I am reposting because it is currently on sale for $0.99 for the Kindle Edition

Summary: Advice for the reluctant reader.

Lit opens with an explanation that its purpose is to convince people that do not like to read, why they should read. So obviously I am not the intended audience. But I did find much to like in this book. The parts I liked most were the casual reading advice sections. I did not agree with a number of the pieces of advice. Tony Reinke is consciously attempting to write a Christian version of the classic Mortimer Adler’s How To Read a Book (wikipedia link). There were many places where I thought, “Why would you encourage people to do that?”. For instance he encouraged people to spend about a hour going over a book before you start reading it, looking through the table of contents, writing up questions that you want answered in the book, reading the last couple pages, looking over reviews before you start. I think some of these ideas are good, but is this the way to encourage people to read? These are things you should be doing before you pick (and buy) a book.

My larger concern is with the structure of the book.  Reinke starts with almost a full quarter of the book discussing scripture and how we need to keep scripture as our prime reading material, how scripture is different than other books and a discussion of truth and how we can only understand truth in other books once we understand the truth of scripture.  I understand why he has this long discussion.  It is important to his theology of reading, which is the basis for why the entire book is written.  But if the intended audience really are reluctant readers, they are never going to get through that section to the advice sections on how and why they should be reading.

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Takeaway: The Mystery of God is a real part of historical Christian Theology.  But it is not useful as a way to explain away all the difficult parts of the bible or theology.

As I have been reading about the Trinity over the past year or so, I have run across the idea of the mystery of God as an explanation of difficult parts of theology.  It often feels more like, “I don’t want to fully deal with this, so I will call it a mystery of God.”  At the same time I have been reading be reading introductions to Catholic theology and a few books on the important of beauty and in both areas there was a full embracing of the need for mystery, not to explain difficult areas of theology, but to allow for the bigness, uniqueness and unpredictable ways of God.

So I accepted a review copy of the Mystery of God hoping it would touch on more of the later and less of the former.

Boyer and Hall exceeded my expectations.  The first part of the book is historical theology.  Hall and Boyer walk the reader through a variety of Christian theologians, Aquinas, Augustine, Calvin, Luther and others to illustrate that throughout Christian history the concept of God as unknowable has always been present.

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Summary: A girl discovers she is the protector (Paladin) of Earth and other worlds need her to save them.

Hello, my name is Adam and I like to read children’s and young adult literature.  (Hi Adam).

Lots of adults read children’s books.  I saw one number that suggested nearly 80% of children’s and young adult books were purchased by adults. (Of course it is the adults that have most of the money, so this is not incredibly surprising.)

Most adults that I know that like reading kids books have told me that they read because they still love the classic kids books that they read as children.

The Chronicles of Narnia are probably the most frequently cited books that sparked a desire for kids to become readers. (Followed and maybe now surpassed by Harry Potter).

For me I think it was the hero story that really moved me as a child.  Whether it was fantasy or biography (which I read a ton of as a child), the hero is the one that does the hard work to put others before themselves. I thought about this the other day when I was reading a blog post about allowing boys to play fight (and I would suggest girls need this as well.)  Play fighting is one of the places where you learn that you can hurt others, where you learn to restrain yourself but not mentioned in the blog post and I think very important, it is where you get to pretend you are the hero that saves everyone.

The Sword of Six World is a great book for actual kids and their adults to read about being a hero.  As with most hero stories, there is the mix of fear, reluctance, desire for glory and fun and the eventual need to put others before yourself.

This is a Narnia-like story.  There are talking animals, living rock, dimensional travel and evil.  Validus (it is Latin and she knows it is an odd name) discovers that their evil substitute teacher is trying to kill her and her best friend Alex.  Two new students help save them and they are swept into another world, where the two new students are actually a Tiger and a Horse.

The evil, Blight, is slowly taking over different worlds.  The evil is similar to the darkness in the Wrinkle in Time and it starts by turning people against those whom they love.  Val and Alex (he discovers he can talk to rocks) have to stop the blight from taking over the Citadel.

The author, Matt Mikalatos, is not new to writing.  I have reviewed his two previous books, Imaginary Jesus and Night of the Living Dead Christian.  This is a very different book.  Those were oriented toward adults, and used fictionalized versions of himself to tell pretty straight Christian teaching.

The Sword of Six Worlds is a children’s book that is about good and evil, but never mentions Christianity.  This is writing from a Christian world view without invoking the name of Christ as CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien are famous for doing.  This really felt like a very good modern version of a classic children’s book.

The Sword of Six Worlds is the first book in a series and the next book is coming out in 2013.

The Sword of Six Worlds by Matt Mikalatos Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition

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I received a digital copy of the book from the author for purposes of review.

Related Bookwi.se Book Reviews

• Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of CS Lewis (bookwi.se)
• The Magician’s Nephew by CS Lewis
• The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
• Imaginary Jesus by Matt Mikalatos
• The Night of the Living Dead Christian by Matt Mikalatos

Summary: Practical steps on how to read more, and fall in love with reading, because you enjoy it, not because it is good for you.

One of those books I have not read, but I have been influenced by is How to Read by Mortimer Adler.  Adler is one of those people that approaches books scientifically.

While I have not read Adler, I have read Lit! by Tony Reinke which is intentionally a Christianized version of Adler.  I read and reviewed it last year.  Lit! had a very good theology of reading and some good ideas about how to read better.

But on the whole I think that it lost the focus on reading for pleasure and concentrated too much on reading for good.  It was focused on efficiency and ‘getting the most’ out of the books that you are reading.  That is not all bad, but it is a good way to suck joy out of reading.  It is like talking about how to get the most out of being a parent or a spouse without actually talking about enjoying your actual children or spouse.

137 Books in One Year does not have that problem.  This is a book to read if you want to find the joy of reading again.  This is a short book (93 page).  I read it in about an hour. It is in three parts.  Just over half the book is Kevin Hendrick’s 10 steps to read more and enjoy what you are reading more.  These are practical (always carry a book) and focused on pleasure (read what you like).

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Summary: A fascinating history, but the writing was sophomoric.

Searching for God and Guinness is a “biography” of beer’s role in history and culture through the lens of one of the most famous brands and the family behind it. In simple and readable prose, Stephen Mansfield traces the arc of beer–specifically its origins as a moral and healthy alternative to the hard liquors that destroyed men and marriages, the economic and social development of the Guinness family, and especially the latter’s incredible impact on the justice issues of the day.

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Summary: Fascinating look at creative areas of the economy where copyright and patent law do not apply.

According to the common line of thinking, without copyright and/or patent law there would be no incentive to create.  The authors of this books are not completely dismissing this claim.

Instead they are following creative industries where copyright and patent law legally are not applicable.  The areas explored are fashion (you cannot copyright a ‘useful object’), food (you cannot copyright a series of instructions), football (theoretically you can copyright choreography  but no one has tried to do this in football), open-source software, magic and comedy.

All of the areas are very creative, and all are thriving.  The authors look at the way that alternative means are used to reward creativity and limit inappropriate copying.

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Summary: Mostly Gire does not find God at the hunger games.

I loved the Hunger Games.  I have read it twice, watched the movie twice.  I spent long hours talking with my wife about the books (we don’t often read the same books and when we do we often talk a lot about them.)

So when christianaudio.com was offering Finding God in the Hunger games to review I jumped.  And since the book is short I listened to it all in an afternoon the same day I requested the review copy.

My main problem is that this is a slipshod book.  I do not have a problem with the relatively short length (about 85 pages).  But the is not really a book about the Hunger Games.  It is three essays.  One about entertainment and Rome. One about the hunger for God within each of us.  And a final chapter about the end times.

Not only is Finding God in the Hunger Games not about the real content of the Hunger Games, but the author admits that the few interactions with the Hunger games are mostly from the movie and not the book.  That was disappointing, no where in the description does it say that this book is primarily about the movie.

He even says he had not finished reading the book before he started watching the movie. This leads to lots of impressions and not much content. There are the occasional quotes, discussing a couple scenes.  However, what I was looking for was a discussion of the story, the over arching themes of the book.

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Summary: A look at 10 different forms of prayer through  biographical sketches.

There are so many books on prayer.  As Evangelicals have started paying more attention to historical theology, church history and church practices of other streams of Christian faith there is a need for books like Kneeling with Giants to help us understand the value of prayer practices that we may not be as familiar with.

Gary Hansen takes his experience teaching prayer practices to seminary students and melds it with good church history.  In many ways the actual information is not much different from what has been presented in other books, like Richard Foster’s Prayer.  But this book will appeal to those that like their history in biographical sketch.  Foster can be a bit heady at times.

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Bookwi.se Note: Welcome Seth Simmons, a new Bookwi.se Contributor. If you would like to contribute reviews to Bookwi.se read our brief guidelines.

Fatherhood is a holistic role and endeavor. It impacts politics and government, education, vocation, poverty and crime, religion, and more. There is no facet of culture that is not impacted by fatherhood–or its decline.

Douglas Wilson’s Father Hunger is a rousing and convicting call for men to lead their families. Theologically robust yet pastoral and practical, Wilson gets to the heart of the matter in his characteristically direct manner. Like Chesterton, he has a way of looking at an issue from a different perspective and unearthing the basic truths.

An overarching theme of the book is the idea of gratitude. ”Masculinity is the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility” (41). “Gratitude declares the meaning of fatherhood like little else can” (59). Fathers are generous in all things. He shows how the apostle Paul compared not dirty and clean, but dirty and grateful (175).

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