Book Reviews

Summary: An Archdeacon, with a fondness for drink, seeks after his debutante.

The Church of England Series continues to enthrall me.  As I write this I am almost finished with the fourth book of the series I have read in less than a month.

I am normally not a fan of Christian fiction.  But this is not normal Christian fiction.  First, it is oriented around the Church of England in the early and mid-20th Century.  Second, it is primarily about clergy that are in need of spiritual counsel and redemption.

Third it is not Christian Fiction that has a salvation story and then all is right with the world.  Instead, as with the first two books of the series, the redemption story happens fairly early in Ultimate Prizes and then the rest of the book is about how the main character deals with the fact that he got what he wanted.

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First, a note about the author: John Green has had success as an online vlogger, as well as an author. In 2007, John and his brother, Hank, who lived in different cities across the US, created a vlog series where they only communicated through video messages that were posted on YouTube. I believe that it is fair to say that the Green brothers are two of some of the original YouTubers. In 2010, the began hosting an annual gathering of you tubers called Vidcon and are very well respected by and connected with many of the big names on YouTube. Even before I had read this book or even heard about John Green as a writer, I knew of him and his brother as a source for enlightening information on the internet (the two brothers currently have a channel where they discuss history and science). I was pleasantly surprised to hear that John was lauded as being an excellent writer of young adult literature. If anything, I would have expected a “geek” to be a writer of sic-fi. I continued to hear great things about his writing, especially this book, so I decided to give it a listen

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Summary: Smiley catches Karla’s trail again.

This is the sixth George Smiley I have read since August.  It is also the third of the sub-trilogy that started with Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy.

Overall this is one of the best of the series.  If you are not a stickler for reading series in order, then the three best of the series are Tinker, Tailor, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Smiley’s People.

In Smiley’s People, George Smiley has again retired.  At the conclusion of the Honorable Schoolboy, Smiley had lost his shine.  He and his people had found Karla’s plot, but the British Intelligence system was in disgrace, they did not capture Karla, Smiley’s agent was killed and the USA had swooped in and claimed the little credit that was left to claim.

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Summary: First of a series of book that are written to be the books of Richard Castle (the author in the TV series Castle.)

My wife and I are huge fans of the TV show Castle.  So ever since I found out that there is actually a series of books that were written to coincide with the books that Richard Castle writes in the show.

I was interested enough to want to read this, but not enough to actually buy it.  I picked it up at my library on audiobook.

In the TV show, Richard Castle is a mystery writer that works follows the police murder detective Beckett.  He is inspired to write the book Heat Wave about the police detective Nikki Heat and the journalist Rook.

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Takeaway: God uses people. They will not be perfect, but those that are used, are usually changed by God.

A. W. Tozer has had a resurgence in my world lately. I have not read anything that he has written and really did not know anything about him, other than I know my grandfather liked him and people quote him all the time. Louie Gigglio only started using twitter after he decided to start doing Tozer Tuesday quotes. And then Out of Ur blog decided to copy the idea. After a friend, Matt Erickson, blogged about this book, I figured I would start reading here.

Lyle Dorset was a professor at Wheaton when I was there and I have met and talked to him several times, but never had him for a class. I really liked his biography on Dwight Moody, A Passion for Souls and the very brief biography of E. M Bounds (it was free last month at christianaudio.com but the offer is no longer good.)

Dorset’s biography was well done. It is brief (just under 200 pages), but very well documented with lots of personal interviews personal correspondence that was not available to the previous two biographers. Dorset does what I want in a biography, especially one of a Christian, showing the whole person. But part of my issue with a new introduction to Tozer (not having read any of his books before) is that he was a very broken man. Like many mystical oriented prayer warriors in Christian history, Tozer likely suffered with depression throughout his life. He was an introvert and almost never greeted people before or after church on Sunday. Instead he went to nursery to play with the children.

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Summary: Humorous look at the pregnancy process from the Dad’s perspective.

If you are just joining us, my wife is pregnant and our first child is due in early November.  I process by reading.  So, I am reading.

John Pfeiffer does a good job writing a book that most guys will actually enjoy reading.

There is good info, good advice and mostly just warnings about what to expect.  I am not completely unaware of pregnancy.  I was a nanny for 5 years, I have been around a lot of pregnant people.  But as a guy, there are some things that just don’t get shared unless you are the actual father involved.

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Summary: 19 Year old Finn just found her grandparents, the love of her life and started college. 

A couple weeks ago I went on cruise.  I did almost nothing except sit by the pool (or in the pool) and read.  Except for when I was sitting on our balcony reading. It was very nice.

I had decided before leaving that I just wanted to read fiction and relax.  So I loaded my kindle with about 75 fiction books and didn’t make a plan.

One of the books was The Summer I Learned to Dive.  I chose it primarily because I liked the cover.  It was a vacation and I was looking for beach reading.

The Summer I Learned to Dive told the story of how Finn found her grandparents, realized that all she had been preparing for was not really what she wanted to do with her life.  And she found Jesse, a boy of her dreams.

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