Ti | Book Chatter

Sunday Matters

Good morning! The house feels really good right now. Carpets shampooed and all little tidbits of stuff Jinx was playing with have been put away or sent to her. The pup is a happy camper! She has her sunny stair back and dozes uninterrupted. I’ve never seen a dog smile so much.

My daughter got back to Missouri just fine. On the third day of school she had a snow day. Luckily she stocked up on food beforehand. Here we are, already at the end of January. I feel a touch of spring in the air, at least out here in Southern California.

Right Now:

I was going to sit back and enjoy my coffee but the sun is hitting this desk just right and all I see is dust. Need to jump on that.

Then, off to student ministry. We have a special event tonight so I will be heading back there this evening after today’s message.

This Week:

I have a lot on the calendar this week. It seems a little overwhelming. Plus, when my daughter was driving back from Disneyland something hit my windshield. It was a small crack but yesterday it went from an icy morning to 71 degrees so now the crack is all across the window. Getting it replaced on the 4th but I don’t think I can drive it that way.

Reading:

I finished The The Deluge. Click the link to catch the review. That was nearly 900 pages of “rough”. Markley is a master storyteller but climate change is a real horror show. After that one I needed something lighter so I went with Exiles.

Watching:

Still haven’t settled on a show to watch. There is so much out there right now. Here’s what I have in mind:

Wednesday
Yellowstone
The White Lotus
Only Murders in the Building (started it but lost interest)
Kaleidoscope

Grateful for:

Crisp, sunny days. It’s beautiful here.
The YouVersion Bible app. It’s handy, it keeps me in the Bible and it’s a great way to wind down at the end of the day.
That we found a new tax person after our beloved tax lady retired. I was going to do it myself but I just don’t have the energy or the drive these days.

How are you doing? Tell me.

The Deluge
By Stephen Markley
Simon & Schuster, 9781982123093, January 10, 2023, 896pp.

The Short of It:

This book left me feeling very frustrated and honestly, a little sick to my stomach. Climate change is terrifying.

The Rest of It:

In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. ~ Indiebound

In 2013, Tony is a scientist studying the effects of undersea methane. His discoveries are not welcome and result in death threats. As he continues with his studies, which take him into the mid-2030s, we are introduced to a cast of characters. Some broken, some desperate, some so driven that they are oblivious to their paths of destruction.

This is an ambitious and terrifying read because it gives us a glimpse of where we are headed. We are experiencing the effects of climate change now, but reading about what our lives could be 15 years from now is especially terrifying because I’m not sure we can do much about it at this point. So much damage has already been done. Is this our fate? Temps so hot that life cannot be sustained?

The Deluge is not a fun book to read but it is an important read. It’s nearly 900 pages but I plowed through it, hopeful that I’d find some glimmer of good somewhere in the text. That was not to be. This book will shake you up and leave you very unsettled. If that was Markley’s intent, then he succeeded.

Why read it? Because it’s important to consider how our actions affect life as we know it. Environmentally, rising temps, drought, poisonous gasses, and really, waste in general can do us in. Holing up in the safety of our homemade cocoons won’t save future generations.

Markley paints a very scary picture of the future. Do with that what you will.

Source: Review copy provided by the publisher.
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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