Jack: A Life of CS Lewis by George Sayer

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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.)

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

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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.

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

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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.

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The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

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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.

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The Anglican Way: A Guidebook by Thomas McKenzie

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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.

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Intimacy With God: An Introduction to Centering Prayer by Thomas Keating

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Summary: An introduction to the theology, but not much on the practice of Centering Prayer

If you have been reading Bookwi.se for a while you have probably noticed a couple things. One, I intentionally try to read at least one book a month from an author that is Catholic, Orthodox or other Christian tradition that I am not a part of. (I do this intentionally both to learn and get a different perspective on christianity than my own low church historically Baptist/non-denominational one.)

And second, I have mentioned several times that I am going to a Spiritual Director. Catholics and to a lesser extent, Anglicans, have kept alive this tradition of meeting with another person for intentional focus on spiritual growth. My Spiritual Director, knowing that I like to read and discuss books, suggested we talk about this book, less for its focus on Centering Prayer as a practice than for its theology of connecting with God.

Keating is a Trappist priest that is known for bringing Centering Prayer to greater use in the 1980s and 1990s.  This is a practice of meditation that is related to earlier Christian meditation, but also draws on some of the eastern meditation practices.

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Mind of My Mind by Octavia Butler (Patternist #2)

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Summary: The subject of Doro’s breeding program, after several thousand years, comes of age.

The first book in this series, Wild Seed, was more of a prequel than the first book in the series.

Doro is some type of mutant person that was born about 4000 years ago. He accidentally discovered that he could leave one body and take over another, giving him a type of immortality. Eventually he started a breeding program to create a people for himself. And he took on a type of God role for them. This breeding program both gives him some type of purpose (this book really discloses the purpose of the program) and a ready source of bodies to take over.

This book opens in the 1970s (roughly current time period because it was written in 1977), jumping more than 100 years from the end of Wild Seed (which moved about 300 years during the book.)  Doro finds Mary, a young abused girl, and gives her to Anyanwu (now called Emma) to care for and raise.

As Mary gets older and ‘transitions’ to her full powers, she is more like Doro than any other of his previous “˜children’. Mary creates “˜patterns’ (the source of the series name) and draws people under her power.

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Embracing Obscurity: Becoming Nothing in Light of God’s Everything

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Embracing Obscurity: Becoming Nothing in Light of God's Everything

Takeaway: Obscurity, humility, smallness.  All undervalued and difficult disciplines in a world of individualism, social media and mixed messages.

I ran across the very interesting book Embracing Obscurity on Tim Challies’ blog.  His review gave a bit of the back story and resulted in the book being put on sale for a couple weeks at Amazon.

An anonymous author decided to write a book about humility.  The author realized that writing a book about humility was in itself an un-humble activity so he (and I think it is pretty clearly a he) decided to write and publish a book secretly.  Even his family is unaware.

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The Maze Runner by James Dashner (Book and Movie Review)

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The Maze Runner By James Dashner is the first part in a three part series about a group of teenagers who find themselves in the middle of a maze. Every month a new boy wakes up in the strange new world, the Glade, to find his memory wiped. Each day the boys struggle to survive in this existence where they are given the mere essentials. Leaderships form and boys are assigned to work jobs where they excel the most. One job is to be a runner and go out each day in the maze to see if a way out can be found. The story revolves around Thomas who desires to become a runner as it appears that he may know more about the maze than most.

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Out of Town Again

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Roughly once a year, a group of my guy friends from college go on a trip together.  We have been doing this since 1995 and this is our 21st trip.  (We are going backpacking in Colorado this year.) It is hard to schedule six guys that now live in four different countries (including the US), … Read more