Finished reading: The Type B Manager by Victor Lipman

Being a recently new manager at work, and having a definite Type B personality, I saw The Type B Manager on the shelf and thought, hey, why not?

Now, books on management, in general, are a tough sell for me. After a lifetime of reading thick engineering, physics, history, and theology, management books seem relatively thin books and mostly a collection of platitudes and “well, duh” principles. But in an attempt to become a good manager, I keep giving them a try. 

The Type B Manager was an exemplary specimen of this sort of thin platitude. Even in  trying to address Type B personalities, the book tends to describe the management challenge, what a Type A manager would do, and then how a Type B manager might handle it differently - a strategy that made the Type B personality seem like the poorer option. 

Maybe I just need to give up management books in general and spend more time reading Rands instead.

Finished reading: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

I didn’t get as much read on this business trip as I’d thought I might - French schedules have you eating dinner late with little time left for recreational reading before bed - but I did manage to finish All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. This novel, set in WWII, tells the parallel stories of a blind French girl and a German boy with a precocious engineering streak.

It’s a beautifully told story, capturing a smaller slice of life than you often get from a World War II novel. The intersections between the two main characters become clear by about half-way through the book, and I spent the rest of the time hoping against hope that the ending would be satisfactory. It was.

All the Light We Cannot See won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and while I haven’t read that much 2014/2015 fiction yet, I can understand why this one took the prize. Highly recommended.

I should've remembered this from last time...

This post serves simply as a reminder to myself that when a European immigration officer asks where I came from and then asks “by?” he doesn’t want to know what Iowa is near to - he wants to know what cities my flight connected through.

And he’ll get rather irritated if I don’t pick up on that quickly.

On the other hand, if he can say “By? By? By?” with a little more rhythm, he might have a future on an ‘N Sync reunion tour.

I love my daughter's embarrassed-but-pleased-with-herself smile

Oh yeah.

Fiet: Wheaton College and the Fear Machine

Midwestern pastor (and Wheaton alum) April Fiet has some really good thoughts today about the Wheaton College brouhaha around professor Larycia Hawkins’ comments about Muslims and Christians worshiping the “same God”.

Fiet doesn’t tackle the comments themselves, but rather our approach to them, regardless of our position.

What troubles me the most deeply about what is happening at Wheaton has very little to do with statements of faith, and more to do with a hermeneutic of suspicion. More narrowly, I am troubled by the fear that seems to be driving much of the conversation. It seems to me that too many conversations within the church are being powered by fear rather than by love for one another.

She talks about some of the fears she sees, and some of the really good things she has seen happen when fear was not so prevalent. And I really like this reminder:

Fear cannot be the motivating factor for the way Christians live, move, and exist in this world. When writing about the Christian life, the author of Hebrews put it this way: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.” (Hebrews 12:1-2a) We run as people motivated by the cloud of witnesses all around us, and we run with our eyes on Jesus. We are not running because we’re afraid. We are not running because there’s something scary chasing us. We’re running as part of a group that has all eyes fixed on Jesus.

I really appreciate her focus here. It dovetails nicely, too, with something one of my pastors has been saying recently on this topic, which is that even if we disagree with Professor Hawkins’ position, we can make good progress in not “othering” our Muslim neighbors simply by remembering and adhering to God’s command to love our neighbor.

Anyhow, Fiet’s piece: recommended reading.

Finished reading: How to Watch a Movie by David Thomson

I picked up David Thomson’s How to Watch a Movie on a whim from my local library shelf knowing nothing about it or Thomson. You can’t really call me a movie buff - I just don’t have time to watch many movies - but I really enjoy watching them when I get the chance, and I love listening to smart people talk about movies. (The Filmspotting podcast has been at the top of my must-listen list for at least the past 5 years.)

So for my interest in movies, I haven’t (to my recollection) read any books about them.

And, (spoiler alert?) if you’re in my shoes, I wouldn’t recommend this one.

Maybe it’s brilliant and I just need to read 10 other books to get ready for it, but I don’t think so. In 200 pages Thomson talks about different aspects of film-making and film-watching and manages to come across as a pompous snob. I pushed on through because it was short and I wasn’t ready to start my “nope” list on Goodreads quite yet.

So, I need to find some better books on film. Which jogs my memory - the Filmspotting guys did an episode recently where they listed their top 5 film books. Guess I should’ve paid more attention. Maybe I’ll give it another listen.

Meador: on Intervarsity and Black Lives Matter

Jake Meador over at Mere O has a really good piece today on the white evangelical response to the messages at Urbana last month, and more generally to the Black Lives Matter movement:

We do not have to endorse everything about the organization Black Lives Matter. We shouldn’t feel like we cannot ask questions—even critical questions—about speeches like the one given by Michelle. But we also should not be instinctively suspicious of the claims of our black neighbors. Our nation’s history is such that we should have no difficulty believing our black neighbors when they tell us about what life is like for black people in America today. Indeed, given our nation’s appalling history it would be more surprising if they didn’t have any problems.

Definitely worth reading the whole thing.

Finished reading: Hackers by Steven Levy

I hadn’t heard of this one prior to listening to an Incomparable podcast episode last year - for the life of me I can’t figure out which one - but it stocked my Amazon wish list with several tech history books, which my mother-in-law then generously gave me for Christmas.

In Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, Levy tells the story of software hackers who for the most part aren’t household names. Sure, there are quick mentions of Jobs, Wozniak, and Gates, but there are a dozen others you’ve never heard of who are similarly fascinating.

Levy talks quite a bit about the hacker ethos and principles that were pervasive from the early 1960s until, well, business and money got significantly involved in the late 1970s. It was a fun read for me since I recognize my own potential to become one of these heads-down, computer-obsessed hackers who barely notices when the sun rises or sets. (A course I have thankfully avoided thus far… for which my wife is both thankful and probably largely responsible.)

Yes, I’m shamelessly picking up John Halton’s habit of blogging reading progress this year, if for no other reason than it gives me 60+ additional posts a year… and maybe give a reader a good recommendation for a book to read. (Or to stay away from!)

My 2015 Reading Year in Review

2015 was another enjoyable year of reading for me, and with books tracked as usual on Goodreads, here’s a short summary:

Total books read: 62. That’s less than last year, but more than each of the three years before that. Fairly average for me.

Fiction/non-fiction: 36 / 26.

Fiction:

  • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter #6) (Rowling, J.K.) re-read w/ the kids
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter #7) (Rowling, J.K.) re-read w/ the kids
  • Kristin Lavransdatter (Kristin Lavransdatter, #1-3) (Undset, Sigrid) Epic. Long. Mostly worth it.
  • Station Eleven (Mandel, Emily St. John) excellent
  • Spark (Hawks, John Twelve)
  • Empire (The Chronicles of the Invaders, #2) (Connolly, John)
  • Satin Island (McCarthy, Tom)
  • City of Savages (Kelly, Lee)
  • The Great Zoo of China (Reilly, Matthew)
  • Fall of Giants (The Century Trilogy, #1) (Follett, Ken)
  • Winter of the World (The Century Trilogy #2) (Follett, Ken)
  • Edge of Eternity (The Century Trilogy, #3) (Follett, Ken)
  • No Fortunate Son (Pike Logan, #7) (Taylor, Brad)
  • Mightier Than the Sword (The Clifton Chronicles, #5) (Archer, Jeffrey)
  • Seveneves (Stephenson, Neal)
  • The Goblin Emperor (Addison, Katherine) an unanticipated favorite
  • Tin Men (Golden, Christopher)
  • Iron Wolf (Brown, Dale)
  • Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War (Singer, P.W.)
  • The Three-Body Problem (Three-Body, #1) (Cixin, Liu)
  • The Dark Forest (Three-Body, #2) (Cixin, Liu) dense but really enjoyable sci-fi
  • The Martian (Weir, Andy) fine but don’t buy all the hype
  • The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1) (Rothfuss, Patrick)
  • Invasion of Privacy (Reich, Christopher)
  • The Water Knife (Bacigalupi, Paolo)
  • The Library at Mount Char (Hawkins, Scott)
  • The Governor’s Wife: A novel (Harvey, Michael)
  • My Struggle: Book 1 (Knausgård, Karl Ove) strangely fascinating
  • Without Remorse (John Clark, #1) (Clancy, Tom) re-read for the first time in 20 years
  • Neverwhere (Gaiman, Neil)
  • Zero World (Hough, Jason M.)
  • Tenacity: A Thriller (Law, J.S.)
  • Dark Corners (Rendell, Ruth)
  • Werewolf Cop (Klavan, Andrew)
  • Saturn Run (Sandford, John)

Non-Fiction:

  • The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (Fukuyama, Francis)

  • Alan Turing: The Enigma (Hodges, Andrew)

  • Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (Armstrong, Karen)

  • Words Without Music: A Memoir (Glass, Philip)

  • The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (Lewis, Michael)

  • 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Mann, Charles C.)

  • Einstein’s Dice and Schrödinger’s Cat: How Two Great Minds Battled Quantum Randomness to Create a Unified Theory of Physics (Halpern, Paul)

  • Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (Weiner, Tim)

  • Between the World and Me (Coates, Ta-Nehisi) deserves every accolade it gets

  • The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir (Bryson, Bill)

  • Leaders Ought to Know: 11 Ground Rules for Common Sense Leadership (Hooser, Phillip Van)

  • Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America (Haygood, Will)

  • The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams (Zaleski, Philip) a good warts-and-all history of the Inklings.

  • The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities (Breyer, Stephen G.)

  • Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World’s Superpowers (Winchester, Simon)

  • The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics (Swaim, Barton)

  • Alexander Hamilton (Chernow, Ron) Because Hamilton, obviously.

  • Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Volf, Miroslav)

  • Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (Palmer, Parker J.)

  • The Lion’s World: A journey into the heart of Narnia (Williams, Rowan)

  • Secondhand Jesus: Trading Rumors of God for a Firsthand Faith (Packiam, Glenn)

  • Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Smith, James K.A.)

  • Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (Rohr, Richard)

  • Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life (Rohr, Richard)

  • The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective (Rohr, Richard)

  • Malestrom: Manhood Swept into the Currents of a Changing World (James, Carolyn Custis)

  • Spiritual Friendship (Hill, Wesley) Worth reading, and then reading again.

Worked on, but didn’t finish yet:

  • Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Wright, N.T.) I’m about half-way through volume one. Slow going.

Miscellaneous thoughts:

  • Won the “buy it for Dad for Christmas” award: Desiring the Kingdom by James K.A. Smith.
  • I’m honestly surprised by how little theology I read this year. Seems like a lot less than previous years. Guess maybe I was ready for a break.
  • Size of my unread book pile at the moment: embarrassingly large. Got 4 new books for Christmas. Added them to the pile. It’s possible that by spring I’ll need to go on another “no books from the library until the pile goes down” pledge. We’ll see.

Do you have any recommendations for 2016 reading?

Finished reading: Saturn Run

So here’s an idea: a sci-fi novel written by somebody who can actually write, with the physics and science worked out by a real nerd sidekick. That’s what you get from [Saturn Run](Saturn Run www.amazon.com/dp/039917…) by novelist John Sanford with help from sci-if nerd Ctein.  Saturn Run is the book The Martian wishes it could be if Andy Weir had a talent for prose. Great way to wind up my year of reading.