Book Reviews – Page 2

The Wild Robot by Peter Brown

October 22, 2024 by Adam Shields

Summary: A new robot is lost, and as attempts to survive, it learns from the animals around it and becomes a “wild robot.”

My son read and enjoyed The Wild Robot last year when he was eight. He is a pretty good reader and likes to read books on his own. I have been interested in reading the book myself since I saw that it was being made into a movie.

This is a classic late elementary book. There are tons of very short chapters, rarely more than a couple of pages each. This makes the book both easy to engage for 3-5th graders to read by themselves and easy to read to them at that age or slightly younger.

I appreciate that this is a book that admits hard things. This book is mostly about a robot trying to understand the world around “her” and about animals. The reality of the wild world is that animals will die. Some will be eaten by others, some will die from elements or accidents. The fact that there is grief and sorrow in that loss is not glossed over.

John Lewis: A Life by David Greenberg

October 8, 2024 by Adam Shields

Summary: How do you summarize a life like John Lewis’?

I am not new to the story of John Lewis, but this was the first full-length biography I have read about John Lewis. I have previously read the graphic novels (The March Trilogy and Run) and the short biography by Jon Meacham, as well as watching the documentary Good Trouble. And Lewis figures prominently in many biographies, memoirs, and Civil Rights era histories. But I had not read a full-length biography.

David Greenberg has previously written biographies of Nixon and Coolidge and two books about the presidency. This is a biography that used hundreds of interviews and personal papers. And I think perhaps most interesting to me is that the biography was only half finished when Lewis was ousted from SNCC. The main difference is that everything I have previously watched or read primarily focused on Lewis’ early civil rights work prior to leaving SNCC.

“Lews found himself, at age 26, with no job, unmarried and unsure what to do with his life. The movement to which he had devoted his adult life was veering away from the ideals that had animated it. To remain in the struggle, he would have to find another path.”

Part of what has always previously struck me about Lewis was how young he was when he was thrust into leadership. He was a leader of the Nashville Student Movement before he was 20. He was one of the speakers at the 1963 March on Washington when he was 23. Stokley Carmichael replaced him as chairman of SNCC when Lewis was 26. Everything I had previously read about Lewis was how his orientation toward a belief in nonviolence as a principle, not just a strategy paired with his maturity as a young man. He was not inclined to date or drink or parties, but he did draw people to him.

The Attenbury Emeralds by Jill Paton Walsh

October 3, 2024 by Adam Shields

Summary: After the war, Lord Peter starts telling Harriet about his first case, and that telling leads to a new case.

One of the ongoing themes of this set of four books is that there is a play between what is real as a mystery and how mysteries can be written about to be believable. As a setup for the rest of the book, Lord Peter describes to Harriet his first case and how he started as a detective. Throughout this early section, Harriet and Lord Peter talk about whether something would be believable if it were in one of Harriet’s novels vs in one of Peter’s cases. This is a running gag in the series because Peter is often asking Harriet what he should do or if she were writing the story what the perpetrator would do at that point. It is both a running gag, but also a serious discussion about the nature of reality and how the nature of writing works. You can’t just write a story, you have to fall within the set of conventions that seem believable unless you are intentionally subverting the conventions to suggest that the conventions themselves are not believable.

Part of the thread of the book is that the Attenbury Emeralds, which is what his initial case was about, has continued to come up again and again over the years. That is improbable, but it is improbable because there is more to the story than what it initially seems.

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

October 2, 2024 by Adam Shields

Summary: A retelling of Beauty and the Beast in a modern (spicy) romance/fantasy format.

Recently my local school district removed A Court of Thorns and Roses and the rest of the series from all of the school libraries. I was unfamiliar with the series and so I looked it up. I saw that the first book is a loose retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I read the original short story about fifteen years ago and was very familiar with the Disney movie and the live-action remake. As I was looking up information about it I saw that the audiobook was free to me in the Audible lending library for members. So I picked it up and fairly quickly decided to just buy the Kindle edition.

There is a good discussion in the YA author community about the role and purpose of young adult and middle-grade fiction. I think KB Hoyle, cofounder of Owl’s Nest Press has done the best at discussing the changes to the category “Young Adult Literature”. There are a variety of podcasts and articles where she has done that. But I will highlight this article and this podcast about the need for a real middle grade and YA category and this post about why retellings of classics are useful. To summarize her point, with the rise of adult interest in young adult stories (Twilight, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Divergent, etc), there has been a shift to writing coming-of-age stories for adults and it is included in the category of “young adult books.” There are a number of reasons for this, but the coming of age story is a popular format. The rise of the internet seems to have pushed interest toward simpler stories. Then these books sold well. And then there was the mega-success of Fifty Shades of Gray, a type of coming-of-age story that included sex as a central theme.

KB Hoyle started Owl’s Nest Press particularly to address the ways that middle-grade children and young adults were getting ignored in their own category of literature. I have read every one of KB Hoyle’s books, many of them more than once, so I definitely think that books written for pre-teen or teen readers can still be read by adults with great enjoyment. But that category of books, the adult-oriented coming-of-age novel which includes sex is still being written and remains popular. And it is one type of book that is being targeted for school book bans. I am not particularly in favor of school book bans, in large part because the act of banning draws attention to the books. My local library now has over 100 people in line for the ebook of A Court of Thorns and Roses and that doesn’t include the print or audiobook waits. When I looked the estimated wait time was 18 weeks.

The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage by Paul Elie

September 30, 2024 by Adam Shields

Summary: A joint biography of Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Walker Percy, and Flannery O’Connor.

I have been wanting to get around to The Life You Save May Be Your Own since it came out in the early 2000s. After having read a brief biography of Dorothy Day and a book of essays about Thomas Merton earlier this summer, I decided it was time. I have also read three books about O’Connor, a more academic look at her work, a short biography, and a collection of her early journals I felt like I had a pretty good handle on O’Connor. But I knew nothing about Walker Percy outside of his novels.

Elie mostly tells the story chronologically. Dorothy Day is almost 20 years older than Merton and Percy and nearly 30 years older than O’Connor. But she also lived longer than both Merton and O’Connor. And while Percy lived until 1990, and Day passed away in 1980, Day was 83 when she passed away, and Percy was only 73.

All four are well-known Catholic writers who were consciously Catholic in different ways. O’Connor was the only cradle Catholic, the other three were all adult converts to Catholicism. O’Connor and Percy were both also very much Southern Writers while Day was most identified with NYC and her non-fiction writing. Merton was the most clearly a “spiritual” writer and the only clergy member of the group.

The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance by Jemar Tisby

September 30, 2024September 30, 2024 by Adam Shields

Summary: Stories of resistance.

This is a natural next book for Jemar Tisby. His first book was a survey of the ways that the church in the US has been complicit with racism. The second book was a response to the question, “What should we do now” that he kept getting from people who read the first book. And this third book is designed as inspiration for continuing to work for justice.

I am fairly well-read in civil rights history and there were both well-known figures and people I did not know here. The balance between the known and the unknown (or lesser known) was good. You can’t ignore major figures like Martin Luther King Jr, but in some ways, those figures are less inspiring because they have become “saints” of the movement. The lesser-known figures I think are more inspiring because they worked toward justice without becoming well-known.

That isn’t to say those lesser-known people are less important. Part of what Tisby is doing is bringing balance to the story. There is a whole chapter on women of the civil rights movement, not because they were completely unknown but because the sexism of the time impacted how we tell stories today. And many behind-the-scenes figures were essential to the organizational and movement-building work that allowed the well-known people to become well-known.

A Presumption of Death by Jill Paton Walsh

September 18, 2024 by Adam Shields

Summary: In the early days of World War 2, Harriet is managing children while Peter and others are in the war effort.

A normal for me, I keep getting caught up in information and forget about fiction. And then I return to it to remember again why fiction is a necessary part of a healthy reading diet. I have been reading a long joint biography of Dorothy Day, Flannery O’Connor, Thomas Merton, and Walker Percy. As much as the book has been worth reading, I remember why reading about fiction is not the same as reading fiction.

I read the Thrones, Dominations, the first book of the series where Jill Paton Walsh continues Dorothy Sayers’ mystery series last year. I saw A Presumption of Death on Kindle Unlimited and needed a fiction series to work on. It has been several years since the events of the first book. Peter and Harriet have several children, and she and her staff are watching several more children because of concerns about the bombing of London and so that their parents can work in the war effort.

There are many discussions about the refugees from London or other countries in this book. Harriet and the children are living at Tallboys, their country home. The limitations of the war, from the lack of food to the danger, are constantly constantly present. Peter is gone and there is also the worry for his safety.

Engaging Thomas Merton: Spirituality, Justice, and Racism by Daniel Horan

September 18, 2024September 17, 2024 by Adam Shields

Summary: A variety of essays or talks about Merton and how his life and work can impact people today.

Engaging Thomas Merton is a book you can dip in and out of because while the book is thematically about Thomas Merton, you can easily skip around chapters based on your interest or read it slowly over time. I spent about six or so weeks slowly working through the book.

Because of my interests, I think the most engaging chapters were chapter 6 (using Merton’s work on the true and the false self to engage ideas of how we are embodied and digital selves) and then the three chapters about Merton’s engagement with the civil rights movement.

Overall, I think the digital self chapter is probably both the best chapter of the book and worth the price of the book for me. Horan makes the case that Merton would have seen that one of the realities of the digital age is that identity is “almost infinitely negotiable.” As a means of engaging with Merton in a situation that Merton didn’t experience, Horton takes Merton’s understanding of the false self and engages those insights. The clearest summary of Horton’s thesis here is, “The true self only appears elusive because we are too concerned with our false self (selves) to turn toward God.” (p93)

An End to Inequality: Breaking Down the Walls of Apartheid Education in American by Jonathan Kozol

August 20, 2024 by Adam Shields

Summary: A brief book about the problems of education reform.

I picked this up because it was by Jonathan Kozol. I read several of his books in the 1990s and was a bit surprised that he had a new book out. Kozol turns 88 in Sept 2024 and his work on social justice and education should be celebrated. I am glad I read this because it was by Jonathan Kozol, but at the same time, if you are interested in the problems of education reform and especially how it negatively impacts Black or other racial minorities or poor students of all races, I would recommend Bettina Love’s recent book Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal. I read it last year but did not write up my thoughts at the time because I was in a busy season. But it is a very helpful book that I think should be more widely read, not just among educators, but also among politically active people of all types of backgrounds.

An End to Inequality covers a number of different problems with public education from the physical environment (lead in water or paint, poor air circulation, heating, air, etc.) to curriculum to problematic reforms. I think one of the main themes of Bettina Love’s book is handled well here. Generally, testing of educational reform programs is done at poor or minority schools. Any testing of educational reform at predominately white and higher income public schools are reforms that give students more options or freedom. While the reforms at lower-income and minority schools are reforms that are focused on more highly structured teaching models, narrower academic ranges of subjects, or economic efficiencies. Said another way, reforms at predominantly white and upper-income schools are designed to help students have more enjoyment at learning and reforms at lower-income and predominately minority schools tend to reduce educational enjoyment.

The main problem with this first third of the book is that the examples are presented anecdotally, not systemically. I completely believe that everything that he reports happened, but there isn’t a structure to tell the reader how widespread these problems are or if they really are disproportionately impacting low-income and minority students. I think they are, I think there is plenty of evidence available in other sources to show that they are, but Kozol’s standard format is to tell stories of particular students or teachers and that story-oriented structure tends to lack statistical underpinnings.

Turning Points in American Church History: How Pivotal Events Shaped a Nation and a Faith by Elesha Coffman

August 20, 2024August 15, 2024 by Adam Shields

Summary: An introduction to American Church history.

Mark Noll originally released his book Turning Points in Church History in 2001. (It is now in its 14th edition.) Elesha Coffman is writing a United States-focused version with the consent (and introduction) of Mark Noll. Noll is approaching 80 and still has the third in his history of the use of scripture series and several other books he is working on, and he says in the introduction that he didn’t have the time or interest to do an American-focused turning points book.

As with any type of book like this, the choices of what are the turning points matter and will be debated. I think that this choices were good. She started with the Spanish Armada, which she framed as a starting point for English colonialism and a shift in global power. I might have started with the rise of Puritanism or the English Reformation, but all three of those starting points are related and led toward the English colonies in North America.

Coffman did a very good job contextualizing the different turning points. In this type of book, the turning points are a frame for looking at an era of history not just the thing itself. So Azusa Street Revival was not just about that event, but about the rise of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements in the US and how they rippled through not just those denominations but also impacted Catholic and Episcopal charismatic reform movements as well.