Book Reviews

Summary: A useful book to work through Hermeneutical issues (biblical interpretation) in modern culture, and worth reading as a book on parenting.

One of the things I am most thankful for is the fact that I was able to be a full-time nanny for my two nieces over a five-year period.  From about eight weeks after the birth of the oldest, until they both started preschool last year, I saw them almost every day, and most of the time I loved being a nanny.

Part of my thankfulness is because I am not going into parenting blind.  My wife has been a teacher for 17 years and is better at classroom management than pretty much anyone I know. Part of her job as an Academic Coach is to mentor other teachers and help them work through both their own professional development and to problem-solve with particular children who have not been identified as special education but are not being reached with standard approaches.

I feel we are fairly well prepared to parent our new daughter.

I have been aware of William Webb’s books for a while, but just have not ever gotten around to them.  They fit in with my focus on hermeneutics a couple of years ago, but I think I found out about them after I was getting a bit tired of the subject. Re-reading Mark Noll’s The Civil War as Theological Crisis and thinking through issues of culture and race as a Christian pushed these books back up to the front of my list. William Webb is probably better known for his earlier book Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis. (later review) I am sure I will read that eventually, but Corporal Punishment in the Bible is both intended to be a more popular-level treatment, and it is focused on parenting which I have been thinking a lot about lately.

William Webb is interested in something that is called a Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic. In simple terms, Webb suggests that God speaks down to us as humans, accepts where we are, and speaks to us there. Over time (both in scripture and in culture), there is a progressive movement that refines God’s instructions to us and points in a progressive understanding of revelation and obedience. The idea of this is pretty uncomfortable for many Christians, especially Evangelicals who like to think of God as unchanging. But Webb is not suggesting that God is changing, but that the way God speaks to us changes as our culture changes.

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Takeaway: Society has a responsibility for its own maintenance.

Unlike most of the rest of the world, I did not read Fahrenheit 451 in high school.  (I didn’t read most books that people seem to have read in high school.)

The story is set in the near future (written in 1953, but still feels near future.)  Guy Montag is a fireman.  In a world where all the homes are fireproof, it is firemen’s jobs to set fires, not put them out.  When people are found to have illegal books, it is the firemen’s job to burn the houses including the books after the people have been arrested.

After Guy meets and begins a friendship with 17 year old free thinking Clarisse, he starts questioning his life. Eventually he steals some of the books he is supposed to be burning and reads them.  He starts questioning society and why no one reads or remembers.  (Part of the subtext is that there is always noise and video and pictures so that people no longer want to read.)

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Summary: A comparison of the difference in storyline between Ender’s Game and Ender’s Game Alive.

After I listened to Ender’s Game Alive last week (a radio-styled audio drama) I decided to re-read Ender’s Game in print.

Ender’s Game is a story that has had lots of versions.  It was originally a short story.  Then Card expanded it into a full length book.  Then Card revised it to the ‘Author’s Definitive Version’.  And now there is Ender’s Game Alive and the Ender’s Game movie.

In addition there have been a number of short stories that have expanded on scenes from the book or provided background.  There is a whole book that was falls between the last two chapters of Ender’s Game and a whole series that starts by telling this same story from a different character’s perspective.

So when I listened to Ender’s Game Alive and commented on my disappointment with the abridgement I got a little push back.  I was going to re-read Ender’s Game anyway.  But I read it with an eye to see the places that were handled differently.

Having read both within a couple days of each other, I agree, Ender’s Game Alive is really a different version of the story more than an abridgement.  But I stand by the fact that I think it does not give enough character development to Ender.  (Stop reading now if you don’t want any spoilers.)

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Short Review: I wanted to like it more than I did. But not nearly as bad as many of the reviews.

Allegiant is the highly anticipated third book in dystopian trilogy.  Starting with Insurgent and then Divergent, Allegiant tells the story of a post-apocalyptic Chicago.

Five factions (essentially small tribal groups) formerly to ruled the city.  But after Tris and Four released a video at the end of the last book, everyone realizes there is something outside the border, something that is influencing how the factions work.

Tris and Tobias leave the city as part of a larger group to find out what is outside the city.

Early reviews of Allegiant have not been good.  As I started writing this review on Friday the 25th, just 3 days after it was released there are already 746 reviews on Amazon, 300 of them are 1 star reviews. (Monday morning the 28th, 6 days after released there were 1311 reviews with only 502 of them being 4 or 5 stars.) The fans that have been waiting more than 18 months for this third installment are not happy.

I think some of the criticism is valid.  The beginning was a bit rough.  It took me a good quarter of the book to get into the real groove of the story and be invested in the characters again.

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Summary: Interesting as a new version of the classic, but not as good as the full book.

I am not an objective listener to Ender’s Game Alive.  I have read Ender’s Game more than any other books (I would guess around a dozen or so times.)  I usually say it is my all time favorite book.

So when Orson Scott Card started promoting a full cast audioplay (an old fashioned radio drama) I picked it up. (Of course it was timed to release right before the new Ender’s Game movie which released Nov 1.)  Orson Scott Card got his start writing as a playwright.  And as a stand alone play, it is well done.

Stefan Rudnicki (who is my favorite narrator) performed and produced the audioplay.  So he was a familiar voice (he narrators and produces almost all of Orson Scott Card’s audiobooks.)  And there are very good (and familiar) other voices that are a part of the audioplay.  The production values are very good, this is just like the best of the old fashioned radio plays.

But there were two things apparent to me almost immediately.  First, this is a book that is mostly about children. But all of the voices were adult.  I don’t know what I expected.  It is not something that I thought was odd when I have listened to the regular audiobook or other children’s audiobooks.  But audiobooks are narrated by one or two voices and I don’t have an expectation of hearing children’s voices.

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