Book Reviews

Summary: Basic reminders that loving your neighbor includes LGBT people.

I picked up and read Loving My (LGBT) Neighbor because of Karen Swallow Prior’s review for Christianity Today. I finished it on Saturday morning, the day before I heard about the shooting in Orlando.

In many ways, this is such a basic book on being a decent human being and Christian that it is surprising that it needs to be written. But it obviously does need to be written. Glenn Stanton mostly does a very good job of presenting a conservative position on sexuality and marriage (he is on staff at Focus on the Family) while very clearly advocating a much more inclusive stance on actual friendship and love with LGBT people than what many Christians currently have.

It is clear that Stanton actually has a variety of gay friends. And he has those friends because he spends a lot of time with gay people. Part of that time is touring around with one of his gay friends debating at college campuses on the ethics of gay marriage. But it is clear from his stories and writing that he is actually trying to live out love of neighbor.

“Christianity is a hard calling because we are not only called to love others but to go further and love those who hate us. And if we are called to love those who hate us, we are certainly called to love those who disagree with us. And love is not conditional; you do this for me and I’ll do this for you.”

There were a few places where I think Stanton missed the mark. In a section where he was attempting to show the diversity of the LGBT movement by talking about different groups within the movement I think he over generalized a couple times in much the same way he was asking the reader not to generalize. But in context of the full book, if every Christian loved LGBT people as Stanton is illustrating, there would be far less problems.

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A guest post from regular contributor Seth Simmons.
Everybody knows Christopher Hitchens by the prominent and public role he played in the culture as the bold and loquacious, unapologetic and often vicious defender of atheism and assailant of all forms of religion. But as Hitchens admitted a number of times in his own memoirs, he very consciously maintained two separate and distinct “sets of books” in his life. In documenting their unique friendship, Larry Taunton reveals and explores a heretofore unknown side of the famous polemicist.

After writing his famous book “god Is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything,” Hitchens gave an open invitation to debate anyone, anywhere. Many evangelicals took him up on the offer, sparking a few years’ worth of lively events all across the United States. Hitchens later wrote about being pleasantly surprised and impressed by his experience with the evangelical community–both in terms of their genuine likability and respectfulness, but also their intellectual power. Taunton is an evangelical Christian apologist who both debated Hitchens directly and also served as moderator for other debates. Hitchens and Taunton became good friends and, after the former’s diagnosis of cancer, went on two road trips together and studied the Gospel of John.

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The Clockwork Three is one of the best middle grade children’s books I’ve read in a long time. It’s charming, the characters are genuine and realistic, the prose is poetic and creatively descriptive, and the plotting is tight without seeming unlikely.

The story takes place in a steampunk version of New York City (although it’s never named as such) in the late 18th century, and involves three kids whose stories intersect and overlap:

Giuseppe is an “employee” of a low level thug who provides minimal food and shelter for street urchins in exchange for all their money earned playing instruments on the streets; he’s effectively a slave. When a magical green violin washes up on shore, the music that Giuseppe pulls from it literally stops listeners in their tracks, and he earns more money in one song than he does in a week with his old violin. He quickly realizes it’s his ticket out, back to Italy where his family is from. But his patrone discovers the new violin and Giuseppe barely escapes with his life. Now he’s on the run from ruffians, but unable to get out of the city or buy a boat fare home.

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I am reposting my 2014 review because the Kindle Edition is on sale for $2.99.
Summary: A flu-like virus (Haden’s Virus) leaves millions without the ability to move. With the assistance of robots and human “˜integrators’, Haden’s sufferers can move around and interact and lead somewhat normal lives. But never with their own bodies.

I am a big fan of John Scalzi. And Lock In lived up to the very high level of promotion that Audible gave it.  Audible made the unusual choice of producing two different editions of the book.  One narrated by Wil Wheaton and one narrated by Amber Benson. If you pre-ordered one of the editions, you would get the other for free.

Scalzi is a talented writer. He has moved around in various subsets of the sci-fi genre, from Military Science Fiction to near term Alien encounters, to rewrites of classic sci-fi.  Lock In is more of a police procedural (or FBI to be more accurate) that happens to have a near term sci-fi setting.

The Hadden’s syndrome has forced the FBI set up a department to deal with crimes that might involve the Hadden’s sufferer using the body of either their robot or a human integrators. Chris Shane (a Hadden’s syndrome sufferer) is a new member of this FBI department.

Shane happens to be the poster child for Hadden’s, literally.  Shane’s father is sort of a cross between Michael Jordan and Donald Trump. A former basketball star, turned billionaire real estate mogel, he was an early proponent of government intervention in Hadden’s and trotted out Chris (in a robot body) throughout childhood.

As an adult, Chris is trying to find his own way in the world.

While this is primarily a mystery/thriller, Scalzi uses the book to bring up a number of issues around medical ethics, medical testing, the role of government and business corruption. None of those issues are really settled, but I think the raising of the issues is done well and in context of the story and not as propaganda.

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Takeaway: Expressive Worship and Formative Worship, while both valid, have different purposes.

It is good to re-read books. I can not remember where I read it, but I remember a discussion about the difference in reading habits of people a couple hundred years ago. The short version is that books used to be very expensive. So you would read and re-read a book several times because you only had a few options of what books to read.

Today books are cheap. I routinely pick up books for a couple dollars or even free. So we tend to read a book once and move on to the next idea. I have put a goal on myself to re-read at least one book a month. I rarely re-read books quite that often, but almost every time I re-read a book I am reminded about the importance of re-reading. Maybe others are more careful readers than I am. But I almost always find significant ideas that I either missed on the first reading or I have forgotten.

The most important idea from You are What You Love that I missed on the first reading is the clear understanding of the difference between what Smith calls Expressive and Formative worship. For Smith, expressive worship, the predominate focus of modern evangelicals, is about the importance of bringing praise to God. Smith does not say it is wrong to expressively worship. But he is not sure that expressive worship should be our primary focus and this is for several reasons. 1) Expressive worship is focused on what we do for God instead of what God has done. 2) Because of our age of authenticity, the temptation for expressive worship is to always seek out the new and innovative because repeated expressive worship feels less authentic.  3) Because of point one, the only real place for the congregation to participate in expressive worship is the music portion of worship. So expressive worship ends up minimizing the full range of worship in a service.

Instead Smith believes that we should approach worship as primarily formative. Formative worship is focused on what the activity of worship does to us. Music reminds us of themes of worship, creeds reminds us of the historical and catholic character of Christianity, the eucharist reminds us of the sacrifice of Christ and the power of the Spirit to act in us on a daily basis, the word reminds us of the message of the gospel.

I think that I have been so shaped in my evangelical formation on the importance of expressive worship that I have missed Smith’s distinction between expressive and formative worship in the first reading.

The main focus of the book is that we are shaped by habits that occur in the pre-cognitive portion of our brain. Things that we do without really thinking of them. So we should strive after creating habits that help us move in the direction that we want to go as Christians.

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Takeaway: Even introductions can be difficult

I am fascinated by physics. I don’t understand physics, but I am fascinated by it.  So I tend to pick up at least one introduction to physics book a year and I tend to ultimately realize that I am not designed for high level physics.

Fear of Physics is a well reviewed introduction used in a number of college settings. I listened to the audiobook that I picked up on sale. I am not sure that audiobook was the best format for this book. There was nothing wrong with the narrator, but the content occasionally would have been better in print instead of audio.

The two chapters I enjoyed most (and I think I understood most) were about how physicists understand math differently than mathematicians and how physicists ‘creatively plagiarize’ previous work until it becomes something new. The math chapters basically help describe how physics has understood very large and very small numbers and used approximation as a tentative placeholder until better measurement technology becomes available. Some of the insights into math surprised me as basic math place value discussions that are now taught in early common core math. (This book was originally written in 1993 and updated in 2007).

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Perhaps it depends on the topic and the artist depicting it, but I’ve become convinced that the graphic novel as a medium for narrating history–at a high level, at least–is a large well of untapped potential. Jonathan Hennessey’s contributions in this vein are simply fantastic, and although I give this third entry one fewer star than the others, it’s only because the first two (on the Constitution and the Gettysburg Address, respectively) are top-notch and hard to beat.
The Comic Book Story of Beer starts with pre-historic man and the fermented drinks they consumed, and then touches on the many ways beer has been a sidekick to most of world history. Long before science came along to articulate what was actually happening with the drying of grain, the fermenting process, the discovery of yeast, and more, people interacted with beer in ways varying from mysticism and superstition to economic exploitation. Along the way, as the book covers the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and European peoples, we get “profiles” of different styles of brew: Lambic, Trappist Dubbel, Bock, Porter, India Pale Ale, Pilsner, American L ager, American Pale Ale, and Belgian Wit. The reader will learn about international bitter units (IBUs) and other qualitative measurements of beer that have only been developed in the twentieth century.

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Reposting this 2012 review because the audiobook is Audible’s Deal of the day today and on sale for $2.95.

Summary: Comedy about an alien race that contacts a Hollywood agent about introducing them to the planet earth.

This was a book I picked up on a whim. I was a bit burned out on my non-fiction books. And I needed to buy four audiobooks at once to get a $10 coupon from Audible. So Agent to the Stars ended up as one of the picks.

Reading the description (The space-faring Yherajk have come to Earth to meet us and to begin humanity’s first interstellar friendship. There’s just one problem: They’re hideously ugly and they smell like rotting fish) reminded me of a Christopher Buckley novel. I love Christopher Buckley’s novels. They are funny, sharply political (against all sides) and almost always pull me out of reading funks. So I picked this up.

John Scalzi is just as funny as Buckley, but instead of the political subtext, this books uses a science fiction/entertainment subtext. You do not need to love science fiction to love this book, but it might help.

Will Wheaton (Wesley Crusher of Star Trek fame and recently regular cameo on Big Bang Theory), does an excellent job narrating. After listening to Wheaton narrate Ready Player One, he is becoming one of my favorite audiobook narrators.

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The Legend of Sam Miracle is an exciting and intense story. I read this to my 8 year old, and he loved it. I’m not sure he fully understood all of the concepts–the plot involves multiple deaths of the mean characters across many different timelines, including the ability of the main villain to slow down time and avoid injury during attacks–but it’s a non-stop thrill ride of excitement.

The creative storyline is fresh and imaginative: after getting shot up, Sam Miracle wakes up to find snakes grafted into his arms–the only way to save them from being amputated. One snake wants to kill everything it sees, so Sam must be wary on when he chooses to wield his pistol, while the snake in the other hand is sort of a goofball who will always hit what he’s aiming at but refuses to shoot to kill.

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Summary: The American Revolutionary War won freedom from Britain. It took another six years to create 13 separate states into a single country.

Since I have been all things Alexander Hamilton lately, a friend suggested that I read The Quartet. Joseph Ellis has written well reviewed biographies of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John and Abigail Adams and several other books about the revolutionary period.

The Quartet particularly focuses on the movement from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution. After winning freedom from Britain, there was little desire for another national government. The Articles of Confederation were an intentionally weak (and ultimately failed) attempt to partner together as states without really becoming a single country. As Ellis suggests several times, the initial understanding of the Confederation was more similar to the European Union than a single country.

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