The Soloist by Steve Lopez

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The Soloist is the retelling of Steve Lopez’ relationship with Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, a homeless musical prodigy whom Lopez meets while out riding his bike in Los Angeles. Lopez is immediately amazed by Ayers abilities, especially seeing that he is playing well on a two-string violin. He begins to write about Ayers in his column at the L.A. Times. Through his columns, readers send him instruments for Ayers to play.

Lopez explains in his book that he strived hard to understand Ayers’ situation as he struggles with schizophrenia, a mental disorder that caused him to quit Julliard and live on the streets. Lopez’s column and Lopez’s own networking gave Ayers some of the help that he needed to get off the streets and get back his dignity through music. For Lopez, the most surprising aspect to his relationship with Ayers is that while he started out wanting to help Ayers he realized quickly that they had a lot to learn from each other.

Steve Lopez truly does tell a compelling story of an amazing man who would likely be on par with Yo-Yo Ma if it weren’t for a debilitating mental disorder. It seems that Lopez discovers through the process of helping Nathaniel that our desire to simply put a Band-Aid on certain sad situations or throw some money at the uglier side of life doesn’t always work and often makes things worse. From personal experience, Lopez has learned that misunderstanding is one of the main roadblocks for people getting the help that others are trying to give. By telling the story of Ayers, Lopez explains that giving someone a few dollars, buying them a hot meal, setting them up at a half-way house, putting them on medication, while not bad things, are not a solution, especially if they come without a relationship.

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Unnatural Death by Dorothy Sayers (Lord Peter Wimsey #3)

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Summary: Lord Peter Wimsey overhears a doctor talking about a case and is convinced it is the perfect crime.

When I think of Lord Peter Wimsey, I most often think of the modern TV show Castle. I am a big fan of Castle. And there are many similarities. Lord Peter Wimsey is rich, interested in crime, has a good intrinsic sense of how crimes can be committed, is interested in crime as intellectual activity and works with a police officer who he allows to do all the mundane work and there is a good bit of humor in both.

Of course there are differences, Wimsey is not a writer, just a rich Lord (brother to a Duke). He has the free time to think about and solve crimes (Wimsey collects and sells rare first edition book, but has no need for money). And this is the 1930s Britian, so the sexy female cop is out of the question.

But I can totally see Castle with this plot. Wimsey is eating dinner at a fancy resturant and overhears a doctor talking about the death of a patient.  He interupts and asks the doctor to tell him the whole story which leads Wimsey to believe that the patient was killed.

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Identity Crisis: 21 Days of Discovering Who God Says You Are by Michael D. Perkins

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For years many of us have struggled with trying to measure up to others standards for us and for our own. We walk around calling ourselves failures. We tell ourselves we are not smart enough, good enough, nice enough, and on and on. After spending years telling himself similar things, Michael Perkins discovered that none of those things were what God had to say about him.

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Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen

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Bad Monkey is Carl Hiaasen’s latest novel that came out at the beginning of the summer of 2013. Similarly to many of Hiaasen’s novels, the book is about a rough around the edges detective who desperately wants his job back. He sets out to solve a murder that he really has no business solving. While tracking down the murderer, he observes and is a part of a number of humorous hijinks, and his life and the lives of those around him are put in danger.

Carl Hiaasen grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and has lived in Miami for most of his adult life. For this reason, his books generally take place in the state of Florida and the character of the state plays a big role in his novels. He has been a reporter for the Miami Herald since 1976, which explains why his novels also revolve around crime and the police detectives whom he has solve those crimes. Another theme that runs commonly through his novels are that the environment, specifically the wildlife and the swamps and oceans of Florida, are often exploited, destroyed and need to be protected. I would say that if Christopher Buckley is the master of the dry political comedies then Hiaasen has a corner in the dry detective comedy genre. I definitely enjoy both of these types of novels as they do an excellent job of combining two types of genres and making an intriguing new genre.

This is the second novel that I have read by Carl Hiaasen, the first being Skinny Dip. Another aspect to his novels that I thoroughly enjoy is that they are filled with unique characters and that there is no perfect protagonist. Everyone has their hang-ups and everyone has their ulterior motives. This book, Bad Monkey, is entitled so because there is a very naughty monkey (and, not naughty in the Curious George sense) that is supposedly the monkey from the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie but was essentially fired because he was so difficult to work with. Through some coincidence, the monkey plays a somewhat integral part of the story and in a way helps to get the crime solved. The uniqueness of the characters in Hiaasen’s books definitely helps to keep the reader engaged.

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Help Thanks Wow: Three Essential Prayers by Anne Lamott

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Reposting my 2013 review because the Kindle Edition is on sale for $2.75
Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential PrayersSummary: SHORT, but helpful look at the essence of prayer.

I am not an Anne Lamott devotee.  So I do not read everything she writes.  But I have read enough to know that she is a very good author and one that looks at spiritual realities from a different perspective.

So one day last month I was tired of all of my audiobooks I had been listening to and looked around to find another.  I noticed that with my member discount at Audible, Help, Thanks, Wow was under $5.  So I picked it up.

I had resisted previously because it is so short.  In audiobook it is barely 90 minutes.  In paper it is listed as 112  pages.  But it must be a gift book sized pages.

However, for $5 I thought it was worth picking up.

I listened to it two days after listening to Palmer Parker’s Let Your Life Speak.  The two books, although not at all similar in subject had a similarity in spiritual direction.  Both emphasized that the Christian life is not striving after looking good or being respectable.

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How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor by James KA Smith

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Summary: The traditional story of how to the world came to be secular (a subtraction of belief) is not the real story.

Starting last year I have been paying a lot of attention to James KA Smith (Jamie). The first book of his that came across my radar screen was Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview and Cultural Formation. (I still haven’t actually read that one, it is on my list for this summer.)

But I did read Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works. And it really did fundamentally change my perspective on liturgy and worship. Since then I regularly read Smith’s editorials (he is the editor of Comment magazine) and I have slowly been reading some of his other books.

How (Not) to Be Secular is the type of book I wish were more popular. For important ideas to really take hold, we need good authors to popularize those important ideas into formats that a general public can understand. Charles Taylor’s A Secular age is a massive and important book, but at 900 pages it is too long (and too dense) for most readers. (And more than a few people have suggested Taylor is not the most readable author.) So Jamie Smith has put together a 148 page companion that covers the basics of the argument and includes relevant contemporary examples.

The basic idea of A Secular Age is to explain what it means to live in a secular age and how we have come to this place in culture.

“We are all skeptics now, believer and unbeliever alike. There is no one true faith, evident at all times and places. Every religion is one among many. The clear lines of any orthodoxy are made crooked by our experience, are complicated by our lives. Believer and unbeliever are in the same predicament, thrown back onto themselves in complex circumstances, looking for a sign. As ever, religious belief makes its claim somewhere between revelation and projection, between holiness and human frailty; but the burden of proof, indeed the burden of belief, for so long upheld by society, is now back on the believer, where it belongs.”

Taylor’s innovation is how he reframes discussion about secularization from what it has lost (belief in God) to how the very nature of belief claims have changed.

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Dad is Fat by Jim Gaffigan

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Dad is Fat by Jim GaffiganSummary: Funny stories mixed in with some advice.

I like comedy.  I don’t laugh nearly enough.  I have a tendency to be a little too serious.  But I have a few standard humor authors.  Christopher Buckley is one of my favorites (but I have read pretty much everything he has written.)  Christopher Moore is pretty funny except when he isn’t.  I really liked Bossypants by Tina Fey.

Last year, some friends introduced me to Jim Gaffigan.  Since then I think I have seen three of his TV comedy shows and I really like his humor.  He seems like a fairly real person.  And like me he is an introvert, likes kids, hates sports, is a little over weight and loves his wife.

This seemed like the perfect book for him.  He has great material on being a Dad.  He has five kids (six and under).  He lives in New York City in a 2 bedroom apartment (on the 5th floor without an elevator) and lives without a car.  When he is not touring, he is often at home with his kids.

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A Christian Survival Guide by Ed Cyzewski

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Summary: The basics of Christian practice and belief from someone that survived their faith.

One of the problems of my life is that I spend very little time with people that actually are non-Christians. I am a stay at home Dad, I work part time out of the house in my spare moments, my prefered enjoyment activities are reading and being alone.

The time I do spend with people is usually my extended family or church small group. In spite of that I feel like I know a lot of “˜post-Christians’. Those that have grown up in the church or on the perefery of the church, but have an uneasy relationship with the church now.

The US makes being a “˜none’ easier all the time. And for many, it is far easier to walk away from the church when things get difficult than it is to struggle through to a new equalibrium. Or at least that is how I describe it. It seems to me that there are many points in time where all is good, you are comfortable, you have faith, you see God working, and things make sense. But then there is a crisis of faith, or a dry spell or a tragedy or something that breaks that equilibrium and you have a choice of searching for a new equilibrium or to just stop fighting.

Ed Cyzewski has written this guide for two groups of people, those that have no background in the church, or those that have lost their equilibrium and need to find a new one. For both readers, the old answers aren’t working any more. New Christians have different questions because they didn’t grow up in the church and they are culturally ill-disposed toward the standard answers that were based in a previous generation’s questions. And those that have grown up in the church and had their equalibrium break, the standard answers were probably what caused the break in the first place.

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Vacation

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Starting tomorrow I am going on a week’s vacation.  I have book reviews scheduled, but I am not sure if I will be posting any free book posts. All should be back to normal on Sept 15 (or maybe the 16th if I am really swamped the first day back at work.)