Book Reviews

Summary: A humorous middle grade quest fantasy book from Lloyd Alexander.

When I was young, my favorite series was the Prydain Chronicles (Book of Three, Black Caldron, Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer, and High King). These books are a sort of middle grade/young adult Lord of The Rings. The only other books of Alexander’s that I read was the young adult Westmark Trilogy (Westmark, The Kestrel and Beggar Queen) .

The Arkadians has a lot of the best elements of the other two series. The two lead characters are reminiscent of the male and female leads from the other two series. There is a third character who provides a lot of comic relief (and a bit of content warning if you are reading this with younger children.) The third character is a man that has been turned into a talking donkey, a jackass in more than one sense of the word and the word play is used to its full extent.

There is a bit more upfront feminist empowerment in the Arkadians than in the other two series (although Alexander always has had a feminist bent.) The great ones have gone away because the Bear Tribe (men) unleashed chaos on the world and the women are attempting to keep the old ways alive in spite of oppression by the Bear Tribe.

The heroes are on a quest, or really a series of quests. The structure seems like it is in part a way to explore the concept of story telling. This book is full of stories, some of them re-workings of ancient myths, some are new (at least to me.)  But it felt a bit like Donald Miller’s book A Thousand Miles in a Million Years because there was constant discussion of how to tell a story and suggestions on how a story might be made better by adjusting the details.

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Summary: Told over a 60 year period as the world descends into dystopia, there is something more than what it initially seems.

The Bone Clocks has been highly recommended by a number of people that I trust. It is well written literary fiction with elements of science fiction and fantasy. I think I should have loved it, but I did not, although I did not hate it either. In the end, I am glad I read it, but the 24.5 hours of audiobook were more than I really felt worth the time.

The audiobook I think was the first problem. Due to my schedule, I have been relying on audiobooks lately. The quality of the audiobook  is excellent, but the structure of the book was not well suited for an audiobook. The Bone Clocks both moved forward and backward through time and in print there would have been more visual clues to the changes. In the audiobook I was frequently lost.

The structure of the book is six interconnected novellas, somewhat similar to the structure that Susan Howatch has used several times in her books.  The first section starts with Holly Sykes, a 15 old who decides to run away after a fight with her mother in 1984.  Once we grow to know and actually understand Holly, the story switches to 1991 to an unlikable Cambridge undergrad, Hugo Lamb. There is a connection to Holly Sykes eventually but again, once there is a stable place the story shifts again. The third section is a new narrator, Ed, a war correspondent and now Holly’s husband (it is long into the section before I realize that he is a minor character from the first section) speaking in 2004. Section Four is set in 2016 with a minor character from section two, a once famous novelist. The last two sections are narrated by Holly again in 2024 and then 2043.

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Summary: Cormran Strike is searching for an unlikable author that has disappeared.

Regular commenter Sheila Brennan said a few days ago that my opposition to mysteries seems to be diminishing.  She is right, I really have begun to like a certain type of mystery. Mysteries that are about characters and understanding people are interesting. Mysteries that are about violence and ‘who-dun-it’, not as much.

Silkworm is certainly more violent (and vaguely sexually violent) than absolutely necessary. But the point isn’t the violence, but creating the character that would also be violent. At some point the murderer has to be a person that would commit murder.  It is a weakness of the genre, either the books are about violence of some sort, or there isn’t a mystery. I thought that Silkworm was somewhat like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (at least in how it related to sexual violence).

About eight months have passed since Corman Strike solved case in the first book. Since then he is doing a bit better. His assistant Robin has helped him get out from under most of his debt and assisting him to work on paying cases. But Strike also hates working for pricks. And more to get rid of a prick of a client than anything else, he accepts a commission from a socially awkward woman to find her missing husband. That husband is a temperamental writer who disappears frequently, who openly has mistresses and who writes very odd books. Together they have a 26 year old developmentally disabled daughter.

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Summary: An overview of Paul to help us see Christ.

I have appreciated reading a couple of Rowan Williams’ books over the last year. Williams writes on a wide variety of topics. I glanced through his list of books as I was prepping this review and he has books on Christian history, theology, literature, other Christian groups (outside of his own Anglican background), poetry, spiritual practices, biographies and more.

The two previous books, and this one, were Lenten lectures that were turned into short books. I will have to pick up a longer book eventually, but these short books allow my restricted schedule to get intellectually satisfying content in a short form.

Williams has three basic chapters on Paul. The first introduces him and his setting. The second focuses on the idea of the church welcoming all. The third is about Paul’s vision of the New Creation.

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Takeaway: Social and personal effects of pornography really are more devastating than I thought.

The promise of Wired for Intimacy is that it can speak to the problems of pornography both from a Christian/theological/moral perspective and a neurological/psychological perspective. Some people are drawn more to one type of argument or the other. But I think it is important that there is an attempt at both sides. Without the theological, there is just a pragmatic science. Without the science, it is one person’s theological system against another.

The first half of the book progresses from definition of pornography, to the social issues that occur because of pornography, to the neurological effects on the male brain from exposure to pornography. This is the heart of the book. The main issue, identified neurologically, is the potential for creating sexual triggers that are based more on pornography than a sexual partner. And the earlier a person is introduced to pornography the more likely that sexual response will become dependent on pornography and create sexual dysfunction when sexual response is desired with a human partner.

Sexual response for a male is more complicated than I would have imagined. There are a variety of chemical, hormonal, and other neurological responses that usually occur in the progression of arousal through to orgasm. But when pornography is used, several of the steps are skipped. When the brain becomes used to skipping steps, the ability for a man to have a fuller sexual response becomes limited. (There is a lot of neurological science in the book that I am skipping.)

For readers that are Christians I think that chapter 2 (Corruption of Intimacy) is important. But for readers that are non-Christian (as most of the negative reviews on Amazon indicate) there is a need for a discussion that is based in science but uses more abstracted moral argument that is not based solely in Christianity. Even counselors that are Christians and pastors could use assistance in helping people that may be starting at a different theological point. That being said, as a Christian, the fact that pornography inhibits the ability to hear the Holy Spirit I think is important (but that really only works if pornography is an addiction and the case has to be made scientifically that there is an addiction.)

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