Book Reviews – Page 117

A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 by GJ Meyer

January 21, 2014 by Adam Shields

Summary: A history of an incredibly tragic and costly war.

One of the things I love about reading is learning about things that I know almost nothing about. European history is one of those areas. So I picked up A World Undone as an audiobook during a sale late last year. This is not a small book (816 pages or 28 hours in audio) and I split it in half, listening to the first half, then finishing a couple other books before returning to finish it.

A detailed history book like this is hard to review. I am not adequate to evaluate the history (although it seems to be well regarded.) There were long battle scenes that were difficult to understand (and I frequently consulted maps to see what was being talked about.) But overall, A World Undone is a very readable overview of a huge and important war. It did not take long for me to realize that much of my little knowledge of the war was wrong. So what follows is really just some thoughts that I had about the book and the war.

It is incredible to me how large the standing militaries were prior to the war and how quickly (and how large) the drafts were. Russia alone started with well over 1 million troops. Tiny little Belgium had more than 100,000 troops before anything started. At the height of the war individual battles had nearly 1 million troops on each side.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

January 20, 2014 by Adam Shields

Summary: One of the last, maybe the last, human recounts the end of the world.

Last year I listened the audiobook of Margaret Atwood’s famous, and excellent, Handmaid’s Tale. Oryx and Crake is also a dystopian novel, but a very different one.

Both were narrated by a single character. Handmaid’s Tale is from a woman that is at the bottom of the power structure and trying to survive and more of a political story.

Oryx and Crake tells a story about the end of the world but it is more environmental and maybe evolutionary. But my biggest problem with the book is that I really had no idea what was going on with the book until about halfway through the book. The main character is describing a world and his experience of it, but we really don’t know who he is, what the world is or why everything so bad.

Bruno, Chief of Police: A Novel of the French Countryside by Martin Walker

January 14, 2014 by Adam Shields

Summary: A small town police chief in rural France must protect his community, in more ways than one.

Seven years ago, my wife and I went to France to visit friends that live live there. We loved France. More than the wonder of Paris, which was incredible, we enjoyed time in the relatively small town that our friends lived in. Walking to get bread in the morning with gardens and old homes and churches on nearly every corner we felt why Europe and US are very different culturally.

Bruno feels very French. He is interested in food and wine (and we hear quite a bit about that.) But he is more interested in the people of his community. This community has adopted him and he loves them.

Bruno is the police chief of a very small community in France. There has been a vicious murder, not only the first murder in recent memory, but one that exposes some of the nasty undercurrents of the community. Bruno has the job of not only solving the murder, but protecting the town from outsiders that have no interest in it.

The Maze Runner by James Dashner (Maze Runner #1)

January 11, 2014 by Adam Shields

Summary: First in a dystopian series about a group of boys trapped in a maze.

When Thomas wakes up all he can remember is his name. A group of teenage boys welcomes him to ‘the Glade’.

The Glade is a large open grassy area with high stone walls. As Thomas asks questions he comes to understand that none of the boys can remember anything before the Glade. Some have been there as long as 2 years. The glade is in the center of a massive stone maze. One that changes every night.

In the Maze the boys have created a functioning society. And while there are always difficulties, this is not The Lord of the Flies.

Our Common Prayer: A Field Guide to the Book of Common Prayer

January 9, 2014 by Adam Shields

Summary: A guide to the parts and functions of the book of common prayer service (not really to using the book itself).

Over the past several years I have been paying much more attention to the resources of higher church, especially in the areas of the liturgy. However, temperamentally and experientially I am still a clearly low church Christian.

Part of what I have been talking about with Spiritual Director has been exactly that. I have been trying to get back into the practice of fixed hour prayer. Several years ago, I was able to do that fairly regularly when my oldest niece was an infant (and I was the nanny.) But then a second niece was born and the naps were no longer overlapping and fixed hour prayer went out the window.

Even before reading Alan Jacob’s Book of Common Prayer: a Biography or reading Susan Howatch’s Church of England series, I was interested in the Book of Common Prayer as a spiritual practice.

Farewell: The Greatest Spy Story of the Twentieth Century

January 8, 2014 by Adam Shields

Reposting this review because Farewell is the Jan 8 Kindle Daily Deal and on sale for $1.99 (the audiobook is only $0.99 with purchase of the kindle book.)

Takeaway: The actual workings of spy tradecraft is as odd as the fictional ones.

Farewell is the code name of one of the most important spy stories of the 20th century. A Russian KGB agent, frustrated with his treatment by the KGB, turned over thousands of pages of documents to the French secret service (the FBI equivalent, not the CIA equivalent) and was perhaps more responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union than any other single person.

The story really is both incredible and fairly simple. Vladimir Ippolitovitch Vetrov, a talented athlete, a good student and a handsome young man is recruited to the KGB. He is trained as a foreign operative and serves two terms outside of Russia. But because of some of the problems of the KGB and some of Vetrov’s own problems he gets called back to Moscow and ends up as a technical analyst.

Frustrated by his lack of importance and the lack of respect he feels he is getting, he decides to become an informant and contact the French DST. Working with a French secret service he is first given a handler (a businessman that is close, but not a spy) and then a single agent. But it may have been the very lack of tradecraft that allows Vetrov to sneak out hugely important technical details of the Soviet infrastructure, military and spy systems.

Most Read Book Reviews in 2013

January 5, 2014 by Adam Shields

The God of the Mundane by Matt Redmond Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism by Molly Worthen The Fault in Our Stars by John Green Holy is the Day: Living in the Gift of the Present by Carolyn Weber Divergent by Veronica Roth 137 Books in One Year: … Read more

The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan (Book 1 of the Kane Chronicles)

January 5, 2014 by Adam Shields

Reposting this review because Red Pyramid is free on Kindle. I was not a huge fan, but I have heard from several who thought that I was too hard on the book and have finished the trilogy. Free is worth picking up, and kindle format is probably better than the audiobook.

Summary: A brother and sister must figure out a way to save their parents and the world from a vengeful Egyptian god.

I found this free on audiobook from my local library. I am listening with two purposes. One, I need some lighter fiction. I have been over-doing the theology and heavy stuff and if I am going to keep blogging I need to maintain an intellectual balance of books. Too much intellectual challenge is draining. There has to be time to process and relax. But I also have several friends who have children that are reading faster than they can keep up. They are good parents that want to read what their kids read and try to have conversations and discussions with their kids about books, but there is a point when kids and parents reading speeds start converging and kids often have more time to read than their parents. So I am trying to keep an eye out for good middle grade, early young adult books that I can recommend.

I really enjoyed the Percy Jackson series and was interested in a new take on mythology from Riordan. This is definitely a different take. Instead of the gods of Greek mythology, these are the gods of Egyptian mythology. Instead of being focused on children that are half human/half Greek god, these are more like possession by the Gods. The subject matter is just more problematic and the books feel a bit darker, although not much.

The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind

January 2, 2014 by Adam Shields

Summary: Parenting is a full time job, but the goal is not entertainment, but preparing children for their future life.

We don’t do it often, but occasionally my wife and I read a book together. Or in this case, we listened to this on audiobook together while driving back and forth to her family’s cabin. It took us about six weeks to finished the book, but it led to a lot of good conversation about parenting and family. Because I was a nanny to my two nieces for 5 years (now 6 and 4.5) and I am still very involved with them, and my wife has been a teacher for 17 years, we had a lot of current context to think about beyond our current 8 week old daughter.

I first came across this book in a series of posts from Rhett Smith, a family counselor. The focus of the book is 12 different parenting strategies (which can be adapted for teachers or family members or others that work with children) to help children learn to integrate their emotional, intellectual and creative brain functions to be a more integrated person.

What I think is most important about this book is that while it believes parenting is very important, it is low pressure in its approach. This is a quote from close to the end of the book:

“The goal of parenting is not to be perfect by an stretch of the imagination. But a goal of every parent should be to be intentionally and consistently engaged in the lives of our kids in a meaningful way “” not just there “” but really present.”

2014 Focus for Bookwi.se

January 1, 2014 by Adam Shields

Cover of "Kindle Wireless Reading Device,... — Cover via Amazon

I have been blogging regularly at Bookwi.se (and before that MrShields.com) since Sept 2009. As of this post, Bookwi.se has 3288 blog posts including 875 Book Reviews. In may ways I am surprised that I am still blogging after more than 4 years.

This ended up being an entirely too long post. So here is the summary version: this next year I will be experimenting, I want to keep working on good content. I will be posting a few less book reviews in order to keep the reviews good (and reposting some old book reviews to round out the content.)

And now the longer version: Why I started blogging book reviews was that I love to connect people to books that they love. I also enjoy processing books out loud. That is of less interest to others, but continues to be important to me. In 2013, I read just under 200 books. As a new parent, this is unsustainable and I know that. I am going to intentionally try to read fewer books, but read them more deeply. (Although this is not my traditional reading style.)

In years’ past I have written posts about upcoming reading goals. This year my reading goals are not subject areas (such as the trinity, or a single book of the bible, etc.) Instead my 2014 focus will be on putting into practice (wisdom) rather than just acquiring knowledge. So for the next six months I will buy no more than one new book a month (can’t stop cold turkey) and instead focus on books that I already have, and on re-reading books that I have read and valued previously. I may choose to extend this focus an additional six months, but right now this is an experiment. (As a side benefit my book budget can go to toward diapers.)