Book Reviews – Page 151

Finding Juliet by Frank Sennett

July 12, 2012 by Adam Shields

I am at the beach this week. So I decided to post some of my favorite beach reads instead of writing new reviews.

Summary: Classic guy meets girl romance with a slight literary twist.

Today is my last day at the beach while on vacation. I just have not been reading much this vacation. Instead I have been playing Scrabble and Words with Friends and hanging out in the room. (I break out in hives if I put on too much sunscreen, so I have to limit my sun exposure to a couple hours a day.) I have mostly been reading church focused stuff but not finishing anything.

Yesterday, I gave up and decided to just go fiction. So I looked through my long list of fiction books that I have picked up free from Amazon and pretty much at random chose one. (The cover image on the left was different when I originally picked it up. I think when I got it, it was a statue of Juliet. This cover looks like it should be on a vampire book.)

Finding Juliet is a classic beach read. A light romance without a ton of mental content. The set up is a recently dumped Literature Grad student writes a letter to Juliet (from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet) as a class assignment. The letter is chosen best in class and sent to the Juliet Society in Verona. A letter is written back and soon the guy decides to travel to Italy to meet his Juliet.

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray (Second Review)

July 6, 2012 by Adam Shields

Note: Bookwi.se contributor Emily Flury posted a review of this book earlier. This review is from Adam Shields.

Summary: A humorous satire about a group of teen beauty pageant contestants that crash land on a deserted island and have to figure out how to survive.

It is summer. And I am mostly in a mood for vacation reading. Vacation reading for me is funny, usually light, reads. I often lean toward young adult or action/romance or maybe some fantasy books during the summer.

After reading Emily’s review, I picked up Beauty Queens from the library on audiobook. This is a book that I think needs to be listened to. I have not seen a paper copy, but I have no idea how it would properly communicate the story the way that the audiobook does. There are commercials, flashbacks, pageant background interviews, not the mention the actually story line. In audio form, it works really well.

This books is satire. A group of teen beauty pageant girls crash land on a deserted island. All of the adults and chaperons and most of the pageant contestants die in the plane crash. But a small group of them survive and have to figure out how to live on a deserted island.

King Jesus Gospel by Scot McKnight (Read Again Post)

July 5, 2012 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: Asserting that the Gospel is about Jesus, does not minimize the need for salvation, the need for evangelism, the need for social ministry or God’s transforming power.

In my desire to expand my knowledge (and keep myself entertained), I read a lot of books. In my head, I know that many times I need to ruminate on a book more to really get the point and put into practice what I have heard from it. But too often I just keep reading. After all I have a blog to write.

So I made a goal for myself to re-read one book a month. I suck at meeting goals. I have only re-read 10 in the last 18 months and only 2 this year. But when I re-read, I like to read in a different format. The first time I read King Jesus Gospel I read it on my kindle. This time I listened to the audiobook.

First things, first. I think this is a very important book. I think that the message, that we need to place Jesus as Savior, Lord and Messiah and full-filler of the story of Israel, is vitally important.

Signs of Life: 40 Catholic Customs and Their Biblical Roots by Scott Hahn

June 29, 2012 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: The more I explore Catholic belief, the more it pushes me to think about my own beliefs.

If you have not noticed, I have been reading about Catholic theology, practice and conversion lately. This is a personal project to understand a stream of Christian faith that is large, important and often quite misunderstood by Evangelical Protestants.

The subtitle of this book: 40 Catholic Customs and their Biblical Roots, seemed like a perfect book to further my education. And it was useful, even if not really what I was expecting. It is designed to be read like a daily devotional. There are forty short chapters with an explanation of the custom and a little devotional quote from a modern or ancient Christian figure.

They Eat Puppies, Don’t They? by Christopher Buckley

June 28, 2012 by Adam Shields

Summary: A novel about a defense contractor lobbyist and a political commentator who get together to whip up furor over China in order to justify more weapons programs.

Christopher Buckley is one of my favorite authors. But this is not one of my favorite of his books.

Buckley’s books follow a similar path. Washington insiders, in a cynical, but somewhat believable way push a line that seems absurd, but much of the time you could actually see things working out in real life like they do in his books. It is satire. What makes Buckley one of my favorite authors is that he ridicules all sides of the political spectrum, he keeps his books funny and in the end his heroes usually see the error in their ways.

But this book is not as funny as most of his other books. It is satire, and you can see him poking fun at lobbyists, at the defense industry, at the media. But it is not sharp, it is not very funny and it feels phoned in.

The Unity Factor: One Lord, One Church, One Mission by John Armstrong

June 27, 2012 by Adam Shields

Summary: A brief book about why the church needs to pursue unity as part of our Mission.

“We must understand that the unity of the church is not an end in itself. Unity is a sign and an instrument of the first fruits of God’s purpose to reconcile all things in heaven and on earth through Jesus Christ.”

Unity of the church is important to me. It is one of the reasons that I have been reading about Catholic theology lately. It is one of the reasons that I specifically try to read outside my theological stream. John Armstrong has written this brief book about why and how Christians should pursue unity.

When Beauty Pursues You by Elora Ramirez

June 26, 2012 by Adam Shields

Summary: A brief, poetic look at the pain and redemption of growing up as a girl seeking to be cherished.

For someone that reads as much as I do, and someone that has so many books on my To Read list, I find it odd that I don’t always know why I start reading the books that I read.

Tonight I read this very short little book because I said I would (the author contacted me to ask me to review it.) I did not have anything else I wanted to read, so I picked it up. It was finished in less than a hour. And it was very good.

I am not the target audience, it is primarily written to women, especially women that feel broken. But I appreciate the writing. I am a nanny for my two nieces. I love caring for these two precious girls. For all of the stress and bother and calls to ‘be a lion’ or ‘no, stand like this’, I want to be a figure that encourages and strengthens them. Reading about women that have not been cherished and cared for helps give me encouragement to keep going.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

June 22, 2012 by All Old Users

Summary: A competition/duel between two magicians that work at the Night Circus, a circus that arrives without warning and only occurs at night. My feelings about this book fluctuated depending on where I was in the story. The Night Circus is about a strange competition between magicians that is played out in the happenings of … Read more

Small Faith – Great God by NT Wright

June 20, 2012 by Adam Shields

Summary: A reissue of a 1978 book. A decent intro to many of Wright’s ideas, but not as fully developed as later books.

This books is primarily based on a series of early sermons that NT Wright gave in the 1970s. The oldest of them was originally delivered a year before I was born. They were first compiled into the first edition of this book in 1978. They were released in 2010 with only very light editing and a new forward.

What struck me most is how many of Wright’s ideas were already in place when he was in his late 20s. So if you have not read much of Wright, this would actually be a decent introduction. It includes some of his thoughts on heaven, many of the major points of his book After You Believe and some hints of some points from Simply Christian. Wright more recent work on Jesus and Kingdom and his more famous older work on Paul are not really mentioned.

How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps by Christian Smith

June 19, 2012 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: If you are thinking about joining the Catholic church this has many good questions, clarification and guidance.

I am on a project to understand more about the Catholic church. I have two motivations around this, 1) a friend of mine recently converted and I am reading understand more about his decision and 2) I am convinced that much of the Evangelical opposition to Catholicism is rooted in ignorance of the Catholic church and not really on theology. So I apologize to those that have no interest in Catholic theology, but I will probably read at least another half dozen books in the next couple months.

I have been paying attention to Christian Smith for a while. He is a Sociologist specializing in Christian youth culture and maturation. But I had not read more than a couple of articles (more about his research than by him) before I read his book Bible Made Impossible last year. It was a massively frustrating book for me. He points out many of the problems that Evangelicals have with the bible and its use. In the end I think he is right that we need to read the bible with a Christological hermeneutic, but that is difficult to describe in practice. I think he strongly hinted at his conversion in the book because coupled with the Christological hermeneutic is the need for a church voice (or authority) to regulate the reading (ie the Catholic Magisterium).