Book Reviews

Summary: A defense of reading old books as a way to counter an orientation toward bias. 

I have read many of Alan Jacobs’ books. I think he is one of the best essayists writing. I think I have read all of his books except a couple. Unlike some writers, he is not someone with one primary theme and hits that same theme repeatedly.

In some ways, Breaking Bread with the Dead could be considered an update to CS Lewis’ defense of reading old books from Lewis’ introduction to On the Incarnation by Athanasius. And if you have not read that one, you should. It is brief and accessible, and classic for a reason.

But Jacobs’ is not just updating Lewis, he is also expanding on why old books matter, especially today. One of the biggest reasons modern people object to old books, besides the orientation toward the new, is concern about how past sins are normalized in old books. Those sins, like the support of slavery or sexism, etc., are discussed extensively in a section about Frederick Douglass’ reading of an old book about public speaking that inspired Douglass’ work. I think Jacobs’ is working well here, but his reasoning did not entirely convince me. Part of the argument I agree with is that different eras have different orientations, and we need different orientations. And I appreciate that Douglass was inspired by a book not written in his own context.

But it is different for Douglass to read a book that had a section about an enslaved person being freed and finding those words to inspire his own freedom, and readers today reading books by people that justified slavery. In Douglass’ case, he had minimal access to books and only a few books that he could have read. Today we have almost unlimited access to books. I am not saying we should never read books by people that have views that we disagree with. But I do think that in making his argument for reading things that we may disagree with, Jacobs made some leaps that were unpersuasive, even as his larger argument, I do agree with.

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Summary: Harriet reluctantly returns to Oxford after her murder trial and encounters a mystery that might end up as a murder.

I have been slowly working through the Peter Wimsey mystery series over the past several years. When I have seen people talk about the series, they generally say that either Strong Poison or Gaudy Night is their favorite book. However, since I recently reread Strong Poison to prepare to finish reading the series, I can more directly compare them.

Strong Poison introduces the character of Harriet Vane, Peter Wimsey’s love interest. Harriet Vane is a mystery writer, and I think most people think she is a bit of a stand-in for Dorothy Sayers herself. Gaudy Night is the only book I have read that focuses on Harriet. Harriet is a character in the other books, but Peter is still the main focus. I believe that only Gaudy Night is told from Harriet’s perspective for most of the book.

Even as it is told from Harriet’s perspective, it is a lot of exploration of Harriet’s lack of confidence in her ability to be a detective and her wishes for Peter. Part of the wishing for Peter is her coming to understand that she does love Peter. (Gaudy Night leads directly into Busman’s Holiday, which I read out of order and know is about their honeymoon.) But apart from the romance angle of Gaudy Night, I appreciate the development of Harriet’s character. Still, I wish more full novels were past Busman’s Holiday because Harriet is underdeveloped. She feels to me like she was never fully the partner to Peter that she is intended to be. Peter is still the main character, who Harriet supports as the sidekick.

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Summary: Prequel series that goes back before the start of Ender’s Game. 

I am in a data entry season at work, and these are the times when I look for fiction to listen to. Orson Scott Card’s books are produced by Stefan Rudnicki and have a full cast, including Stefan Rudnicki. In the Acknowledgments to Card’s most recent book, he thanks Rucknicki and says that the series has become an audiobook series primarily. The voices and high-quality production are consistently among the best audiobooks I listen to, even if the actual writing is not always up to the same quality.

A decade ago, Aaron Johnson started on these two prequel trilogies (a trilogy for each of the first two Formic Wars). And although I am a huge fan of Orson Scott Card generally, I was getting tired of Card’s politically orientated fiction (Empire and Hidden Empire) and how some of the Ender series felt like it was just recycling old storylines. And a number of the reviews from Ender fans were not favorable. So I never picked them up. I eventually picked up The Swarm when it was in a sale but did not listen to it for months after I purchased it.

I should have realized that these are interconnected trilogies, but I did not. The Swarm is the first of a second trilogy, but primarily the characters were introduced in the first trilogy. So I was getting dropped into the middle of the story. This is a prequel series, so as Aaron Johnston says in the afterward, the reader knows where the story ends, just not how it gets there. Mazer Rackam, the mentor to Ender in Ender’s Game, was the hero of the first and second Formic Wars. But he was relatively unknown at the time of the two wars because his work was classified. Again, as Aaron Johnston talks about in the Afterward, primarily what we know of Mazer Rackam’s background was in a single sentence of Ender’s game. That meant that Johnston, with consultation from Card, had to pay attention to that canon content (because super fans will) and yet still make the story engaging and coherent.

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Summary: Harriet Vane is introduced to the Lord Peter Wimsey mystery series.

I read the final book of the Lord Peter Wimsey mystery series last week, and that inspired me to go back and listen to the audiobook of Strong Poison, the book where Harriet Vane was introduced. Unfortunately, I continue to not really be a fan of Ian Carmichael’s audiobook. They are fine, but not as well narrated and engineered as I think they should be.

There is not much different from this second reading of Strong Poison than my thoughts after the first reading. I was mostly interested in getting the details of the book, so I could read the books between Strong Poison and Busman’s Holiday over the next couple of weeks. I also wish that Harriet was more present in this book. She is basically a damsel in distress here. She is in jail for virtually the entire book. People know her and reference her, but she is not a strong character. She is more present in Have His Carcase, but that is still mostly told from Peter’s perspective. I still have not read a number of the short stories, and I am currently in the middle of Gaudy Night (which is told from Harriet’s perspective). Gaudy Night and Busman’s Holiday prove that this could have been a good series that focuses on the two of them, not just Harriet as a sidekick.

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Summary: Brief biography of a Catholic Priest/Poet who was only published posthumously. 

I am not a very good poetry reader. I appreciate poetry theoretically and enjoy the technical work of the poet. I am fascinated by the rhyme schemes and structure. I believe in how poetry forces us to think and process words that have multiple meanings. However, I just do not read poetry as much as I should because it takes more work and time. But that very work and time is part of why I theoretically appreciate poetry even if I do not practice what I value theoretically.

Gerard Manley Hopkins is one of those Christian poets that, if you have a little bit of knowledge of his poetry, you will see references to it all over the place. Several of Eugene Peterson’s book titles are references to his poetry. And many other modern authors also reference his lines of poetry. Hopkins died young. He converted to Catholicism against his family’s wishes in the mid 19th century as a young man. He fairly quickly became a Jesuit priest, following in the steps of John Henry Newman.

Gerald Manley Hopkins loved writing but also was conflicted about his writing because he thought, at times, it distracted him from his devotion to God. At least once, Hopkins destroyed a significant amount of his poetry. And his Jesuit order destroyed a significant amount of his poetry at his death. After his death, his friend Robert Bridges and others published his poetry, often collecting it from letters.

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Takeaway: Watch the documentary, skip the book. 

Books attached to documentaries are very mixed in quality and value. Some are designed to be companions and provide additional context and background and might be worth reading even if you have never seen the documentary (American Conscience about Reinhold Neibuhr). And some are essentially the script of the documentary (I Am Not Your Negro) or literally the audiotrack of the documentary (NT Wright and Micheal Bird’s audiobook). The Black Church is more than just a transcript, but there is not much additional value if you have already watched the documentary.

I watched all four documentary episodes live as they were released, and I listened to several podcasts and read articles about the documentary. The original documentary was four hours long. The audiobook was seven hours long. Except for the epilogue, it was hard to remember anything about the audiobook that was not mentioned in the documentary. I am sure there were some additional quotes and context. But it felt like most of that difference in three hours gave context to what was visual in the documentary. For instance, the book has to introduce everyone that is quoted, but in the documentary, their name and affiliations are just a subscript on the screen.

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Summary: Lord Peter and Harriet finally get married and go on their honeymoon, only to have it be a ‘working vacation’ as they solve a murder. 

I have very slowly been working through the Lord Peter Wimsey mystery series. I noticed when looking for something else that Audible had a copy of the old Ian Carmichael audiobook as part of their free audiobook library for members, and even though I have not read Gaudy Night, which is before Busman’s Honeymoon in series order, I needed a fiction audiobook, and I jumped at it.

When I started Dorothy Sayers’ books, I had already read Rhys Bowen’s Royal Spyness series for a couple of years. Regularly I have noticed places where, even though I am reading Sayers after Bowen, I can tell that Bowen was paying homage to Sayers in her books.

I did not look it up until I finished this book, but a busman’s holiday is the idea of a bus driver going on vacation by riding a bus somewhere. It isn’t a vacation to do what you usually do for work, as a vacation. Lord Peter and Lady Harriet have decided to honeymoon at a small country house that Harriet has purchased to have as a place to get away from the pressures of their lives. I will not give away the plot, but as you would expect in a cozy mystery series, a body appears, and there is a murder to solve.

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Summary: A biblical case for why reparations is a Christian concept using the example of Black Americans. 

This is a second reading (original post) of Reparations. This reading was with a book discussion group. I first read Reparations almost a year ago, and much of my thoughts are similar in this second reading.

I appreciate the careful definitions and the narrow focus on reparations for an evangelical Christian audience by looking at only the case for reparations for Black Americans. Kwon and Thompson are calling for reparations for “…the threefold theft wrought by White supremacy: not only the theft of wealth (as is generally understood) but the theft of truth and the theft of power as well.” (p18). However, while this generally argues the case for a large-scale reparations project, I think it is easier to make a case for reparations on an even narrower basis. For instance, reparations for the denial of Black soldiers and sailors’ access to the GI Bill after WWII. I believe in the case for a large conception of theft of White supremacy that is made in this book. But I also think that part of the resistance to reparations is the intangibility of that theft. It is easier to point to particular people and say, “you were denied the educational or housing support you were due.”

The lack of shared history is part of the greatest need. For example, many people falsely believe that affirmative action is a reparations program because they believe that Black students receive free education. As detailed by Angela Parker in her book If God Still Breathes, another professor accused her of taking his job at a professional conference. He thought that the job should have been his and that she only got the job because she was black and a woman. Her response, I think, details part of the disconnect between reality and perception.

When the gentleman told me I took his job, I replied, “Oh, really? Tell me what you teach.” My interlocutor began to regale me with courses that are strictly historical-critical or in the vein of “White male biblical scholar.” I proceeded to ask him if he taught Womanist or feminist interpretations of the Bible, to which he responded in the negative. I also asked if, perhaps, he integrated critical social theories into his biblical interpretations. Again, he answered negatively. At that juncture I responded that I teach and engage those modalities, and therefore I did not take his job, since my institution needed those classes, that training, for its students. (p68)

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Takeaway: Genre defining book, theologically more revealing than I think Tolkien intended. 

There is nothing that I can really write that hasn’t been already written, and written better, about the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I am not a superfan. I have read the Hobbit three times I believe, but I think this is only my second reading of the trilogy and my previous reading was more than 20 years ago.

I decided to start the series because the Andy Serkis narrated audiobook was on sale at Audible. I had previously listened to the Rob Inglis version of The Hobbit, but several friends have raved about Serkis’ version. Inglis’ version is excellent, but I do think that Serkis’ version is probably a little bit better. My only complaint about the Serkis version is that when listening with headphones, which is how I tend to listen, the dynamic range was a bit too broad. I understand why the dynamic range is wide, but I tend to listen when I am walking or doing chores around the house, and changing the volume is annoying.

I alternated between audio and kindle. I listened to good portions of the first and third books while reading the second almost exclusively. Song is so much a part of the writing that I am tempted to say that the books should be listened to primarily, but audiobooks do take longer than reading. I don’t know how they prepared for the songs, but the singing portions were very well done with appropriate melodies and emotion. It does communicate a very different culture and I think that is part of why the songs are so important to the books.

I was musing on Twitter that war is my least favorite part of the trilogy. And by the end, there are far fewer battle scenes than I had remembered, probably because the battle scenes are so memorable from the movies. It is the quest and friendships that make the story, not the battles.

As I said I am not a Tolkien scholar. I have never read a biography of Tolkien and I have never read a commentary book on the Lord of the Rings, although I do have Fleming Rutledge’s book and plan on reading that one. But I have understood that Tolkien did not think he was writing a “Christian” story and did not like people suggesting that there were Christian allegories in the books. That being said, I think that there is a lot of theology. Christian obligation and calling to do good and work toward justice, even if it is personally difficult is throughout. The concept of the way sin breaks not just personal, but social systems is very well illustrated. And the way that even good people with real virtue can be corrupted by access to power. The right use of power and the corruption that power brings is a very significant theme. I think there is some irony to Tolkien talking so openly about power and systems in the trilogy and the fact that there is so much controversy about the “Marxist” roots of that discussion today. There is also a nearly Christian sense of providence or election throughout the books without any referenced God or prophecy that was directing.

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Summary: A journalistic account of two Atlanta legal cases in response to the 1964 Civil Rights act, joined by the Supreme Court to uphold public accommodations (Title 2 of the 1964 Civil Rights Act).

I do not think I would have picked up Heart of Atlanta if my book club had not decided to go to a book talk with the author at the Atlanta History Center. But Heart of Atlanta is the type of narrow history that I think is exactly what we often miss in our too-quick presentation of the Civil Rights Era. The Civil Rights Era was so transformational because the movement was broad-based. Literally, hundreds of thousands of people participated, at least in minor roles. But even the often significant characters of the era have been forgotten. And the more minor characters were often never really known. One of the best examples of this is that frequently throughout the book, Ronnie Greene will cite a video or picture or newspaper story about these events, and the five main characters of the story were either unnamed or listed as “unknown.” In fact, the men often did not know that there was photographic or video documentation of their protests until Ronnie Greene showed it to them.

All five pastors in the subtitle were students at the Interdenominational Theological Center seminaries (ITC). Two of the five pastors are still living, Albert Sampson (involved in the earlier sit-in movement in North Carolina) and Woodrow Lewis (involved in the earlier Atlanta Student Protest movement). Unfortunately, the other three, Albert Dunn (also involved in the Freedom Rides), Charles Well, and George Willis (both having been in the military before returning to attend college and seminary), have passed away. All five continued their activism after their involvement in these cases, but like many pastors organizing in their communities, they did not obtain national recognition.

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