Book Reviews

Takeaway: A perfect book to read Maundy Thursday and Good Friday

Silence is a difficult book.  It is not difficult to read but it is difficult because of the complex picture of Christianity that it presents. I can understand why so many people love and many others find it near heresy.

Silence was written in 1966 by Shusaku Endo.  Shusaku Endo was a Japanese Catholic and wrote this historical novel about the 17th century persecution of Christianity in Japan.

The story follows a Portuguese Jesuit Priest that sneaks into Japan to minister to the local persecuted Christian community and find out if it is true that his former mentor Father Ferreira has committed apostasy (denied Christ.)

Japan is one of the historical examples of where the ‘blood of martyrdom’ was not the ‘seed of the church’ as Tertullian put it.  The Christian community in Japan grew quickly after Francis Xavier (founder of the Jesuits) first brought the message of Christianity there in 1549.  There were several hundred thousand Christians in Japan by the time the first persecutions started.

In 1597, 26 Christians were crucified.  Later persecutions occurred in 1613, 1630 and 1632.  But after the Shimabara Rebellion in 1638, where a peasant revolt was put down (many of whom were Catholic Christians), the ban on Christianity was strongly enforced.

Silence is set in 1638 just after the Shimabara Rebellion. Father Rodrigues and his companion Father Garrpe find a village of Christians and secretly minister to them.  But soon they are discovered and escape so they will not bring problems to the village.  Their escape is too late and several villagers are tortured and killed.  The priest split up to reach more people and hopefully be harder to find.

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Summary: A 13 episode series of connected short stories set in John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War universe.

I have long been in favor of authors and publishers experimenting to find new methods of writing and distributing books.  Now that I have experienced a real episodic serial I am not sure that I am a fan.

First of all it feels like it is more expensive.  I don’t think it actually is, the first episode was free, the 2nd to 5th episodes I bought at the standard Audible member discount price of $0.69.  Then episodes 6 to 13 I bought during the Spring Cleaning sale for $0.51 a piece.  There was a note on my purchase that said I will be charged individually for the episodes that have not yet been released.  So Audible is going to charge me $0.51 per week for the next four weeks.  Incurring individual processing fees instead of bundling the costs together (since I bought them all at once.)

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Summary: Good idea. The world biggest comic book fan becomes a superhero.

In general I read a lot of Christian non-fiction and very little Christian fiction. Part of that is choice, most of the fiction I read is spy, young adult, science fiction or fantasy. All of which are pretty rare on the Christian fiction market. Part my lack of reading Christian fiction is that there is so little that I have been really excited about in the past.

But I like to experiment. So when Tales of the Dim Knight was offered for free on kindle books I picked it up. When I noticed that there was an audiobook that was discounted to $1.99 on Audible because I had already ‘purchased’ the free kindle book, I bought it.

I listened to it all in three days. I really did want to find out what was going to happend and I liked it enough that I will probably read the second book in the series.

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Summary: First of a trilogy of books about Jesus written by Pope Benedict XVI written after he became Pope.

I have heard repeatedly and from various people how good the Pope’s trilogy on Jesus is.  Since he was stepping down, I figured I should try reading one of his books.  I did not finish it before he stepped down, but I did finish it before the next Pope had been chosen (barely).

This is clearly a book worth reading for people looking for theological content about Jesus.  Benedict is focused on teaching about Jesus as God and Savior.  While he acknowledges the importance of research into historical Jesus and the culture of the 1st Century and other methods of exploring Jesus, primarily, this is an exploration of Jesus as a theological teaching tool.  Primarily he is using the Gospels as his starting point.

Part of what is impressive to me is that it is clear that he has academic chops, but this is a very readable book.  A lot of academics have important things to say.  But we need others to interpret and popularize their content so that the average person can understand.

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Takeaway: The Trinity is who God is, not just how God reveals himself.

I am glad there is a new interest in the Trinity among the Evangelical world.  Like most things, the current revival of interest in the Trinity among Evangelicals reflects the increased academic interest in the trinity over the last 50-60 years (Barth, Rahner, Grentz, etc.).

What I find odd about the renewal of interest in the Trinity among Evangelicals is that they seem to want to not talk about recent academic writing about the Trinity.

So when I read Ryken’s book on the Trinity he wanted to talk about the Trinity as a purely individualistic issue and ignored the Trinity as a social theology (which has been the primary focus of modern Trinitarian writing.)  Ryken also primarily seemed to talk about the Trinity not as who God is, but what the Trinity means to who we are as Christians (why we need the Trinity for salvation).

Sanders does not fall into quite the same problems.  He explicitly says, “We have seen that God is triune at the deepest level, at the level of who he essentially is rather than merely at the level of what he does.” and later “God is Trinity primarily for himself and only secondarily for us. One of the consequences of this is that the Father has always been the Father, the Son has always been the Son, and the Holy Spirit has always been the Holy Spirit.”

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Reposting review because the book is now available in a Kindle Edition

Summary: The wonderful story with a new comic book feel in honor of its 50th anniversary.

Late every Christmas Eve my wife and I go over to her cousin’s house and we act as elves.  We put together all the toys, make sure all of the batteries are in (we cart away all the empty boxes and wrapping because Santa does not buy toys at the store.

As the kids have gotten older there are less complicated things for us to put together and we have more time to talk.

I was talking to my wife’s cousin’s husband and he was saying that over the past year he has rediscovered his love of comic books because of the iPad.  With his iPad he now is back to buying all kinds of comic books and rediscovering the joy of the comic in a new form. (Note: Marvel now has an unlimited subscription option for ipad comic books.)

I never got into comics.  I just didn’t have a community of friends that read them and so there was no one that shared them with me and my local library did not carry comic books (although I am sure some do.)

I have been paying more attention to factors in children’s reading.  Why is it that some kids read and some do not.  I am convinced that part of it is the community that they grow up in.  If everyone around them reads, then they probably will read as well.  One educator interviewed kids at her school that were readers and she found that the kids that were strong readers were closest to the local library and were encouraged to use it. (There is probably a causality problem with her research, but access to books is certainly one influence.)

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