiritual life"!) and John Updike ("some may find his fixation on sexual issues to be a little too graphic and anatomically detailed for their taste"). It's like he feels embarrassed for recommending them but not enough and is almost but not quite sorry for not being embarrassed enough. He'll often try to cushion his warnings with meaningless little "you'll need to read it with a grain of salt" or "some say he's not quite orthodox" expressions. It's difficult to trust him in many categories, especially when he only recommends Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer by Twain but recommends all four of the other books he (Glaspey) has written thus far.
Many of the classics he lists are given with similar meaningless recommendations: "this is quite a classic" or "he uses artful, authentic language" or "this is a fine experience" sort of comments. None of those are verbatim, but that's the generic feeling one gets from several of his entries, especially for the classics. W. H. Auden, he says, "wrote powerful poems on many topics" (and this is verbatim). One gets the impression he is being sponsored by Pizza Hut and only wants to get free pizzas from kids doing well in the Book-It! program, as if his glowingly tepid summaries will motivate students to read older books. Either that, or he is auditioning for a back-cover writer position at Penguin. Then he comes out and says The Lord of the Rings can only be read on one of two levels: an exciting adventure story or personal mythology drawing on Norse, Christian, and Arthurian influences. I'm pretty sure there are more avenues of interpretation than just those two.
Even though the title does not imply this is for Christians, many of his brief chapters at the beginning and ending of the book strongly indicate he is primarily aiming his lists for Christians. The many lists about growing in the Christian faith and regaining the Christian tradition indicate that fairly strongly as well. This makes his reticence to say "look out for the intense bad language and sexually explicit content" all that more confusing. He will nonchalantly say Aristophanes is vulgar and graphic with an attitude of "check it out and see how he does it!" but he will only say of Darwin most of his critics have misunderstood him. It's hard to understand at times why he is recommending some of the books he is recommending - even when his last chapter is about the importance of "plundering the Egyptians." The main focus of that "plundering the Egyptians" chapter is about recognizing "all truth is God's truth" (a very tiresome expression), and so we shouldn't feel bad about reading books by non-Christians. Yet, most of the non-Christians he recommends don't say things that are true! "Although Nietzsche is, from a biblical viewpoint, wrong in most of the conclusions he draws, he can be exceedingly prophetic in his insights." Huh? I don't think even Glaspey knows if he is praising or condemning Nietzsche. He is very ambivalent throughout the book on my topics/authors.
Obviously, I'm all for reading books by non-Christians (and not just because "all truth is God's truth"). Glaspey's survey of books he's read (or, in many cases, likely just heard about) does not give Christians many good reasons to do it, though. Nor does he give adequate warning about many authors' worldviews, especially considering his stated purpose in the book throughout the early chapters. He does toward the end say Christians can border (or tread into) arrogance if they think "they only need to read the Bible and can't learn anything from non-Christians," but it comes far too late in the work and does not explain so many perplexing entries for "classic" works. And it certainly doesn't explain why he has William Blake in the section on "Christian heritage"!
One small thing in this book's favor is his section on Contemporary Fiction. For him, that's '80s-'90s novels, for the most part, and since it's quite likely many people who read this today have not heard of most of them (like I haven't), it's good to have a list of titles and authors (even if what he says about them is potentially unreliable).
If one has never read a "here's a lot of great books you should read" sort of book before, and this is the first such book one has come across, I suppose it's not a thorough waste of time. Yet even his chapters on the importance of connecting to the rich Christian intellectual heritage do not make this book easy to recommend. If you know someone who has it, ask them to type of the titles of the books he recommends and then just get the list and go from there. You'll get about as much insight from a simple list of nouns than you would reading his annotations. Calling John Keats "[a] fine English poet" ... indeed! I'm giving you a Bill Cosby look of disgust right now, Mr. Glaspey.
Many of the classics he lists are given with similar meaningless recommendations: "this is quite a classic" or "he uses artful, authentic language" or "this is a fine experience" sort of comments. None of those are verbatim, but that's the generic feeling one gets from several of his entries, especially for the classics. W. H. Auden, he says, "wrote powerful poems on many topics" (and this is verbatim). One gets the impression he is being sponsored by Pizza Hut and only wants to get free pizzas from kids doing well in the Book-It! program, as if his glowingly tepid summaries will motivate students to read older books. Either that, or he is auditioning for a back-cover writer position at Penguin. Then he comes out and says The Lord of the Rings can only be read on one of two levels: an exciting adventure story or personal mythology drawing on Norse, Christian, and Arthurian influences. I'm pretty sure there are more avenues of interpretation than just those two.
Even though the title does not imply this is for Christians, many of his brief chapters at the beginning and ending of the book strongly indicate he is primarily aiming his lists for Christians. The many lists about growing in the Christian faith and regaining the Christian tradition indicate that fairly strongly as well. This makes his reticence to say "look out for the intense bad language and sexually explicit content" all that more confusing. He will nonchalantly say Aristophanes is vulgar and graphic with an attitude of "check it out and see how he does it!" but he will only say of Darwin most of his critics have misunderstood him. It's hard to understand at times why he is recommending some of the books he is recommending - even when his last chapter is about the importance of "plundering the Egyptians." The main focus of that "plundering the Egyptians" chapter is about recognizing "all truth is God's truth" (a very tiresome expression), and so we shouldn't feel bad about reading books by non-Christians. Yet, most of the non-Christians he recommends don't say things that are true! "Although Nietzsche is, from a biblical viewpoint, wrong in most of the conclusions he draws, he can be exceedingly prophetic in his insights." Huh? I don't think even Glaspey knows if he is praising or condemning Nietzsche. He is very ambivalent throughout the book on my topics/authors.
Obviously, I'm all for reading books by non-Christians (and not just because "all truth is God's truth"). Glaspey's survey of books he's read (or, in many cases, likely just heard about) does not give Christians many good reasons to do it, though. Nor does he give adequate warning about many authors' worldviews, especially considering his stated purpose in the book throughout the early chapters. He does toward the end say Christians can border (or tread into) arrogance if they think "they only need to read the Bible and can't learn anything from non-Christians," but it comes far too late in the work and does not explain so many perplexing entries for "classic" works. And it certainly doesn't explain why he has William Blake in the section on "Christian heritage"!
One small thing in this book's favor is his section on Contemporary Fiction. For him, that's '80s-'90s novels, for the most part, and since it's quite likely many people who read this today have not heard of most of them (like I haven't), it's good to have a list of titles and authors (even if what he says about them is potentially unreliable).
If one has never read a "here's a lot of great books you should read" sort of book before, and this is the first such book one has come across, I suppose it's not a thorough waste of time. Yet even his chapters on the importance of connecting to the rich Christian intellectual heritage do not make this book easy to recommend. If you know someone who has it, ask them to type of the titles of the books he recommends and then just get the list and go from there. You'll get about as much insight from a simple list of nouns than you would reading his annotations. Calling John Keats "[a] fine English poet" ... indeed! I'm giving you a Bill Cosby look of disgust right now, Mr. Glaspey.
March 21, 2011
Borrowed from a friend. Hope to find a copy for my bookshelf some day so I can refer back to it from time to time. Really liked when the author would point out - this is a good book to give to a nonbeliever, a good book to give to someone who just lost a loved one. Loved the insight. Added way to many books to my to-read list, but that's okay.
April 8, 2008
Fun and lots of new ideas. Wish this came in an LDS version, lol.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews