Book Reviews

Summary: Old men (and women) make better warriors because they have something to live for, and fight for.

Old Man’s War makes five John Scalzi books in five months.  I am not sure I am finished yet.

Like Little Fuzzy and Redshirts, Old Man’s War takes some currently existing story ideas and takes them in a new place.

Much of the first half of the book is roughly based on Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (the book, not the absolutely horrible movie).

Starship Troopers is one of the best anti-war science fiction books written.  It is cleverly written as the story of a young man going to war.  In Scalzi’s world, it is old men (and women) that go to war.

After people have lived their life, they can chose to leave earth and become soldiers.  But they can never return.  Officially they are considered dead on earth.  But everyone has the option of joining up at 65 and then leaving for war at 75.  The assumption is that somehow they will be made young and after serving for 4 years (with extensions of up to six more) they can either continue to serve or become colonists on one of the worlds that they have been defending.

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Summary: The threat running through most of this series comes to a head.

The Inspector Gamache series is a traditional murder mystery series. Every book, Chief Homicide inspector Gamache and his team respond to a murder and attempt to solve it.

But through most of the series there is a subplot about corruption within the police force. Gamache is against the corruption, but the bureaucracy is infused with it and that corruption wants Gamache out.

Gamache’s number two, a man Gamache thinks of as friend and son more than anything else, has turned against Gamache fully. Beauvoir, addicted to pain killers, and being psychologically bullied by other officers to turn against Gamache. Those against Gamache, whoever they ultimately are, are hoping that this final straw will push Gamache out.

The central murder of the book is based on a real story. (This is based on the Wikipedia entry). In 1934 there were naturally born Quintuplets born to a poor farm family in Canada. The girls were removed from their family by the state and essentially put on display for tourists to visit. Approximately 3 million visitors came to see them between 1936 and 1943 and they were the largest tourist attraction in Ontario, including Niagara Falls. Two of the sisters are still alive.

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Summary: Funny, heartfelt memoir of parenting by a normal guy that loves his kids.

The world may not need another memoir by a Dad about being a Dad, but if the genre is going to expand, this is not a bad addition.

I am a stay at home Dad. Previously I was a nanny for my nieces for 5 year until they started school. I am not particularly a fan of ‘Dumb Dad’ jokes or sitcoms or books or other media that highlight idiots with male genitalia that happen to have fathered children. I am also not a particular fan of ‘super-Dad’ books.

Either side is about a stereotype and not a real person. Real parents love their kids, make mistakes, want to do better, still screw up but are not complete idiots.

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Summary: We may be able to live without sex, but we cannot live without friendship.

In Wesley Hill’s earlier book Washed and Waiting, Hill makes a case for the reality and immutability of same sex attraction and Gay Christians and also the importance of maintaining traditional Christian teaching on sex and marriage. Which leaves Hill and all other Gay Christians with celibacy as their only option.

I am not completely convinced that Hill has made a universal argument with his first book, but I do think that Hill understands the purpose and meaning of sexuality better than most and that he has insight into sexuality in the modern world that can only be obtained by one that is observing it from the outside.

Spiritual Friendship seems like the natural next step. After reading his first book, I thought that deep friendship was absolutely necessary for those that have decided to be celibate (whether Gay or straight) because despite the fact that some are called to be celibate within Christianity, we are all called to be in a church, a part of the universal body of Christ, and as Hill argues, involved deeply in the lives of particular friends.  And I became a regular reader when he and Ron Belgau and others started a group blog called Spiritual Friendship.

As with his first book, this book is memoir-ish. He is making an argument (in the original book for celibacy and here for the importance of deep friendship) but he is not making an abstract or theoretical argument. Hill has lived in the brokenness of needing friends, of the joy of finding friends, of the pain of losing friends and the fear of deep friendships that might be lost.

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Summary: A virus kills nearly everyone, society collapses, but some survive.

Station Eleven has had a lot of hype. It has been short listed for a ton of awards, John Wilson (from Books and Culture) loved it, a lot of people that I know really liked it.

And I thought it was ok. A solid, but not earth-shattering end of the world novel.

There are a lot of characters and none of them are really the main character. Station Eleven moves back and forth between characters and from before the fall of civilization to after the fall. By the end, there is at least the hint of a complete story, connecting all the various characters and times.

The fall is caused by a swine flu variant called ‘The Georgian Flu’. In a matter of hours from contamination, with basic flu symptoms, 199 out of 200 people die. Within a few days complete panic has hit. Within a few weeks civilization has completely collapsed. The electric grid goes down, transportation stops because no one can get gas (and what gas is available goes bad in a few years.) The sheer size of the devastation (and the fear of a reoccurrence of the outbreak) keeps people in small groups and afraid of strangers.

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Summary: An extension of Walton’s earlier work to Genesis 2 and 3.

I wish I could say everything that is important is also interesting. But I cannot. There are a ton of interesting books that have no importance whatsoever. And there are also a ton of important books that are as dull as dirt.

John Walton is doing important work. In his earlier book The Lost World of Genesis 1, Walton laid out a case for the creation story being focused not on physical creation (the how) but on functional creation (the why). But possibly even more important, he made a case for Genesis 1 being primarily concerned with the creation story being actually about the dedication of the earth as a temple to God, and the placement of us humans as God’s priests in that temple.

The main weakness of that earlier book is that Genesis 2 has a second creation story and even if Walton is right about Genesis 1, Genesis 3, the story of the fall is theologically seen as just as important to many Christians.

The Lost World of Adam and Eve is the next step in that puzzle. Walton’s method, in this book and the last, is to make a proposition and the defend that proposition and then move to the next. So in the earlier book he had 19 chapters slowly making the case bit by bit for why so many have misread Genesis 1 for so long.

In this book there are 21 propositions about the purpose and meaning of Genesis 2 and 3 and how they theologically matter to Christians today. One of those chapters is largely written by NT Wright about how Paul understood Adam. And while that is not one of Wright’s clearer works, it really stands out in the book because Walton can be so dull. I don’t want to harp on boringness of the book too much, but it is a real problem.

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Summary: Two pamphlet length articles joined together for a short book.

Spiritual Direction has been an interest of mine for the past several years. With the rise of renewed interest in liturgical and sacramental expressions of faith, the historic practice of spiritual direction has also come back into awareness.

As a number of friends and internet-only acquaintances are becoming Anglican/Episcopal or Catholic I keep hearing of more and more that have been going to spiritual directors. (And a number that have not been converting are also going to spiritual directors.)

Many of those spiritual directors are Catholic (or at least were trained by Catholic spiritual directors.) I have been going to a Spiritual Director for nearly two years now. My own spiritual director is protestant, but goes to a Catholic spiritual director himself and was formally trained in spiritual direction with mostly Catholic instructors.

Spiritual direction has a long and varied history. But it was originally the practice of monks and nuns. Thomas Merton, one of the most recognizable monks of the 20th century was writing primarily to the monastics here but intending to be overheard by those that were not living a monastic life.

Spiritual direction is not about finding the wise guru and learning from them. Nor is it about counseling. According to Merton:

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Summary: A previously hidden order of monks calls on Gamache when their Prior is murdered.

Louise Penny has frequently hinted at religious issues in the previous books. But with Beautiful Mystery, set in a monastery, religious thoughts are on full display.

Penny is playing with the recent popularity of Gregorian Chant. In her fictional world, the rise of interest about Gregorian Chant is the responsibility of a previously hidden order of monks from rural Canada.

This order was among the earliest settlers of Quebec to escape potential investigation by the Inquisition. And once established, they fell off the radar of the church and intentionally hid.

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Summary: Culture and assumptions matter. And when reading scripture, something written to a different culture, time and place, those considerations are important.

Misreading Scripture With Western Eyes I think will become my new recommendation for the place to start when thinking about how we read and understand scripture.

I have made a pretty concerted effort as a lay person to understand hermeneutics (the science and art of reading and understanding scripture) over the past half dozen years. Much of what I have read is oriented toward the academic, the theologian or the pastor. And I am glad I have read it. But books like that are not easy to recommend to an average reader that wants an overview, and doesn’t have a good background in theology, biblical languages or history or linguistics.

Misreading Scripture With Western Eyes is an introduction to cultural anthropology as much as it is an introduction to scripture. And this is really important. Some conservative Christians in their reaction against liberal cultural values also react against understanding different cultures and perspectives as ‘post-modern’. This often occurs not only in an attempt to uphold Christian values, but because some conservatives are also somewhat insular and have only been exposed to US American Culture.

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Summary: Clara is finally getting her art show, but someone is murdered at the party.

Series fiction is a tricky thing. Veer too far from what made the stories popular and fans will complain. Stick with what made the series popular too closely and even the fans will get bored.

So Louise Penny has been wise to approximately every other book move the crime away from Three Pines while still keeping the character development and the threaded storyline that runs through the series going.

A Trick of the Light returns the story to Three Pines. Clara, the most important of the Three Pines characters to the series is finally getting her first real gallery show to showcase her art. Nearly 50 years old, she has worked in obscurity on the edge of the art world and thought of as a lesser artist in comparison to her husband Peter. But the series has always understood that Clara is the better artist, just not recognized.

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