So now comes the tug-of-war for my synaptic dedication.  I’ve already managed to pull five or six books off the shelf, assuming this one to be the one I’m going to read next.  And trust me; there is no rhyme or reason to the quandary.

One more word about Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River.  As I’ve already said, I simply cannot “sum up” a book that has this kind of resonating depth. But I have rarely been “haunted” by a piece of fiction like I have with that one.  And by that term, I mean in a good way . . . 

So my shelf is yelling, thus:

Sherlock Holmes, The Complete Stories by Arthur Conan Doyle

Miracles, by C.S. Lewis

Strangers in the Land, by Stant Litore

Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

The Complete Stories, by Flannery O’Connor

The odd thing is, I’ve read some of these all the way through, years ago. But  age and supposed wisdom of the here and now presupposes that I missed half the game the first time around.

As for the Sherlock Holmes novels, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that, like the BBC/Benedict Cumberbatch adaptation of A Study in Scarlet (reconfigured to pink in the adaptation), that the first tactile presentation of Holmes was kept intact—that he truly WAS eccentricly beating on corpses in the morgue for forensic pursuits.

So my rationale for reading them is for comparative purposes—to see if Steven Moffat has maintained some integrity throughout the extant nine episodes.

Strangers is simply me taking the next step in Litore’s Zombie Bible series, and the Flannery O’Connor stuff will be read if for no other reason than to finally have all the reference points within them my good friend Steve makes about them. Besides, I’ve somehow gotten this far without having THE avatar for southern grotesque catholic literature ever making her way through my brain.  It’s time.

And for the record, C.S. Lewis will always be in my rotation.  He’s the best there ever was.  And I’ve already said essentially the same about Chesterton.  I’ve said before, if Twain and Lewis were tossed into a hay-bailer—Chesterton would come out on the other side.