My current new read is the Bible.  I have managed to get past the first twenty pages or so, which is quite a feat as I have tried to read it a few times before.  There was a truly terrible made for TV movie from 2000 or 2001 about some key Bible figures on TV a week ago.  There were very many recognizable actors on it and it struck me how terrible a job they were doing.  They spoke their lines like they were reading the ingredient list off a soda bottle. I expected more feeling or passion than what I saw.  To me, a casual observer on the outside, I had always thought these stories were more moving and that they should engender more passion.

So I decided to read it for myself, and I have actually gotten through the part I saw on the movie and a little further.  I've been stuck reading about the red and purple stuff being made to house the golden ark (of the covenant?) and how many tabs should be on each side of each panel for the last few days. These explicit descriptions seem to get told to one person and then repeated. A lot.  For you Mosaic of Thought fans out there, my book to book connections for the Bible so far are:

I think they were talking about the dimensions of the ark and the curtains to go over it for about as long as Harry and Hermione were stuck in that damn tent in the woods and not quite as long as Imriel was tromping through the snow of Russia.

I am also getting a kick out of recognizing phrases from other books, like the use of the phrase 'Fat of the land'. I may get a two second flash of Lenny stroking a bunny each time I come across the phrase, but I do understand the influence of this work of literature on everything else, even if I have no familiarity with the original source material.  When you study English at school long enough you also get a half-way decent review of history since the two are so tied together. To a similar extent you get a smaller review of what is going on in the Bible, just from the sheer number of references made. 

I've had an interest in reading most of the basic religious texts from across the world for some time.  Jacqueline Carey's books have helped influence that as well, as has been my idle poking through the Unitarian websites.

I have to work to remind myself that though an interest in literature prompted this reading, it was not written as literature and therefore I have to deliberately choose not to be critical of execution of the story (as in the tendency for one person to get a description from God and then turn around and repeat everything to another person in entirety).

I've also been doing a lot of thinking about Neville Longbottom, but I do want to review a couple of chapters of HP7 before I write about it.