A World Undone

I am slowly reading a one volume history of World War One, entitled A World Undone. It is written by G.L. Meyer, and I am finding it very informative. I am also reading the second book of the Hunger Games, called "Catching Fire" by Suzanne Collins. I have found the Hunger Games to be a moving and provocative narrative. In a recent sermon to some high school students at Juan Diego Academy, I described the Hunger Games as set in what the world would have looked like if Mordor had won the battle for the Ring. It is an ugly world, with dark and extravagant extremes. Power and entertainment dominate the landscape of human relations. Death is a game, and the powerful control the society by combining fear and violent entertainment. Young people are placed in the middle of this macabre dance of socially sponsored death and games. But the young can be heroic, and Katniss the heroin of the tale, restores by her humanity in an inhuman situation, a genuine sense that things need not go the way of blood and power. Beauty is possible in a soul.

I am also reading the Son of Neptune, Rick Riordan's second volume in the Heroes of Olympus series. Designed for a younger set of readers than The Hunger Gmes, it is a series I have enjoyed thus far (one of my nieces urged me to read the Percy Jackon series, which is how I got hooked). Still, like the Hunger Games, the plots of the Percy Jackson series move because there is a threat that the world is set to destruction because of sinister and chaotic forces. And young people respond heroically to hold things together. What? You ask, the bishop spends his time reading childrens books? Well, I read lots of things, mostly at airports and on airplanes. It's good to know what young people are reading, and to learn a little from authors who seem to be in touch with what their fears and hopes are. Reading these two series you might be justified in thinking that many young people fear a world on the verge of falling apart, or governed by chaotic forces of death and control. You might even call it a fear of A World Undone. You might also find that many young people yearn for a nobler more heroic way to live a human life. 

I am also reading La isla de la Pasion, by Laura Restrepo. Before you jump to conclusions about what the title might suggest about content, let me say it is really a historical novel set on the island of Clipperton, out in the Pacific Ocean. When Clipperton was discovered by the Spanish explorers a couple of hundred of years before it was named La Isla de la Pasión. The island is the setting for a small crew of Mexican soldiers and their commander, and his wife. They are sent at the end of the Porfiriato to defend the island from a real or imagined threat of French invasion. I'll let you know how it turns out.