Adam Shields – Page 106

The God Of The Mundane: reflections on ordinary life for ordinary people by Matt Redmond

March 3, 2015 by Adam Shields

Summary: God is God of all of us, not just the extraordinary that get the world’s attention.

I think I am in a season where I want to re-read books that have impacted me. As I am drafting posts today, three of the four books I am writing about are books that I am re-reading. (My original review of God of the Mundane.)

Re-reading a book a couple years later is something I try to do regularly because often good books have more content than can be absorbed in a single reading. And several years later, you are in a different place and different things are impactful.

This time I suggested that my small group read this book together for discussion. The length is perfect as a discussion book, there are 15 chapters in less than 100 pages. Even slow readers can read 2 or 3 chapters in 20 or 30 minutes.

5 Most Read Reviews in Feb 2015

March 2, 2015 by Adam Shields

The most read review of the month was not of a book but of the Scribd ebook/audiobook subscription service.

I am a fan of the service, although it does not work with my Kindle Paperwhite, which is my prefered device. But it does have a lot of audiobooks, which is what I have been using it for more than anything else.

The second most read review was about the areas that I think Scribd needs to improve. A few of them have already had updates since I posted (and I have updated the post where the improvements made a difference.

Lifehacker mentioned Scribd as one of the five best audiobook services last week.

Continue reading the main Scribd review or the areas for improvement

Summary: A readable, recent introduction for those new to Anglicanism.

The Anglican Way is a fairly recent book that is still spreading by word of mouth. I saw last week that it was the best selling Anglican book on Amazon.

If you are interested in the concept but don’t want to read the book, you might be interested in McKenzie’s podcast of a five week teaching of the main content of the book. I listened to all of it and while there was certainly overlapping content, the podcast had enough new material and questions from the audience that it was well worth listening to.

Continue reading the full review of The Anglican Way by Thomas McKenzie

Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor

March 2, 2015 by Adam Shields

Summary: We need to be able to see God in the Dark as well as the light.

Barbara Brown Taylor is a beloved memoir writer. I know a number of people that she speaks to deeply. But this is the second book of hers that just didn’t connect.

Learning to Walk in the Dark is about embracing the dark parts of life as well as the light, about seeing that God loves us when we can’t figuratively or literally see anything around us.

Thematically I think Taylor is right, but I couldn’t finish the book. Much of the book seems very literal. Taylor talks about being terrified of the dark as a child. She talks about the beauty of the night in the country, about being alone in a dark cabin for the night. Almost all of her stories of darkness are about literal darkness. But she then tries to make the connection to spiritual darkness and the connection, at least for me, seems to fall flat.

Disquiet Time: Rants and Reflections on the Good Book by the Skeptical, the Faithful, and a Few Scoundrels

February 24, 2015 by Adam Shields

Summary: 45 Reflections on how the bible pushes us toward disquiet.

I am not a devotional guy. I rarely read devotionals and I even more rarely find them helpful. It is not that I am against them as a concept, but that they just don’t work well for me. I read too much and am too disorganized to find short devotional reading useful.

But every once in a while I try again. I have been occasionally using Disquiet Time as a devotional over the past three months. I have read a chapter two or three times a week most weeks before bed. This is one of the better devotional books I have read, in part because it is attempting to disquiet and not quiet.

The main focus of the book is to ask a WIDE variety of writers to reflect on what is disquieting about scripture. And the results are quite diverse and almost universally good. Amy Julia Becker (blogger at CT and author) talks about how we all cherry pick verses. Karen Swallow Prior (English Professor and author) writes about how our bibles tend to leave out or hide all of the sh*t in scripture. Caryn Rivadeneira (church staff and author) talks about the scandal of being made in God’s image.

The Brutal Telling: Chief Inspector Gamache #5 by Louise Penny

February 19, 2015 by Adam Shields

Summary: How do you solve the murder of an unknown man? Chief Inspector Gamache is again back in Three Pines. That small little village that he loves, filled with people that he loves, once again has a dead body. This time the body is found in Olivier’s Bistro, but no one seems to know who he … Read more

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

February 13, 2015 by Adam Shields

I lightly updated this 2012 review because the Kindle Edition is on sale for $2.99.

Takeaway: Fairytales are not just for children. Stardust is intentionally a fairytale written for adults and quite good.

Gaiman is one of my favorite fantasy authors. I have read almost all of his books. He is mostly an adult author (although I enjoyed his children’s books Coraline and Graveyard Book.) He is often quite funny, but he is not a slapstick author like Douglas Adams. Many of his fantasy are on the dark side, but not oppressively so, more realistically dark.

Stardust is a story of Farie. The story opens with a fair, once every 9 years the people of Farie (the magical world) and the people of the village of Wall (at the wall that separates Farie from the rest of the world) have a fair and buy and sell and meet one another. Tristran’s father, meets a woman from Farie (there is one sex scene right at the beginning of the book) and Tristan is a product of that night.

When Tristran is grown (without knowing his parentage) he takes a challenge to go beyond the Wall into Farie to retrieve a fallen star so that he can win the heart of the girl he loves. Of course it is not that simple, but the getting there is quite good.

Coffeehouse Theology: Reflecting on God in Everyday Life by Ed Cyzewski

February 12, 2015 by Adam Shields

Summary: If you know you want to explore more about theology and the bible but are not sure where to start, this is a good place.

This is the third of Ed Cyzewski’s ‘books’ that I have read. One of the books was really just a short, but I appreciate where Cyzewski is coming from and overall we have much in common. We are both stay at home Dads with theological degrees, we have both moved around a bit theologically, although our starting places and current places are not quite the same, the movement as he describes it seems familiar.

So I picked Coffeehouse Theology up because it was a free ebook as part of Scribd (ebook/audiobook subscription service that I recommend) and I thought I would read another one of his books. There is much to commend here especially for the Christian that is really starting to explore theology or wants to start doing theological work on their own.

Cyzewski starts by exploring what theology is and why theology has to be enculturated (made relevant to the culture that we are in and speaking to).

A Rule Against Murder: A Chief Inspector Gamache #4 by Louise Penny

February 11, 2015 by Adam Shields

Summary: Inspector Gamache and his wife go away to their favorite vacation spot for their 35th anniversary, murder follows them.

This is my fourth Inspector Gamache book in as many weeks and the series seems to be getting better. Inspector Gamache and his wife traditionally go to a small quaint upscale wilderness inn for their anniversary. Again this year for their 35th, after a rough year, they are able to get away.

The only other guests at the inn are a wealthy extended family. The matriarch and second husband, the adult four children and corresponding spouses and one grandchild round out the guest list. Returning characters Peter Marrow, and his wife Clare, from Three Pines is one of those children. Peter, the third of the four and in his early 50s is still in many ways traumatized by his family as it seems are the rest of the family.

After several days, a statue of the children’s father is installed at the inn. The next morning the second child (the oldest daughter) is found crushed by the statue in the garden.

Scribd Adds 10,000 Comics and Graphic Novels

February 10, 2015 by Adam Shields

Today Scribd announced that in addition to their 30,000 Audiobooks and over 900,000 ebooks, they are adding 10,000 comic books and graphic novels to their subscription service. I have a full review of Scribd and another post about areas for improvement, but after almost 3 months, I have been very happy with my subscription. There is … Read more

You Don’t Understand the Bible Because You Are Christian by Richard Gist

February 9, 2015 by Adam Shields

Summary: We as modern Christians miss a number of nuances of scripture because we do not understand ancient Hebrew culture.

The title of this book is intriguing. I rarely accept review copies any more because I just prefer picking my own books and the prospect of a free book is not all that enticing. But I accepted a review copy of this book by the author after he emailed me.

The overall point of the book is important and I think useful. There are a number of things about scripture and the Christian faith that we miss because the bible was not written directly to us as 21st century Americans. It was written to people of a particular time and place (although that time and place varied throughout scripture). And while we can trust that the message of scripture is not completely lost to us as 21st century Christians, because of the power of the Holy Spirit, the tradition of the church and research by academics, there is real value in exploring ancient culture.