Mormon Settlement in Arizona by James H. McClintock
BiblioBazaar - Aug 2008
Reprint of 1921 edition
Out of Print
For Such A Time As This, Volume 2: Gospels
Northwestern Pub. House (1991)
For Such a Time as This: Epistles (Comfort From Meditations, Volume 3)
Northwestern Pub. House (1991)
For Such A Time As This, Volume 1: Old Testament
Northwestern Pub. House (1991)
About the author:
Terry Tempest Williams is full to the brim. When she was younger, she wrote books about her life with and separation from her Mormon family and the church itself; about our distance from nature; about democracy, freedom and responsibility; about communicating with stones. Williams is an ecosystem writer — concepts in her world are joined together by physical and spiritual threads. For some, she can be too much. No vessel, least of all a book, can contain her.
Review:
The book requires some effort, yes. The mind is not always ready to connect pieces for itself, especially in a world that is more than happy to make connections for you. But Williams fills “Finding Beauty in a Broken World” with so many glinting surfaces that the mind wants to connect them: the wide-open eyes of the prairie dog, and those of the mother watching her 5-year-old daughter raped and discarded; the bones in the American Museum of Natural History, and the bones in the church where 10,000 Rwandan people were murdered; the dignity of Lily, the artist who invited Williams and others to Rwanda to build a wall of names of the victims of the genocide, and that of William’s own father, “direct and unapologetic in the losses he has suffered.”
‘Finding Beauty in a Broken World’ by Terry Tempest Williams
By Susan Salter Reynolds
Los Angeles Times 30 November 2008
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-ca-terry-tempest-williams30-2008nov30,0,3227571.story
Reviewer’s Point-of-view:
It’s hard for anyone living in Utah to ignore polygamy; it’s everywhere in the media at least once a week. But if one is descended from the original Mormon pioneers — who came to Utah and settled it so they could practice polygamy (even if the official LDS Church did give up the practice in 1890) — then polygamy hangs like a huge cloud over an otherwise proud history.
My great-great grandfather had 5 wives and 32 children — that we know of.
Yup. Polygamy is part of my past, like it or not.
Review summary:
Still, it’s worth reading if one has an interest in polygamy. AnnEliza’s story is told well, probably better than she told it herself a century ago. That alone makes the book valuable. But the contemporary thriller isn’t bad.
Book Review By Me: The 19th Wife: A Novel by David Ebershoff
A Paperback Writer 28 November 2008
http://apaperbackwriter.blogspot.com/2008/11/book-review-by-me-19th-wife-novel-by.html
In this heartwarming, feel-good story based on an actual event, distrust, abandonment, and lack of hope give way to love and service in an early morning seminary class full of problem kids who help their teacher pay an overdue debt of gratitude.
Seasons of Salvation is about a young girl abandoned at birth. It’s about a mother finding a daughter. It’s about a group of ordinary students caught up in doing extraordinary things. And it’s about everyone who wants to make a difference in the world.
Young Women Book Club December 2008 Book
LDS Young Women Book Club 27 November 2008
http://ywbookclub.blogspot.com/2008/11/december-2008-book.html
To an extent, because of these lacunae, reading the book is a frustrating experience. We leave the story not completely sure of what was real and what imagined. Nor are we sure to what degree blame for whatever happened should attach to Rudd as opposed to Lael. Reading the book, then, is not exactly a pleasant experience. Yet the author does a good job of suggesting events through the hazy focus of Rudd’s point of view. It feels like we’re watching a madman’s actions from the inside out. It’s not fun, but it’s an impressive feat.
Evenson, Brian: The Open Curtain
By Debra Hamel
The Book Blog 27 November 2008
http://www.book-blog.com/2008/11/evenson-brian-the-open-curtain.html
Stories of Mormon polygamy abound, but little is written of the unrelenting violence and brutality toward anyone who impinged on perceived Mormon rights and territory in the 19th century.
Jones attempts to capture the sinister Mormon past in this novel spanning more than a half-century, with gentiles pursuing their own lives and mining ventures in land coveted by the newly settled Mormons.
[Clearly a reviewer, if not a book, with a bias against the Mormons of the latter 19th Century. "Unrelenting violence and brutality"? Really?]
Specialty bookshelf: reviews of regional, children’s and mystery titles
This review by Joan Hinkemeyer
Rocky Mountain News 27 November 2008
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/nov/27/specialty-bookshelf-reviews-of-regional-and/
For a more extensive treatment of the symbols of the Salt Lake Temple see Matthew Brown and Paul Smith’s excellent book Symbols in Stone.
Salt Lake Temple Symbols
Temple Study 27 November 2008
http://www.templestudy.com/2008/11/27/salt-lake-temple-symbols/
The book that may have helped me most appreciate and enjoy the LDS temple was actually written by a Jewish scholar. The book Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1985) was written Jon D. Levenson who was at the University of Chicago at the time, but now is at Harvard. I read his book while finishing graduate school at BYU over 20 years ago. On page after page, I encountered what seemed to be possible evidence that ancient Temple practices - covenant making, symbols, meanings, themes - had been restored to some degree in the modern LDS Temple.
Temple Symbolism: Lundquist’s Academic Paper on (Ancient) Temple Typology
By Jeff Lindsay
Mormanity 26 November 2008
http://mormanity.blogspot.com/2008/11/temple-symbolism-lundquists-academic.html
New York Doll (2005) A hilarious and heartbreaking portrait of New York Dolls bassist Arthur “Killer” Kane. Proto-punk, survivor, Mormon, corpse: This may be the single most representative career arc of the whole scene.
Punkology primer
By Ty Burr
Boston Globe 28 November 2008
http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2008/11/28/punkology_primer/
The Hole is a serial apocalyptic horror novel, based in Mormon mythology, about a global plague, zombies, and a small group of survivors making their way across a very weird Midwest.
The Hole: A Serial Novel of Supernatural Apocalypse
by Aaron Ross Powell
Aaron Ross Powell: Fiction and Philosophy:
http://www.aaronrosspowell.com/thehole
