Like authors Ann Sloane and Clive Anderson, who have co-authored one of the many books commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Titanic's sinking, I recall being mesmerized as an 11 year-old boy by the accounts of her demise in 1912 and her rediscovery in 1985. When a complimentary copy of Silent Voices: Learning from the Titanic recently arrived in the post, it was a foregone conclusion that I would read it and  complete it exactly 100 years to the night that Titanic sank with such great loss of life.

David P. Murray has it exactly right: depressed people cannot usually read a book running to hundreds of pages - even if the book is about their very own condition. Murray, a former pastor and current professor who has ministered to many depressed people and who teaches seminary-level counseling, offers 112 pages entitled Christians Get Depressed Too as a primer and an emergency guide for depressed Christians and those who minister to them.

We tend to like our university or college textbooks and systematic theology volumes neatly packaged and carefully laid out according to topic. We tend to like Bibles featuring concordances and "What to read when..." sections at the back. But the Bible isn't laid out topically and real life isn't straightforward either. Psalm 51, as Paul David Tripp memorably describes it, is the beautiful result of "a tawdry and disgusting story, one you wouldn't read if it were a paperback at your local bookstore." In Whiter Than Snow: Meditations on Sin and Mercy, Tripp gives the themes of Psalm 51 breathing room to allow its high and low points to sink deeply into the mind, soul, and spirit of the reader.