The Magicians by Lev Grossman

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Summary: An adult look at what it would be like to be a magician, and get everything you could possibly want, and still not find meaning or purpose in life. I tend to buy audiobook in groups at Audible.com. They often have sales where you buy two and get one free, or buy four and … Read more

Invisible Wealth: The Hidden Story of How Markets Work by Arnold King

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This book is a loose collection of interviews the authors had with ten economists about the free market–its history, future, and contemporary intersection with modern society around the world.

At the beginning, the authors differentiate between what they call Economics 1.0 and Economics 2.0. The former is how economics has been studied for most of its history–in terms of commodities and the “scarce allocation of resources.” The latter is less about raw materials or tracking the swings in supply and demand, and more about the value of information.

Another way of looking at it is that Economics 1.0 studies the hardware in a computer, and Economics 2.0 studies the “software layer” containing the intangible things that have economic value–and the social and political institutions that are a necessary condition for this sort of value to develop. Economics 2.0 explains that when I purchase a new car today, most of the sale price is not going toward the physical materials making up the vehicle; rather, I am paying for all the knowledge and information accumulated over time that go into that vehicle: the physics required to design an aerodynamic body, the electrical components and computer systems that make a thousand minor calculations and adjustments per second as I speed onward, the insights required to design an anti-lock brake system, or airbags, or rear-view cameras, or electric engines.

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To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

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Takeaway: An American Classic.

To Kill A Mockingbird deserves all of its praise.  I had not read it since middle school or early high school, so when it came out for the first time as an ebook last month (at a very reasonable price) I picked it up.

It starts a little slow I think. I read the background and first two years of the story and then set it aside and read several other books before returning to  it again.  But once the main story starts with Atticus defending Tom Robinson I finished the rest of the book in two days.

There is no good way to review this book.  The basic story is well known and is one the true classics of American literature.   And Emily Flury is also reading it to review for Bookwi.se, so I will leave the hard work to her 🙂  But I did read the Wikipedia entry just to see what it said and was surprised how autobiographical the novel was.

I knew (but had forgotten) that Harper Lee and Truman Capote were friends.  I did not realize that Truman was the inspiration for the character Dill.  Wikipedia also said that Haper Lee’s father was a lawyer that lost a case defending two African American men on charges of murder.  After losing the case he did not practice law again.  Jem was based on her own brother, also 4 years older.  Haper Lee’s mother did not die until she was 25, but there was an African American maid/cook that worked for the family and her mother was emotionally distant because of some mental health issues.  There was also a real Boo Radley character in her neighborhood, a young man got into legal trouble and the father kept him at home for the 24 years out of shame until he was basically forgotten and eventually died.

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July Most Read Reviews

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Sex, Mom and God by Frank Schaeffer Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites“¦and Other Lies You’ve Been Told: A Sociologist Shatters Myths From the Secular and Christian Media by Bradley R.E. Wright Fangirl by Rainbow Roswell Resolving Everyday Conflict by Ken Sande Evangellyfish by Douglas Wilson Ubik by Philip K Dick

Deep and Wide by Andy Stanley – Favorite of 2012

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Reposting because the Kindle edition is on sale for $2.99. (And the audiobook is only $3.99 with the purchase of kindle book.)

Deep and Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to AttendSummary: The Church at its core is about reaching people outside its walls for Christ.

Right off the top, I love my church.  Andy Stanley is my pastor.

If I had to recommend this book for only one reason it would be because this book, more than any other I can think of, casts the vision for why the church has to be focused on those outside the church. If there is one thing that Andy Stanley is passionate about (and writes about well) it is the fact that most churches need to do everything they can to reach people that are not in church.

I should not need to repeat statistics about the fact that most churches baptize very few adults because of conversion.  Or the recent statistic that says that most Christian adults believe that they are instructed to share their faith, but admit that they have not in the last year shared their faith with anyone.

I do not believe that the attractional church model is the only model for church.  In fact, I think that organic church and missional church are two other models that are very important to drawing in people that have almost no background in the church to Christ.

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Ubik by Philip K Dick

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Takeaway: Is anyone better at writing paranoid fiction than Philip K Dick?

Philip K Dick was brilliant and deeply troubled.  Which seems to make for a good science fiction writer.  Ubik, a 1969 novel, is set in 1992, when psychic powers are common.  Joe Chip works for a “˜prudence organization’.  Prudence organizations specialize in helping people or businesses protect themselves from psychics.  So they use anti-telepaths to protect people from having their minds read by telepaths or other anti-psychics to counter the variety of different psychic powers.

The other plot point you have to understand is “˜half-life’.  In this future, when people die, if they can be preserved in time, they can live in “˜half-life’, a sort of preserved life of the mind.  You cannot life forever this way, but your body is preserved and you can communicate with people outside your preservation chamber.  But at some point you sort of fade out and are reincarnated.

There is basically no way to discuss this book without spoilers, so if you don’t want any spoilers for this 45 year old book, you should stop reading because I am going to disclose pretty much the whole book.

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Among the Unseen by Jodi McIsaac (The Thin Veil #3)

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Summary: Cedar, the new Queen of Tír na nÓg, is trying to adjust to her new life and new powers.  But all the Unseen (the magical creatures of Earth) have started dying. 

The Thin Veil trilogy is one of the increasing numbers of books published by 47North or one of Amazon’s other publishing imprints.  And I think it is fairly similar to the others I have read, better than most self published books, but still not quite to the upper levels of quality of all books.

The Thin Veil trilogy follows Cedar, her daughter Eden, and others through discovering that the Celtic gods were actually an immortal race from another world, and that Cedar is the lost daughter of the last king.

Similar to Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series or the Nicholas Flamel series by Michael Scott, this is a modern look at ancient mythology.  But the Thin Veil series is adult fiction (although I would have read it as a teen and I don’t really have any content warning other than some sexual innuendo.)

This is a good light beach read fantasy.  Nothing heavy, but not terribly original either.

The main story arc of the third book is about the sickness and death of the magical creatures on earth.  There was an ancient spell that protected the creatures from humans as long as humans believed in them.  But now that humans have stopped believing in them, they have started dying.

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The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike #2) by Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling)

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Another fast-paced, well-written whodunit from JK Rowling. It’s been 8 months since Cormoran Strike solved the murder of model Lula Landry, and now an Owen Quine, an author of mild success, has gone missing. He ultimately turns up dead–in a gruesome scene that mirrors the ending of his latest to-be-published novel. That novel is a non-subtle attack on numerous celebrities in the publishing world, and the list of those depicted who may respond with murder is a long one. Strike and his assistant Robin meticulously gather the evidence in pursuit of a killer with an impressive ability for planning and forethought.

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