An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith by Barbara Brown Taylor

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Summary: Finding spiritual practices for those that have become dead to spiritual practices.

One of the problems for me in loving Amazon and enjoying book reviews, is that there is always five recommendations for every book that I actually read. The more I read, the more I see that I want to read. One of those authors that has been on my radar for a while is Barbara Brown Taylor. A number of my “˜reading friends’ rate her very highly.

Barbara Brown Taylor is a former Episcopal priest, turned professor. It is hard not compare her writing style and voice to Anne Lamott. They both are around the same age, female, and disgruntled with a church that they still feel drawn to and love in spite of themselves. Their memoir-y writing styles are not completely different.

An Altar in the World is semi-autobiographical, but it is less memoir than recounting what it is like to find spiritual practices outside the church that connect us with God. Parts of this were very good. But parts of it just seemed a stretch for me. I have been interested in finding God through the spiritual practices within the church, the historic ones that have not been a part of my Christian journey. Mostly this book is about finding God in the every day and ordinary.

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If I Had Lunch with CS Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of CS Lewis on the Meaning of Life by Alister McGrath

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Summary: McGrath tries to imagine what type of advice Lewis would give, if you had lunch over 8 weeks.

McGrath has written one of the two or three best biographies of CS Lewis, so in my ongoing quest to read more and more by or about Lewis, I was eager to pick up McGrath’s newest book, Lunch With Lewis, especially since it was free on Kindle and the audiobook part of my free trial of Scribd.

The preface laid out exactly I was looking for, Lewis is the type of person that many people would say they would like to have lunch with out of a host of historical characters. And so McGrath wanted to imagine what type of things Lewis would talk about and what type of wisdom we could gain if we did have lunch with him. So McGrath set out 8 weeks of lunches, and a chapter for each.

The problem is that the actual book did not live up to the promise. Instead most of the chapters were more lecture, biography or book report. The first chapter is on the meaning of life. The second was on friendship (which was mostly about Tolkien and the Inklings.) The third was on the importance of stories in shaping our life and meaning (with significant overlap from the first chapter.) The fourth chapter was on Aslan and how he was and was not Christ. And it continued on, apologetics, education, the problem of pain, heaven and hope.

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The Crowded Grave by Martin Walker (Bruno Chief of Police #4)

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Takeaway: Justice is sometimes different than what happens with our legal systems.

What I love about this series is the sense of responsibility that Bruno has for his community. As the only local police officer for his small town and surrounding countryside, he knows virtually everyone. So when a crime occurs, Bruno’s first impulse is not to find out who to arrest, but to bring about justice and restoration of relationship.

Since this is the fourth book in the series, and the third I have reviewed in the last two weeks, I am not going to revisit the basic setting. In this book there are three intertwined stories. First, there is a body that was found in an archeological dig. Instead of being 30,000 years old as the rest of the site is, this body is about 20-25 years old. But no crimes from the area involve a missing person or are unsolved that would fit the body. And it appears to be a violent assassination that might have included torture.

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Scribd Adds 30,000 Audiobooks

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Note Bookwi.se now has a full review of Scribd

Scribd is a document sharing and ebook subscription service. Originally it was mostly to share unpublished papers or articles, Scribd started its ebook subscription service about the same time as the better known Oyster, last year.  At the time I tried and reviewed Oyster, but didn’t bother reviewing Scribd because the services were so similar.

After spending 3 months with Kindle Unlimited, I was interested to hear Scribd announce yesterday that the $8.99 a month service will now include 30,000 audiobooks. This morning I signed up for the free one month trial and have some initial thoughts.

First, this is a much better website than it was last I looked at it, and the selection is much better than Kindle Unlimited. Yes Kindle Unlimited has more books, but Scribd has more of the books you want to read.

For instance, while Kindle Unlimited had a handful of CS Lewis books in ebook (none with free audiobooks), Scribd has most of his books, both in ebook and audiobook formats, in addition to the recent biographies from Alister McGrath and Devin Brown, and a number of Lewis’ books also have Spanish editions.

There are audiobooks from Blackstone, HarperCollins (which owns Zondervan, Thomas Nelson and HarperOne) and Scholastic included in the 30,000 audiobooks.

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Black Diamond by Martin Walker (Bruno Chief of Police #3)

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Summary: Bruno looks into a shady community market and stumbles on a series of international crimes.

More than anything else, this series of books leads me to want to visit rural France and eat lots of French food and drink wine. I have friends that live in France and about 8 years ago we went to go visit them. They live in a community that is probably not too different from the setting of this book (although north of Paris and not in the regional setting of the book.)

Black Diamond’s food discussion revolves around Truffles. When I hear truffles I always think of the chocolate variety and not the expensive fungus that is a delicacy in French food. Bruno when he moved to St Denis and built his home started hunting truffles and planted the Oak trees and doing the other work to start his own truffles. Though his friend, who everyone calls ‘The Baron’, Bruno meets a local truffle expert who helps train Bruno’s dog to search for truffles and helps Bruno to learn about the market and the beauty of truffles. But when a local truffle exchange market seems to be corrupted, Bruno is brought in to investigate.

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The Niebuhr Brothers for Armchair Theologians by Scott Paeth

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Summary: A short book that felt longer than it was because it felt like a book report.

I like the idea of introduction books. Short books that are able to give an introduction to an idea or a person can be very helpful, but also very hard to write.

I have read a number both the Armchair Theologian books and the Oxford Very Short Introduction Series. They are a very mixed bag. The best of the Armchair Theologian series that I have read is the book on Aquinas by Timothy Mark Renick.

This book by Scott Paeth is definitely on the weaker side. I am still glad I read it because I did not know much about the biography or context of the Niebuhr brothers. Their context and history is important to their writing. I have read at least one book by each of the brothers. So I was not coming into the book blind.

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The Dark Vineyard by Martin Walker

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Summary: An arson on a remote (and illegal) genetically modified research farm leads to a crisis. And it might be related to a potential new investment by a large winemaker. Bruno as chief of police and lover of his small town seeks to preserve the community.

Martin Walker has created a small French village and a cast of characters that feel to me like a French version of Wendell Berry’s fiction, but with a modern thriller twist.

The Dark Vineyard is the second in the series and included all that I loved about the first. It is as much about the setting and the long descriptions of life in the French countryside as it is about the mystery. And that is what most of the complaints are about in the Amazon reviews.

This is not a fast book. But it is a delicious one, both in literary description and its description of all of the food and wine consumed. It is a book that seems to have been written with the slow food movement in mind.

Christians followers of the “˜slow church’ movement or those that are rediscovering the parish concept might also enjoy this series as an illustration of the value of slowing down and valuing the local.

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Sacred Companions: The Gift of Spiritual Friendship and Direction

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Sacred Companions: The Gift of Spiritual Friendship and DirectionSummary: A guide for giving and receiving Spiritual Direction.

I have been interesting the concept of spiritual direction for several months now.  As with many things I need to read through a number of books and spend a lot of time thinking through things before I am really ready to move further.  So I still have not actually found a spiritual director yet. (I have been going to a spiritual director for about a year now.)

But I am getting closer to understanding what Spiritual Direction is all about.  For David Benner, spiritual direction is mostly about prayer.  The Spiritual Director is praying for and helping the person receiving the spiritual direction to pray and connect more fully to God.

Benner is a counselor.  So he spends some time differentiating Spiritual Direction from counseling.

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Most Read Bookwi.se Reviews in October

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This month I am a bit broader and including my reviews of the Kindle Unlimited after Three Months and the new Kindle Voyager and Kindle Basic Touchscreen since by page views, they were among the most read reviews of the month. The most read reviews at Bookwi.se: Discovering Your Heart with the Flag Page Test … Read more

Haunting Reads for the Halloween Season

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Halloween, the season of creepy monsters and cavities, is also the perfect time to curl up with a good book. Whether you like to be scared stiff by your reading material or prefer a romantic ghost story instead, the literary world contains ghouls and goblins galore if you know where to look. From classic tales of the macabre to modern supernatural thrillers, a good Halloween book offers both tricks and treats. Celebrate the holiday with some of the spooky and supernatural titles mentioned here.

Horns by Joe Hill

Recently adapted for a UK movie starring Daniel Radcliffe, this supernatural grindhouse thriller follows Ignatius Parrish in an unpredictable and suspenseful battle for his own soul. Ig’s small town reputation catches up to him in a unexpected way the morning he wakes up from a night of heavy drinking to find a pair of unmistakably demonic horns growing from his skull. Written by the son of Stephen King, this thriller has dynamic pacing and a climax that will leave you gripping the edge of your seat.

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

This intensely poetic and nostalgic novel from the mind of fantasy genius Ray Bradbury focuses on one autumn in the lives of two twelve year old boys. Set in the year that “œCooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show” visits their small American town, it follows the two boys, one of their fathers, and the mysterious carnival leader – a haunting presence known as “œMr. Dark.” Bradbury’s title comes from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, uttered by a witch as she completes her spell. This novel holds secrets and terrors for the protagonists and for all readers who possess the kind of romantic Halloween spirit that still inspires dreams of running away with the circus.

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