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I’ll confess I’d never heard of James Rhodes prior to picking this book up at the library. Turns out he’s about my age, and a British classical pianist who has had some amount of popular culture impact in Britain trying to make classical music less culturally stuffy and more accessible to the masses.

Instrumental isn’t nearly so much about music as it is about a man trying to come to grips with the effects of some horrifying abuse he underwent as a young boy in primary school. I’ve never read an account that so directly describes the horror and brokenness that an abuse victim can feel. One of Rhodes’ escapes is music, but he vividly describes others that are much less beautiful and much more self-destructive.

Rhodes does mention a couple handfuls of favorite classical pieces through the book, which someone has already arranged into a convenient Spotify playlist.

Instrumental is a worthwhile read but not for the faint of heart.

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Instrumental: A Memoir of Madness, Medication, and Music

Found this one on the New Books shelf at the library and figured hey, why not? Welky tells here the story of a handful of Arctic explorers who followed up on Robert Peary’s claim to have seen an Arctic continent he called “Crocker Land” (named after one of his financial sponsors).

Want to trek for multiple years living off pemmican, hardtack, and the internal organs of whatever bears and musk oxen you can hunt? Lose your toes to frostbite? Go (in some cases, at least) more than a bit loony? Early 20th century Arctic exploration might be for you!

Welky’s writing is engaging and the story is an adventurous one. After reading it, I think it’ll be at least a week before I stop feeling cold.

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A Wretched and Precarious Situation: In Search of the Last Arctic Frontier

Because sometimes you need some thoughtless entertainment. Even at that, Grisham is just coasting on his reputation at this point. Meh.

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The Whistler

The buzz on this one had been going around Twitter for a while, so I was glad to pick up a copy and read. Michael Wear is a young guy who, not even out of college, worked as the White House lead for evangelical outreach during President Obama’s first term. Reclaiming Hope is part memoir of those years and partly Wear’s suggestions for how to repair political engagement with religion.

On the whole, I think Wear did a good job of identifying points where both the right and left failed in opportunities to find common ground that could’ve made legitimate progress on issues important to religious conservatives. However, I think his admiration for President Obama causes him to pull his punches in the second half of the book.

In the first half of the book, Wear reveals himself as something of an Obama fan boy as he details all of the President’s speeches that reveal the depth to his personal faith. (I’m not disputing these - I have great admiration for Obama’s faith - but the tone is pretty fawning.) When Wear starts assigning blame in the second half of the book, though, the blame is never to Obama directly, but always to the “administration” or the “White House”.

Overall, it’s a good little memoir, and Wear has some good thoughts to share about how we might find progress forward on issues significant to people of faith.

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Reclaiming Hope: Lessons Learned in the Obama White House About the Future of Faith in America

History, it is often said, is written by the winners. Zinn, though, undertakes to tell a history of America from the perspective of the losers, the poor, the oppressed. Think the arrival of the explorers from the perspective of the Native Americans. The colonial and early US history from the perspective of the slaves. The early 1900s from the perspective of poor workers banding together into labor unions.

Zinn is not trying to be even-handed here, but this volume would serve as an excellent companion to any more traditional history of the United States. It also serves as a good reminder that while things may seem bleak in our current political era, they have been much worse, and our country has withstood far more.

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A People’s History of the United States

John Halton’s review set me on this one, and I had much the same response to it that he did. Soggin’s work looks at the Old Testament from a historical perspective and dives heavily into textual criticism.

It is eye-opening for this conservative evangelical to see how far the academically-accepted historical background of the OT differs from the one we are taught by our church leaders, but rather than causing me to look askance at the OT now, it causes me to appreciate more how God has brought together these texts in a way that is meaningful for us as believers today. (It also cements in my mind that defining “infallibility” for the Scriptures is an impossible task, and that “inspired” or “God-breathed” makes much more sense.)

Glad I read this one… and ready for something a little less academic now as a palate cleanser.

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Introduction to the Old Testament

Read this one on a business trip this week. Having nothing to do with actual nautical survival skills, this book is Martin’s personal confessional and memoir of the breakup of his marriage and leaving the pastorate at his church.

Martin is a very talented writer, and while some of the initial Scripture applications are a stretch (Paul, after his shipwreck, told the people to eat, therefore, when our lives are in metaphorical shipwrecks, we should be sure we eat via participation in the Eucharist), the book shines in the latter chapters when he focuses in on grace in a way that will sound familiar to readers of Robert F. Capon.

There’s a part of me that’s skeptical of the value of an author writing this instructionally when he was clearly still in the midst of learning the lessons he’s communicating, but it was still an encouraging read. My prayer for Jonathan is that he continues to heal and grow in grace in the days to come.

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How to Survive a Shipwreck: Help Is on the Way and Love Is Already Here

I got sucked into Griffin’s Badge of Honor series years ago. This is book #13, and the hero is still only 27 years old, and opens the story still suffering from the wound he suffered in book #12. Hey, if Griffin is still making money cranking these out at age 87, good for him. But let’s not pretend they’re any more substantive entertainment than your average 1.5-star franchise action movie. Meh.

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Broken Trust

Found this on the library shelf and was a challenging read to start the year. Is Kendi making an effort to be super-even-handed? Nope. But he has enough facts on his side to make a compelling account. From the first white settlers colonizing through the beginning of the 21st century, he highlights the terrifying history of racism in the USA. It can feel like a stretch at times - King Kong subliminally picturing white’s fear of blacks? sure, but the Rocky movies continuing to do so with the white hero taking on black opponents? Maybe from a certain point of view.

Some progressive reading isn’t gonna hurt me, I guess. (I just borrowed Zinn’s History from the library the other day.)

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Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America