Book Reviews – Page 9

The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind by Jason M Baxter

November 21, 2024 by Adam Shields

Summary: Discussion of how understanding the Medieval world and its books help to understand CS Lewis.

Over the years, I have read an enormous amount by or about CS Lewis. I am not Lewis scholar, I have not been systemically enough and I certainly haven’t read enough to know what the academy thinks of Lewis, but I have read read about 25-30 books by or about Lewis since starting this blog.

One of my complaints about the biographies of Lewis is that they say very little about Lewis’ discipleship, including Devin Brown’s which is about the spiritual life of Lewis. Part of what Baxter is doing in The Medieval Mind of CS Lewis is suggesting that a significant part of Lewis’ discipleship was the result of reading old books. That makes sense to me, although I do think that Lewis’ work with a spiritual director likely mattered to making that real.

What is helpful about The Medieval Mind of CS Lewis is the explanations of the references that are missed when we don’t know about them. I have read a bit of Dante, but I don’t know Dante well. I have never read Boethius and many others referenced here. What I love about reading young adult writer, KB Hoyle, is that she always has references and hints in her books. You can read her books without knowing any of the references and you get a good story. But as an adult reading her books, I get a lot more because I get the references. There is depth to the stories and the depth encourages rereading. That just isn’t the case for a lot of current pop fiction. A lot of pop fiction assumes that the reader isn’t paying attention, doesn’t care about reference and is simply looking for an escape. Reading for escape isn’t bad, I read for escape all the time. But I don’t want to always read for escape. (It is not surprising that KB Hoyle taught at a Classical school before becoming a full time writer and publisher.)

I found The Medieval Mind of CS Lewis very helpful and if you like CS Lewis and want to understand more, you likely will like it as well. But I do have a concern, not about the book as much as the way that classical education is sometimes used. Recently a number of atheist or agnostics have been calling themselves cultural Christians, this trend seems to not be about Christianity as much as it is about shared culture. I get very wary of arguments for shared culture. I think there is real value in retelling fairy tales and old stories and finding traditional archetypes in those stories. That is part of what a good education should include.

The Wild Robot Protects by Peter Brown

November 19, 2024 by Adam Shields

Summary: The Wild Robot discovers not just new animal friends, but also new roles for her life.

I still have not seen the new Wild Robot movie, but I am a fan of the book series. This is an early middle grade series, so I am not going to worry about spoilers here. People reading reviews are likely reading to understand what their kids are reading, not because they are reading themselves. (I read it myself, my 9 year old has already read the first book and my 11 year old was not interested.)

The first book, The Wild Robot, was a book about self-discovery, vocation, and meaning. The Robot is lost at sea, washed ashore on remote island without people and learns to communicate with animals while learning from them about how to survive. She adopts an orphaned goose and that care for her son both helps her to see her role as a protector and allows the animals to see her as safe. The meaning from caring for her son and others drives her to continue to learn and see the world with different eyes.

The second book, The Wild Robot Escapes, is thematically about home. At the end of the first book, Roz, the robot, leaves the island to be repaired. Roz is repaired but because her memories are not damaged, she continues to remember her life on the island and her son. She is sent to work on a farm with a human family. Roz see the value in helping the human family. She learns to communicate with the humans, farm animals and different wild animals that she finds as she escapes from her work on the farm. In process of escaping from the farm, she is again captured, but this time is interviewed by the creator of her type of robot. That creator understands the unique reality of Roz and works to help her get back to the island, but again has repaired and upgraded her body to make life on the island easier.

Othered: Finding Belonging with the God Who Pursues the Hurt, Harmed, and Marginalized by Jenai Auman

November 13, 2024 by Adam Shields

Summary: A discussion of how churches can harm, paraticularly those who have been previouly traumaized.

I think one of the reasons that people resist hearing about abuse is that trauma and harm are reception events. In other words, they are not universalized objective realities but subjective realities. Two people can experience the same events and be from similar backgrounds, and they can perceive those events differently. And in the research into trauma, it is not that one person is “right” and another person is “wrong” but that both have their own perception.

We have also had other people misunderstand us. We said something, and the other person either misheard what we said or what we said was accurately heard, but its meaning was still misunderstood. I think this is a universal experience, but moving that universal experience of misunderstanding to discussions of abuse and trauma is still difficult. I distinctly remember having a conversation with some guy friends about parenting and how we can’t just assume that what was helpful with one child will work with another. We lamented that children need different things from us because they are different. It makes any relational connection difficult because it takes work to monitor the relationship and seek to understand differences.

How to Walk Into a Room: The Art of Knowing When to Stay and When to Walk Away by Emily P. Freeman

November 11, 2024 by Adam Shields

Summary: A books about discernment.

Anyone who is a regular reader of my book reviews probably knows that I have been on a long-term reading project about discernment. I listened to an interview with Emily Freeman on the Gravity Commons podcast, and then a couple of days later, Audible had a sale on How to Walk Into a Room, and I picked it up.

One of my convictions about discernment (you can read my most recent summary of what I think about discernment here), is that while discernment includes decision-making, I am more interested in formational discernment, how we are formed toward Christ so that we both intuitively follow Christ’s lead as well as how we consciously make decisions. I think both parts are important, but How to Walk Into a Room is mostly about the consciously deciding aspect of discernment.

Over the past decade there has been a near constant discussion about the rise of the ‘Nones”, those who no longer identify as part of a specific religious community. Those nones are not necessarily leaving Christian faith, but they are leaving a religious community for one reason or another. One of the findings of the research study that was detailed in The Great Dechurching, is that most people stop going to church when they move. It is less an intentional withdrawal from church than a lack of motivation to find a new church. Another large group of people stopped going to church during Covid and never found their way back. But Freeman is talking about a third group of people, those who are intentionally trying to discern whether to continue in a church or leave because of specific reasons. Those reasons can be different, spiritual harm or abuse, differences in theology or practices, personality conflicts, etc., but there is conscious intention to ask God if they should continue or leave. In many cases, these people are not leaving faith, they are leaving a specific community and intend to go to a new faith community.

Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Richard Rohr

December 18, 2024November 8, 2024 by Adam Shields

Summary: A look at the process of change as we age and mature.

I am in a Tuesday morning book group at my local Jesuit retreat house. The group meets for about 8 to 10 weeks twice a year. There are about 20 people who are involved, usually about 15-16 people a week are present. Because the group meets at 10:15 AM on a Tuesday, it is mostly people who are retirement age. The group is primarily Catholic and female, although not entirely. I very much value the group and I will continue to read whatever the group picks. But I was not looking forward to reading Falling Upward. I have previously read it twice in 2011 and in 2016. I liked it less each time I read it. But there is something helpful about reading a book in a group because you gain the perspective of others as you read it. I tend to like books less if I previously liked them when rereading them in a group. But I also tend to like books more when rereading with a group if I didn’t like them previously. In both cases, it is because different perspectives give me insight into aspects of the book that I did not have when reading alone.

Part of what I found interesting is that about a third of the group was new to the book. But most of the group had read it two or three times previously. Almost everyone who found the book valuable had read it multiple times. I continue to think that Rohr is less clear than he should be. And I continue to think he is trying to read too large of an audience. I both found the book more helpful and more limited with this reading.

The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny (Inspector Gamache #19)

November 6, 2024 by Adam Shields

Summary: Inspector Gamache is back at the job but corruption and murder are still present and it is up to Gamache to save everyone.

I am a huge fan of the Inspector Gamache series. I reread the whole series a couple of years ago and participated in a group blogging project by a number of book reviewers who also love Gamache and Louise Penny. I definitely pre-order all books by Louise Penny and read them immediately. I have both read the print versions and listened to the audiobooks. There is a new audiobook narrator for this 19th book, bringing the series to three narrators now. The new narrator is Jean Brassard, who is from the area where the books are set. He does a good job with the narration and feels pretty similar to the previous narrators in the style and tone of the narration.

I did enjoy The Grey Wolf, but it feels like the story has been told already. Gamache is the head of homicide he is back in Quebec and splitting his time between Three Pines and Montreal. While in Three Pines he gets notice that the sensor of his apartment in Montreal indicates that it has been broken into. Beauvoir checks it out, but can’t see anything missing or wrong, so they chalk it up to a bad sensor. The next day, Gamache’s coat is delivered to the police headquarters with two notes inside. And that starts a long thread that leads to an investigation of corruption and murder.

The book is well written if the thread of corruption had not already been done a couple of times. I noticed that Armond is again described as being in his late 50s, which is exactly how he was described in the early books. Since that time Beauvoir has married Annie and both of the Gamache children have children. No less than 10 years have passed, but Gamache is still in his late 50s and at the top of his game. I don’t think that Penny makes Gamache into the near superhero that he has been in some of the books, but still, a number of the choices seem forced or go over the same ground as other books

Why Everything That Doesn’t Matter, Matters So Much: The Way of Love in a World of Hurt By Charlie Peacock and Andi Ashworth

May 19, 2025November 6, 2024 by Adam Shields

Summary: A book of wisdom.

I am a fan of memoirs, especially memoirs written toward the end of life that evaluate life and what is important. This isn’t a memoir, but it has the feel of a memoir. Why Everything that Doesn’t Matter, Matters So Much is a series of essays. Some of this retreads ground that has been trod before. I love Charlie’s thoughts on music and art and what it means to be an artist as a Christian, but I have heard those parts before.

What I haven’t heard is anything from Andi, Charlie Peacock’s wife. From the book it is clear that I just haven’t been paying attention, because she is the better writer. It is not that Charlie is a bad writer. I think he has important things to say and I think that his role as musical mentor and sage is important, but she has grappled with life and her thoughts in a way that I think shine brighter.

Part of what is important here is that they are both showing the struggle of the Christian life even as relatively successful people. Part of what she ends the book with is a discussion of success. They emphasize that their view of success isn’t money or records sold or influence, but the deeper things of life. And I appreciate that they share vulnerably and appropriately about struggles with health and marriage and vocation and trauma.

A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah Maas

October 31, 2024 by Adam Shields

Summary: A very special Solstice (Christmas) edition.

I am of an age where we lived through “very special episodes” not just made fun of them. After a TV show had a hundred episodes and could go to syndication, then it would have a couple of seasonal episodes that would always be shown out of season during syndication. I kept waiting for this the purpose of this book and I never really found it.

The book is overshadowed by recovery from “the war.” But the war was really a couple of battles. We know from previous discussions that 500 years ago there was a war that had lasted for years. And we know that the Rhys and others had been captured for nearly 50 years. I am not asking for more war narrative, but three battles without a real peace settlement doesn’t feel to me like the end of the war is here. So the whole premise of the book, Feyre and others trying to come to terms with the trauma of the war, seems off.

The Wild Robot Escapes by Peter Brown

October 29, 2024 by Adam Shields

Summary: Roz becomes a farm robot and wants to find her son and make her way home to the island.

At the end of the first book of the series, The Wild Robot, Roz had been damaged trying to protect her adopted son (a wild goose) and her friends (the other animals on the island where she lives) from the robots that had been sent to retrieve her. Those robots were Those robots were all destroyed, but Roz had no choice but to turn herself in so that she could be repaired.

Roz was refurbished but she maintained her memories and personality. After refurbishment, she was sold to a disabled farmer. As Roz works the farm, she becomes friends with the farm animals and the two children on the farm.

She is good at farming. She understands how to work with the animals and the other farm machines. She can see that there is real value in the work, not just because the work is enjoyable, but because the work she does serves the family and Roz likes the family.

The Late Scholar by Jill Paton Walsh (Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane Mysteries Book 4)

October 28, 2024 by Adam Shields

Summary: Peter discovers a new duty that his role of Duke brings. It leads him to a mystery and eventually to several deaths.

I have enjoyed this series of four books that grew out of Dorothy Sayers writing. The first was the draft of a novel written by Dorothy Sayers that Jill Paton Walsh finished. The next three were mostly Jill Paton Walsh using Sayers characters. I have enjoyed the books and I am glad that I read them. But I also haven’t loved them.

I still like Peter and Harriet as characters and I appreciate seeing them as they age. Their children are young adults. At the end of the last book, Peter had assumed the role of Duke after his brother died. His nephew was killed in action during WWII. Harriet still is writing, but the work of Duchess takes time. And there is a lingering of her earlier reputation as an accused murderer that does pop up in this book several times. Bunter is the ever present assistant who wants to keep the social boundaries in place, but who acquiesces to the increasing informality of the 1950s.

The mystery always felt a bit under developed. There is an ancient manuscript in one of the college of Oxford. Because of a long ago bequest, Peter has the role of “visitor” to help settle disputes within the college. In part because of money problems within the college, there is a disagreement about whether the manuscript should be sold and the money invested or if the manuscript should be kept and financial changes made in other ways.