Book Reviews

A Christian Survival Guide by Ed Cyzewski

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Summary: The basics of Christian practice and belief from someone that survived their faith.

One of the problems of my life is that I spend very little time with people that actually are non-Christians. I am a stay at home Dad, I work part time out of the house in my spare moments, my prefered enjoyment activities are reading and being alone.

The time I do spend with people is usually my extended family or church small group. In spite of that I feel like I know a lot of “˜post-Christians’. Those that have grown up in the church or on the perefery of the church, but have an uneasy relationship with the church now.

The US makes being a “˜none’ easier all the time. And for many, it is far easier to walk away from the church when things get difficult than it is to struggle through to a new equalibrium. Or at least that is how I describe it. It seems to me that there are many points in time where all is good, you are comfortable, you have faith, you see God working, and things make sense. But then there is a crisis of faith, or a dry spell or a tragedy or something that breaks that equilibrium and you have a choice of searching for a new equilibrium or to just stop fighting.

Ed Cyzewski has written this guide for two groups of people, those that have no background in the church, or those that have lost their equilibrium and need to find a new one. For both readers, the old answers aren’t working any more. New Christians have different questions because they didn’t grow up in the church and they are culturally ill-disposed toward the standard answers that were based in a previous generation’s questions. And those that have grown up in the church and had their equalibrium break, the standard answers were probably what caused the break in the first place.

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Perelandra by CS Lewis (Space Trilogy #2)

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Perelandra by CS Lewis (Space Trilogy #2)Summary: In the second book of the series Ransom visits Venus.

The books of Lewis’s space trilogy are hard to review.  How to you review a classic work of CS Lewis?

In the first book, Out of the Silent Planet, Ransom is kidnapped and taken to Mars where he finds a ‘garden of Eden’.  Mars is an old world, one that has not fallen.  There is no sin.  There are only the creatures, following in perfect unison with their creator.

In Perelandra, Ransom is called to Venus for some purpose he does not know.  Once there Ransom meets a green woman.  One of only two people on the planet.  She has been separated from ‘the king’.  The world of Venus is a great ocean with floating islands.  There is one solid place in the whole world.  But the green woman and ‘the king’ have been told by their God that they can visit, but they are not to live there.

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The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis

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The financial crash of 2008 surprised almost everybody–the investment banks, the government, and the Federal Reserve, not to mention millions of American homeowners. In The Big Short, Michael Lewis tells the story of a handful of investors who saw it coming, who read the tea leaves in the mortgage market, recognized that it was unsustainable, and decided to bet against the system. They earned hundreds of millions of dollars off one of the worst economic collapses in history.


Lewis dives into the underworld of mortgage backed securities (MBS), collateralized debt obligations (CDO), and credit default swaps (CDS), explaining them all in incredible detail. Despite the technical discussion, if you stick with it Lewis rewards you: he manages to weave a story so fascinating that it reads like a thriller novel. I devoured it in just a few days.

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1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

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Reposting this 2013 review because the Kindle Edition is on sale for $3.25
Takeaway: The world is not what it seems.

This is a wide ranging book, originally written as a trilogy in Japanese .  It is hard to classify it as a genre, but I would probably call it a contemporary fantasy.  Although I think that most of the people that will like it would not pick up a book labeled fantasy as a first choice.

Aomame (the female protagonist) opens the book late for an appointment.  She is stuck on a skyway in a cab.  The cabbie suggests that if she really needs to get to her appointment she could get out of the cab, climb down an emergency ladder and take the subway (which has a stop near the bottom of the stairway.)

Aomame decides to do this, but the cabbie warns her that nothing will quite be the same once you have stepped outside the realm of your normal life.  And nothing is. Aomame is not going to any old business appointment.  She is on her way to assassinate a man who beats his wife.  She has a relationship with a rich older woman that provides her with information (and money and support) to kill men to stop them from beating their wives.

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Building a Life Out of Words by Shawn Smucker

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Often times when life throws us a curve ball, out natural tendency is to find some corner somewhere, cry in cup of coffee, and sing our favorite verse of poor, poor me. But what if we drew a deep breath, stepped back, and considered for a minute how we could use this opportunity to make a positive change of direction in our lives?

Shawn Smucker was faced with such a situation. After returning from four years of managing a large business in England, he felt lost working 10 hour days painting houses and living in his parent’s basement with his wife and two children. When his aunt called out of the blue and asked him to write her life story, he had no idea how his life would be impacted.

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CS Lewis: A Life by Alister McGrath

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Summary: An important, highly readable biography of Lewis.

More than several people agree that this is the best Lewis biography to date (see links below).  So far I have not read any negative reviews of Alister McGrath’s new biography.

McGrath unlike previous biographers was not a friend, student or family of Lewis.  And unlike previous biographers McGrath had access to an enormous library of Lewis’ correspondence which has led to a new understanding of Lewis.

McGrath also is planning a second, more academic evaluation of Lewis, so this book is written as a popular biography.  If there is a weakness of the book it is that it does not go into as much depth as I would like it to about several areas.  His spiritual development as a young Christian, how Lewis related to his step sons both before and after their mother’s death, and his theology are all areas I would have liked more depth. (Bookwi.se Note: I read A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of CS Lewis by Devin Brown after writing this review and it is a good supplement in this areas.)

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Wealth and Poverty: A New Edition by George Gilder

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A full-throated moral, philosophical, and practical defense of capitalism. Rather than advocate with reluctance for capitalism, granting critics’ charges of its excesses and a supposed foundation of greed, Gilder shows that only a capitalist system will bring true prosperity and growth to all levels of a society.

Gilder argues that the most important element of capitalistic growth and success is the entrepreneur, the person who puts up capital in risky ventures in the hope of a payout. These risks fail more often than they succeed, but in all cases knowledge is learned–knowledge upon which new ventures build.

Simply scanning topics he covers and the conclusions he draws, one might think Gilder is just pitching conservative Republican ideology warmed over. But his arguments eschew partisanship in favor of a philosophical, principled, and utterly researched approach. Gilder’s breadth of knowledge and understanding of economics and sociology is stimulating to encounter; having read his more recent (and even more theoretical) Knowledge & Power, I can see he is truly a polymath.

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Tenth of December by George Saunders

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Takeaway: Another short story collection I didn’t like, surprise!

Anyone that has read my blog regularly over the past year or so will not be surprised that I didn’t like another collection of short stories.  That makes me 0.5 of 5 this year.  And it is not that the collections were poorly reviewed or by bad writers.  The collections I have read over the last year were by PJ Wodehouse, GK Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, and Flannery O’Connor and now George Saunders.  (Technically the Flannery O’Connor was a few days over a year ago.  And it was definitely the one I liked the best of the five.)

Given my general dislike of short stories you as reader are probably tired of me posting about not liking them.  But I keep wanting to read books that are well reviewed and generally loved.  Karen Swallow Prior gave Tenth of December very good review at Books and Culture. And it one the 10 best books by New York Times Book Review as well as winning some other awards.

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The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why Pure Capitalism Is the World Economy’s Only Hope by John Allison

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John Allison was the CEO of one of the only large banks that stayed profitable during the financial upheaval that came to a head in 2008. During his 20 year tenure at BB&T, during which he lead based on the principles of Ayn Rand, the bank grew exponentially in its success (from assets of $4.5 billion to $152 billion). During the crisis, the federal government in essence forced BB&T to take bailout money, even though they didn’t want it or need it, and they were literally the very first bank to pay back the money once it was legal to do so.

It’s fair to say that Allison had a front seat to the financial crisis, but from the perspective of a healthy bank. During all the crazed activity in Washington running up to TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Plan””the massive bailout of the financial industry), while the Federal Reserve was propping up banks, insurance and other finance companies and dictating the sale of others, Allison tried multiple times to consult with leadership at the Federal Reserve and the Treasury. But it was in vain–those making such monumental financial decisions weren’t interested in hearing from the healthy banks, just the dangerously overleveraged ones.

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