Bookwi.se – A few thoughts about books, kindles and Christianity

Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (2nd Reading)

March 24, 2026 by Adam Shields

Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro cover image Summary: An untrustworthy narrator tries to excuse his failures.

Note: This post has a lot of spoilers because I am trying to grapple with how Ishiguro uses the unreliable narrator to grapple with what really happened to the protagonist and those around him. The book also has been out for over 30 years and there is a movie adaptation, so I am not particularly concerned about revealing spoilers.

I have been revisiting books that I have liked and adding more fiction this year than I normally do. My daughter is currently studying the lead up to World War 2 and I helped her work on a project reading several original documents about Chamberlain’s appeasement policy and then she had to make an argument about whether it had been the right policy or not.

It is almost impossible to put yourself in the position to really make these arguments when you are aware of the result of WWII. Personally, I lean toward pacifism, even if I am not completely pacifist. I think we should try diplomacy as much as possible prior to war. And so reading The Remains of the Day while helping my daughter with her project really does make me appreciate what Ishiguro is trying to do here. Almost no one thinks that appeasement was a good policy at this point. And at the time it was controversial.

The main positive arguments, according to the documents my daug

LaGuardia by Nnedi Okorafor

March 21, 2026 by Adam Shields

Summary: A fictional story in response to the Muslim immigration/travel ban from the first Trump administration.

I picked this up on sale years ago, but like many books I pick up on sale, it can takes years get around to reading it. I read it today in part because I have been trying to decide whether to keep a Kindle Colorsoft that I purchased a few weeks ago.

I read it outside and that outside light offsets the fact that the Colorsoft is pretty dark generally. I won’t turn this into a review of the Colorsoft, but I do want to note that it was a digital ebook and it looked great in full color.

I am a fan of Nnedi Okorafor’s writing. LaGuardia is the 8th book/novella that I have read from her. She is writing scifi/fantasy from an African perspective. My favorite of her books is the Binti trilogy.

This is a near future story where Aliens (from space) were in both Nigeria and the United States. Contextually, it appears that the aliens came to Africa first. The main character, Future Nwafor Chukwuebuka, was born in the US to Nigerian parents who were doctors. Those doctors died in a terrorist bombing in the US that was protesting alien immigration to the US. After that bombing, Future, also a doctor, went back to Nigeria to start a medical clinic. As the story unfolds, the reader comes to figure out why the pregnant Future had returned to the US to have her baby.

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

March 21, 2026 by Adam Shields

Summary: Beautifully written utopian tragedy.

I am not sure if I am feeling nostalgic or tired of non-fiction or if something else is going on, but I have very much been drawn to fiction this year. Generally I am a non-fiction reader. But year to date, about half of the reading I have done has been fiction, and two of the non-fiction books have been biographies of authors.

Bel Canto is the third book this year that I have re-read. It read it about 10 years ago. That time it was all on audiobook. And this time, it was about half audio and half in print. The audiobook narrated by Anna Fields was well done. (She also narrated Children of God.)

Bel Canto is a tragedy and you anticipate it as a tragedy almost from the very start. There is a dinner in honor of a Japanese businessman, who the country was wanting to encourage to build factories in the (fictional and unnamed) South American country. The dinner was hosted at the Vice Presidential home and attended by many ambassadors and business people from around the world. The highlight of the event and the reason that the businessman agreed to the dinner is that a world famous soprano opera singer would perform. And that businessman’s only real love in the world was opera, that singer in particular. But the dinner was interrupted by guerrilla terrorists who mistakenly believed that the President of the country would be there. I believe that this was inspired by a real hostage crisis in Peru in 1996.

As I said in my last post about the book, a type of uneasy utopia eventually develops. But a utopia could never last. And tragedy is the end result. That really is the whole story and it feels like I have described too much of the story even while I haven’t even named a character.

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

March 20, 2026 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: One of the most effective books for discussion my book group has had.

Last fall the book group I have been leading for about six years read The Gospel According to Baldwin. It was an odd choice for the group because other than myself, no one has ever read James Baldwin and only two had seen I Am Not Your Negro. But we read it and the group really enjoyed that book and was interested in Baldwin.

We tend to take off the Christmas season and so when we got together to come up with our next book, The Fire Next Time seemed like a good choice. It is a short book, just over 100 pages. There are two essays. One is framed as a letter to his nephew on the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.

And then the remaining 80 pages is a long biographical essay, written in three parts. The first part is mostly about Baldwin’s life growing up in Harlem and the way and how race and puberty and poverty impacted him. The second part was mostly about having dinner with Elijah Muhammad in Chicago in 1961 and the attraction that the Nation of Islam had, but ultimately why he could not be a part of the group. Part three is more about the way forward.

Nonesuch: A Novel by Francis Spufford

March 18, 2026March 18, 2026 by Adam Shields

Summary: A novel about World War II where the war is just some of the reality of the world.

Francis Spufford is a novelist that I avoid all spoilers and descriptions and just buy the book as soon as I see it. Nonesuch was released last week and I started it as soon as I finished my last book. I never like to give away too much when writing about fiction books.

One of the things I really like about Spufford is that he writes very different novels from one another. This one feels like Charles Williams and Neil Gaiman were inspirations (treating the supernatural as very real, with a little bit of almost creepiness, but never really being creepy and enough sex for it not to be a young adult book but it not to feel gratuitous). There is also a hint of CS Lewis’ That Hideous Strength, but only a hint.

I won’t give it away, but Spufford is also very much known for last minute twists to his books. This one is no different and I won’t give it away, but this time I didn’t love the twist. It makes sense, I understand why he did it. But while I think the twist in Golden Hill made the book, I think it was a net negative here. In some ways, I think it changed the book from a historical fiction book that had great characters and really felt like it was a book about the war and the problems of war, to being a book that “was about something.” I don’t want to be too negative, because I loved the novel. But I just don’t think the twist was quite right.

Iris Hawkins is driven young woman. She works in a brokerage house and she wants to succeed. She also is clearly trying to control the world around her and seems to be running from something. In the days leading up to World War II, she stumbles on the reality of the supernatural and gets drawn in to a bigger story than she really wanted to.

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

March 11, 2026 by Adam Shields

Summary: A beautifully told story in letters.

There is some irony that just a couple of days ago I wrote a post about not liking to read letter collections and how I always get bored before I finish them. And today I am going to strongly recommend a fiction book that is formatted as a collection of letters. I know not everyone is an audiobook fan, but if you do audiobooks, I would start with this on audio. The production and editing is top notch and the various voices reading the letters give context to the letters. It is going to vie for my favorite audiobook ever. (Colin Firth’s narration of The End of the Affair by Graham Greene has been at that place for a long time, but this is right there.)

This is a book that I have great appreciation for, in part because it is pushing back against speed and efficiency in a helpful way. The story is about Sybil, a divorced, retired woman who lives alone just outside of Washington DC. She was a lawyer in private practice with a long term friend. And when he was appointed to a judgeship, she took the pay cut and became his chief clerk. She retired when he retired after 28 years on the bench.

The story unfolds slowly as she writes letters to friends and family and various celebrities, especially authors. I don’t know if Virginia Evans got permission to write in the voice of various authors, but Sybil is a great reader and letter writer and when she reads a book she loves, she writes the author and tells them. And as she says throughout the book, a surprising number of people will write back if you write them. So in this book of fiction that takes place over about 10 years, there are multiple letters to Joan Didion, who she has developed a friendship with, but also a teen boy of a law clerk she mentored, and a friend who she has been writing for nearly 60 years.

Daughter of Rage and Ruin by K. B. Hoyle

March 10, 2026 by Adam Shields

Summary: A retelling of some of the Jack and the Beanstalk stories.

I have made my love of KB Hoyle’s writing well known. I have read every book she has written, most more than once. I have never met her in person, but we are both in the facebook group for Christ and Pop Culture magazine where she is a regular writer and we have interacted a lot over the years. Hopefully we will meet someday.

Part of what I love about her books is that they are literary and still written for middle grade or young adult readers. By literary, I don’t mean esoteric or abstract or hard to understand, but I mean that there is depth that invites rereading. There is always a surface story that moves the story along and engages the reader. But there is also always depth to the story in allusions and references and underlying themes that may not be apparent to a young adult reader on the first reading.

One of the things that drives my kids crazy (but I think it is still important) is that I frequently will stop a movie or pause in reading and ask about a scene and what is going on. Sometimes they have understood the reference or know what the word means, but a lot of the time they haven’t. Part of what I am trying to do is invite them to look for the meaning below the surface.

I have been hosting a zoom book club since 2020. Right now we are reading James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. It is a compilation of four biographical essays. Baldwin is a master of references and allusions. Some are easier to spot than others, but it is clear that he isn’t only a writer, but a deep reader, of scripture, the classics and the current literature of his time. It is a joy to read that in a group because we have different histories and experiences and we catch different things.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

March 8, 2026 by Adam Shields

Summary: An astronaut works to recover his memory and save humanity.

I was surprised when I looked back at the Martian that it has been 12 years since I read it. I purchased Project Hail Mary four years ago when it was on sale and just had not gotten around to listening to the audiobook. It won a number of awards when it came out and I have had more than a few people comment to me that it is their favorite audiobook. (My favorite audiobook is the Colin Firth narration of The End of the Affair by Graham Greene.)

I have purchased, but not yet listened to Artemis. Generally that has not been as well liked as Project Hail Mary and The Martian. But there is a similar thread to the two books by Weir. It is not that the stories or themes are the same, but there is a dogged determination that is the same. I would argue that “life is worth living” is part of what people like about these books. Yes they are well written hard science fiction. Yes, Weir is writing good character and compelling plots with lots of action. But I think what draws people to them is that the protagonists don’t give up and the reader gets to root for a hero that lives up to their hero status.

The protagonists are not perfect. There are lots of mistakes, both “wrong calculations” type of mistakes and character flaws. But those are humanizing flaws. The actual brass tacks of the story have protagonists that do what it takes, but also are good honorable people. And the world needs more stories that have flawed humans that are still good honorable people.

Let God: Spiritual Conversations with François Fénelon by Winn Collier

March 8, 2026 by Adam Shields

Summary: Modern translation/paraphrase of the spiritual direction letters of François Fénelon.

As I regularly say, I appreciate book clubs in part because they make me read things I might not read on my own. This was the second book in this year’s Renovare book club. Generally I do not participate in any of the online message boards for the book club and I do not go to any of the in person meetings that I could go to. But I do listen to the podcasts about the book. This one was with Winn Collier, who was responsible for editing this book.

Spiritual direction is an old practice. And I think that many people met with their spiritual directors in person, but we only have records of spiritual direction that was done by letter because no one as the audio or video of spiritual direction from the 16th century. And except in the cases of spiritual direction supervision, which often has the practice of the spiritual director transcribing their memory of the sessions for purposes of discussion and learning, spiritual direction is intended to be private. As a spiritual director I don’t share about the people I meet with except with my own spiritual director who occasionally gives me advice. I occasionally do write about my work of spiritual direction because I find writing to be helpful as I clarify to myself what I think about things. But I tend to get rid of those writings immediately because I want to honor people’s privacy.

I have read several other collections of spiritual direction writing from Henri Nouwen and Evelyn Underhill and some others, but I just don’t tend to like the type of short writing that letter collections tend to be. I get bored and I rarely finish them. I did finish this one, but it took me about four months. I rarely read more than two letters at a sitting. I tended to read them at night before I go to bed. I often read a couple chapters of whatever I am currently reading until I am too tired to read and for this book I would often read one or two of these and then do my regular reading. The problem with this is that I am not giving myself time to think about them. It would be better if I read them and then went on a walk and was able to reflect on them for a while.

How to Hear God: A Simple Guide for Normal People by Pete Greig

March 6, 2026 by Adam Shields

Summary: Christian theology and practice assumes that God speaks to us, personally and corporately. But part of what is needed, is the development of “ears to hear”. Grieg uses the Emmaus Road story as a grounding point to discuss various ways that Christians hear from God.

I have previously read Greig’s How to Pray, also as a part of the Renovare Book Club. How to Hear God is very similar in feel. Greig is a good story teller. He writes short and straight forward chapters with reflection points, questions to think about, historical examples of people who have heard from God in the ways he is describing and biblical examples that ground his methodological examples.

As I said in my previous review of Greig’s book, I have a mixed view of the 24/7 movement. I think Greig is solid and I don’t have any concerns about him or his books. But I do have concerns with some of those who are a part of that movement in the US and some of the ways that the theology of the 24/7 movement can lead to a type of dominionism that becomes a problem. Greig actively opposes some of those misuses of his ideas and theology here, but willful misuse often is difficult to counter.

Part of what I appreciate about Greig’s method is that he knows there is going to be both, misunderstanding of God’s word to us, and that misuse of the claim to hear from God to control others. He really does actively work against that. So I don’t want to minimize that. But part of my take away here, is that we need health in many areas of life to use our gifts and skills well. A person who is not self reflective about the mixed motives that we have at all times, will not be able to discern well, what God is saying to them. A person who views God primarily as a tyrant waiting for you to mess up, will be unlikely to hear words of comfort or calls to rest. That basic thought goes in many directions, so as much as Greig is calling us to test what we think we hear from God, those who are unlikely to do the introspective work of discernment are quite likely to also misuse claims of hearing from God to abuse or control others. And correspondingly, those who are mature and discerning are going to be fairly likely to be responsible, so that as a short hand, the more controlling a person seems to be about hearing from God, the more likely they are to be immature or wrong.