Book Reviews

Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel Review

March 9, 2013 by Adam Shields

Reposting review because the book is now available in a Kindle Edition

Summary: The wonderful story with a new comic book feel in honor of its 50th anniversary.

Late every Christmas Eve my wife and I go over to her cousin’s house and we act as elves. We put together all the toys, make sure all of the batteries are in (we cart away all the empty boxes and wrapping because Santa does not buy toys at the store.

As the kids have gotten older there are less complicated things for us to put together and we have more time to talk.

I was talking to my wife’s cousin’s husband and he was saying that over the past year he has rediscovered his love of comic books because of the iPad. With his iPad he now is back to buying all kinds of comic books and rediscovering the joy of the comic in a new form. (Note: Marvel now has an unlimited subscription option for ipad comic books.)

I never got into comics. I just didn’t have a community of friends that read them and so there was no one that shared them with me and my local library did not carry comic books (although I am sure some do.)

I have been paying more attention to factors in children’s reading. Why is it that some kids read and some do not. I am convinced that part of it is the community that they grow up in. If everyone around them reads, then they probably will read as well. One educator interviewed kids at her school that were readers and she found that the kids that were strong readers were closest to the local library and were encouraged to use it. (There is probably a causality problem with her research, but access to books is certainly one influence.)

Bossypants by Tina Fey

July 15, 2026March 6, 2013 by Adam Shields

Kindle book dropped to $5.99 so I am reposting the review.

Takeaway: Funny memoir, and surprisingly insightful discussion about the role of women in entertainment.

Tina Fey is a great writer. I have never watched that much Saturday Night Life. It is past my bed time (I usually wake up between 5 and 6 even on weekends. Yes I am an old man.) And I have never watched 30 Rock (although I am going to try it out after reading this book.)

But I have seen enough of Tina Fey that I was interested. My Sister-in-Law passed on the hardcover months ago after she read it, but it was a hard cover and I never got to it. Last week I picked up a free audiobook in a promotion (the promotion is dead now) and decided to listen to it as a change of pace.

I finished it in less than 24 hours. It is not long, less than 6 hours unabridged. But it is read by Tina Fey and she does a good job acknowledging that she is performing an audiobook, not just blandly reading the text. There is even the audio clip of her first Sarah Palin SNL skit. I love authors that read their own audiobooks. The vast majority of the time it is so much better than a random narrator.

Second Shift – Order (Wool #7) by Hugh Howey

July 15, 2026March 4, 2013 by Adam Shields

Summary: Now that we know the background of the silos, we return to a different perspective, the instigators.

One of the unique perspectives that Hugh Howey brings with this extended series is a way of writing a series that does not primarily rely on affiliation with the main character to move the story. Instead while there are recurring characters in the books, mostly each new book has a new main character.

Done poorly this will mean that the author has to reacquaint you with the story and draw you into the character that you are now reading (and waste a lot of time for the reader in repetition). But with the Wool/Silo series Howey has used this method to move through a lot of time and tell the story from a wide variety of perspectives.

A Life Together: Wisdom from the Christian East by Seraphim Sigrist

July 15, 2026February 27, 2013 by Adam Shields

I am reposting this review because A Life Together is on sale for $2.99 for Kindle until March 1.

Takeaway: Community, like all great Christian paradoxes, is both here, with what we really experience, and potential, with what we might imagine.

I have been thinking about our theological isolation as I have been reading the two books For Calvinism (my review) and Against Calvinism (my review). It is interesting to interact with other Christians that cannot comprehend thinking about a theological issue in any other way than the way they conceive of it. It is not that it is wrong to be sure of our faith. But if we are sure of our faith because we have never thought of our faith or understood that there are other ways to think of our faith, then are we really sure of our faith?

So I think it is important to read works outside our theological comfort zone. If you are a Calvinist, you need to read John Wesley. If you are a Baptist, you should read Pope John Paul II. If you are Methodist, you should read Bonhoeffer or Barth.

How (Not) to Speak of God by Peter Rollins

July 15, 2026February 26, 2013 by Adam Shields

I am reposting this review because How (Not) to Speak of God is on sale for $2.99 for Kindle until March 1.

I have read one other Peter Rollins book, The Orthodox Heretic. My opinion of How (Not) to Speak of God is very much the same. Rollins is very bright. He knows what he is talking about (although I don’t always understand), and in this book where he is more directly talking about philosophy and epistemology, he is way beyond my ability. I consider this one of those books that I read outside my comfort zone (both theologically and philosophically) to help expand my horizons.

I am not alway sure what he is talking about, and even when I am, I do not always agree with it. But there are three ideas that I pulled out of this book that I do think are useful and/or are a different way of approaching how to speak of God.

His first tack is to take on the traditional idea of idolatry. Not many modern people literally worship physical stone or wood idols. But Rollins wants to move away from a concept of idol as thing. That is common. We have all heard sermons about turning money or security into idols. But Rollins takes it a step further.

Who is the Holy Spirit? A Walk With the Apostles by Amos Yong

July 15, 2026February 26, 2013 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: The Holy Spirit is with us today just as he was with the apostles in Acts.

Who is the Holy Spirit uses the parallel books of Luke and Acts to illustrate how the Holy Spirit empowers Christians to do God’s work in the world.

For the last six months of last year I was focused on reading and reading about the gospel of Luke. Spending that much time in Luke really helped to focus me on how intentional the parallels from the gospel of Luke and the books of Acts are. This book takes the parallels and focuses on how the Holy Spirit not only is God, in the same way that Jesus was God in person on the earth, but shows how the Apostles, through the power of the Holy Spirit, worked to fulfill the mission of God just as Christ did.

This is a wide ranging book. And if anything, that would be my main criticism. I almost wish it was more focused. But Yong wants to hit all the major themes and actions of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts. So there is a very good section on the power of the spirit in salvation and empowering the apostles while they were in Jerusalem.

The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales by Peter Rollins

July 27, 2026February 25, 2013 by Adam Shields

The Orthodox Heretic: And Other Impossible Tales

Takeaway: We as Christians need to continually search for meaning in scriptures.

This was a free book on kindle a couple months ago. It has 33 short stories/parables with a page or so of explanation. These are intentionally attempting to retell Jesus’ parables (or at least follow the form) in a modern form. Some of them are good. Some of them seem to be intentionally unorthodox to try get a reaction.

In general I approve of trying to find meaning in scripture. But there does not seem to be a lot of focus on trying to be true to the story as much as being true to the form. When I finally got past the fact that Rollins was intentionally trying to give new meaning I got a lot more out of them.

Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life by CS Lewis

July 27, 2026February 25, 2013 by Adam Shields

Summary: Memoir of CS Lewis’ early life and how he came to faith.

CS Lewis is an author that you just have to read if you are a Christian. If you have not read the Chronicles of Narnia, then you will have read Screwtape Letters or Mere Christianity (I never have) or his Science Fiction Trilogy or one of his other books. But as a person that considers myself fairly well read, I have not read nearly as much CS Lewis as I feel like I should have.

I picked up the Science Fiction trilogy when it was on sale last year but I have not read it yet. I have tried Mere Christianity a couple times but I have not finished it. I really like Screwtape Letters and the Great Divorce and enjoyed Till We Have Faces. One I have enjoyed more than almost any other is his Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer.

What really moved me to read this is the fact that two books I really like were adapted titles. Carolyn Weber’s Surprised by Oxford was the story of how she came to faith at Oxford and she intentionally modeled the title after Lewis’s book. And Lyle Dorsett titled his biography of Joy Davidson (CS Lewis’ wife) Surprised by Love (first edition of the book was called And God Came In).

I had always assumed that Surprised by Joy was about his relationship to Joy Davidson, but it was written long before he met and married her.

Just Courage by Gary A. Haugen

July 28, 2026February 23, 2013 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: It takes courage to stand up to violence. But Christians should not be lacking in courage when we have Christ. God desires to use us, not to keep us safe.

This was a free book from ChristianAudio a couple months ago. It is a brief book, just over 3 hours in audio version, but it is powerful in its story of International Justice Mission. I have been aware of IJM for a few years. I serve on a committee with a woman that is part of their fund development committee. I have heard news reports about their work releasing people from slavery and sex trafficing for years.

But this was my first real introduction to the work directly. Gary Haugen started IJM about 10 years ago. It is a collection of lawyers, social workers and advocates that work around the world to raise awareness about and free people from slavery, sex trafficking and injustice. Haugen has a particular definition of the work that they do. It is more than just producing justice or alleviating need, it is directly addressing injustice where violence is present. He asserts that when violence is present, people are often incapable of releasing themselves from injustice and require outside intervention. Violence of the sort that is associated with slavery and sex trafficking is exactly the type of work that we as Christians need to have the courage to work for, but often are either unaware of the need or assume it is much smaller than reality.

The Science of Fear: How Culture of Fear Manipulates Your Brain

February 22, 2013 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: Humans are very bad as understanding risk whenever risk becomes complicated.

The Science of Fear feels like a book that was written specifically for me. It is filled with statistics, it has a good bit of sociology and psychology. Its messages is overwhelmingly that we fear the wrong things, that humans as a whole are not all that good at evaluating risk, and that in the end it is very easy to manipulate people into fear.

That is not to say this is a perfect book. Even for someone as stats obsessed as I am, this book was easily 75 pages too long.

The summary thesis is that we have a rational side and an emotional (gut) side. The gut side is what takes over the majority of the time and only rarely does the rational side come up on top.

There are several psychological or behavioral economic principles that that make it hard for the rational side to hold the gut side at bay. Gardner gives several examples: The Anchoring Rule (if you give a number or example even if completely unrelated to the topic, the listener will use that to anchor the evaluation), the Rule of Typical Things (basically if it sounds right it probably is right: chemicals are bad, rare things must be more dangerous, etc.) and The Example Rule (if you can see that anyone has had this happen to them, then it is probably more frequent than you know). He also uses some of the more familiar principles of confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance but focuses more on the behavior economics rather than the older psychological ideas.

So in an example on the fear of serious degenerative diseases from leaks in silicone breast implants you see how this works. The example rule says that is a woman has breast implants and has a degenerative disease then they are probably connected. But if there are a million women with implants and the particular degenerative disease occurs in the general population at 1 percent, then normally 10,000 women with implants should have that disease. It requires large scale epidemiological studies to know if it is likely that the implants and the disease are related. In this case they were not. But the Rule of Typical things says that putting silicone in your body sounds like a bad idea, so it is probably the cause of the disease.