Book Reviews

Sunday I started my list of favorite books by posting the 9 Honorable Mentions that I wanted to highlight but for one reason or another didn’t main the main list. Yesterday I posted my favorite 10 Fiction books and today, my 10 favorite Non-Fiction books.

As always these books are based on the year I read them, not the year published. And they are based on my enjoyment of the book, not necessarily its literary greatness. These are not in a particular order.

Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace by Miroslav Volf – This is a book that still after a few days short of a year later, I still am thinking about. I am planning on re-reading this soon. Miroslov Volf is a professor at Yale, and previous to that Fuller. The book is intended to be a popular level book (although still pretty dense). Volf is well known for his more academic Exclusion and Embrace which is also about reconciliation and forgiveness. Volf in Free of Charge explicitly connects forgiveness and giving as concepts and talks about the importance of both forgiveness and reconciliation. And he is mostly talking about big areas of sin (rape, genocide, murder), not small. However, using the concepts that he uses for big sins, it is easy to see how they are also important for what we usually think of as smaller, more personal sins, gossip, slander, meanness. ($5.98 on kindle)

The God of the Mundane by Matt B Redmond – God of the Mundane is a great counter to a lot of the ‘Christianity is radical’ books. As I said in my original review, if I were going to write a book, this is a book I would write. Christianity is more about the mundane everyday world than the big deal events. And just because we are not well known, does not mean we are not serving God in exactly the way he want us to be serving. (only $2.99 on kindle)

Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power by Andy Crouch – Power is something that Christians, and Evangelicals in particular, are uncomfortable with. But Crouch’s book makes the case that it is not power that is bad, but the improper use of power that is bad. For Crouch, the highest use of power is creative power that empowers others. This is book has only been out for a few weeks, but has had a lot of positive reviews and is on a couple of best Christian books of 2013 lists.

Corporal Punishment in the Bible: A Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic for Troubling Texts by William J Webb – Corporal Punishment in the Bible takes an issue that while important, does not have the emotional tension of some other issues (like women in leadership) that also use Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic. The short version of the hermeneutic is that God speaks to us where we are, but actually seeks more for us. So in scripture restrictions and instructions on corporal punishment were limiting what culture deemed acceptable. As culture has changed, we need to work with the thrust of scripture, not words of scripture to understand what God’s actual desire is. One example from the book is that in scripture slavery is limited but not prohibited. But as culture changed, a complete prohibition of slavery is what is God actually desires.

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Summary: The concept of beauty is an under appreciated and very important concept in Christian Theology.

Over the past couple years I have occasionally thought about the role of beauty in theology.

NT Wright in his book Simply Christian talks about the role of Beauty in theology and I think that was really the first time that I had heard someone speak of beauty in the way.

Neither Zahnd nor Wright are talking about physical beauty. Instead they are talking about conceptual beauty, maybe awe or amazement would be synonyms, but not quite.

For Zahnd, when we miss the concept of beauty, we make Christianity into something that is fully discoverable, more of a science than an art. And more important we try to gain control over our faith (and God.)

That focal point is this: Jesus is the full revelation of God. Jesus is the eternal Word of God made human flesh. Truly this is the greatest wonder of all. The wonder we long for is found in the sacred mysteries of the faith, and a return to these mysteries can recapture the wonder. Recapturing wonder is part of salvation. We become jaded and bored because we mistakenly think there are no more mysteries to imbue us with wonder, but the Incarnation is an eternal fountain of mystery and wonder. In the mystery and wonder of the Incarnation is found the beauty that saves the world.

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I have posted my list of favorite books I read over the previous year since I started Bookwi.se.  In years’ past, I wrote a brief introduction and then reposted the review and spread the ‘best of’ list over two weeks.  This year I have a lot more books that I think need mentioning.  I had a hard time narrowing and still ended up with 29 books.  So today I am going to talk about the Honorable Mentions.  These are books that I think are well worth reading, that I really enjoyed, but for one reason or another didn’t make the top 10 cut.  Monday I will post my 10 favorite Fiction books and Tuesday, my 10 favorite Non-Fiction books.

As always these books are based on the year I read them, not the year published.  And they are based on my enjoyment of the book, not necessarily its literary greatness.  Of the total 29, 11 of the books I listened to on audiobook (and the audio was excellent and in several cases they made the list because of the audio.)

Of the 29, 9 were published this year, 6 last year and only 5 were published before 2000.  The remaining 9 were published between 2001 and 2010.  These are not in a particular order. Links are to the full reviews.

Fiction Honorable Mentions

Back on Murder by J Mark Bertrand – My fiction tastes do not normally run to murder mysteries or police procedurals, but after having this book recommended over and over again, I picked it up.  It is one of the books that are regularly free on Kindle.  I picked up the discounted audiobook with promotional Audible credit because I tend to listen to books I am reluctant to read.  That was probably a bad choice, the audio I think detracted from the story.  But the story was excellent.  Especially considering that it is published by a Christian publisher.  Unfortunately this excellent book’s author is looking for a new publisher since he thinks that the Christian publisher does not know how to market this genre.  And the publisher is not making any money on a book that has had great reviews but not sold all that well.  It is the first of a trilogy.  I have picked up the rest of the trilogy when they were on sale, but I have not read them yet. (Currently Free)

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood – Margaret Atwood is a well known author that I have not read.  I picked this up on audiobook when it was on sale and because it was narrated by Claire Danes as part of Audible’s A-List Series.  Handmaid’s tale is one of the classic dystopian books.  The books is narrated by a woman who’s name is never revealed.  Society has collapsed, fertility rates have plummeted and women have lost all of their rights.  So the woman OfFred (named for her relationship to her owner/husband, not with her own name) describes her life and the world around her.  The dry plain narration fits with this book very well and it is easy to see the power of a real dystopian nightmare.

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Summary: More bodies keep piling up around the 34th in line to the throne.  And she needs to find some answers in order to stop an international incident.

The first book in the series, Her Royal Spyness seemed to play clear homage to Dorothy Sayer’s Peter Wimsey series of mysteries.  So I thought about reading the next Peter Wimsey book before reading this second book.  But I changed my mind, because I needed another audiobook. I have listened to both of these books on audio and I think the excellent narrator (Katherine Kellgren) has really made these books shine.

As I have said before, I listen to audiobooks while I am processing data for my work or doing housework or caring for my daughter.  Audiobooks keep me entertained while working and make the time pass quickly.  But a good narrator really makes or breaks the audiobook.

In this case, Katherine Kellgren has done a great job with the light humor that sets this these two books (and presumably the whole series) apart from a lot of other cozy mysteries.

This second books feels less like Dorothy Sayers.  Georgie, the 34th in line for the throne, has established herself in London.  She is living out from under the influence of her brother and his wife, but also without any financial support.  So in spite of her title and position, she is broke.  In the last book she started a house cleaning service to make money while trying to discover her place in London society (she grew up in a Scottish Castle) and keep her work a secret from the Queen.

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Summary: The character continue to get deeper into the mythology and danger.

This is essentially the 9th fully book (with a couple more short story collections) of the Percy Jackson series.  This second series Rick Riordan has expanded his available mythology so that both Greek and Roman mythologies are available.  I am far outside my own depth and knowledge at this point.  That is not a problem because Riordan does not expect the reader to know everything.  But there are more and more minor figures involved in every book.

At the end of the last book, Percy and Annabeth were sucked into Tartarus (the deepest place of the underworld where the Titans and other monsters get banished).  The rest of the crew has to try to get to the door to the House of Hades to both let Percy and Annabeth out and to seal the door to keep the monsters from over running the world and to stop Gaia from waking up.

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