Saturday, January 19, 2013

Saturday Good Reads: Soul-Stirrers


We saw Les Miserables last night at the movie theater. As we drove home, my wife asked me if I liked it or The Hobbit better. I said they were both different movies, but Les Miserables stirred the soul. 

What a movie. That’s all I can say. What a movie. 

What it reminded me of was other things, the things I’ve read and seen that stirred my soul. 

Like Don Quixote by Cervantes. 

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. And perhaps David Copperfield. (My wife prefers A Tale of Two Cities.) 


Augustine of Hippo by Peter Brown. 

Chariots of Fire. Slumdog Millionaire.  


The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes. 

Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. 


The First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. 


There are other films and books, of course. Things come first to mind for me. There is something about all of them – a certain nobility of spirit, an aspiration for something higher, a reach inside ourselves for something that touches and wraps our hearts. 

I considered something else, too. This soul-stirring business – it’s likely why I write. 

What stirs your soul?

5 comments:

  1. Glynn, you often stir my soul, just so you know. Les Mis...absolutely. This world needs more Jean Valjeans!Thank you for yet another reading list!I have to get to A Light Shining first. It sits on my desk and stares at me while I finish McCourt's Tis.

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  2. All of the above -- books, poetry, and of course, certain films...

    but what stirs my soul the most -- music, especially hymns.

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  3. I took my 13-year-old daughter to see Les Mis. She asked me why Javert killed himself. I tried to explain. She said, "Doesn't he have a soul?" It was the first spiritual discussion we'd had in ages.

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  4. What stirs my soul? Music, undoubtedly. The soundtrack from the film The Mission, especially
    Gabriel's Oboe. Also, The Odes of Solomon (Andrew Schreiner). Anything Fernando Ortega sings.

    Well, and anything from Les Mis.
    Always.

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