Book Reviews

Summary: The end of the world is coming soon, but there are still cases to solve and people to help.

Maybe it is just too easy to envision the end of the world, but I am having a hard time reading the apocalyptic and dystopian fiction lately. It has been a steady part of my book diet for years. But reading Countdown City and Wayward Pines back to back, during political convention season, was probably a bad idea.

Countdown City is true apocalyptic fiction. Hank Palace is a former police detective. At the end of the The Last Policeman he gave up his job and now he is ‘working’ as a private detective. The problem is that the world is going to be ending in a few months and society is falling apart. (A giant asteroid is coming.)

What is interesting about the trilogy is Detective Palace’s desire to solve the crime in the face of impending doom. What is maddening about this book (and clearly it is intentional) is Palace’s focus on the crime as a tactic to avoid reality. Palace is not getting paid. He is doing the impossible to find a missing man when the whole world has gone missing and at a time when society and infrastructure is crumbling. The minor issues of pay and preparation for the end of the world all end up in the back seat. The constant question from others, ‘why are you doing this?’ annoys both Detective Palace and the reader.

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Summary: A ghost story about the nature of good and evil.

Charles Williams was one of the Inklings, the famous literary group that included CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. Charles Williams books have been picked up by Open Media, an ebook publisher that has focused on 20th century literary fiction that is out of print. Open Media has a daily sale with five sale books and a free public domain books. Over the past couple months I have picked up two of Charles Williams’ books for $1.99. All Hallow’s Eve is the first I have read (and the last book he wrote.)

When I read review of Charles Williams’ books they are most often described as odd or strange. Williams was interested in the supernatural. While I would not consider All Hallow’s Eve all that odd of a book, it is a ghost story. Which I think is an odd choice for Christian fiction. Charles Williams was not writing ‘Christian’ fiction. The category did not really exist in the 1930-1940s when he was writing. He was writing fiction and he was a Christian. His faith is evident in the story, but it is not explicit like Lewis’ fiction but more a part of the worldview of the author like Tolkien’s fiction was.

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Summary: Brief exploration of the Apostles’ Creed by a significant 20th century Catholic theologian.

I have been interested in von Balthasar for a while. He is a significant trinitarian theologian of the mid 20th century and a good friend of the reformed theologian Karl Barth. I started reading Stephen Long’s book Saving Karl Barth, which is a joint biography of Barth and von Balthasar’s friendship. But I realized I didn’t know enough about von Balthasar’s theology. So I set it aside.

Credo is the first of von Balthasar’s books I have finished. I also have his book Prayer, which I started but have not finished. The book prayer has been praised by Eugene Peterson and a number of others as being one of the best books on prayer written.

Credo was not written as a book. But is a compilation of church newsletters articles about the Apostles’ Creed written in the year before his death. As a book it is very short. The introduction is a third of the book.

I did not grow up with Creeds. They are late additions to my faith. But I have been convinced that the creeds are important. Earlier this year I talked my small group into doing a video about the Apostles’ Creed. The one we did was a shortened form of a 12 hour (way too long) documentary. But at 2 hours it had such short clips and bounced from talking head to talking head so quickly, it was hard to get that much out of it.

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Summary: Bruno loves his community, helps prevent crime, meets a new woman and solves a big crime (but not much really happens).

Bruno is one of my favorite lead characters in a mystery series. He can cook, he loves his community, he understand the real purpose of law enforcement and how to strengthen a community. The series as a whole has created an idyllic understanding of community, while maintaining an understanding of the fallenness of the world. Crime still happens, people are still abused and hated, and there is still a need for police to protect the innocent and bring about redemptive justice. Bruno is not religious in this series. There is no explicit Christian faith. But his view of justice is deeply Christian.

I purchased Fatal Pursuit (the newest book) on the day it came out. I alternately  read it on kindle or listened to the audiobook and finished in 2 days. I enjoyed the book, but it felt like a re-tread of previous books. There was a major crime, there was a connection to WWII history, a new woman in the community for Bruno to consider, a new aspect of the very small community that had never been mentioned before (in this case a community amusement park), and yet another connection to international terrorism in his small community.

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Takeaway: Taxes, abuse of power, responsiveness to the citizenry, and corruption seem to be involved in most revolutions.

My European history is lousy. I doubt I will every have a really good handle on European history, but short books like The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction help.

This good addition to the Very Short Introduction series. The book is just over 100 pages of real material. There are six chapters: Echoes; Why It Happened; How It Happened; What It Ended; What It Started; and Where It Stands.

In a short introduction like this, there is not room for a detailed look at the events of the revolution. A broad overview, along with cultural and historical implication is the main focus.

I had a couple of thoughts when reading. First, economics are almost always important to revolutions. But not necessarily directly. The French revolution occurred after some tax cuts and the average person was a bit better off. However overspending on the military and empire still distorted the fundamental economics.

Both the aristocracy and the church share some blame for the revolution. In both cases there were signs that their power and finances were unsustainable in the long term. Instead of voluntarily giving up power, finances and authority for the good of the country as a whole, they were ultimately reduced to a fraction of their previous state. I always think the church should understand giving up power and finances to gain cultural voice and authority. But that seems to be a hard lesson to learn, even when it is part of our faith.

I also did not realize the extent that the church was repressed in France. It went badly for everyone and in many ways it is odd to me that the Soviet Union and later China (and others) did not learn the lesson about the repression of the church and faith from the earlier French revolution.

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I am reposting this 2014 review because the Kindle Edition is on sale for $2.99
Summary: A 14 year marriage is in danger, and a magic phone to the past may be just the thing the marriage needs to be saved.

Rainbow Rowell is definitely now in my list of “˜favorite authors’. Like most I first heard about her because of her breakout book Eleanor and Park. From there I moved on to Fangirl and Attachments and now Landline. Each book impressed me more than the previous one.

I, and I think many others, still think of Rowell as a young adult author.  Although even Eleanor and Park was not originally published as a young adult book. And all of the rest of her books deal primarily with adults.

So with Landline, it feels a bit like Rowell is again trying to breaking free of her young adult label and writing a much heavier and more adult oriented novel.

Georgie McCool (yes it is her real name) is a TV script writer. Just days before Christmas, and the day before her family is scheduled to fly to Omaha to spend Christmas with her Mother in Law, her dream comes true. A Network wants to see a script for a pilot and four additional episodes for her own series.

But that means that she cannot go to Omaha with her husband (Neal) and daughters. And instead she will have to stay in LA and write with her best friend and writing partner, Seth.

When Neal decides that he is taking the girls and going to Omaha anyway, instead of staying and having Christmas with her, it creates a crisis for Georgie. She realizes that she has checked out of her marriage in many ways. That her husband has been unhappy for a while. That she has not even been taking care of her own basic needs let alone the needs of her family.

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Summary: Lord Wimsey is vacationing in an artist’s community when one of the artists, someone no one likes, is found dead. Five artists have motive and weak alibis.

I like reading book in a series in order, even if the order really does not matter particularly to the series. The Five Red Herrings is one of those book in a series that could have been placed in a different order and would not have mattered. It barely has Wimsey’s faithful servant Bunter or Scotland Yard and Inspector Parker. The new love interest introduced in the last book is not even mentioned. This could just as easily have been book three as book seven in the series.

The mystery itself is not bad, but a lot of it is in fairly minor details to try to establish whether alibis are valid or not. As a mystery, it is well presented but dull. Sayers has some real glimpses of brilliant writing, almost always as insights into people or situations, but those do not really make up for a mediocre book.

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