Book Reviews – Page 100

The Honorable Schoolboy: A George Smiley Novel by John Le CarrÃ©

January 23, 2015 by Adam Shields

Summary: George Smiley is not in charge of the circus. After ferreting out a mole, Smiley can not be sure he can trust anyone.

John le CarrÃ© is an author I really like, but can be frustrating at times. I love the slow burn of his books. They are unhurried, take place over a long time, feel like real spy work and not just heroics.

But the Honorable Schoolboy also takes forever to move along and finally get anywhere. There are a ton of characters, many of which have at least one undercover name. I keep thinking I will read (instead of listening to the audiobook) one of these, but I keep listening because I find them audiobooks on sale and the kindle books never seem to go on sale.

There is a real change in this book from previous le CarrÃ© books. The narration suddenly gets is own voice occasionally. I am not opposed to the ‘omnipotent narrator’ as a story telling method. But it is new and feels a bit odd at times. The reader is being told the story from the future. The narrator knows what is going to happen and knows there is going to be regret in the end.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail

January 19, 2015 by Adam Shields

The first time I remember reading Letter from a Birmingham Jail was in Divinity School pastoral ministry class. And while I have read portions of it since, I am not sure I have read it straight through again until this morning. Letter from a Birmingham Jail is both convicting and relevant right now. Protests are … Read more

Still Life: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel by Louise Penny

January 19, 2015 by Adam Shields

Summary: A town too small to show up on most maps has a woman shot dead by an arrow.

After talking about my love of the Bruno Chief of Polic series, Sheila Brennan suggested I try the Inspector Gamache books. I was vaguely aware of the series (it had come up as an Amazon recommendation) and somehow I got the impression that it was an older series. (I think I may have confused it with the Jules Maigret series). But as much of my reading lately, Still Life was on Scribd so I picked it up.

Still Life opens up with the characters in Three Pines, a small village outside of Montreal. After a fairly quick introduction to several characters, Jane is found dead and Chief Inspector Gamache is called in to investigate the death. Like the Bruno series, at least part of the interest for me is comparing the different legal systems. Gamache is the head of a team of homicide detectives for a regional police system. It is his job to go to the area and set up shop until the crime is solved.

Because Gamache basically moves in to the community, and sees his job as primarily watching and listening to people, there is a lot of space for character development and understanding the setting. There are more main characters than in the Bruno series. And at least initially in this book, there is a lot of assumed backstory for Gamache that is hinted at, but not actually revealed. My assumption is that more of the back story will come up later in the series. The tenth book in the series was published last fall.

The God of the Mundane: Reflections on Ordinary Life by Matthew Redmond

January 17, 2015 by Adam Shields

Reposting my 2013 review because God of the Mundane is free at NoiseTrade in mobi (kindle format), PDF or epub.
Takeaway: God is the God of our every day mundane tasks and activities just as much (if not more so) than the mountaintop or special times.

If I were going to write a book (which I have no intention of attempting), this is the book I would want to write. Since Matthew Redmond has already written it I am off the hook.

For the past couple years I have told people that I am attempting to live an ordinary life. It is not that I don’t want to change the world. It is that I think the way that we are Christians are most effective at changing the world is living as faithful ordinary Christians.

The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver

January 16, 2015 by Adam Shields

I am reposting this 2012 review because the Kindle Edition is on sale for $2.99.
Summary: A 1960s Southern Baptist family moves to the Congo to be missionaries. Their lives are forever changed.

I have been somewhat reluctant to read this book. I know a ton of people that have liked it. My sister in law suggested it years ago and kept suggesting it to me. Many others commented when they saw I had started reading it.

It is a book that well deserves all of its praise. This is a book many should read. It is not a everything comes out happy story (which I knew going in). But not all stories that are important are happy.

Very quickly into the story the family move to the Congo. As you can guess much of the early book is focused on cultural transition issues. The father feels called by God to bring salvation to the Congo. But he is inadequately prepared for what that really means. The mother can barely survive what it takes to just live, cooking, cleaning, raising four girls in the Congo. Even without a difficult overbearing husband, it would be hard. The four daughters find their own ways of coping for better and worse.

What Your Body Knows About God: How We Are Designed to Connect, Serve and Thrive by Rob Moll

January 15, 2015 by Adam Shields

Summary: Science can help us better understand how we are created to know God.

Everyone is price conscious, at least a little bit. I knew that Christianity Today voted What Your Body Knows About God as book of the year and it was on a number of other lists. But it wasn’t until it went on sale this week for $2.99 on kindle that I decided to pick it up (although I ended up listing to the audiobook at Scribd).

Christianity and Science books are a bit iffy much of the time, in large part because Christians tend to not be great scientists. Rob Moll is not a scientist, he is a journalist. So What Your Body Knows About God is more like one of Mary Roach’s books or The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

Christianity and Science books also tend to be apologetics oriented, either trying to prove that God was behind the science or that science is wrong (neither of which I am all that interested in). There is a little of that, but the focus is different. This is the Francis Spufford’s Unapologetic type of apologetics if it is anything. Moll is not trying to convince the skeptic, Moll is trying to pull the attention of the believer toward how we can use science about the body to help us better find God.

The Gettysburg Address: A Graphic Adaptation by Jonathan Hennessey and Aaron McConnell

January 14, 2015 by Adam Shields

Summary: Sophisticated history and political science in graphic novel form.

I like the idea of being someone that reads graphic novels. And I have enjoyed most of those that I have read, but I rarely read them for some reason.

The Gettysburg Address was highlighted in some article or podcast when it first came out and I put it on my watch list (along with a gazillion other books.) When it went on sale right before Christmas I picked it up, in part to give myself something to read on my new Amazon Fire HD 6 to help justify the purchase price. (It is back on sale for $4.99 as of posting)

I was expecting the Gettysburg Address to be more simplistic, a well done 6th grade history in graphic novel form. But it was much more than that. It started out with a fairly long, fairly violent look at the reality of the Civil War before pulling back and really introducing the book.

Simply Good News: Why the Gospel Is News and What Makes It Good by NT Wright

January 9, 2015 by Adam Shields

Summary: “The one true God has now taken charge of the world, in and through Jesus and his death and resurrection.”

NT Wright is an author that many are excited about and many are frustrated by. There is good reason for both. NT Wright is a serious scholar and he has helped reinvigorate serious scholarship about the New Testament that is focused on orthodox Christianity.

The main theological frustration, especially for a particular group of Reformed, is that he has focused on Paul and interpreted Paul as not being primarily focused on Jesus’ Penal Substitution. He has not ignored Penal Substitution, or said it is not a real part of Christianity, but he has said the focus of Paul is not on Jesus’ penal substitution, but on Jesus as King and restorer.

That major focus on Wright’s work is front and center in Simply Good News. Wright does fairly well writing either to an academic audience (as his 1700 pages opus on Paul) or a popular audience. Simply Good News (like Simply Jesus, Simply Christian and Surprised by Hope) is popularly focused and has few footnotes or academic references. And it is one of Wright’s shortest books.

NT Wright is in one way imminently readable. He tells stories and builds a case that can be followed. But in another ways Wright is almost always frustrating because he usually seems to complicate even small matters. Nothing by Wright is unrelated to the whole story because the nature of Wright’s project pulls together parts of the Christian story which some minimize or over simplify.

Wright cannot talk about the Good News without talking about Jesus and his project (obviously) or the broader concept of covenant (which Jesus is coming to fulfil), or the work of the church (doing our part in reconciling the world to Christ), or the end times (which should drive our understanding of what our reconciliation should be focused on), or the history of Israel (to which Jesus came as Messiah) or a whole host of other issues that are interrelated and connected. Anyone that has read Wright before always feels the repetition that is necessarily a part of Wright’s method of presenting the story.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Meditations on Psalms edited by Edwin Robertson

January 7, 2015 by Adam Shields

Summary: A collection of sermons, letters, devotional writing, etc on the psalms with helpful biographical introductions.

When I wrote the review of Martin Marty’s Biography of Letters and Papers from Prison I said I needed to read more Bonhoeffer directly and rely less on the secondary sources. Edwin Robinson has a helpful halfway point between primary and secondary works. He has edited together a book of Bonhoeffer’s reflections on the Psalms. Most of these are directly sermons or devotional writing of one sort or another. Rarely is a section longer than 15 minutes (I listened to this on audio semi-devotionally for about two weeks).

Most of it is fairly traditional Christian material. That is not to dismiss it. But to instead say, Bonhoeffer was first a pastor. No matter what else he did, his vocation was pastor. So this collection is primarily pastoral. There are clearly difficult sections here where Bonheoffer is struggling against the weight of the German state and Hitler’s power and God’s role in it (especially in private letters). But still primarily he was pointing to the power of Christ to transform and using the wide variety of emotions that are contained within the Psalms as prayers and reflections as the church has always used them for thousands of years.

Stuff You Should Know About Stuff by Tripp and Tyler

January 6, 2015 by Adam Shields

Summary: A bunch of random thoughts about various things.

I love Tripp and Tyler’s videos, especially the Christian Tingle and Conference Call in Real Life. So while I did not exactly pre-order their book, I did pick it up when it was on sale last week.

Tripp and Tyler are great at simple humor, the straight forward dry Seinfeld type of humor. But after reading this book, I think that it is best delivered on video or in person.

I like funny books, but I still expect funny books to tell a story. So I really liked Bossypants because it was a memoir and had a point.

I thought Jim Gaffigan’s Dad is Fat was decent and had some good moments, but it still felt more like a string of jokes than a real coherent book. And with Gaffigan’s second book about food, it was even worse.