That’s my new Kindle Fire HD 8 above beside a real book I’m also reading. It is my second Kindle ever and 1 inch taller which does make the print a little larger and easier to read, but there are some things I don’t like as well as on my old 5-year-old Kindle. First, the cover is simply not as good and does not stand up on my dining table as well as the old one. Inside it is more complicated and confusing to use electronically for this old man – beginning to show my age? But I will get used to it and love it eventually. 🙂
The Strange Juxtaposition of Two Books I’m Reading
DIGITAL ON KINDLE: The Seven Storey Mountain
Written in 1948, this is the autobiography of a spiritual mentor whose writings I like and who is of the same generation of my parents, Thomas Merton. He describes his “coming of age” as an adult and discovering who he really is from first the adventures of life and then the spiritual dimension of life and at 68% through the book (Kindle tells you that) he is still struggling with what his vocation will be but even more so with his relationship with God. Been there, done that! 🙂
REAL PAPER BOOK FROM FRIEND: The Gringos Hawk (not available digitally)
I’m only about a fourth of the way through this hardback book which is also an adult coming of age autobiography of a young man of my generation this time, published in 2001. Not as spiritual as Merton’s, yet more adventurous as American Jon Marañon ends up in southern Costa Rica on the Pacific Coast (where I love traveling) and as a 23 year old buys a tract of land on the coast at a bargain price. Then the problems and adventures begin dealing with government regulations, local farmers, and even a “witch” along with illnesses, injuries, etc. And that is as far as I am in the story now. But it is the kind of thing I too might have done in the 1960’s if I had not been, like Thomas Merton, highly motivated by what I considered a “calling” from God. Young men struggling with who they are!
I will report back when I have finished both bios and how I am relating to them then. It is funny how I identify with both guys of two different generations and two different worlds and somehow ended up reading both stories at the same time. 🙂
Listening to God and/or ourselves is a lifelong task, unless we just give up. Too many people do somewhere along the way. Thanks for staying alert, my friend.
Great commentary Charles! I believe that reading a lot of different writers and traveling to a lot of different places will keep me in tune with both God and my fellow humans and certainly brings joy into my life! ~Charlie, Retired in Costa Rica — ¡Pura Vida!