Pure Pleasure: Why Do Christians Feel So Bad about Feeling Good? by Gary L. Thomas

by

I am reposting this 2010 review because the Kindle Edition is on sale for $2.99 (along with the also reviewed Sacred Pathways and Sacred Marriage).

Takeaway: God has created pleasure, we should not feel bad when we enjoy what he has created.

I have been puttering through this book for about eight weeks now.  I started it, read a few chapters, then got distracted by some other books.  Then picked it back up as my pastor started a series called “Guardrails” (itunes podcast link).  In some ways, Pure Pleasure is the opposite of the point of the Guardrails series.  But I like to read several books together in tension.  I have been reading three different books on virtue and keep stopping one to read another to keep them in conversation.

The short version of the thesis is Christians were designed as spiritual, physical people.  But too often Christians reject physical pleasures as “less than” or sinful.  Instead Christians should embrace both physical and spiritual pleasures as a form of worship.

Read more

39 Clues: The Maze of Bones by Rick Riordan

by

The 39 Clues: The Maze of Bones is the first book in a 10 book series about a large-scale scavenger hunt that takes family members all over the world in search for clues to becoming the most powerful person on Earth. Two teenage siblings, Dan and Amy, find themselves in an exciting but dangerous adventure as they search for and follow the clues. Other family members such as the snotty Kabras and “œthe bull in a china shop” Holt family, force Dan and Amy to stay on their toes and remember not to trust anyone, especially family. Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson series, is the writer of this series and the overall story arc for the series, which he then hands off to other writers for the other books in the series.

The author of this book and creator of the main plot of this story, Rick Riordan, has an impressive history as an educator. Before quitting to become a full-time author, Rick taught high school and then middle school for many years. He mainly taught English and History and he particularly loved teaching Greek mythology. The idea to write the Percy Jackson series, stories about a long lost son of Zeus, came from the fact that he had run out of stories to tell his son, who had developed a deep interest in Greek Mythology, and had to then create stories of his own. Also, in writing the series, Riordan created the story hoping to capture the interest and motivate his own son, Haley, who had been diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia. From videos I found on the Scholastic website, Riordan has a clear desire to engage young students to read and specifically writes his book with their needs in mind.

With this particular series, Riordan states that Scholastic actually approached him with the idea for this story and he agreed to develop the story and write a couple of the book in the series. Riordan states in an interview that because he had created the story arc he has a general idea of what would happen in the sequential books but that many of the details are left up to the authors of the each book. He also commented that editors at Scholastic, not himself, would be responsible for keeping the books cohesive. I have read a book where each chapter was written by a different author, and I was not pleased with the outcome. The story felt weird, and so I wonder if the multiple authors in this series did a better job of maintain a more singular voice.

Read more

Patternmaster (Patternist #4) by Octavia Butler

by

Summary: The world has devolved into perpetual war between the clayarks and the patternists. A young patternist must find his way and try to avoid getting killed by either group.

Finally at the end of the series I figure out why each of the four books of this series have been so radically different. When Octavia Butler was 10, she saw a really bad science fiction movie and thought she could do better. So she started writing a story. That story become the book Pattermaster. It was the first book she finished and published.

The second book on the series Mind of My Mind was published a year later. The first book in the series, Wild Seed was not written and published until 1980. And the third book in the series (at least chronologically within the story) was Clay’s Ark published in 1984. There is a fifth book in the series, Survivor, published in 1978, but it has been out of print for a long time because Butler did not like the book and refused to let it come back into print.

Each of the books in the series fill in the gaps of the story introduced in Patternmaster. Wild Seed give the origin of the rise of a genetically different group of humans. Mind of My Mind is about the creation of the telepathic’s Pattern. Clay’s Ark tells of how the disease started (which is the origin of the war between the Patternists and Clayarks.

Read more

Lila: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson

by

Summary: A woman familiar with abandonment learns about Grace.

Every once in a while you stumble on something beautiful. I happened to be looking for another book at my library’s website last week and it happened that Lila had just been released that morning and I stumbled on it before anyone else grabbed it.

So this past week I have been slowly listening to the lyricism of Robinson’s writting. Robinson’s 2005 book, Gilead, won the Pulitzer Prize and it on a number of best novel lists. I read it first about 2 years ago after a number of people had recommended it to me. And I really did enjoy that slow character study of an old pastor, John Ames, writing letters to his young son. He knew that he would not live long enough to pass on the important things in life to his son in person, so he wanted to put them on paper.

Gilead is half about the wisdom of age and half about the hope of life. Lila picks up the story from his much younger wife’s perspective. Lila was a neglected and abandoned child. She was stolen by a passing woman to protect her from her negligent parents. And then raised on the run from both real and feared reprisal.

Read more

My 3 Month Review of Kindle Unlimited

by

If you signed up for Kindle Unlimited when it first was announced your first three months is just about to end. I have been using Kindle Unlimited actively during that time and wanted to update my initial thoughts about the value of the service and who should think about using it. I am not going to pretend that I am an average reader, I read more than at least 95% of the public. But I do think that for at least some, Kindle Unlimited is valuable.

Kindle Unlimited allows the subscriber to borrow up to 10 books at a time from a library of more than 600,000 books (roughly 30% of the total Kindle books available.) None of the major 5 publishers participate, but several of the still good-sized smaller publishers do.

The first month of the trial is free, and each of the following months is $9.99. The first three months the subscriber also gets 1 Audible.com Audiobook credit a month that can be used on any Audible book, not just those in the Kindle Unlimited library.

So how much did I use Kindle Unlimited? Quite a bit. During the last three months I read (including books that I did not complete):

Read more

Jack: A Life of CS Lewis by George Sayer

by

Summary: An older biography of Lewis, but with the memories of a friend and student. 

I continue, after about 18 months of reading about one book a month on or by CS Lewis, to be continually impressed by him. Part of what continues to impress me about Lewis is his humanity in the context of his greatness. Lewis was certainly fallible and this biography by a former student and long term friend acknowledges the fallibility.

Fallibility is important, I think especially in regard to Christians. Christianity is large part is centered around the need for a savior and acknowledgement of our sin and limitation. So I think it is especially important for Christian biography to honestly (and gently) talk about limitation (and sin) in a way that acknowledges that humanity. We are not gods, and all those that are not God are limited.

CS Lewis was certainly limited. He was limited by his lack of math (won’t have gotten into Oxford without his military exemption from the Math entrance exam and throughout his life his poor understanding of his finances and his ability to sell his books limited him.) He was limited by life situations (he cared for the mother of a friend throughout his life as well as his alcoholic brother.) He was limited by time. He was only 63 when he died and that was just a couple years longer than his wife (they were only married for 3 years before she died.)

Read more

Clay’s Ark by Octavia Butler (Patternist #3)

by

Summary: A human starship has returned from its first visit to another star system, but it did not come back alone.

As I am writing this I have finished the fourth book of the series and finally understood why the books of this series are so different. I will leave that to the review of the fourth book. But yet again, this is a very different book in style and content from the first two books in the series.

This is a story of alien contact, almost horror, but not quite. The story is told in parallel, with the current time line and a historical timeline. Neither one is completely chronological so some of the jumping around slows down the suspsense and confuses the story.

The historical timeline tells the story of Asa Elias Doyle, an astronaut and the only member of a 14 person crew to make it back from visiting another star system. The spaceship crashlanded onto earth and he is presumed dead by everyone. The problem is that he was infected by an alien microbe that is slowly changing him. He is trying to protect humanity by staying away from other humans.

Read more

The Magician’s Nephew (Chronicles of Narnia) by CS Lewis

by

Reposting this 2011 review because the Kindle Edition is on sale for $1.99
The Magician's Nephew: The Chronicles of NarniaTakeaway: Wonderful illustration of creation as metaphor

It has been decades since I have read the Chronicles of Narnia.  I remember my mother reading them out loud to us on family vacations.  We spent a lot of time listening to my mom read on vacations.  And as we got older we spent a lot of time reading ourselves on vacations.  I am not a great out loud reader.  I read to quickly and have a hard time forcing my eyes to slow down to the speed of my mouth, so I often lose my place and get tongue-tied.  But I still read out loud to my nieces.  They are getting old enough to start reading short chapter books (not to the Chronicles of Narnia yet).  I am looking forward to reading these with them when they get older.

If you are not familiar with this book, it is the creation story of Narnia.  In the traditional ordering of the book, it is book six, right before the last book.  But in the new ordering, it is the first book of the series.  The children Polly and Digory are not in the books as children again so there is not a natural flow from this book to The Lion Witch and the Wardrobe.  And I think that the Lion Witch and the Wardrobe is also a better introduction to Narnia than the Magician’s Nephew.  So I would still start in the traditional ordering not the new ordering. (This was also the second book written if you want to read them in order written.)

This was never my favorite of the series, so I have probably read it the least.  But after spending time reading a number of books on scripture and creation over the past year, this is a very good book to use to talk to your children about the purpose and meaning of creation stories.  John Walton’s Lost World of Genesis One (my review) is the most important book on understanding the Christian creation story that I have read and with the Magician’s Nephew I think it would be a useful way to talk about what is important, that God has created us and that he is Lord over our world.

Read more

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

by

The Maltese Falcon is a detective novel written in 1929 by Dashiell Hammett and immortalized in film in 1941 by director John Huston. The detective in the novel, Sam Spade, is a hardened man whose characterization becomes a model for many detectives to come. In this novel, Sam Spade is hired by a woman, Miss Wonderly, to follow a man who has supposedly run away with her sister. From here out, Spade encounters a number of intriguing characters, learns that things and people are not whom they seem and ensures, in the end, that justice will be served no matter the cost.

It is my humble opinion that the reputation of this novel and its movie has become greater than it deserves. I am a huge fan of classic films and understand the importance of firsts, of which this novel and movie has many, but I am not sure it would stand up as well against some of the great detective novels and films of today. Now, would those detectives be as clever and biting if it weren’t for the existence of Sam Spade? Probably not.

Sam Spade is a great and complicated character, and I have learned from my research that Hammett, who was himself a detective, described and created Spade as the type of detective that many strive to be. He is the type of detective who can sleep with his clients and yet not let that cloud his judgment nor stray him from his goal. He often works alongside the police, but he never works with the police because their motives are at times not inline with his own. He is an impressive character, but perhaps I am just jaded by the super clever masters of deduction that we encounter more often these days.

The audiobook that I listened to was an actual dramatization of the book. Similarly to the recording of 12 Angry Men, this production had practically a different actor for each character. It was not a performed dramatization, so some of the smaller characters were played by the same actor or actress. There were some big names involved such as Michael Madsen (Reservoir Dogs) playing Sam Spade, Sandra Oh (Grey’s Anatomy) playing Miss Wonderly/O’Shaughnessy and Richard Gilmore (Gilmore Girls). I enjoyed listening to the different narrators even though Sandra Oh didn’t sound like her usual snarky self.

Read more

The Anglican Way: A Guidebook by Thomas McKenzie

by

Summary: A readable, recent introduction for those new to Anglicanism.

Fads are a reality of the world, Christian as well as not. In my world right now, converting to Anglicanism seems to be almost the level of a fad. Not that I think there is anything wrong with returning to a more liturgical practice of Christianity, or participating in the second largest global body of Christians. Honestly, if the Parish were on my side of town, instead of the opposite side of town, I would be seriously considering it.

Over the past couple of years as I have been reading James KA Smith (not Anglican) and gaining a greater understanding of the Liturgy (and maybe just getting older), more people in my extended digital world have been doing the same. Eddie Kirkland, former worship director at my church has started the Parish, Glenn Packiam as formed an Anglican congregation inside of New Life Community Church in Colorado, Scot McKnight has been ordained Anglican, Aaron Niequist, while not officially moving toward Anglican ordination as far as I know, has started a Sunday evening service at Willow Creek that by description seems to lean Anglican.

Personally, my theology has become much more sacramental and much less Baptist over the past 10 years or so years since I stopped working for the Southern Baptists in Chicago. I am also far less interested in arguing minor points of theology and much more interested in a Christianity at accepts all that hold to the Nicene Creed or other traditional Creeds.

So The Anglican Way is exactly right type of book for me. Thomas McKenzie is a parish pastor in Nashville (and the exact same age as I am I assume since he graduated from high school the same year I did according to one of the stories). He grew up in an Episcopal church, but was not really active until he went to college and was introduced to a charismatic form of Anglicanism.

The first section of the book is about the balance within the Anglican Way (illustrated by the Compass Rose) between Charismatic and Orthodox, Conservative and Liberal, Activist and Contemplative, Evangelical and Catholic. Temperamentally, that type of focus of relationship within theological and practical tension appeals to me. I want to be around, and worshiping with Christians, that are different from me, while still broadly holding to the orthodox tenets of Christianity.

Read more