Book Reviews

Takeaway: Trust in Christ and Love of other are not in opposition to right theological understanding.

A number of books have been written in the last decade or so that have embraced the acceptance of doubt or at least have normalized having periods of uncertainty as a regular part of the Christian life. It has progressed far enough that there are now books and article rejecting the over embrace of doubt.

Peter Enns has long been a part of this controversy because his own book Inspiration and Incarnation was controversial because some thought that it encouraged an unhealthy doubt. The Sin of Certainty concludes with a long, and very personal, section about Enns’ own doubts, which were exacerbated by the mishandling of the controversy around his earlier book. I will not get into the full story since it is detailed in the book, but Enns was forced out of his job as full professor at Westminster Theological Seminary in 2008 after several years of controversy. (It took 4 years for Enns to get another full time teaching job and even now four years later he is not yet a full professor.)

Enns own story is driving the message of the book. I think it would have been more helpful for the story to have been pushed up in the book to give greater context for why Enns thinks that a focus on certainty is unhelpful. But placed at the end of the book, the story really allows for the book to end strongly.

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Summary:  An 8th grade boy discovers that his mother hasn’t abandoned the family, but been sucked into a wormhole.

My paying job involves program evaluation for an after school program. I am working on doing data entry for 3rd quarter grades (nearly 1000 students) right now. So I need something to help pass the time.

Audible started a new free feature for members last week, Audible Channels. This is basically curated podcasts. There are news, lectures, short stories, actual podcasts that you can get other places. One of the parts I am paying attention to are the ‘7 Days of…’ channels. These are short stories from famous authors. Right now Anton Chekhov, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde and Philip K Dick all have seven short stories.

Space Boy is in the Sci-Fi section. There are several other about 1 hour short stories.

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Summary: Discipleship and spiritual formation are not primarily about gaining new information but being formed over time through habit and worship.

I have been influenced by James KA Smith over the past several years more than almost any other author. In the last three years I have read five books and a number of shorter articles, not to mention watching at least a dozen lectures. And I do not think I am alone. I was in a private Facebook theology discussion yesterday when in 110 comments, Smith was referenced at least 8 times with no less than four of his books directly mentioned or hinted at.

There is a reason Smith is becoming influential. He is speaking to several issues that are important and prominent. You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit is the latest attempt both to deal with the issues and the first book to really attempt to speak to a lay audience about them.

There are three real points being made in the book. First, we are not solely intellectual beings. God created us with intellects and brains, but also emotions and unconscious bias. We are not, to use his common phrase, “Brains on a stick.” We are fully human, and we are intended to be that way by God. That may not seem like a big deal, but much of Christian culture has understood us to be Brains on a Stick. Our evangelism, discipleship and spiritual growth are often primarily oriented toward the intellect. There is also the anti-intellectual parts of Christianity. But they are in many ways just as oriented toward the Brain on a Stick idea, just using the insight in a different method.

The second point is that because we are not brains on a stick, we need to take into account the various ways that we are influenced and shaped. Jamie Smith uses the term ‘liturgies’ to describe the shaping activities that are all around us. Going to the mall is a consumerist liturgy. The bright airy buildings give us comfort and place. Our five senses are being engaged by Cinnabon and the skylights and the comfortable seating areas. We are being shaped by the feeding of our desires and absorbing our place in the world as consumer. Sports have a different liturgy. We feel a participant in something greater than ourself, we have the us vs them mentality encouraged.

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Summary: A fanboy’s dream.

If you are a fan of Hamilton the Musical, you own a copy of the soundtrack, you have read the Chernow biography (my review), you are frustrated because you can’t get a copy of the tickets, you have watched all of the youtube clips you can find and you are still interested in the show, you should buy a copy of Hamilton: The Revolution.

Hamilton: The Revolution is two (or three) books in one. One book is written by Jeremy McCarter. McCarter is a theater critic and friend of Lin-Manuel Miranda. McCarter traces the development of the show, the background of all of the performers and collaborators. He talks about how the show developed from pre-production idea to early musical pieces to the initial trial run to the Broadway version. There is discussion of how musical pieces changed, motivation behind some of the writing of the pieces and other personal thoughts about the show and the actors.

The second aspect of the book is the lyrics of the show (the libretto) for the whole show, with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s annotations. I have read the lyrics that were available in Amazon’s version of the soundtrack, but that is only about half of the pieces. So this is the first time I have actually read the lyrics of the entire show.

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Summary: Well written biography which is the inspiration for the broadway hit.

I am obsessed with the musical Hamilton (free if you have Amazon prime). Because of my obsession I decided to re-read Ron Chernow’s biography. I listened to the audiobook when it first came out, soon after I read John Adams.

This time I read the Kindle Edition. It has been eight years and a different format, there is so much that I had forgotten. Alexander Hamilton is truly one of the most fascinating characters of American history. And Lin-Manuel Miranda captures the spirit of Hamilton well.

As you would expect, the two hour musical glosses over a number of biographical issues, simplifies some storylines, changes some of the characters, distorts some of the history for tension building and simplicity. But for the most part it is pretty easy to see the reasons for the changes.

What is fascinating is the character study. Hamilton was incredibly gifted with huge reserves of energy. The line in the musical asking how Hamilton managed to rise to prominence so quickly after the war says, ‘the man is non-stop’. Which is almost an understatement.

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Summary: A novella about battle school at Christmas.

I have been using up the last of my audiobook credits at Scribd before canceling my subscription. So I have been listening to books that I wasn’t interested enough to purchase or are to short to justify the price.

A War of Gifts is short. It is 123 pages in paper, but most of the reviews comment about how few words are on each page and it is not quite 2.5 hours in audio.

The story opens with a fundamentalist preacher and his gifted son. The son has absorbed his father’s faith and while there is nothing he can do to stop being taken to battle school, he chooses to not participate. He fulfills basic requirements, learns to shoot and participates in the battles, but refuses shoot at another person.

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Summary: Spiritual insights from the author’s friendship with Mr Rogers.

There really are surprisingly few books about Mister Rogers. Outside of the books by Mr Rogers, I can really only find four. One I read and reviewed last year (The Peaceful Neighbor). One that I just found today, one that is self published (and very poorly reviewed) and this one, The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers.

The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers recounts Amy Hollingsworth’s friendship with Fred Rogers during the last 8 years of his life. She was a young mother and writer. She asked for an interview and unusually, she was given one.

This started what seems to be a real friendship, although one that was mostly via letter and the occasional phone call. It is hard to tell whether Hollingsworth is being modest about her friendship or whether she is making more of the friendship than was warranted (as a few reviewers have suggested.)  My assumption is that the friendship was real and her stories are genuine admiration. The stories and quotes from letters seem to suggest a real friendship. But there is also a lack of new insight into Mr Rogers that seems odd. I have not read much about Fred Rogers, but there was little that was new here.

In attempting to make this about ‘spiritual insights’ instead of straight memoir or biography Hollingsworth over-uses uses the metaphor of ‘toast sticks’. When Fred Rogers was a boy, an older woman that lived near him would feed him sticks of toast. Not long before she died, she taught him to make the sticks of toast himself. So the central metaphor is Hollingsworth attempting to teach us the spiritual lessons that she learned from Mister Rogers.

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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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