Book Reviews

Summary: An early 20th century romantic thriller set during the French Revolution.

When I was an elementary student I had two ‘go to’ reading choices, a set of children’s biographies (more historical fiction than biography) and the Illustrated Classic series.

The children’s biographies gave me a pretty good sense of history and historical figures (although probably 80 percent of each book was fiction.)  And the Illustrated Classics gave me the rough outline of a number of classic books.

But as I read many of those classics again as an adult I have a hard time remembering if I actually have read the full version or the children’s abridged versions prior to re-reading.  (And there is often a pretty large difference.)  Stories that I loved, I sometimes love even more reading the full original version.  And sometimes my memory of the story is nothing like what the actual book is like.

The Scarlet Pimpernel was written originally as a play in 1905 and then novelized.  It is a swashbuckling novel of heroes and light romance.  But in many ways reading it again it feels more like a 1940s pulp fiction than a classic.

The hero (Sir Percy) is perceived as bumbling and slow (but very rich) by everyone, including his wife.  In reality he is cunning and a great fighter.  It feels like Zorro (but I looked it up and Zorro was written 14 years later.)  That same secret identity idea really took off with the comic book superheroes.

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Summary: A brief overview of the role of spiritual formation in the Christian life.

One of the areas that I think that many Evangelicals have missed is the concept of spiritual formation.  It is not that Evangelicals don’t do many of the things that make up spiritual formation.  They pray, they read their bibles, they share the gospel, they study theology, etc.  But there is a concern among at least some, that working on spiritual formation is a form of works righteousness.  (In other words, it is a way of earning our salvation.)

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Summary: Two cousins in New York City get in on the ground floor of comic books.  The book follows them for 15 years through their highs and lows.

Michael Chabon is one of those writers that has been recommended to me and I have been meaning to read for a while.  I didn’t really know anything about it, but The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000 so it seemed like a good choice when I saw it on sale a while back.

Joe Kavalier escapes out of Prague just before World War II breaks out and moves in with his Aunt and cousin Sam Clayman in New York City.  Sam finds out that Joe is an artist and together with Sam primarily writing and Joe primarily drawing, they become the great comic book writing duo of Kavalier and Clay.

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Paper Towns is the third novel by the increasingly popular young adult novelist, John Green.  The book is about a graduating senior in high school, Quentin Jacobson, and his strange and compelling relationship with his neighbor, Margot Roth Spiegelman.  As young children, the two came across a divorced man who had committed suicide.  While they never spent much time together after that, the event created an unspoken bond.

One night their senior year, Margot gets “œQ” to drive her around while she seeks revenge against those who had wronged her.  They have a wild and crazy night together and then the next day she disappears.  Margot leaves small clues for Q to find her.  For the remainder of the book, he searches for her by following her cryptic clues and doing some soul searching in the meantime.

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Summary: An attempt to make philosophy young and hip and applicable to the modern world (using question like What does it mean to be a slut, How to reject the faith of your upbringing, and How to break up with your boyfriend.)

In my attempt to work through the audiobooks I have in my archive before buying new ones, I am running across a few that I probably should have just skipped.  Just because it is free does not mean it is worth downloading.  Over the past year or two I have stopped picking up a lot of free books that I would have picked up earlier because I have read a number of books I picked up for free that were just not worth the effort.

PhilLOLZophy is not a horrible book.  But it is not particularly good either.  The idea is decent.  Make philosophy accessible by using it in real world situations.  But the working out of the idea is mixed at best.

It is clearly oriented toward young 20 somethings. Which is not bad.  I like a lot of books that are not oriented toward my 40 something self (like Packing Light).  But this seems to be trying too hard to be cool.  There is a good bit of language (which I am not opposed to), when appropriate to the subject. But here is seems to be a way to show coolness. And much of the content is oriented around sex, dating, and becoming an adult.  Again, I am not opposed to those subjects.  But it seems the authors want to talk about them and occasionally bring up philosophical ideas.  And this seems to reverse the point of the book.

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Takeaway: Another example of why you should read the book and not depend on the movie.

Solaris is a classic science fiction book.  It was written in 1961 by Polish author Stanislaw Lem.  It was then translated to French and then the French version was translated to English in 1966.  Lem sold the rights to the English sales as part of the translation deal and for the last 45 years the only available version of Solaris in English was a version that Lem (who read and wrote fluently in English) thought was inferior.

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