Book Reviews

Summary: Very helpful, quick overview of John Paul II’s theology of the body.

I purchased this about a year ago after I read Matthew Lee Anderson’s very good Earthen Vessels: Why Our Bodies Matter to Our Faith (first review, second review).  I was looking a basic introduction to John Paul II’s Theology of the Body and Christopher West has written several books on it.

The book sat on my bookshelf for a year but I read it very quickly once I picked it up. Overall I this was a good book.  I highlighted and marked up the book quite a bit (and then left it with my Dad while visiting for Thanksgiving, who was also interested in reading it.)

So I don’t have the book notes.  From memory, the strong points are Marriage as a divine gift, the strong idea about how celibacy fits into that sacramental view of marriage, the way that God designed the body and the ways that sin and redemption of have affected our subsequent view of body.  All of that really is good, fits well within the Christian (and Evangelical) theology and I think strengthens our theology.

Many place the book was quite beautiful in its descriptions of the body, marriage, sex, and God’s love for us.  I think that beauty is something that is often missing in our Evangelical descriptions of the body.  We get erotic, physical, dangerous; we miss the beauty.

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Summary: There is no one better the catch a crook than another crook.

When I was a kid I read a good bit.  A lot of it was fairly worthless pulp science fiction.  I have never been that snobbish about poorly written books.  I like Twilight, Harry Potter and a host of other books that many people complain about.  While I really do appreciate a well written phrase, there is more to writing in my mind than perfect writing.  A story needs to be told.  The reader needs to be engaged.

The Stainless Steel Rat was a series that I know I read in or around middle school.  But I had absolutely no memory of the series.  I noticed that the first book was available at my library on audiobook and I picked it up out of pure nostalgia.

The story is not all that original (or at least it does not feel original now).  In a future world, crime has almost entirely been stopped.  Those few criminals that exist are captured and  ‘re-educated’.

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Summary: Five different perspectives on how we seek out meaning in scripture.

Over the past two years I have spent a fair amount of time coming to terms with how to read and understand scripture. Mostly this time has been confirming a couple of ideas. 1) The bible is not a magical answer books. 2) Christians (Evangelicals in particular) spend more time arguing about the bible than reading it (myself included.) 3) We think that everyone else ignores their cultural pre-suppositions, but that we have it right. 4) Understanding of scripture should be primarily a community, not individual activity.

Biblical Hermeneutics (how to to understand scripture) takes five authors with five different perspectives and shows how those different perspectives affect the way that we understand scripture.

The best part of the book is that they took a particular passage then used their perspective to explore how they would get meaning from the text. The book uses Matthew 2:13-15 (which is partially quoting Hosea 11:1) as their test case. This allows for both direct look at the meaning of Matt 2 and a look at how to use New Testament passages that refer to the Old Testament.

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Summary: A cute early reader books about two girls that do not like one another because both of them are named Stephanie.

One of the things I have most enjoyed about book blogging is getting to know authors (at least on line) over time.

Kevin Hendricks and I met online after I read his book Addition by Adoption. Over the past couple years I helped format two of his books for ebook release (Open Our Eyes and Outspoken: Conversations about Church Communication)

This summer Kevin and his 6 year old daughter wrote a book together.  Kevin used a Kickstarter Campaign to get the book published and yesterday the book officially launched.

The Stephanies is a early reader book about two girls that do not like one another because they both have the same name.  Over time they figure out how to be friends.  I picked up the kindle version, but I think I am also going to buy the Color Your Own version so I can read it with my nieces and let them color it as well.

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Summary: A series of lectures on the state of the Catholic Church that was later turned into a book.

Over the past several months I have been reading about Catholicism (see below for other reviews).  Many of the book have been written by Evangelicals that have converted to Catholicism.  I chose several of them precisely because I knew that they would write with language that I as an Evangelical would mostly understand.

But it is time to start reading more widely and I want to start reading more books written by Catholics to other Catholics.  I picked this audiobook up on a whim from Audible because I had a couple dollars of promotional credit and it was on sale.

It is not actually a book.  It is a series of lectures that was later turned into a book.  It is not new either.  The lectures were given in 1985 during lent.  It sounds like they were given in a church basement to a small group of people that are concerned about their church (although the audio of Rohr is very clear).  On the whole this does not feel all that dated.  There are a few things that let you know that these are almost 30 years old.  But most of the issues are probably pretty similar.

What I always find most encouraging is that many of the poor assumptions about Catholics that Evangelicals have disappear quickly when you actually listen to people like Rohr.  This is a man that is in love with Christ, that wants to see the world evangelized that is charitable in his opinions of other Christians and has a real heart for the church.  He opens each lecture with a prayer, prayers that would be very comfortable and familiar to Evangelicals.

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I love books.  I love people that love books.  I love books about books by people that love books.

Karen Swallow Prior is an English Professor, writer, and essayist.  She has written a memoir highlighting the books (and poems) that have changed her life and made her who she is today.

Each chapter highlight a book and then uses that book to help tell the story of her life.  Sometimes the book helps her to learn, sometimes the book helps her to explain.  But in each case, it is her as a reader that comes through.

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