books
- Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. This is a futurist masterpiece of a novel that reads really fresh even though it was written back in 2000. Really good stuff.
- The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. A fantasy novel that doesn’t get so lost in the fantasy world that it forgets to have a plot. This is basically your favorite con-man story set in a fascinating fantasy world. I understand that the second book in the series is out now, so I need to get on it.
- Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. This one has been at the top of a lot of year-end lists, and while it may not deserve that, it was very entertaining. Set in the future, but full of 1980’s nostalgia, this was a fun, engaging read. (Stephen Granade has a good post outlining some ways that Ready Player One could’ve been changed to be a much better novel.)
- Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxes. This biography of the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer is both thorough and thoroughly fascinating. A long but worthwhile read.
- A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World by Paul E. Miller. A highly practical book on incorporating prayer into your everyday life. An easy read, very worthwhile.
The Anxious Christian - Rhett Smith
Sorry for turning this into a book review blog of sorts. One of these days I’m going to get to some more serious posting. For now, though, I’m going to get the books reviewed that I need to. Bear with me.
The subtitle of Rhett Smith’s book The Anxious Christian is either a very silly rhetorical question or designed to feed the anxieties of the target audience. “Can God use your anxiety for good?” Well, of course He can. God’s ability in that regard has never really been in question. If you’re one of Smith’s anxious Christians, though, maybe your anxiety about God’s ability will drive you to buy the book.
Smith uses the early chapters of the book to recount his own struggle with anxiety as a young man. The loss of his mother and several other close relatives at an early age drove him to compulsive behaviors in an attempt to bring some control to his anxious, insecure life. Smith then explores the lessons he has learned from seeing God’s work in his life.
Christians who don’t wrestle with anxiety on a regular basis may immediately point to Phillippians 4 where Paul instructs us to “be anxious for nothing”. Smith addresses this directly in the first chapter, saying that while the instruction is “powerful” and is often counseled by those who “mean well”, we can inadvertently communicate the wrong message.
When we discourage others from safely expressing their anxiety, then we are essentially saying to them that anxiety is a bad emotion, and that it is something to be done away with. It communicates to them that perhaps something is wrong with their Christian faith…
Kierkegaard referred to anxiety as our “best teacher” because of its ability to keep us in a struggle that strives for a solution, rather than opting to forfeit the struggle and slide into a possible depression.
There, in a nutshell, is what Smith is going to come back to in nearly every chapter of the book: to recognize that God is continuously at work in us, and that our anxiety can be useful if it drives us forward to continued struggle and action. He says that God “uses [your anxiety] to awaken you and help turn you toward Him.” In chapter four he goes further to say that “God wants you to pay attention to it [anxiety]. He wants you to listen to it. For in your anxiety God is speaking to you and He is encouraging you to not stay content with where you are.”
In the last few chapters, Smith puts his experience as a marriage and family therapist to good use as he provides some practical suggestions for working in areas that often cause anxiety; he discusses setting good personal boundaries, refining personal relationships, and asking for help.
With a topic like this, an author runs the risk of playing the victim card, but Smith handles it deftly. As one who has struggled with anxiety at various times in my adult life, I appreciated the reminder that God is at work in my life. While I know it to be true, Smith’s book was a welcome kick-in-the-pants reminder.
Note: Moody Press provided me a free copy of this book asking only that I give it a fair review.
The Road Trip that Changed the World - Mark Sayers
Australian pastor and author Mark Sayers put out a request for reviews of his new book, The Road Trip that Changed the World a few weeks ago, and I’m happy today to take him up on it. I had previously read his book Vertical Self and enjoyed it quite a bit, so I was looking forward to his newest offering.
The Road Trip that Changed the World draws its title and chief topic from the classic American novel On The Road by Jack Kerouac. Sayers examines how Kerouac’s novel incited a generation to leave the ideals of home, family, and place and instead to chase the dream of the road, the hope of whatever lays just beyond the horizon.
He spends a good chapter discussing our search for the transcendent, and notes how when we fail to notice and embrace the transcendence in the material here and now, we end up constantly looking for the next “woosh” - a fleeting moment of awe that makes us feel alive but quickly leaves us searching for the next hit.
The first two-thirds of the book is devoted to this examination of the shift in American culture brought on by Kerouac; the last third brings things around to the gospel. Sayers discusses Abraham as “the first counter-cultural rebel”, and traces a path through the Old and New Testaments, ultimately concluding that we need to reject the endless search for the “woosh” over the horizon, instead finding joy and meaning and transcendence in the here and now, as we experience true community and relationship with God.
I’ll say this - Sayers has the spirit of the times nailed. If anything, I didn’t respond to it more because it already seemed so familiar. His diagnosis of cynicism, distance, and the search for transcendence in “woosh” moments is right on. His prescription of embracing community and finding transcendence in experiencing God is a call appropriate for the time. If my cynical generation is willing to hear it, The Road Trip that Changed the World is a great call back to what really matters.
Note: I was provided a free copy of the book in return for reading and posting a fair review.
Second-guessing God
Stringfellow is just full of good stuff. Still in Chapter Two of An Ethic for Christians an Other Aliens in a Strange Land, he says this about trying to understand God:
Biblical ethics do not pretend the social or political will of God; biblical politics do not implement “right” or “ultimate” answers. In this world, the judgment of God remains God’s own secret. … It is the inherent and redundant frustration of any pietistic social ethics that the ethical question is presented as a conundrum about the judgment of God in given circumstances. Human beings attempting to cope with that ethical question are certain to be dehumanized. The Bible does not pose any such riddles nor aspire to any such answers; instead, in biblical context, such queries are transposed, converted, rendered new. In the Bible, the ethical issue becomes simply: how can a person act humanly now? … Here the ethical question juxtaposes the witness of the holy nation - Jerusalem - to the other principalities, institutions and other nations - as to which Babylon is a parable. It asks: how can the Church of Jesus Christ celebrate human life in society now?
Stringfellow on Revelation
In the second chapter of William Stringfellow’s An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land, he continues to contrast the two cities mentioned in the latter half of Revelation: Babylon and Jerusalem. The Babylon of Revelation, he says, “is archetypical of all nations.” Those nations are principalities that, Stringfellow argues, by their very nature are anti-human; they serve themselves and work against that which is good. Jerusalem, on the other hand, is representative of Christians as “an embassy among the principalities” or as “a pioneer community”. (These phrases remind me instantly of N. T. Wright’s similar description of the Church in Surprised by Hope.)
But Revelation, says Stringfellow, cannot be read as a “predestinarian forecast”.
To view the Babylon material in Revelation as mechanistic prophecy - or to treat any part of the Bible in such a fashion - is an extreme distortion of the prophetic ministry….
A construction of Revelation as foreordination denies in its full implication that either principalities or persons are living beings with identities of their own and with capabilities of decision and movement respected by God. And, in the end, such superstitions demean the vocation which the Gospels attribute to Jesus Christ, rendering him a quaint automaton, rather than the Son, of God.
While my Calvinist friends will quibble with the thought that humans have “capabilities of decision and movement respected by God”, I find that last sentence to be a compelling thought - that the work of Jesus Christ redeeming the world is magnified if his work is redeeming free and willful men, and that if, as in the strong Calvinist view, the whole cosmic saga is already completely fixed in history, then Christ is, in a way, just one more player in a pre-defined role.
William Stringfellow: "An Ethic for Christians & Other Aliens In A Strange Land
Among the many Christmas gifts I received this year, I was quite pleased to get a book which had been sitting on my Amazon wishlist for several months: William Stringfellow’s An Ethic for Christians & Other Aliens in a Strange Land. I will confess to having been completely ignorant of Stringfellow prior to someone online (I forget who) recommending this book, but he seems to have been a fascinating fellow; an Anglican layman who graduated Harvard Law only to move to Harlem and doing pro bono legal work for racial minorities and sex offenders.
To quote Ben Myers excellent summary of Stringfellow’s emphasis:
The most striking feature of Stringfellow’s work is his powerful analysis and critique of the “principalities.” For him, the principalities are institutionalised forms of death. Institutions exist for the sake of their own expansion and self-perpetuation; they are not subject to human control, but are autonomous entities vis-à-vis all human agency. Human beings often believe “that they control the institution; whereas, in truth, the principality claims them as slaves” (Free in Obedience, p. 99).
I’m only 35 pages into this slim 150-page volume - having read only the introduction and Chapter 1 - but I’m immediately struck by how timely his critique of American government and corporate institutions is. Consider this:
The Fall is where the nation is… Americans have become so beleaguered by anxiety and fatigue, so bemused and intimidated, so beset by a sense of impotence and by intuitions of calamity, that they have, for the most part, become consigned to despair. The people have been existing under a state of such interminable warfare that it seems normative. There is little resistance to the official Orwellian designation of war as peace, nor does that rhetorical deception come near exhausting the ways in which the people have found the government to be unworthy of credence or trust. Racial conflict has been suppressed by an elaborate apartheid; products which supposedly mean abundance or convenience turn out to contaminate or jeopardize life; the environment itself is rendered hostile; there is pervasive babel; privacy is a memory because surveillance is ubiquitous; institutional coercion of human beings has proliferated relentlessly. Whatever must be said of earlier times, in the past quarter century America has become a technological totalitarianism in which hope, in its ordinary human connotations, is being annihilated. … Americans have been learning, harshly, redundantly, that they inherit or otherwise possess no virtue or no vanity which dispels the condition of death manifest everywhere in the nation. (p. 19-20)
If Stringfellow felt this strongly in 1973, what would he be thinking today in 2012?
An Ethic is not quick reading but to this point every page has been worthwhile.
My 2011 Reading
The end of the year means it’s time for a summary of my last year’s reading. Thankfully Goodreads keeps it easy for me to track things; I don’t have to remember to do much more than log my books when I’m done with them (on the handy Android app) and at the end of the year I have this nifty list.
By the Numbers I finished 51 books this year, which made it an average year for me. 19 of those were non-fiction, leaving 32 as fiction. (You can see the whole list on Goodreads if you really want to.) As usual, my non-fiction is basically theology, with a little bit of science and history thrown in. The fiction is essentially scifi, fantasy, and legal/political thrillers.
Best fiction I gave 5-star ratings to 3 novels this year that were first-time reads. They were:
Best non-fiction
There are two books that deserve mentions here.
The Stinker
There was only one book that I gave just one star to this year, and I won’t even give it the honor of linking to it on Amazon: Abyss by Paul Hagberg. I can do no better than to quote my review from goodreads:
I should’ve known just from the cover and flyleaf that this particular bit if genre fiction was going to be a train wreck. And yet, like a train wreck, once I started I couldn’t look away.
Ridiculous plot premise, unbelievable protagonist (former CIA director turned bodyguard?!?), uninspired prose and underdeveloped characters fill the 400+ pages of this tome. The author seems contractually obligated to describe each female character in terms of breast size, but mishandles the interpersonal scenes so badly that you wonder if he’s actually ever had an interpersonal relationship.
The cover of the book proclaims it to be “A Kirk McGarvey Novel”, leading me to believe that there are more books out there starring this ridiculous character. My advice: avoid them. Avoid this one, too.
So that’s my 2011. Here’s hoping that 2012 finds me reading the best of books new and old. (Leave any recommendations in the comments below!)
Introverts in the Church
I’ve been doing a slow-and-steady re-read of Adam McHugh’s Introverts in the Church, and words don’t well express how much I resonate with what he is saying. Just as I read Dilbert and think that Scott Adams must’ve worked where I work to get it that right, I read McHugh and think he must’ve served in the same churches I’ve served in. Amazing.
Last night I got to chapter 5, “Introverted Community and Relationships”, and found a few paragraphs that were so apt that I couldn’t resist sharing them.
As introverts seek to enter into and participate in particular communities, their trajectory of commitment may take a different shape than that of their extroverted counterparts. extroverts, who want to increase their level of involvement, may proceed roughly in a straight line as they move from the periphery into the nucleus of the community. … The journey of introverts into a community, however, is better conceptualized as a spiral. They take steps into a community, but then spiral out of it in order to regain energy, to reflect on their experiences and to determine if they are comfortable in that community. They move between entry, retreat and reentry, gradually moving deeper into the community on each loop.
The introverted path into community, much to the confusion of many extroverts, never reaches a point in which the spiraling form is shed.
You know how it feels when someone puts words to something that you’ve always felt and experienced but haven’t been able to describe? That’s how I feel when reading that passage. That’s what my pattern has been, or has needed to be, for the past 10 years.
Some more:
An introverted college student I worked with…encountered several reactions when he chose to step outside of his community after two years of consistent participation. Extroverted leaders chided him for his lack of commitment and were convinced that his pulling back was indicative of a larger spiritual problem infecting his heart. The pastor of the community arranged meetings with him to understand what was happening and what was the source of his dissatisfaction with the group. These efforts, as well intentioned as they were, only pushed him further away instead of drawing him back into his previous level of commitment.
And yes, I’ve been there. And I’m thankful to be in a place now where that isn’t happening.
Slowing Down
I’ve read a lot of books the past few years. As my Goodreads account will attest, I’ve averaged a book every 5 - 6 days for the past four years, and to date in 2011 I’m still on that pace. The book pile next to my bed waxes and wanes with library visits and Amazon shipments. I’ve always been a quick reader. This can be a beneficial thing at times, but it also means that sometimes I’m still picking up detail on my second and third times through a book. I’m coming to the conclusion now, though, that I need to slow down.
I’ve read a number of books over the last few years that have, at the time, stuck out to me as being particularly insightful and helpful to me thinking. (Wright’s Surprised by Hope, Capon’s Between Noon and Three, and McHugh’s Introverts in the Church quickly come to mind in this category.) But with the exception of Surprised by Hope (which I read through multiple times, underlined extensively, and attempted to blog), the other books I read quickly, went “wow, that’s good stuff”, and then put them down.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to me, but it holds more impact when written down in black and white: the value I get from reading the book is in direct proportion to the amount of time I’m willing to devote to digging in to it.
So, I want to slow down. I want to cut down on the number of frivolous novels I read, and focus in on the valuable stuff. I want to take books a chapter or two at a time, chew on the thoughts, and fill up a Moleskine making notes on them afterwards. I want to use this blog as a place to wrestle with and promote the good stuff I find in those books. I want this exercise to sharpen my thinking, hone my writing, and draw me closer to Christ. By His grace may it be so.
I’ll keep you posted on what I’m doing.
Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions
Have you ever read a book that turned everything you had been taught about a subject upside down? That’s where I feel I’m at on the topic of cross-gender friendships after reading Dan Brennan’s Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions.
Growing up in the evangelical church, what I’ve been taught about friendships between men and women goes something like this: be careful. Stay away (mostly). Male-female relationships mostly just lead to sex. Once you’re old enough to marry, find that right person. That person then needs to be your best, closest friend, and only cross-gender close friend for the rest of your life. Beware of spending time with people of the opposite sex for fear of damaging your reputation. (Because after all, if a man and a woman develop any sort of a relationship, it’s going to lead to sex.) Take a step even further back and make sure you don’t even do much serious communicating with those of the opposite sex because you might venture into “emotional infidelity” to your spouse.
But wait, you say, there is truth in these things. Marital unfaithfulness is, sadly, not too uncommon in the church. And when it happens, it’s devastating to men, women, children, families. I know this. As a church leader I’ve seen first-hand the damage that can be caused. But I resonate with Dan Brennan when he says that the evangelical church has gone the (sadly) usual route of putting up legalistic barriers “for protection” rather than taking down the walls and allowing for the possibility that good things could run wild. This idea that male-female relationships inevitably end in sex is something we’ve gotten from Sigmund Freud, not from God. Why can’t we wait to let Galatians 3:28 soak in (“here is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.") before immediately saying “Yes, but…”?
Brennan persuasively argues that, pre-Freud, it was not uncommon for the language of friendship (both in same-gender and cross-gender friendships) to be personal and intimate in ways that make our modern minds squirm with Freud-inferred sexual tension. Yet, Brennan says, these friendships often chastely existed, and indeed co-existed alongside the healthy marriages of one or both of the friends. He quotes liberally from the early and medieval church, and cites three Biblical examples: David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi, and Jesus and Mary Magdalene. In each case these relationships were intense, deep, intimate friendships; and yet in each case, no matter what Freud would tell us, these friendships were good and right and appropriate. While Brennan is arguing at times based on what he (reasonably) infers from the text, I believe the burden of proof is on those who would say “no” to this type of relationships rather than on he who is saying “yes”.
If I had one gripe with Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions while reading, it was that I wanted more practical advice or examples of what these friendships would look like when worked out in real life. Brennan provides some examples from his own cross-gender friendships; he touches briefly on things like prayer and conversation, recreation, and physical affection. But as I reflect on it, I realize I’m thinking wrongly about it. I don’t really need a book to tell me what friendships should look like. But though I agreed with Brennan that we’ve set legalistic fences in the wrong places, in expecting more concrete examples what I was really asking was “OK, where do we move the fences to?”. And if that’s all I’m asking, I’ve missed Brennan’s point. He’s saying, instead, “take down the fences.”
I’m not sure that the church is really ready to deal with Dan Brennan’s book. His ideas require buy-in from a lot of people if they are going to work. And yet, if the church were to truly buy into it, we would be a powerful example to the world of how God’s redemptive work truly makes all things new… even relationships between men and women.
Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions is worth reading and chewing on for a while. You can get it from Amazon.
Books in my reading queue
My reading queue has been backed up for a while now, and I’ll admit that I only make things worse by buying books and regularly hitting the library. I’ve been entertaining myself with some light popular spy thrillers lately, but it’s time to put those down and work through some better stuff. Here are a few that are in my pile:
Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions: Engaging the Mystery of Friendship Between Men and Women by Dan Brennan. 
I had this one on my Amazon wishlist for a while after John Armstrong wrote about it. Becky bought it for me for Valentine’s Day and it’s been sitting in the pile ever since. The author’s premise is that there is a meaningful place in the Christian life for close friendships between members of the opposite sex who are not married to each other. Typically this has been something that Christians have advised against, usually on the basis of wanting to protect marriage… but I’m interested in what the author has to say.
Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace by Robert Farrar Capon 
I got this one for Christmas and have already read it once, but it really merits a re-read and perhaps a blog post or two or three. This is a fascinating little book on grace, and there were two or three particular places in it that caught me square on and have gripped my thinking ever since. Definitely time for a re-read.
Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. 
I don’t even remember what blog I was reading that recommended this sci-fi novel, but the review was good, and the summary looked good, and the library had it… so it’s in my queue. I do love me some sci-fi.
Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture by Adam McHugh. 
This goes into the re-read category as well. I read things too quickly sometimes, and this was one that I buzzed through on the way to some other book. It deserves a more thoughtful re-read; there’s a lot in it that could be very helpful to me and other introverts out there.
Well, enough for now. Any recommendations on other books I should add to the queue?
The Perils of Hipster Christianity
Brett McCracken’s column that appeared on the Wall Street Journal website yesterday really hit home for me. McCracken, 27, outlines the increasing efforts that the evangelical church has made to try to attract and keep 20-somethings. Whether it’s the obsession with being culturally savvy, or with being technologically cutting-edge, or with using shock tactics (‘you’ve never heard your pastor talk about *this* before’), McCracken argues that they are simply gimmicks that may bring people in the door; “But”, he asks “what sort of Christianity are they being converted to?”
Quoting David Wells, he further adds:
And the further irony is that the younger generations who are less impressed by whiz-bang technology, who often see through what is slick and glitzy, and who have been on the receiving end of enough marketing to nauseate them, are as likely to walk away from these oh-so-relevant churches as to walk into them.
McCracken concludes that “cool Christianity” is not a “sustainable path forward”, and that, “when it comes to church, [twentysomethings] don’t want cool as much as we want real”.
It’s worth reading the whole post. I, for one, give him a hearty Amen.
Book Review: <em>The Echo Within</em> by Robert Benson
There is a particular class of inspirational book these days that you can identify on the shelf without even looking at the content. First is the book’s size - usually no larger than 5 by 8 inches. Second is the cover art - typically a scenic vista or natural landscape, meant to soothe and inspire. I didn’t get a look at the cover art before I agreed to accept a free copy of The Echo Within from Waterbrook Press and review it on my blog, but as soon as I pulled it out of the envelope, I started to wonder. Is this gonna be another one of those fluffy inspirational books?
Robert Benson is the author of over a dozen books, all of which he describes on his website as being about one thing: “paying attention”. Says Benson:
I write about paying attention for the things that can point us to the Sacred in our lives. About the longings that we have for home and community and a sense of belonging. About practice and ritual and work and contemplation and the way that such things can be constant reminders of who we are and who we are to become.
And in this little volume, as you might guess from its title, Benson urges us to listen to “the echo within” - the little voice within ourselves that gives us some inclination of choices we should make, directions we should take, things we should believe. In the first chapter he describes it this way:
I am coming to believe that the small voice within me is an echo of the Voice that is still speaking the incarnate word that I am here to become, an echo of the Voice that spoke us all into being, an echo of the Voice that spoke all that is alive.
Sometimes we are hesitant to trust that small voice within us because we think it is just ourselves doing the talking… because we have heard a similar voice inside us say things that are hurtful and angry and hateful, to ourselves and about others.
We must learn to listen deeper and deeper, seeking out the true voice within us that echoes the Voice of the One Who made us…
The fact that the Voice that calls to us often sounds like our own is not something to be mistrusted or feared. It is a sign of how close God is to us.
Benson has some good insights in The Echo Within about recognizing the talents, inclinations, and desires that God has built into us - sometimes we do tend to make this whole “God’s leading” thing more difficult than it needs to be - but on the whole Benson strays just a little too far in the “listen to your inner voice” direction, with no balance of recognizing the Truth that is revealed to us in Scripture.
For the person running weary and needing some quiet encouragement, The Echo Within might be a nice little volume to pick up. Read and consider it with discernment, though. That inner voice might be God, but then again, it might not be.
Book I Read: <em>The Weapon</em> by David Poyer
Normally I’d write up a whole 250-word review for a book I finished, but The Weapon by David Poyer just doesn’t inspire that sort of review. I’ve enjoyed Poyer’s other Dan Lenson novels but this one was really just okay. A middling, disjointed story at best. As big a fan as I was of Tom Clancy back in the 90’s, I should be the last to criticize authors for hanging on and writing a long series around a single character, but Poyer appears to be the next in a long line of authors that have burned out their series that way (see also: Tom Clancy, Dale Brown).
So, yeah, I read it, and was mildly entertained… but only mildly. It’s time for these authors to start writing some creative plots instead of just stringing us along for yet another novel featuring the same guy in similar situations. Bleh.
Book Review: <em>The Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music</em> by Ben Ratliff
Normally when we think about musicians and “their music”, we think about the music that they write, perform, and record. But author Ben Ratliff (jazz critic for the New York Times) decided to ask a different question. What do these musicians listen to and find influential? What are they thinking and hearing as they listen to the music? So Ratliff met with a dozen or so noted jazz musicians, asked them what tracks they’d like to listen to, and then relates to us the experience and conversations of listening to the music with the musicians. The result is The Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music. It turns out to be fascinating stuff.
Though I am a musician and fancy myself a fan (though not a hardcore aficionado) of jazz, it quickly became clear to me that the plane these guys think on is just incredibly high. It is fascinating in its own way, though, listening to serious jazz players talk about how they think about jazz. My favorite part of the book, though, was the reference list at the back, where Ratliff lists each recording that he listened to with each of the musicians. It has been a great input for my personal playlist… so much to explore.
If you’re a musician, like jazz, or just want to explore the minds of some great musicians, I’d recommend picking up The Jazz Ear. It’s a short read, but quite worth it.
[You can buy The Jazz Ear from Amazon.com.]
Book Review: <em>Ender In Exile</em> by Orson Scott Card
I’ve been a big fan of Orson Scott Card’s Ender series since I read it a few years ago. Ender’s Game is just brilliant storytelling, and Speaker for the Dead is equally good, perhaps even better themes and story woven through it. So when I saw Ender In Exile on the library shelf, it was a no-brainer to pick it up.
Ender In Exile is not a book you would want to pick up and read as a stand-alone story without having at least read Ender’s Game first. EIE takes place somewhere in between two of the final chapters of Ender’s Game, telling the story of the teenaged Ender Wiggin. Once he had defeated humanity’s mortal enemies and then had his reputation dragged through the mud in court martial, he then travels off to become the governor of a colony on another planet. A good bit of the story is told in the form of emails exchanged between Ender, his parents, his siblings Valentine and Peter, and Ender’s former military commander. Ender manipulates situations with seeming effortlessness, always nobly wanting the good and right thing.
EIE will be interesting to you if you’ve read and enjoyed the other books in the Ender series. If not, I’d probably stay away from it, and would recommend Ender’s Game instead as a good introduction to Card’s work. I think it’s time that OSC come up with a new story and series.
[You can purchase Ender’s Game and Ender In Exile from Amazon.com.]
Book Review: <em>The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British</em> by Sarah Lyall
Every culture has its quirks, but to really notice them and appreciate them you need to be able to look from the perspective of an outsider. When you can then write about those quirks with wit, humor, and insight, then you’re approaching what author Sarah Lyall has achieved with The Anglo Files. Lyall, a correspondent for the New York Times, was posted to Britain some ten years ago, married a Britisher, and now raises two children there in London whilst still writing for the Times.
In The Anglo Files we get Lyall’s thoughts on the oddities of British culture - there are chapters on drinking, hedgehogs, social classes and the nobility, cricket, and the propensity to apologize for everything. She’s not afraid to tell stories on herself, either. And those stories prove insightful; they’re not the clueless-American-rube-bumbles-around-Europe stories, they’re the urbane-American-married-to-a-Britisher-still-baffled-by-Europe stories, which are really more fun. I myself have never been to Britain, but have long been intrigued with our brethren across the pond, so I very much enjoyed Lyall’s insights into them.
Oh, and did I mention the humor? I was good-naturedly amused throughout the book, but one line in particular had me laughing out loud: she describes an inferior washing machine as having a spin cycle that took so long it should’ve been called a Ring Cycle. That’s worth at least a couple of chuckles, folks.
All in all, a fun book. Definitely worth the read.
[The Anglo Files is available at Amazon.com.]
Book Review: <em>Jesus and the Victory of God</em> by N. T. Wright
I should say this up front: the idea that I’m going to be able to intelligently “review” Wright’s massive Jesus and the Victory of God in a 250-word blog post is ridiculous at best, and insane at worst. But I’m posting individual reviews for each book I finish this year, so here goes.
I first became familiar with N. T. Wright through some of his shorter books: What Saint Paul Really Said, Simply Christian, and, of course, Surprised by Hope. Somewhere along the way I found out that he has written a three-volume set specifically about Jesus, and so I requested one of the volumes for Christmas back a year ago. (Why I requested Volume Two of a three volume set is beyond me… but I did.)
Sure, there have been a million books written about Jesus. So why does Wright’s stand out? Wright takes the angle of exploring what I’ll call the “historical” Jesus. What was Jesus, the man, thinking? What were his goals? How did the things he said fit into the theological and political scene of first-century Palestine? Wright answers these questions brilliantly, with clarity and insight.
As just a small example, Wright at one point asks this question: Did Jesus know that he was the Son of God? Certainly we affirm that Jesus was fully man and fully God, but how did Jesus the man know that he was God? Wright gives by way of answer this analogy: Jesus knew he was the Son of God in the same way a musician knows they are a musician. They have the skills and abilities of a musician, and something deep within them says ‘I simply must make this music’. As such, a person knows they are a musician. Similarly, Jesus knew he had the skills and abilities of the Messiah, and had the internal calling. It may not be a perfect analogy, but it certainly provides opportunity to stop and think.
Jesus and the Victory of God deals with Jesus' life and teaching, leading right up to his death. Wright then devotes the entire third volume in his series to the Resurrection. (I got that book for Christmas this year.) Jesus and the Victory of God isn’t a simple read - it’s more like a college-level scholarly text. But if you’re willing to make the effort to dig through it, it will reward you with insight into the life and purposes of Jesus.
Definitely recommended. [You can buy Jesus and the Victory of God from amazon.com.]
Book Review: <em>The Philosopher's Apprentice</em> by James Morrow
I picked up The Philosopher’s Apprentice on a whim from the library. And what a whim. The flyleaf gave a thumbnail description of a philosophy doctoral student who takes a job becoming the tutor for a teenage girl who was in an accident and lost her sense of morality. OK, sounds interesting as far as that goes. But that’s just the beginning of the story.
The Philosopher’s Apprentice is really a story in three acts. Act One: doctoral student tutors teenager on remote Caribbean island. Finds out there is more to the island than he was led to believe, including two sisters of his student, a bunch of genetic engineering, and talking iguana. I know it sounds like a tripped-out dream, but it’s just hard to give a lot more detail without spoiling major points of the plot.
Act Two: philosophy tutor watches from a distance as his former student, suddenly fabulously wealthy, takes his teachings on morality to unbelievable ends.
Act Three: tutor and student end up together again and have to deal with the fallout from the rest of the world as it reacts to the student’s programs.
The Philosopher’s Apprentice is at times quite humorous, at times quite serious, and dances along the line between fiction and fantasy without quite ever deciding where to land. It was a fun read, provoking some interesting thoughts along the way. Worth picking up if you get the chance.
[You can buy The Philosopher’s Apprentice at Amazon.com - on sale cheap right now!]
Book Review: <em>The King of Sting</em> by Craig Glazer and Sal Manna
Sometimes, real life is even better than the stories. The King of Sting details the adventures of its author, Craig Glazer, as a twenty-something college student in the early 1970’s. Glazer was inspired by a movie “sting” - a scene where a team of shady characters pretend to be police in order to steal from criminals - and, with the help of a few friends, became a master sting artist himself.
What started out as acts motivated by revenge and noble causes, though, soon degraded into stings either to make money or just fuel his adrenaline rush. Glazer worked as a sworn law enforcement officer and later was prosecuted and served jail time for his deeds on the other side of the law.
Glazer’s story is entertaining but serves as a good reminder that sin will, in its own time, find you out.
[You can buy The King of Sting at Amazon.com.]