Book Reviews

Summary: An exploration of God’s mercy and the ways that God seems to change.

One of the reasons that I like to read widely is that I learn things in one area that has relevance to another area. That always means that I am potentially drawing inappropriate conclusions because I don’t know enough about multiple things to be an expert, and that if I knew more, I might not draw the same conclusion.

One of the areas that I have been fairly interested in recently is law, especially Supreme Court legal theory. Part of what interests me about that is that in some ways it is the study of Hermeneutics, but through a secular lens. I am a very avid listener of Advisory Opinions, a legal podcast. They primarily cover high level legal theory, more than working out individual cases. One of the things that is emphasized in legal theory is the limiting principle. Because so many concepts in law are not universally true at all times, the concept of the limiting principle tries to map out what the limits of the use of that concept is.

Right now, there is a discussion about the Unitary Executive. There are different versions of this concept, but overly simplistically, the Unitary Executive theory is that all of the power of the Executive Branch is vested in the single figure of the President. So there can’t be independent areas within the executive branch because there is only one president at a time. But that idea runs up against the concept of the limiting principle. Even in earlier generations, no one can really operate in all areas of the executive. There are some areas of expertise where we want career experts not just political appointments. There are other areas, like corruption investigations, where without some level of independence, the executive branch cannot do the job it has been tasked with.

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Summary: A collection of essays that either point out philosophical ideas within Ted Lasso, use Ted Lasso to teach philosophical concepts or more broadly use philosophy as part of classic art (TV?) criticism. 

I know about this book because of the online magazine, Christ and Pop Culture. I have been a reader for about a decade or so and a participant in their facebook discussion group for most of that time. Two of the members of that group were a married couple who taught philosophy and english. David and Marybeth Baggett have since left teaching and both started law school, but before they left they co-edited Ted Lasso and Philosophy.

Ted Lasso and Philosophy is a collection of twenty essays. With any essay collection, there is always some unevenness. But I think naturally when three different types of essays are included, any reader will have more attraction to a particular type of essay that they like more so this isn’t as much about some essays being weaker than others as much as it is that some people will be attracted to different styles.

Personally I think I like the more classic art criticism essays that use philosophical reasoning to expose the depth of writing and acting in the series. That is related but not quite the same as the essays that are exposing philosophical ideas in the show. And neither of those are the same as the essays that are really 101 introductions to philosophical concepts that uses the show as illustrations for the concepts.

One example of the later is the chapter on Stoicism that uses Rebecca as an example of what a stoic believes or the exploration of whether or not Ted fits the definition of a Egoist or if Isaac is an example of the concept of Dao. Or if Beard’s statement about the world just being an AI simulation is potentially true.

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Summary: An exploration of the ways that misogyny impacts our world.

I reference this all the time, but George Yancy wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times in 2015, where he tried to discuss the problems of race in America by including himself within the problems of sexism. He developed that more in his book Backlash and I have come to use his framing as the best shorthand for how we are in a system, while still having the ability (and responsibility) to respond to the system. Using Yancy’s ideas, I tell people all the time that when I was a stay at home nanny with my nieces and then a stay at home dad with my kids, I just got more support and affirmation as a man doing “women’s work” than women do. I didn’t ask for additional help in the grocery store, but it was given to me in ways that I could easily see that it wasn’t being given to women in my same position. As a man, I think it is important to push back against sexism in big and small ways as much as I can. But I can’t withdraw from the system that still misogynistic. Yancy then goes on the connect that to the problems of race. He says that just as he works to be anti-sexist, sexist (someone who as individual works to oppose sexism, but is still within a sexist society and still internalizes sexism in some ways) he also calls on white people to be anti-racist, racists (to be individually opposed to racism, while acknowledging the reality of continued racial hierarchy, both historically and currently.) And as a Christian and spiritual director, I think a third step of being an anti-sin, sinner is an important way to frame how we continue to be impacted by sin, while working to resist sin individually and corporately as well.

That simple framing of naming that as a Christian white male I am an anti-sexist, sexist and an anti-racist, racist and an anti-sin, sinner gives me a place to start reading Dorothy Littell Greco’s book with the assumptions that as a man, the problems of sexism and misogyny are my problems to grapple with, not just “women’s work.”

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Summary: A late mediaeval Russian retelling of Rumplestiltskin.

I have said before that I am a fan of remakes. I like retellings of stories, fairytales in particular. I think that KB Hoyle’s series of fairytale retellings are some of my favorites. This is a retelling of Rumplestiltskin, but with a very Russian or Slavic perspective. My sample size is too small, but I think there may be a trend of more eastern European stories being retold. I got bogged down and never finished The Witch and the Tsar but I did finish the two novellas from Veronica Roth that are consciously based on Polish folktales and the Siberian folktale retelling of The Carver and the Queen Emma C. Fox and the Russian novel Laurus and much older, Orson Scott Card’s retelling of Sleeping Beauty, Enchanted.

Spinning Silver is set in Russia late enough that there were Tsars, but before any modern technology like trains. I don’t know if I would classify this as a feminist novel, but it is a female centered novel. There are four main female characters. The book opens with the peasant teen girl, Wanda. Her mother died and her father borrowed money from the local Jewish money lenders to pay for doctors. But her father spent most of the borrowed money on alcohol. Wanda had to grow up and care for her two younger brothers and avoid her father’s abuse.

Miryem is the daughter of a small village Jewish money lender. When her mother is sick and her father distracted, she starts to take over the business. She realizes she is good at business and collects the payments and turns the goods that she accepts in payment into other good and creates trade. She hires Wanda to care for her mother and do work around the house to give herself time to handle other aspects of the business. Miryem eventually connects back with her grandfather who runs a bank at the city a days ride away.

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Summary: A biography of the great Octavia Butler, but mostly focusing on her work more than her life. 

I knew about Octavia Butler long before I read her. Around 2006 or 2007 I read the twilight books. I enjoyed them enough that I read the original Dracula and then I picked up Fledgling, Octavia Butler’s last book, which was also a type of vampire story.

That led me to reading Kindred and then the Patternist series and then the Xenogenesis series and the Parable of the Sower and the short story collection. I still have not read the Parable of the Talents because I think that other than the book from the Patternist series that Butler worked to take out of print because she didn’t like it, that is the last of her books that I have not read and I am reluctant to read it because of that.

I did not really know anything about Butler prior to Positive Obsession. Butler grew up in post WWII California. I knew that she started writing in part because she saw a really bad scifi movie as a pre-teen and thought she could do better. I knew that she struggled to sell books and worked to support herself by doing temp jobs so she could write for much of her career. And I knew she died too young. (I wish there was more about her death. It is definitely hinted at, that she died in part because of bad medical care and maybe more can’t be written about that beyond that speculation, but I wanted more.)

Positive Obsession did fill in more of her story. The author, Susana Morris, identifies Butler as autistic. I learned more about her background and a lot about the books she wrote. But as a biography, I thought Positive Obsession wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be. It wasn’t badly written. If you see it on sale (right now it is $1.99 on kindle) I think it is worth reading. But I think it is more about her books than about Butler. The author had access to Butler’s diaries and interviewed many. But there doesn’t seem to be much about her and her life.

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Summary:Orion continues to discover more about himself and those around him, leading to more questions. 

I have once again caught up with KB Hoyle’s writing and read every books she has written, most of them more than once. This series I have read aloud to my 10 year old. Mostly we do reading while he is building legos or sketching and I don’t do it regularly enough. When I was about half way through this second book in the series, I started reading ahead on my own and finished it in two nights of reading past midnight. I am going to be impatiently waiting on the completion of the series. (I think that Hoyle said that it was going to be six or seven books, so it will be a while before it is done.)

In the first book, we learn about Orion. He is an orphan being raised by his adopted grandmother. Until someone tries to kill him and that triggers a series of events. The discoveries about who he is unfold slowly and at the very end of this second book they are still coming. I understand the reasoning behind this slow unfolding, but I also understand why Orion the character is frustrated with the fact that things are being kept from him. Orion is not actually human. He is from another world and was smuggled to Earth to keep him safe. But the attempt on his life mean that he is no longer safe on earth. He comes to live the solar system that we identify with Orion’s Belt, a series of three planets with multiple stars that have three interrelated groups of people.

Most people have powers that were given to them from the stardusts that came about when a nebula exploded long ago. (This is a series that is on the line between fantasy and science fiction. The powers are presented as science, but it verges on magic.) The powers tend to be related to the planet your family is from, but there are people whose parents are from different planets who have mixed ancestry and therefore a combination of powers. Orion is one of those. He comes to live with a foster family who are protecting him and hiding his true identity, which gets revealed, in part, in the first book. There is a secondary reveal in this second book.

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Summary: A biography of Augustine focusing on him being from Africa.

It has been about 10 years since I have read a introduction to Augustine and then a few years ago I read Oden’s How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind. Augustine the African is similar to Oden’s book in that it is particularly working to show how the Augustine culture rooted in Africa impacted his thinking.

This was not a traditional biography, but there was plenty of biographical background for those who might not have much background on Augustine. Augustine was born in African as the son of a low level official. His family not well off, but they did have enough resources that Augustine was able to get an education locally before going to further education in Carthage and then eventually in Rome and Milan. (The family was not well off enough to educate his siblings.)

What I found most interesting about the book was how human Augustine was portrayed. He was very human, brilliant, but human. Like many who grew up outside of the main cultural center without much money, he had a chip on his shoulder. He also had a passion to succeed. Between those two, much of the bad decisions in Augustine’s life was connected to one of the other. He also had a good bit of disappointment and tragedy. His mother did a lot to get him where he was, but she also got rid of the mother of his son to try to him to make an adventitious marriage. That marriage didn’t happen, but his relationship with (the never named women) ended. Over a few years his mother, and then several of his close friends, and eventually his son, died. Those tragedies impacted his in many ways.

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Summary: Well written biography of a man that was interested in character and service to country. 

Earlier this year, I read a biography of Jimmy Carter and I was struck by how much that I learned, even though I had read multiple books by or about Carter. A good biography, even if it appreciates the person (as Alter did appreciate Carter) still should complicate the presentation of the person. I have read Meacham’s book on John Lewis and knew he was a good writer. I also, because of that book and some interviews, knew that Meacham was not going to write a fluffy biography.

Personally, George Herbert Walker Bush is on the edge of my memory. I remember the 1980 election, but I was 7 and only just remember it. I was in high school in 1988 and remember Bush very soundly defeating Michael Dukakis. And after having some memory of the 1984 blowout of Reagan over Mondale, I think I had the assumption that presidential elections would always have a very clear winner. I graduated from high school in 1991. I very much remember the first Gulf war because while it ended just before I turned 18, I remember discussion about the draft and registering for selective service with that in the background. I was a skeptic about the first Gulf War, not because I thought that Iraq should not be prevented from invading other countries, but because I didn’t think that the US had the willingness to not counter invade Iraq in response. George HW Bush (in 1992) was the only presidential election that I have ever voted for a Republican. I thought that his willingness to change his mind and raise taxes, when he said he would not, was an act of character. He thought that taxes were bad, but that deficits were worse and that increased taxes were for the greater good, even if it was bad for him politically with his base. And I thought that not deposing Saddam Hussein, was at the time the right decision and showed restraint, that again, countered his base.

There was far more that I didn’t know about Bush than I did know going into this biography. I, obviously, knew he was Vice President and President and the father of a President. I knew that he had been the head of the CIA. But I didn’t realize he had been a Congressman or the Ambassador to the UN and China. He had far more political experience than I realized. I knew he came from an old family, but didn’t realize his father was a Senator. I knew he made money in oil, but I didn’t realize that he really started with very low skilled jobs to learn the business and he and Barbara were living very modestly in the early years.

One of the themes of the book is that Bush had connections that gave him a significant leg up, but his orientation toward service meant that while he did make money and live comfortably, he still worked hard both for his family but also for the common good. He made his money in oil in large part because he was the person responsible for getting investment and financing for his company, a job made significantly easier because of his family connections. His turn toward politics in his early 40s was also made much easier by the fact that his father was a sitting senator at the time and that he was by this time personally wealthy enough to invest the time and resources into politics. His later work in government service from the mid 1960s to the early 1990s rested on personal wealth.

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Summary: An advanced (but young adult) book about the constitution. 

I am fairly familiar with the constitution. I have previously read America’s Constitution: A Biography and two books on the reconstitution amendments, as well as a variety of more general history books that included discussion of the constitution. I am an avid listener to Advisory Opinions, a legal podcast that regularly dives into constitutional issues. I did not realize when I bought Fault Lines in the Constitution was a young adult book. I listened to a podcast interview with the authors and I thought the idea of looking at the constitution as being a document that could have been constructed in other ways (every chapter has a discussion of either other country or state constitution that handled that topic in different ways) and a look at the ways that current debates are in large part a result of the way that the founders wrote the constitution was an interesting perspective.

In general, this didn’t really feel like a “young adult” book in the sense of it being dumbed down or simplistic. The book feels like it is pitched to a high school advanced government or early college class with a few exceptions. The exceptions were times when it felt like the authors were trying to engage what they thought were young adult issues, primarily related to age for voting, minimum ages for office and military service. While I think there was good content in those sections, it felt pandering to me. I am in my mid 50s, so maybe those areas would not feel pandering to actual people in their late teens or early 20s, but I would have pitched those differently.

This is a legal history, part of discussing history is to contextualize why choices were made, to consider what other options could have happened, to make the ideas more complex (not to over simplify but to really understand the nuance.) I am simplifying the Five Cs of historical thinking, which this book does really well. The authors, as all authors do, have a perspective. But they do try to explore different perspectives and point out especially the perspectives that are more foreign to modern people. Culture, assumptions and language has changed since the constitution was written. The constitution was not a perfect document. It was changed, and changed almost from the very beginning. Part of the focus of the book is pointing out not just that the change occurred, but where it needed to be changed because of unintended consequences (the rise of political parties and the way that impacted the relationship between the president and vice president) or because of compromise (3/5 clause and other slavery related issues) or because they just didn’t want to deal with the issue explicitly.

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