Book Reviews

The Dragon Business by Keven J Anderson

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Summary: A middle ages fantasy version of How I Met Your Mother.

Kevin J Anderson is one of those authors that seems to produce a superhuman amount of books.  He has published 120 book according to his bio.  Many of them are part of established worlds, Dune, Star Wars, X-Files, etc.  I have not read any of those books.

But I did really like his Saga of the Seven Suns series (or most of it.)  It was a good space opera series that got a little bogged down with too many story lines in the middle of the series, but it was still quite enjoyable.

I ran across Dragon Business when I saw that Anderson is starting a new trilogy set in the same world as Saga of the Seven Suns.  The Dragon Business was an Amazon Prime book so I could borrow it for free.

The first line of the description is, “King Cullin may be known as “the Dragon Slayer”, but he fears his son’s legacy will be as “King Maurice Who Speaks with Proper Grammar”.”  This is a book with very modern sensibilities, in the vein of the movie A Knight’s Tale.  Early in the book, the father is trying to tell the son a story and the son complains about the father switching between first and third person and omniscient narration.  It was pretty funny.  And there is a good theme of wanting a child to be everything you couldn’t be, but still wanting them to be well grounded and appreciate the things you appreciated.

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Surprised by Scripture: Engaging Contemporary Issues by NT Wright

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Summary: Wright at his best tells a new narrative about an old story. In this book too many issues cut short the narrative.

I am an unabashed fan of NT Wright.  I have read most of his popular level books (except the commentary series) and a few of his more academic oriented books.  I appreciate his focus on calling people to a fresh look at scripture and his ability to take scripture seriously while maintaining real academic quality.

But on the whole I was disappointed by this book.  It is a re-working of articles that have previously appeared elsewhere.  Most of them were commissioned by US journals or from chapters in books that were for US audiences, so as a Brit, he is most of the time consciously writing for the North American Evangelical audience.

His basic argument, like most of Wright, is that given historical realities of the original writers and audience, we modern readers tend to be missing the intended point of the original writers.

As with most Wright he needs to go through a fairly long narrative to be able to help the reader understand his point.  And I think that is why his full length book treatments are better than these shorter issue based chapters.

The problem is not so much the individual chapters, but that in almost every case, he has a better response in a full length books (and he frequently tells the reader that there is more to the story if you want to pick up another one of his books.) So his first three chapters on science and religion, the historical Adam and the resurrection were all better handled by his book Scripture and the Authority of God.

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Slavery of Death by Richard Beck

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slavery of death cover imageSummary: Differing perspectives on theological issues allow us to see other views and approach our views with more clarity.

I have recently started reading Richard Beck’s blog Experimental Theology. I was briefly introduced to Dr Beck 10 or 12 years ago via a mutual friend at a conference, but only recently have I started reading him.

The Slavery of Death is an attempt to explore the way that the Christus Victor model of the atonement* interacts with the way most western Christians view the relationship between Sin and Death.

The Eastern Orthodox tradition does not reject the Penal Substitution model of atonement, but they tend to emphasize the Christus Victor model as more in line with their theological positions. So much of what Beck is doing in this book is telling the story of Christianity again (for us Western Christians), but through the lens of Orthodox views.

The traditional Western story is that death was introduced to humanity (and maybe the whole world) after the sin of the garden.  But…

“According to the Orthodox, the real issue at the heart of Genesis 3 “the biblical story of “the fall” is not focused on establishing a causal model regarding the sin/death relationship and how we inherit a moral stain from our ancestors, but is mostly concerned about the etiology of death and who is to blame for introducing death into the world. In other words, the Eastern Orthodox tradition understands Genesis 3 to be more about theodicy (a story about where death came from) than soteriology (a story about where sin came from).”

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The Android’s Dream by John Scalzi

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Reposting this 2012 review because the Audiobook is today’s Audible Deal of the Day and on sale for $3.95 today only (June 7)

The Android's DreamSummary: Two trade representatives die during an interstellar trade negotiation creating an interstellar incident.  If Harry Creek does not find a particular type of sheep there might a war, one that Earth will not be able to win.

I enjoyed reading Agent to the Stars so much that I picked up another John Scalzi book.  And since it had Will Wheaton as narrator I picked up the audiobook.

Both of Scalzi’s books that I have read so far have not been primarily concerned with the science.  Instead the are science fiction settings, there are aliens, it is in the future, but it is really just the setting, not the main concern of the book.  So people that do not traditionally like science fiction might like these.

Android’s Dream is more of a spy book than a science fiction book.  Harry Creek is a former cop, a former war hero, a computer specialist and currently works for the State Department giving aliens bad news.

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Sun Stand Still: What Happens When You Dare Ask God for the Impossible by Steven Furtick

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I am reposting this 2010 review because Sun Stand Still is part of the June 2014 Monthly Sale. It will be $3.99 until the end of the month.

Summary: God can answer big prayers.

This book is about praying the big prayers that show that God is really in control, not us.  The kind of prayers that allow us to worship God because we know that it is only through his power that things are accomplished.

The book is a long meditation on the story of Joshua, when he prays to ask God to hold the sun so that they army of Israel will have time to finish defeating the 5 armies it was coming up against.

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In Praise of Slowness by Carl Honore

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Reposting this 2011 review because the Kindle Edition is on sale for $1.99.

In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed (Plus)Takeaway: A bit repetitive, but the basic idea, that slowing down, enjoying life, and doing things well instead of fast is a good reminder.

Efficiency and speed are part of the world we live in.  With computers and other tools, fewer people can do more than ever before.  But instead of using the extra time, most people tend to either just do more instead of enjoying the additional products of our labor.

In Praise of Slowness is a book I first heard about from Anne Jackson.  I purchased it then (it was only $5 at the time) and it has been sitting on my shelf for a couple years.

I started reading it last week and enjoyed the basic thesis that faster is not necessarily better.  The book starts with the author seeing an ad for 1  minute bedtime stories.  He was both interested in getting the book and horrified that he had gotten to the point of efficiency that he was actually interested in being efficient in the amount of time he was spending with his child.  This started a long term investigation into speed and backlash of slow advocates.

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A Passion for God: The Spiritual Journey of AW Tozer by Lyle Dorsett

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Summary: AW Tozer is one of the great spiritual writers of the 20th century, and a prime example of God using less than perfect people.

I read A Passion for God first about three years ago.  It is one of those books that has stuck with me more than most.

The main reason is that Tozer is a perfect example of something that theologically I don’t really have a category for.  Tozer, by nearly everyone that knew him’s estimation, was a real and passionate man of God.  But at the same time he was distant from his family (especially his wife), personally lonely and probably leaned toward clinical depression.

It is not that I don’t think Christians can be depressed or lonely.  I certainly think they can.  But Tozer, like several other pietistic leaning pastors that I have read or read about seemed to lack many of the interpersonal tools of relating to those closest to him (while pouring forth energy on others.)

As with the first time I read the book, the most damning sentence in the book is a quote from Tozer’s wife who remarried after Tozer died. Her standard answer when people asked how she was doing after re-marrying was a variant of: “˜Aiden loved Jesus but (her new husband) loves me.’

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Seven Grams of Lead by Keith Thomson

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Summary: A journalist tries to stay alive while tracking down a story about abuse of power by a rogue agent.

Several years ago I was turned onto Keith Thomson when John Wilson (editor of Books and Culture) talked about Thomson’s earlier book Once a Spy.

Once a Spy was part of my getting back into spy novels that lead to me reading a number of John le Carre’s books and other classic and contemporary spy novels.

I picked up Seven Grams of Lead when it was the Kindle Daily Deal a couple weeks ago (and on sale for $1.99).

On the whole this was a much more traditional thriller than the Once a Spy/Twice a Spy books.  Russ Thornton is a journalist/blogger that is known for his investigative reporting on government and big business.  When an old friend calls asking for help (and ends up dead),  Thornton realized that he was the one that inadvertently gave away her secret because his body had been bugged.

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