There's something in the air

I've never read any of Anne Rice's books, the themes of vampires and witches didn't hold any interest for me. But after watching Anne's interview with Charlie Rose the other night, I think I'll be reading her newest book "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt". I have the interview recorded on my TiVo, and went back to copy down some of the parts that really caught my attention.

In the interview, Anne talked about how she had been raised in the Catholic Church, but had become an atheist when she went away to college and started asking questions that challenged her old understandings. Then, years (and many novels) later, she had returned to her faith and to the Catholic Church. She said something like:

"Around 2002... I was in church and I was talking to the Lord about my work and what I was doing. And what I was saying, essentially, is 'I really want to do it all for You. I don't really want to write anything else except what's directly for You.' "

And she went on to talk about how the simplest thing to do was to just do it - write a book about Jesus' life, an autobiographical novel.

The other thing that really caught my attention in the interview was when they were talking about the research she had done for her book, and Charlie Rose asked her what was the best book she read about Jesus. She unequivocally answered that it was N.T. Wright's book "The Resurrection of the Son of God", and that N.T. Wright is "absolutely a monumental scholar". Knowing that so many emerging type people talk highly of N.T. Wright's books has led me to want to read his books as well, so I was really encouraged that he had such an influence on Anne Rice.

So I think I will be reading, or listening to, this book soon. It seems to be getting mixed reviews, but that does not surprise me. I think I will just go ahead and get the book from Audible and listen to it, since I have a book credit there - I'll let you know what I think when I'm done. If you follow this link to Audible, you can listen to a sample of the novel.

The final interaction from the interview that I'll quote:

Charlie Rose: "Do you think there's something in the air about religion these days?"
Anne Rice: "There must be, people are far more responsive to this than I ever expected they would be."