Adam Shields

The Elite by Kiera Cass (The Selection #2)

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The Elite by Kiera Cass (The Selection #2)

Takeaway: To work within to transform the system or fight outside the system, that is the question.

I was less than thrilled with the first book in this series, The Selection.  It is a mix between a Hunger Games dystopian-lite and the bachelor with a young adult romance candy on top.  (A prince is required by law to use a bachelor type game show to choose his bride in a dystopian North America.)

But there was enough in the book that I went ahead and got the second book (these are audiobooks from the library, so I am not investing too much here.)  While I was frustrated at the beginning with the ‘why would he like me, I am just a nobody’ vibe, it did get better.

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The Civil War as Theological Crisis by Mark Noll

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The Civil War as Theological Crisis by Mark NollTakeaway: Cultural blind spots affect our reading of scripture far more than we realize.

There are very few books I have recommended more over the past year or so than Mark Noll’s The Civil War as Theological Crisis.  It has been about over a year since I originally read and reviewed it, so I thought it was a good time to read it again (that and the price dropped.)

One of the clear takeaways from this book is that we often do not see our own cultural blind spots.  For instance, an argument that most pro-slavery Christians did not hear or respond to is that the main difference between American Slavery and the slavery of biblical times was that American Slavery was racially based.  Because civil war era White Christians were so convinced that Blacks as a race were inferior it was inconceivable to most that there could be non-racially based slavery or that free Blacks could or should be considered equal to Whites.  And this was true for the vast majority of Christians whether they were from the North or the South, and whether they were for or against slavery.

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Amazon Updates iOS Kindle App

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Yesterday Amazon released and update to the Kindle app for Apple devices to go along with the update to iOS 7.  It was more than a visual update.  The update brought the app in line with many of the features of the stand alone ereaders. The main two feature updates are X-Ray – a potentially … Read more

Bonhoeffer, Christ and Culture edited by Johnson & Larsen

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Bonhoeffer, Christ and CultureSummary: A Book summary of the 2011 Wheaton Theology Conference on Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I am always so excited to read the book produced from the papers of the Wheaton Theology Conference, but then I tend to have to force myself to finish the book.

It is not that the papers are bad, there are always some very good essays and a few that are less interesting to me (I am sure mostly because of different interests between myself and the authors more than the quality of the papers.)

Because these books are only loosely connected around the subject I tend to read a chapter or two and then put the book down and then pick it up again quite a while later.  I have been reading Bonhoeffer, Christ and Culture for a couple months now on and off.

Timothy Larsen’s chapter on how Evangelicals have received Bonhoeffer over time was very interesting.  It was a good supplement to the biographies that I have read on Bonhoeffer because it was more about why we read Bonhoeffer than Bonhoeffer himself.  (Makes me want to read Martin Marty’s book on the history of Letters and Papers from Prison).

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Two New Books by NT Wright

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I just picked up NT Wright’s new The Case for the Psalms.  It is a fairly short book about why the Psalms are important to Christian worship and theology.  While the Kindle version has dropped from its initial $12.99 starting price (it is $11.04 right now), it is still cheaper for me to get the … Read more

Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins (Underland Chronicles #1)

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Gregor The Overlander by Suzanne CollinsSummary: An 11 year old boy and his sister get suck to a world beneath and realize that their missing father needs them to find him.

I first noticed the Underland Chronicles when looking to see what Suzanne Collins had written beside the Hunger Games Trilogy.  I have been trying to spend less money on books lately (I have a baby coming) and trying to check more books out of the library and read more from the To Read Pile that I already own, so I picked this up because it was at the library.

Gregor the Overlander is clearly a middle grade book, one of that in between age that is neither children’s nor young adult.  And yet again, I will say I tend to not like middle grade books nearly as much as young adult books.

But this is one that moved quickly and in spite of the fact that it is over 300 pages (or 6 and a half hours of audio) I finished it in just over a day.  I actually thought I might have missed a section when I realized I was almost at the end (I didn’t).

Like the Percy Jackson and Book of Three and Wrinkle in Time middle grade series, these are based around a quest.  It is a simple structure, no real sub-plots or significant twists.

Gregor is 11 year old.  His father disappeared without a trace two years ago.  Gregor is the oldest of three.  It is summer and his younger sister is going to camp, but Gregor has to stay home to take care of his forgetful grandmother and his two year old baby sister so his mom can work and support the family.

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows JK Rowling

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Takeaway: I take it back, this is my favorite Harry Potter

Just like Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, this is the first time I have re-read the book since it first came out.  And I have only watched the movies once in the theater straight through (but I have watched pieces of them on TV a couple of times) prior to watching them this week. (Well I watched the first one, tried to record and watch the second, but my DVR recorded the first one a second time.)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is far removed from Harry Potter and the Sorcerers’ Stone.  They are clearly from the same universe, but one is a children’s book and one is as engaging as any other piece of fiction I have read.  (I am not knocking children’s books, I read children’s books for pleasure, but they are rarely as compelling as adult fiction.)

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