Book Reviews

Takeaway: I read on the basis of a recommendation from Eugene Peterson’s book Pastor. It was good, especially for free.

Purchase Links: Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle Edition, Google Books (free)

I read Eugene Peterson’s The Pastor: A Memoir (my review) twice in the two months after it came out.  It is very good.  I want to pick up Peterson’s Take and Read: Spiritual Reading: An Annotated List.  It sounds like my kind of book, a long list of books with short statements of why they are useful/important/interesting.  I will pick it up eventually, but first I am reading a couple books Peterson’s mentioned in The Pastor.

Fosdick’s The Meaning of Prayer is the first.

Peterson interviewed Fosdick for a project in seminary after reading this book.  Fosdick was thought of not only as a liberal, but a heretic and worse in some circles.  Peterson was struck that no one could have written this book and been a heretic and even more struck once he met Fosdick.  This helped shape Peterson’s understanding of the way that we often characterize those that disagree with us.

It is free on Google Books (I read it on my ipad mostly, with a little on my android phone, there is very good syncing.)

Read more

Takeaway: Being a writer is a calling.

One thought that struck me early in the book. Solzhenitsyn was writing in ‘the underground’. He was only sharing his writing with a handful of trusted readers and was not receiving much criticism to help improve the writing. He wrote a play and as he reflected back on that play he said, “…convinced as I was that what matters most for the writer was truthfulness.” But then the play flopped.  He later realized that that form does matter. And to ignore form as an author, especially the fast changing forms of theater, was to ignore the reader.

It is also very interesting how much effort he put into writing.  He went to the Gulag because of his writing in the 1950s.  But still he continued to write in secret.  It was years before anything was published and he almost never shared anything during that time.  But he continued to write.

Read more

Takeaway: We should read more of what we want in order to develop a love of reading and worry less about developing ourselves by reading ‘what is important’.

Purchase Links: Hardcover, Kindle Edition
(Kindle Lending is Enabled, if you have a kindle or kindle app you can borrow this book)

This is a book that just makes sense.  The basic idea is that we should be reading more of what we enjoy and not pay as much attention to the books that ‘everyone’ says we should be reading.  This works for me for a number of reasons.

Read more

Takeaway: Forgiveness is supremely important (chapter 5 is probably worth the price of the book.)

Purchase Links: Hardcover (with DVD), Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook

Wright, after the horrors of Sept 11, the 2004 tsunami, Katrina and the 2005 Kashmir area earthquakes set aside his intent to write a book on atonement and instead wrote a book about why we need the atonement.  I really do appreciate Wright’s pastoral intent and the fact that he wants to affect the church, not just the academic world.  But I am a bit mixed about this book.

Read more