Book Reviews

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg

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From the Mixed Up FilesSummary: The children’s classic story about running away, living in a museum and solving a great mystery all the while finding the important things in life.

Children’s books are great for adults to read occasionally.  In addition, to just being a change of pace, I find that the simple straight forward stories get to the essence of so many things. Children’s book don’t have to have multi-layered plots with anti-heroes or twists and turns.

Instead children’s books tell simple stories that often do a great job of getting to root meanings of life.

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler is one of the classics that I think has held up fairly well. Claudia, a 12 year-old oldest child that feels like she is underappreciated by her parents and decides to run away. Her younger brother, Jamie, comes with her mostly for the adventure. Most kids would identify with one or both of these reasons for running away.

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The Book of Strange New Things by Michal Faber

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Releases today
Book jacket summaries can offer an intriguing glimpse of the riches within its contents or have the opposite effect. A poor summary will result in a reader thrusting a book back on a shelf in the blink of an eye. The teaser for The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber left me somewhere in the middle.

Strange New Things is about Peter, a man of God who is given an incredible once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Through a mysterious corporation known only as USIC, Peter travels to a distant galaxy in order to be a pastor missionary to the USIC employees and the native population on another planet. As he makes great strides in his work, Peter becomes rattled when the missives from his wife back on Earth detail horrifying events happening across the Earth and her own faltering faith.

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The Good and Beautiful Life by James Bryan Smith

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Summary: We are saved by grace but by grow by discipline. 

I am very supportive of the Spiritual Formation work of James Bryan Smith and his mentors Dallas Willard and Richard Foster. Theologically I really do agree that a theology or spiritual practice that focuses on conversion but stops there without leading into the grace that is spiritual formation is a crippled faith.

The difficult work of spiritual work is not a straight line or the easily transferable from one person to another through ‘five simple steps to…’ types of writing.

The most important thing that I got out of the book is that Smith talked about becoming wise, not creating rules. Rules bind people, but wisdom frees people to act with the other in mind.

As I was thinking about this book I kept thinking about those that I think of as both wise and holy. I realized that all of them are old. One of the problems of a youth obsessed culture is discounting the wisdom of our elders. And one of the most important parts of that wisdom is that there are no short cuts.

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Food: A Love Story by Jim Gaffigan

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Summary: Funny, but read more like a series of jokes than a cohesive book.

I am not sure who introduced me to Jim Gaffigan, but I thank whoever it was. I have a tendency to be a bit overly serious and so I have to be intentional about adding humor into my world. Jim Gaffigan is my favorite stand up comic right now.

I read his Dad is Fat right after it came out last year, and bought the audiobook of Food: A Love Story on Tuesday, the day it came out.

If you are going to read a comic’s book, you should get the audiobook if they are narrating. Comics understand delivery, even if they are not professional narrators. There were a few places were it was clear that Gaffigan was reading, but most of the time the delivery was good and more similar to a stand up show than a narrated book.

That is also part of why I did not enjoy the book (and Dad is Fat) as much as I thought I would. Yes, there were lots of funny moments. And I still definitely recommend it if you are a Gaffigan fan.

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The Good Luck of Right Now by Matthew Quick

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The Good Luck of Right Now: A Novel by Matthew QuickSummary: A 38 year old man (maybe on the Autism spectrum?) learns to cope with his Mother’s death by writing letters to Richard Gere.

Mental Illness is serious, which is why I think it is so important that Matthew Quick has made a career of writing good, usually funny books about it. The three books I have read all follow roughly the same method.

They are all first person narrative told entirely inside the head of the protagonist. They all have some wacky other characters and come to a sort of resolution without minimizing the real issues of mental illness. They all have characters that want to help one another and are generally likable. (Note: I know that Autism is not really a mental illness, but Quick is mixing it in as if it were. There are also three other characters that more clearly have mental health issues that are also a part of the book.)

In the Good Luck of Right Now, Bartholomew Neal is writing to Richard Gere. Bartholomew’s mother has just recently died of brain cancer. As part of her cancer’s effects, his mother thought that Bartholomew was Richard Gere, her favorite actor. So Bartholomew played along and is now confessing to Gere, seeking his advice and looking for a friend.

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Pound Foolish by Dave and Netta Jackson

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Pound Foolish Windy CityI met a Christian screenwriter and producer a few years ago and he gave me a piece of advice I have never forgotten, “œwriting stories about faith cannot be treated like ketchup on a hot dog”¦something that can be wiped off. Writing stories about faith must be treated like an egg baked into a cake”¦something that’s impossible to separate”. Dave and Neta Jackson do this well.

The Jackson’s have written their fourth book in the Windy City Neighbor series. As with each tome, the primary character was a secondary character in a previous story, all of which take place on Beecham Street in a Chicago neighborhood. In Pound Foolish, the reader gets to know Greg Singer, a sports show coordinator for power boats, snowmobiles, jet skis, etc. Singer works very hard for his family, assuming a healthy bank balance and grand vacations are what his family requires.

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Jesus: The Human Face of God by Jay Parini

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Jesus the Human Face of God by Jay PariniSummary: A traditional liberal understanding of Jesus.

This is a short review because I did not completely finish the book. This is one of the books that borrowed from Kindle Unlimited. I was close to finished (72%) when my subscription ended. So I waffled back and forth a bit about writing up a review. In the end, I decided to write it mostly because I needed the reviews.

Parini is a literature professor. So in writing a biography of Jesus he is moving outside his primarily area of academic study. Although he is fluent in ancient Greek and has studied both New Testament and other literature from the era.

Parini’s desire for the book is to “˜re-mythologize’ Jesus. He is not a fan of the traditional Jesus Seminar methods of trying to strip away all of the supernatural from Jesus. Parini, as a literature professor, understands that in stripping away the supernatural, the Jesus Seminar methods are also stripping away a lot of the purpose behind telling those supernatural stories.

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Your Church Is Too Small by John Armstrong (Part 1: Introduction)

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I am reposting this 2010 review (yes it is a nearly 2100 hundred word review that I posted in 3 parts) because the Kindle Edition is on sale for $4.99.  I believe that this is part of Zondervan’s general ebook sale that still has not been announced anywhere and don’t have have an end date. Part two of the review is here and part three here.

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After having read Your Church is Too Small I immediately thought of four people that need to read the book.  So the summary review is that I think the book is good enough that I have bought and sent the book to four friends and bought one more to give away here.

After I was about half way through the book I decided that there is just too much rich content to comment on in just one blog post.  So I am breaking tradition and I am breaking this post into three parts.  Part 2 will post on Saturday and Part 3 on Sunday and I will restart the normal schedule on Monday.

Having read John Armstrong’s blog regularly for the past several years, I can think of few others that would have been better to write Your Church is Too Small.  The basic thesis is that only the “…church of Jesus Christ, ministering out of its spiritual unity in Christ and rooted in core orthodoxy, can best serve Christ’s mission.”

Armstrong loves the church and throughout the book reminds us that we should not fear for the church, because it is not our job to build and maintain the church but Christ’s and the Holy Spirit’s.  However, like our faith, we are saved by grace and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, but we still have responsibility for participating in our own spiritual growth.  Armstrong suggests that the unity the Jesus prayed for in John 17 cannot just be an invisible, spiritual unity, but must be a relational.  So while the church is one spiritually, there is a role for our participation in drawing the church together in unity.  I think this is an important point.  Just like James (2:17-18) tells us that we should not tell someone that we will pray for them, but not actually do anything to help them, we should not talk about the Big C Church and do nothing to build relationships with those outside our stream of faith.

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All In by Mark Batterson

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“œIf Jesus is not Lord of all, then He is not Lord at all” In a concise and ease to understand approach, Batterson challenges the reader to perform a self-examination and discover what they are holding onto more firmly than Jesus. He points out that we are either following him completely or inviting him to … Read more