Summary: The conclusion, this time, is real.
The end of The Truth of The Matter (book #3), felt like a conclusion. Because there is a book four, I knew it was not. But it appeared that the terrorist ring had been broken up. Charlie was found by the good guys and he would be heading home soon, cleared of murder and ready to enjoy his regular life.
It was not to be.
Takeaway: Doctrine is the attempt to speak of God faithfully to our culture, but it is limited to the tools that are available to our language, philosophy and culture.
Speaking of God is difficult. There is one group of people that believe that God is so Other that we can only talk about what God is not. And they have a point. God is far beyond our comprehension.
But God has revealed himself to us. There is both scripture, which is God speaking in human language through the writing of dozens of God’s followers. And then there is Jesus Christ, which was God himself come to earth to reveal God’s nature and love to us.
This very helpful book, details the early working out in human language the nature of the Trinity. It is important to remember that what was being done was not creating the Trinity. The Trinity exists independent of human language. But the early church had to figure out a way to speak of the Trinity using human language and philosophy.
Summary: Charlie now knows who actually killed Alex and he is searching for Waterman, his best clue on how to get back to his normal life.
This is book three is the Homelanders series. You do not want to jump into the middle of this series.
This book picks up almost immediately after The Long Way Home. In the Long Way Home Charlie re-connected with his friends and girlfriend Beth. He found out how he got connected to the Homelanders, but there is still a year missing from his memory.
Klavan has done a good job in the series keeping the action moving, giving new information so the story moves and keeping the tension up.
Summary: Charlie West is on the run, from the police and a group of unknown terrorist. How can he prove that he is innocent and at the same time stay alive long enough to make sure the terrorists do not kill anyone else?
Charlie West, the hero of this series, has just stopped a murder at the end of The Last Thing I Remember (do not try to read this series out of order).
The Long Way Home picks up a couple weeks later. Charlie is trying to discover why he has been framed for murdering his best friend Alex (and by whom) while trying to avoid both the police and the terrorists that are after him.
Charlie decides to head back to his home town, in part because of home sickness, but mostly to get to the scene of Alex’s murder.
Takeaway: Right Brained creative thinking is the basis for the new economy (and you are less likely to have your job off-shored).
I like Daniel Pink. His book Drive (Bookwi.se review) on how to motivate employees was very good. I have watched videos of him speaking and in general like his style of Business Psychology books.
But I was not excited about this book. I almost stopped listening several times (and it is only just over 6 hours on audio). I actually missed the last 30 minutes because of a problem with my audiobook player and I did not feel like downloading the file again.
Pink’s point I think is basically right. In the past, left brain analytical thinking has been dominant in the business world. But increasingly as the economy moves toward a knowledge economy, right brain thinking is more valued. His first chapter summarizes the problem as Abundance, Automation and Asia. We are no longer in an economy where we are after the basics to sustain life. So we value creativity and design (abundance). Computers are good at left brain thinking, so automation is increasingly able to do many of the routine or rule based work that was a staple of our work force. Those activities that are more advanced that what computers can do, but still able to be done from afar, are being shipped off to cheaper labor markets like India and China (Asia).
Takeaway: There are pleasures and value in physical labor that should not be degraded.
The best line in Shop Class as Soulcraft is “Work is toilsome and necessarily serves someone else’s interest. That’s why you get paid.” That bit is wisdom is important. Work is not designed to be the great fulfillment in life. But work can be fulfilling.
This book as a whole has a very interesting point. An the author, using his own very interesting work history, is a great example. Crawford has worked as a mechanic (and currently works as a mechanic in his own shop), an electrician, the head of a Washington think tank, and a ‘knowledge worker’. He has a PhD from University of Chicago but learn mechanics from the apprenticeship that is common of the physical trades.
Note: This is an adult book. Discretion advised.
Primarily I read and review non-fiction books. While I like to read fiction, fiction tells a story and its strength is its ability to allow you to see life through someone else’s eyes.
Radically different lives give you a view of a different world. Several studies have shown that reading fiction helps to build empathy and actually by itself, helps to build interpersonal skills.
Fiction in the Christian world often has a couple problems. One, it often is oriented toward ‘nice’ stories that end well, that show people that are too easily changed by the message of Christ or where there is not actually any real conflict in the book. So I rarely read fiction published by Christian publishing houses. But second, there is a distrust of fiction in the Christian world that I find problematic. That distrust seems to be rooted in the fiction of the tale. There are Christians that are uncomfortable with stories as a means of conveying truth.
Kushiel’s Dart will not be mistaken for a Christian novel. It is about a girl, sold into indentured servitude by her mother as a young child, raised to become a prostitute. She becomes a courtesan to the wealthy, one that specializes in the darker sexual appetites. This book is fairly explicit. The sex is throughout the book. Bi-sexuality, bondage and torture are described, the main character views her job as what might be called a temple prostitute, a way for others to reach out to their god.
Takeaway: Explores the idea of whether a person can really change, and what it takes to motivate them if they can change.
I first heard about this book, as I do so many, from Books and Culture magazine. John Wilson, the editor, named it one of his personal books of the year and it was also discussed on the B&C podcast.
I was pushed into buying it when it dropped to just over $2.00 in kindle format (back up to normal price now). What actually moved me to read it was a malaise with my standard non-fiction fare. I just needed something different.
Once I started, I was hooked. I finished the book in three days (pretty unusual for me since I usually read a half dozen books at a time.)
Identity Man is an anti-hero book. I like the concept of anti-heros. Or at least this version of anti-heros. Those that are on the wrong side of the law most of the time, but have a real sense of honor, pride and understanding of the lines that they will not cross. Usually I see this in spy fiction or in fantasy or superhero fiction.
Summary: The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a wildly popular French novel in 2007 and was translated into English in 2008.
The story takes place entirely in a well-to-do French apartment building in the center of Paris. Told fromthe point of view of two main characters we meet Renee, the building’s concierge. Renee is a widow and a lover of Art. She’s an avid reader, loves films, paintings, music and Japanese culture. But she takes great pains to keep her true self hidden from the rest of the world. To the residents of the apartment building, she’s the grumpy old lady who’s addicted to soap operas and her cat, Leo. Renee and her friend Manuela, a housekeeper, spend an hour every afternoon enjoying their tea and critiquing the apartment residents who are truly their inferiors in every way, except in material wealth.
As I have enjoyed many books about dogs in the past such as The Art of Racing in the Rain, One Good Dog, and A Dog’s Purpose, I picked up this novel because I was ready for an easy listening experience after two marathon listens that I had just finished. At first, I was disappointed to find that this novel had the same narrator as another book that I did not enjoy, Merle’s Door. I had blamed the failure of the book in part to the narrator who seemed to be much like a know-it-all or something that was hard for me to put my finger on. I found, however, that the narrator suited this story much better and that perhaps I had been unfair in my review of Merle’s Door.