Chris​Hubbs​.com

A rundown of recent book completions:

A People’s History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story by Diana Butler Bass

Bass is clearly giving a nod to Zinn’s People’s History of the United States with her title and approach. It’s not a bad effort, but nothing really earth-shattering, either.

The Art of Curating Worship: Reshaping the Role of Worship Leader by Mark Pierson

Pierson is an Australian who was writing from a very strong emergent perspective. While the worship experiences he describes are a long way from what would work in my midwestern US church, his perspective on the intent of and attitude toward leading worship was right on and gave me a lot to think about.

Khrushchev: The Man and His Era by William Taubman

A very readable biography of the Soviet leader. Still hard to get a grasp on how someone can be so human and yet so depraved.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

This was the first I’ve read of Butler. Won’t be the last. A wonderful voice in dystopian fiction.

Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness by Edward Kaplan

The first of two volumes of biography of a fascinating Jewish thinker from the early 20th century. Now I’ve gotta get volume two.

The Switch by Joseph Finder

I was wanting mindless entertainment, and this book overachieved at that. By which I mean it was even more mindless and boring than I was hoping for. Meh.

It’s been a while since I’ve put a post together, but I haven’t stopped reading… recent books:

Movies are Prayers: How Films Voice Our Deepest Longings by Josh Larsen

Larsen is the co-host of the essential Filmspotting podcast, as well as being an editor at Think Christian. Larsen explores the overlap of his two interests with an insightful look at how movies can be expressions of prayer. Larsen goes deeper into the theology of prayer than I expected, with insightful results. As also happens when I listen to Filmspotting, I came away from Movies are Prayers with a bunch of movies to add to my to-watch list.

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony by Richard Bauckham

Bauckham explores the Gospels and makes the case that their content was primarily from eyewitness testimony. He spends quite a bit of time exploring how oral histories were passed down through various cultures, and how the gospels bear many of the hallmarks of such oral tradition based on eyewitness information. He also suggests that part of the reason some characters (including some very minor characters) are explicitly named in the Gospels is because they were known living people who could be referenced as eyewitnesses. (What a fascinating thought!) This definitely gives me a new perspective when reading the Gospels.

The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II by Svetlana Alexievich

A winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, Alexievich interviewed hundreds of Soviet women who fought (often as teenage girls) in the Soviet army during WWII. The details are made even more horrific by the narrative telling. War is hell. Terrible, real, and heartbreaking.

A Colony in A Nation by Chris Hayes

A short volume documenting the discrepancy in policing and justice between blacks and whites in America. Not exceptionally surprising after all that I’ve read the past couple years, but tragic and infuriating none the less.

Getting Religion: Faith, Culture, & Politics from the Age of Eisenhower to the Era of Obama by Kenneth L. Woodward

Woodward was the religion editor of Newsweek for decades, in which role he had opportunity to interview many of the major religious figures of the 20th century. A devout Catholic, Woodward provides a measured view of Billy Graham and other early evangelists, the rise of Evangelicalism and its political efforts, the changes in the Catholic church after Vatican II, and the evolution of the Protestant mainline. Woodward’s easy prose felt familiar in some way; finally I realized it must be the deft touch of a newsman similar to that of the late Steve Buttry who I read regularly for nearly a decade until his untimely death last year. All told, a good history of religion in America.

A few more books I’ve completed lately:

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Stevenson tells the stories of many death row inmates he has represented over the years. He makes a compelling case that the justice system is broken for many of these people, documenting gross negligence of counsel, biased law enforcement and judicial systems, and abhorrent treatment inside of prisons. While the inmate whose story forms the through line of the book has a positive outcome, many, many do not. Sobering.

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

A workmanlike path through the immense de facto segregation endorsed by the US government in the early part of the 20th century. It is stunning to understand how zoning laws and public financing were used as weapons to ensure that African Americans were kept out of white neighborhoods. America still has a lot of history to own up to.

Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones

Completing my bleak trilogy is this account of the rise of OxyContin and heroin addiction over the past decade. The parallels of aggressive heroin marketing by drug producers from one small location in Mexico and the aggressive OxyContin marketing to doctors and patients even after serious concerns were raised about addiction are remarkable. Quite a horror.

OK, so my reading hasn’t all been bleak reading on social issues…

Walkaway by Cory Doctorow

A near-future sci-fi in which Doctorow explores the benefits of a communal maker culture. Interesting ideas, but reminds me a little too much of Heinlein - characters having long conversations about the ins and outs of the philosophical position, too much unnecessary sex.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Now this is a fun little fantasy novel. Space adventure in a ship with a diverse, multi-species crew. Easy and fun to read. I have the second book in the series on reserve at the library… any time now, folks.

Summertime seems to make it hard to get through too many, but here are a few more books that I’ve finished over the past few weeks…

Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohler

Ohler’s book is partly a technical explanation of the development of opiates and methamphetamines by German pharmaceutical companies and partly a chronicle of Hitler’s descent into the hell of addiction. A stunning picture of horror and madness.

The Imperfect Disciple: Grace for People Who Can’t Get Their Act Together by Jared C. Wilson

A beautiful little volume that calls readers back to the spiritual disciplines in a way that is gracious and encouraging.

The Givenness of Things by Marilynne Robinson

I’ve posted several quotes from this book already, and should really queue up several more. Robinson’s essays are so thoughtful and engaging. Finding someone who unashamedly professes a belief in orthodox Christianity while at the same time discussing that faith in terms and from angles that are far outside traditional theological writing is a huge treat. Destined to be one of my favorite books of the year.

Grabbed this one off the library shelf on a whim. I read Kostova’s The Historian a few years back and remember enjoying it, and I was ready for some fiction.

First comment on this one: bet you’ve never read a book set in modern Bulgaria before! (Kostova is an American but is married to a Bulgarian, hence her interest in the region.) The novel flashes back and forth between present-day and early Cold War-era Bulgaria to tell the story of a family and their suffering under Communist rule.

I didn’t find it as intense or engaging as The Historian, but Kostova writes beautifully and the story kept me going until the last page. Not a bad choice for some casual reading.

--

The Shadow Land: A Novel by Elizabeth Kostova

Picked this one up from the library on a whim. The Madame Curie Complex is a relatively short volume covering the history of a dozen or so women scientists starting with the archetypal Marie Curie and running through the 20th century up to Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey.

Des Jardins consistently hits the themes that these brilliant women were underappreciated, underpaid, and had uneven expectations levied on them - circumstances that continue for women across the workforce today. While each chapter provides a nice summary of each woman’s achievements, there’s not a compelling through line or narrative arc to the book to pull it together as a cohesive whole. Nevertheless, this is a good bit of history to read up on.

-- The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Science

I’ve kept up with David Fitch for a while now via his blog and twitter. Fitch is a professor of theology at Northern Seminary in suburban Chicago, and has led church plants that reflect his focus on community, mutual leadership and submission, and reconciliation. Faithful Presence seeks to capture those ideas in a short, practical volume for church leaders.

Fitch outlines three areas of presence that Christians should occupy: the “close circle” (presence with other Christians around the Lord’s Supper), the “dotted circle” (still a fellowship of believers, but open to non-believers, typically in the context of a believer’s home), and the “half circle” (extending Christian presence into the neighborhood).

He then spends short chapters on each of seven disciplines he outlines as critical to a faithful presence. They are:

• The Lord’s Table
• Reconciliation
• Proclaiming the Gospel
• Being with the “Least of These”
• Being with Children
• The Fivefold gifting (roles in church leadership)
• Kingdom Prayer

I really like Fitch’s focus on neighborhood and community presence; this is a welcome redirection from the big evangelical church as social hub. I found resonance there with an end note from Nadia Bolz-Weber’s Accidental Saints, where (if memory serves) she says essentially “do you want what we have? Don’t move here and come to my church - instead, start having a weekly dinner in your home with other believers, and let it grow from there.”

There’s a lot here to consider in an easy, small volume. Worth the read.

--

Faithful Presence: Seven Disciplines That Shape the Church for Mission

Because I’ve been lazy and not keeping up:

The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies - and What They Have Done to Us by David Thomson An extensive trip through the history of filmmaking. I’m interested in movies far more than I get the opportunity to watch them, so this was an interesting read and gives me lots of movie watching gaps to fill in.

City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York by Tyler Anbinder This came on the tail of visiting Manhattan for a week for work. A really fascinating read starting with the first white settlers in New York and carrying on through the late 20th century.

The Believer by Joakim Zander A thriller novel that hits a little too close to home, including a wanna-be jihadist and shady government forces at work.

Last Year by Robert Charles Wilson A time-travel novel in which the present day has a gate into one possible past, but only to a specific time the 1870s. More thoughtful than I anticipated.

Dune by Frank Herbert Caught up with a classic I’d never read. Really enjoyed it. Now I suppose I’ll get sucked into the whole series.

Another random library selection, and a nice change of pace from history and theology. In Now, Cal Berkeley professor Richard Muller sets out to provide a layman’s-level discussion of the nature of time and how the domain of physics interacts with and helps explain it.

Muller provides an engaging discussion about relativistic time dilation, the big bang, quantum effects and “spooky action at a distance”, and his own thoughts about what it is that causes time to move only forward. It’s not entirely for the faint of heart, but he at least is good enough to leave his derivation of equations into appendices rather than embedding them within the body text. The Goodreads reviews of the book seem to be a bunch of physics nerds giving the author flack for his approach, but to this engineering nerd who isn’t deep into physics, it was just fine.

-- Now: The Physics of Time