Book Reviews – Page 158

Surprised by Oxford: A Memoir by Carolyn Weber – 2011 Books of the Year

December 30, 2011 by Adam Shields

I read a number of good memoirs this year (Brennan Manning, Eugene Peterson, Ian Cron, etc.) but Surprised by Oxford was my favorite. A beautifully written book about a student finding God while studying literature in Oxford. If you like books about books and memoirs that are as much about ideas as timeline, than you will like this. I also highly recommend Ian Cron’s Jesus, My Father, The CIA and Me. I had a hard time deciding which I liked better. Cron’s book was very good and I really recommend it as well.

Summary: Girl finds God at Oxford in one of the most beautifully written memoirs written in recent years.

Memoirs are an increasingly popular form. Especially since Donald Miller, the memoir seems to have found a new life by showing how a person found God. In many ways, this is just an updating of the traditional testimony that has been, and in some churches still is, a common part of the church liturgy. I have read a lot of memoirs over the past few years. Many of them quite good. But none were as well written and literary as Surprised by Oxford.

Carolyn Weber grew up in London, Ontario. Child of divorced Hungarian immigrants, she had to work hard to make it through high school and college while working to support herself and family and making excelling grades. Caro, as she was known, won a full scholarship to study literature at Oxford. She eventually received her masters and doctorate from Oxford and now is a professor of literature.

Economics of Good and Evil: The Quest for Economic Meaning from Gilgamesh to Wall Street by Tomas Sedlacek

December 27, 2011 by Adam Shields

Economics of Good and Evil: The Quest for Economic Meaning from Gilgamesh to Wall Street Takeaway: We have begun to think that modern capitalism is the only right way to think about economics. This book tracks how economics has been thought of throughout history and calls us to rediscover some of what has been lost.

Very few book do I read that just surprise me by their originality. The Economics of God and Evil is one. Sedlacek is a Czech Economist, journalist and Economic Advisor to the first Czech President after the fall of communism. This book was originally written and published in Europe (and was adapted as a theater piece) before being reworked and now published in the US.

Few really well documented books (footnotes are about a third of most pages) also clearly explain fairly academic subjects as well as this book does.

The concept is that Sedlacek traces several texts that show how we have thought of economics in history. These include the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Old Testament, Ancient Greece Philosophy, Christianity and New Testament, Descartes, Mandeville (who I had no concept of) and Adam Smith. He showed how the concepts of economics were different under each of these worldviews and how they influenced the rise of Western Thought about economics. Throughout he gives hints about places where he thinks that modern economics may have ventured away from what might be a better explanation.

Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling by Andy Crouch – 2011 Books of the Year

December 24, 2011 by Adam Shields

This is the one of the first books I read in 2011. And it actually came out in 2010, but still I think it is a book that more people need to read. The evangelical church needs to recover a sense of secular vocation and Culture Making presents that better than most that I have read. Andy Crouch is one of the most innovated thinkers of the modern Evangelical world and his new project with Christianity Today on the City and the Church continues to show that. You can see the roots of Culture Making in his current project. ~~Culture Making is currently on sale for $3.99 on kindle, so pick it up.~~

Cover of "Culture Making: Recovering Our ... — Cover via Amazon

Takeaway: If you work in a creative field inside or outside the church and you have not read this book, you are doing yourself a disservice.

It is common for me to recommend books that I am currently reading. After all they are in my head, I am thinking about them. I think everyone else should be thinking about them so I can talk about the ideas that are in them. But this is a book that I honestly think most Christian need to read.

The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism by GK Beale

December 23, 2011 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: If you are going to respond to another author, it is best to deal with their actual arguments.

GK Beale opens the book with a fictional discussion between two Evangelicals. This fictional discussion was one of the better parts of the book. It actually took both the conservative and more moderate evangelical students seriously.

Beale is directly responding to Peter Enns’ Inspiration and Incarnation. I was interested in reading a good conservative response to Enns. It is not that I think that Enns’ book was perfect, it was far from it. But Beale’s problems with Enns’ book seem to rely less on the evidence that Enns’ presents than on the defense of what Beale views as an Evangelical view of inerrancy and the doctrine of scripture.

Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions: Engaging the Mystery of Friendship Between Men and Women by Dan J Brennan – 2011 Books of the Year

December 22, 2011 by Adam Shields

This may be the most polarizing of the books I have on my 2011 Bookwi.se Books of the Year. Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions is a provokative book about why men and women, both married and single, need more cross gender friendships, not less. My wife and I have lead small groups for newly married couples for the past couple years. Different expectations and histories with cross gender friendships comes up regularly. I am convinced that healthy cross-gender friendships can do much to strengthen marriages. I have given away more copies of this than any other book this year. Even if you are skeptical about the concept I challenge you to read the book and give Brennan the chance to make the case.

Takeaway: The role of cross gender friendships is important.

I always tell people I find good books by listening to other readers. I spend a fair amount of time reading reviews and blogs by people that I have come to trust over time. One of those that I deeply respect is John Armstrong. He has a daily blog that has a fairly wide range of subjects. But most of them has something to do with his passion for Missional Ecumenicism (essentially drawing the church together). Right before Christmas he had a couple posts about this book.

Right off the bat, John laid out his hand. He started the book to find a problem with it. John actually wrote a book about sexual immorality among clergy because he was so concerned about the damage it was doing to the church. John used to and many other clergy still do to fall back to Billy Graham’s advice to never be seen alone with a woman that was not your wife. So pastors (primarily male) will not meet with woman without someone else present. They will drive separate cars to the same meeting so they do not have to be seen with someone of a different sex in the same car by themselves.

Earthen Vessels by Matthew Lee Anderson – 2011 Books of the Year

December 21, 2011 by Adam Shields

Over the next 10 days Bookwi.se will be re-posting my books of the year. They are in alphabetical order by author. Matthew Lee Anderson has given the evangelical church a real gift with this book. And like many gifts that are actually good for us, this book has not had the attention that it deserves. The physical body should be important to us because it is important to God. And ignoring the theology of the body is ignoring why God created us as physical human beings and came to earth himself as a physical human and was resurrected again with a physical body. I hope this is the start of a new focus on the theology of the body in the Evangelical world.
Earthen Vessels Takeaway: This is one of the more important contributions to Evangelical Theology I have read in recent years. I very much look forward to expanded editions or new books by Anderson to supplement what he has here.

I finished this book up the first night of my vacation at the beach. I am vacationing with my wife’s family, including my two nieces that I nanny. The three year old came into the living room buck naked and asked where her pull-ups were. She unashamedly turned around and stuck out her bottom to show us that she did not have a pull-up on and told us that she still wears pull-ups to bed because she is not big yet.

Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie (Guest Post)

December 21, 2011 by Adam Shields

Guest post by Chris Moore. He blogs at aboyandhisgod.blogspot.com and is on twitter

Takeaway: With creativity, a website, and a plan to make a difference, anybody can do something significant that makes the world a better place. This book is a good guide into how.

I have a lot of friends that want to start something that matters. From prison ministries to mentoring programs to churches to community. I think that most of us have this abstract idea of what should be. Great ideas. Sticky ideas. Ideas for the common good.

But simultaneously, most of us have trouble getting these ideas any more concrete than a few idealistic conversations. Fears of failure. Fears of bankruptcy. Fears of inadequacy.

Bookwi.se 2011 Books of the Year and Honorable Mentions

December 20, 2011 by Adam Shields

Jester reading a book — Image via Wikipedia

The List has been decided. Starting tomorrow, I will re-post the reviews of the books that made the most impact on me this year. These are not necessarily the books that I think are the best books of the year (although most of them would be), but instead these are the books that weeks or months after I finished them, I was still talking about and still recommending to others. The list will not be in ranked order (I couldn’t figure out how to rank them), but alphabetical by Author. After the jump are the 10 honorable mentions that were very close to making my list.

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephanie Meyer

December 19, 2011 by Adam Shields

Summary: The story of last battle of the 3rd Book of Twilight (Eclipse) told from one of the newborn vampires.

So I am going to out myself up front. I read all of the original Twilight books. They are some of the first books I read on the Kindle when I first purchased it. And I enjoyed them. Yes, I get some of the issues people have with them. Yes I understand that they completely turn vampire lore upside down and made what has always been considered evil into good. Yes, I get the issues of sexualizing teens and the problems of her desire to die rather than live without Edward. I don’t completely disagree with those complaints, but I still enjoyed them.

The Wisdom of Each Other: A Conversation Between Spiritual Friends by Eugene Peterson

December 19, 2011 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: Spiritual friendship is important and undervalued.

I intentionally picked this up with CS Lewis‘ Letters to Malcolm (my review) because they seem to be complementary (and because I had a $10 credit on Audible and with my discount they came to $10.09 together).

But while Letters to Malcolm was very personal and revealing, this felt flat. First it is written as an exercise in spiritual mentoring. These are not actual letters compiled but instead are written to characterize the types of letters that Peterson often writes. This gives it form and coherence, but it left the whole thing feeling contrived.