Book Reviews

Summary: Memoir as spiritual growth encouragement.

Jonathan Merritt is a journalist and writer.  His two previous books, A Faith of Our Own (politics and culture) and Green Like God (Environmentalism) are more issue books.  But Jesus is Better Than You Imagined is a memoir.

Jesus is Better Than You Imagined is mostly a book about Merritt’s life and what he has learned through his experiences.  A few years ago I read a number of memoirs in a short period of time and I got a bit burned out by them.

The problem with memoirs is that they are so personal and because of the personal nature it can be hard to interact with them.  And the very nature of memoirs (especially Christian ones) is that the author often seems to be so wise because they are processing what they have learned as part of the book, even though it is often long after the events recounted that the author was really able to fully process the events as they are being presented.

On the other hand, this type of spiritual memoir can really be edifying to read because we can see how God is working through circumstances for their good.  Memoir and spiritual biography I think should be a regular part of any Christian’s spiritual reading.  But there is a problem with too much of a good thing.

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Summary: A series of essays on faith and culture.

James KA Smith is a philosophy professor at Calvin College and editor of Comment Magazine.  He keeps coming across my radar screen but I have not read enough of his books.  I picked up Discipleship in the Present Tense last year when it was released.  It has taken me a nearly a year to get around to reading it, but it is worth the read.

I have had a long standing opposition to parts of Reformed Theology.  But Smith makes me want to investigate wings of the Reformed world that are less focused on the newer ‘Restless and Reformed’ wing and more focused on the older full systems of the Reformed Tradition. (He is more interested in liturgy, the full life of the Christian and less focused on 5 points and cage fighting.)

In the series of 24 essays, Smith mostly is talking about the church’s relationship to culture.  Some of the essays I have read before, such as the very good review of James Davidson Hunter’s book To Change the World which appeared in Books and Culture Magazine and I linked to in my review of Hunter’s book.  But most were new to me.

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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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