Book Reviews

Summary: A novel that I am not sure I fully understood. 

I am a big fan of Vodolazkin’s earlier novel, Laurus, so when I heard the general positive buzz about this new novel, I picked it up soon after it came out because I was in the mood for some fiction. But I think this novel requires more background knowledge to understand the satire than I have. After I started the book, Current posted a review. I try to avoid reviews until after I finish a book, but I read this one because I was a bit bored with the novel and needed some motivation to finish.

It meandered, and I could tell it referenced historical events, but I was unsure what the references meant. At least a part of the target of the satire is the myth of the progress of history. There is progress; we do not have half of our children die before the age of five. And the rate of absolute subsistence poverty has dropped. But progress has not brought about some other promises, radical egalitarianism, an end to poverty, more just institutions, etc.

The book opens as a medieval history written by monks of an island kingdom. After reading for a while, we realize that the commentary on the history is from the King and Queen, who are eventually introduced into the story when their lives are prophecied. They are born, married, and begin to rule. This is a book that slowly unfolds. Parfeny and Ksenia were born in a medieval world, but they have remained alive for over 300 years to also live in the modern world. From the vantage point of their long life, they have perspective. They ruled, and they were ruled, they lived in splendor, and they lived in poverty.

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Summary: Historians take on mostly conservative talking points. 

Historians have been having an internal battle about their public role in current events. Much of the discussion is framed around Presentism, which is “an attitude toward the past dominated by present-day attitudes and experiences.” Part of the reality of history as a social science is that interpretation is a necessary part of what it means to “do history.” I am not a historian, although I do read a lot of history and respect historians who are on different sides of this debate.

Myth America has two problems, and presentism is one of them. Kevin Kruze and Julian Zelizer are Myth America’s editors, both historians of recent American history. The last book I read from them was Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974, which was worth reading, but the problem with recent history is that it is harder to have a broad perspective on that history because it is so recent. Most of the essays are framed around current myths about history that impact current politics, which is precisely the concern over presentism.

Carol Anderson’s chapter on voter fraud takes the concerns around the 2020 election and frames them historically about why we have a current concern about election fraud. That historical framing is helpful to see why we have a current obsession with voter fraud without any evidence of it actually being a problem in most elections. But the book’s very nature is mostly to address current political concerns, leaving the book open to critique of political bias.

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Summary: An autobiography from Sojourner Truth as told to Olive Gilbert.

This year’s final book for the Renovaré Book Club was Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Because I did not really have any background with Sojourner Truth, I read the new We Will be Free: The Life and Faith of Sojourner Truth by Nacy Koester as background before starting the autobiography.

One of the parts of the Renovare Book Club that I most appreciate is the podcast/video interviews and weekly emails with links to information and background. In the first podcast, in preparation for reading Narrative of Sojourner Truth, the host suggested that we come at the Narrative without other background materiaial, so as to understand her words on their own terms. This is common advice and not entirely wrong. But at the same time, this advice is influenced by the “plain reading of the text.” And as much as I appreciate that advice, it needs to be tempered because there is real value in expertise, and experts can give you far more information and background than what is possible when reading without the assistance of experts.

In this case, I do not think reading the Narrative without any background would have been helpful for me. Sojourner Truth was a complex figure outside the standard Southern slave narrative. She spoke only Dutch until the age of 9 and spoke with a Dutch accent her whole life. Her most famous speech, Aint’ I A Woman, was transcribed with a Southern slave dialect and likely was significantly distorted in form because of that.

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Summary: A short history of the feminist movement, primarily focusing on first and second-wave feminism within England, with a follow-up chapter on feminism in other geographical areas.

Because women’s role in the church has been an active conversation lately, I have been thinking about feminism. A tweet (there were several in the same vein) suggested that part of the issue with the discussion today is that feminism has changed the discussion. Today all except a few want to assert that women are equal, but roles are different. Historically the church fathers, until recently, were influenced by Greek thought that understood women as flawed men or lesser creations. Feminism has changed the terms so that even though hard patriarchalists continue to exist and have influence, most will at least say women are equal in value and Imago Dei.

The book opens with a chapter on the religious roots of feminism starting in the middle ages. And then following is a chapter on secular approaches to feminism. This is followed by a chapter on 18th-century women writers. And then two chapters on the 19th century.

Because voting rights were so central to the women’s rights movement, there were two chapters on voting rights. The last three chapters are about first-wave feminism in the 20th century. Then second-wave feminism in the late 20th century. And then, a chapter on feminists worldwide lightly touches on the critiques of first and second-wave feminism. The afterward lightly touches on continued changes to feminism. Kaitlyn Schiess has a good video on her Getting Schooled series, Feminism 101, that covers similar material in about 40 minutes.

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Summary: Very good introduction to hermeneutics (how we understand scripture), the cultural background of scripture, and how our own culture impacts our reading and understanding of scripture.

I recently led a book group through Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes. When I lead book discussions, I almost always read the book twice; once early in the week, I listen to it on audiobook. And then the day of the book club, I reread the same section in print and take notes and highlight the areas that I want to discuss. But this is not my first reading. My review on Audible has 196 likes. And on Amazon, the book description starts with saying that Bookwi.se (me) named it my favorite book of the year in 2015. So I believe that this is my 3rd and 4th reading of Misreading Scripture With Western Eyes.

What I like about leading book groups is seeing how others respond to a book. In virtually every book club meeting, one of the members held up the book and said a variation of, “I love this book.” By the end of the book club (which was about nine weeks), he had convinced his wife, his mother-in-law, two of his coworkers, and some others to read the book. This is a good book that really can help you see different perspectives on scripture. And that is very helpful in renewing interest in scripture.

This book group, which has been meeting on and off for about three years now, started as a church small group reading books about race. The group has expanded and changed, and because it has always been a Zoom group, it isn’t only local people or only people from one church. For several years I have been suggesting to anyone that will listen that one good way to raise consciousness about racial issues in the White Evangelical church is to start with Misreading Scripture because it is a helpful book that raises issues of culture and meaning. When we discover that other people, especially those that are from different cultures and times, have different understandings of how the world works, we can start to investigate how our understanding of the world may be culturally constructed. This isn’t “post-modernism”; this is just acknowledgment of reality, similar to the suggestion of CS Lewis about reading old books. I think, handled correctly, Misreading Scripture can be effective in introducing people who may be reluctant to discuss race and culture by concentrating on a book that is primarily about understanding scripture.

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Summary: A long lecture or short book on ways to prevent tyranny based on 20th-century history.

I have looked at but not read On Tyranny several times. It came out about six years ago. But I decided to pick it up after a tweet from Samuel Perry about regularly rereading it and teaching it. I looked it up again and saw the audiobook was on sale for $3 and was less than 2 hours. (It is $4.50 as I am writing this.)

This formatted too quickly read. Each chapter is only a few pages; the longest chapter is nine pages. While most sermons or commencement addresses won’t have 20 points, it is that type of approach. These are short pieces of advice with brief historical references. Chapter one is Do Not Obey in Advance. That may seem like it doesn’t need to be said, but if we look at history, there are many examples of trying to appease by preemptively doing what you think they would like done. Appeasement may work in some cases, but not in cases of tyranny. In cases of tyranny, it just cements power.

Many of the pieces of advice are about understanding truth or learning. These are always helpful whether we are talking about tyranny or not. Other is more specific like Make Eye Contact and Small Talk. This is primarily a “know your neighbors” idea.

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Summary: A clinical psychologist discussed how our bodies and brains relate to one another (in an integrated way) and how that applies to helping children develop and mature.

I have sat with Brain-Body Parenting for over a week, trying to put my thoughts into words. My short review is that it is one of the best books I have read on parenting, and it is written with a tone of grace and encouragement. The chapter on self-care as a parent is excellent, and the ideas should be in most parenting books. And the broader message of the book that parenting is in large part helping children learn to regulate their emotions and responses, not to repress emotions or feelings but to express them well and appropriately is a great message. And naturally, if we as adults are going to help children regulate themselves, we need to work to address our own dysregulation. This is the central message of Raising White Kids and many other parenting or spiritual formation books.

All of that is good, but I still had a reaction to the book that was not entirely positive. I remember reading The Whole-Brain Child nearly a decade ago and being overwhelmed with how much work it felt like it was always to be taking into account everything all the time. NYT’s article titled Welcome to the Era of Very Earnest Parenting a few days ago captures a part of my concern. The article takes seriously how seriously many Millennials are taking parenting. They want to get it right, in part because they think that their parents did not get it right. They felt misunderstood and wanted to understand their children.

But I am not a millennial. I am solidly Gen-X, even if my kids are still young. And I am concerned about the era of very earnest parenting, even if I support both the goals and the methods. There is nothing in Brain-Body parenting that I significantly object to. Taking children’s developmental stages into account is essential. Helping them to name and regulate their emotions is important. Helping children process emotions properly to internalize change is better than fear-based punishment. All of that I want to support.

But as much as I am supportive and want to incorporate all of these things into my parenting and my dealing with others (children or adults), there is still a nagging sense that we have fallen into a technocratic ditch. Jacques Ellul raised concern about how modern society relies on technique or technology to solve problems. The goal of problems being solved is good. But the use of technique and technology to solve every problem and become ever more efficient and autonomous can make us less human. Ellul was concerned that instead of humans using tools to adapt the world around us to humanity, the tools would instead shape us to their ends. There is some anthropomorphizing there, but we can see it happening if we look at our smartphones. We are literally changing our bodies in response to our desire to use them as a tool.

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