Book Reviews

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.

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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

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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 retrods 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Summary: Princess Aurelia is forced to ask James for help. A curse complicates everything.

Son of Gold and Sorrow is the third in KB Hoyle’s series of fairy tale retellings. Each book can be read independently, but for this third book in the series, it helps to have read them in order. In the first book Son of the Deep (a gender swap retelling of the Little Mermaid), James was a side character. In the second book, Son of Bitter Glass (a retelling of Hans Christian Anderson’s Snow Queen), James joins the book midway through as a partner on the quest. But in this third book, Son of Gold and Sorrow, James, along with Aurelia, is the protagonist. You do not need to have read the previous books to read this book, they can be read in any order, but you will have more understanding about James as a character if you have read the others.

Son of Gold and Glass is a retelling of The Pretty Goldilocks (not Goldilocks and the Three Bears). Like the Snow Queen, I was familiar with elements of the story because it has been retold in other formats, but I had not read the original fairy tale. Again, like the last book, about half way through the book I started searching to figure out what the original fairly tale was and read a few summaries so I could see the elements and get and idea of what had been changed in this retelling. None of that is required to read the book.

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Summary: A single story arc split between two books.

I am behind on writing about my reading and while I have enjoyed this series enough to keep reading it (I am in the middle of the fourth right now), this if far from a perfect series. I have read pretty widely in the more classical fantasy world. And I have read some romance. The recent trend to Romantasy isn’t completely new, but this series seems to have contributed to the movement.

There are some irritating distractions in this version of fantasy. Some are silly things like flush toilets and hot water bathtubs and the level of technology constantly shifting from medieval to 19th-century references. And there is the more common fantasy issues like magic being used to bridge plot points in ways that do not make sense internally to the system.

The series has a sharp turn at the start of the second book (spoilers for the first book and these two books follow), Feyre saved Tamlin and all other Faerie courts by breaking the curse. In the process knowingly killed several innocents and herself was killed. But she was brought back to life by the combined work of the seven High Lords who were all gathered together in captivity and who had just been released because of Feyre’s work. She is resurrected and becomes the “Curse Breaker”.

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