Selfless Genes and Zennish Prophets

I've just finished Charles Foster's The Selfless Gene: Living with God and Darwin. I was expecting a straightforward Christian defence of theistic evolution, but what emerged was both more fascinating and more frustrating and raised as many questions as it set out to answer. Read my review here.

Unrelatedly, except that I was given them both for Christmas, I've also just finished Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. Profound spiritual genius or meaningless New-Agey nonsense wrapped up in impenetrably poetic prose? In this it reminded me strongly of Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist and also of William Nicholson's Wind on Fire and Seeker trilogies. Maybe I've still got too much evangelical baggage to be able to handle books which mix up Christianity, Buddhism and Islam quite so freely (though I loved Life of Pi).

Unfinished books list

I'm a great starter of books but I've only recently faced up to what a terrible finisher I am. Here's a list of all the books I've started in the last few years and which are crying out piteously to me to finish them. It's not a reflection on the quality of the books - just on my staying power as a reader.

• A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth (fantastic but just too damn long!!)
• A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal by Asne Seierstad
• The Snow Geese, William Fiennes 
• Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels 
• Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis (the only Lewis book I've not managed to finish) 
• All Hallow's Eve, Charles Williams 
• A Voyage to Arcturus, David Lindsay
• The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham (our copy was missing its last pages - aarrgh!)
• Head Over Heels in the Dales, Gervaise Phinn
• The Flight of the Sparrow, Fay Sampson
• Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen (after watching a TV adaptation, so already knew the ending)
• Mansfield Park, Jane Austen (ditto)
• The Road Less Travelled, M. Scott Peck
• Lesslie Newbigin, Missionary Theologian: A Reader, Paul Weston
• Love Beyond Reason, John Ortberg
• Life of the Beloved, Henri Nouwen
• Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, Henri Nouwen
• Prayer, Philip Yancey
• Renovation of the Heart, Dallas Willard
• God of Surprises, Gerard Hughes
• The Christian and the Pharisee, R.T. Kendall and David Rosen

And that's nothing to the pile of books I've borrowed, bought or been given but haven't even started reading yet!