A Passion for God: The Spiritual Journey of AW Tozer by Lyle Dorsett

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Summary: AW Tozer is one of the great spiritual writers of the 20th century, and a prime example of God using less than perfect people.

I read A Passion for God first about three years ago.  It is one of those books that has stuck with me more than most.

The main reason is that Tozer is a perfect example of something that theologically I don’t really have a category for.  Tozer, by nearly everyone that knew him’s estimation, was a real and passionate man of God.  But at the same time he was distant from his family (especially his wife), personally lonely and probably leaned toward clinical depression.

It is not that I don’t think Christians can be depressed or lonely.  I certainly think they can.  But Tozer, like several other pietistic leaning pastors that I have read or read about seemed to lack many of the interpersonal tools of relating to those closest to him (while pouring forth energy on others.)

As with the first time I read the book, the most damning sentence in the book is a quote from Tozer’s wife who remarried after Tozer died. Her standard answer when people asked how she was doing after re-marrying was a variant of: “˜Aiden loved Jesus but (her new husband) loves me.’

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Seven Grams of Lead by Keith Thomson

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Summary: A journalist tries to stay alive while tracking down a story about abuse of power by a rogue agent.

Several years ago I was turned onto Keith Thomson when John Wilson (editor of Books and Culture) talked about Thomson’s earlier book Once a Spy.

Once a Spy was part of my getting back into spy novels that lead to me reading a number of John le Carre’s books and other classic and contemporary spy novels.

I picked up Seven Grams of Lead when it was the Kindle Daily Deal a couple weeks ago (and on sale for $1.99).

On the whole this was a much more traditional thriller than the Once a Spy/Twice a Spy books.  Russ Thornton is a journalist/blogger that is known for his investigative reporting on government and big business.  When an old friend calls asking for help (and ends up dead),  Thornton realized that he was the one that inadvertently gave away her secret because his body had been bugged.

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Most Read Book Reviews for May 2014

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Below are the eight most read book reviews over the past month. I am very excited that three of the eight are from Bookwi.se Contributors. I very much appreciate that others are contributing reviews to Bookwi.se. Without them this blog would not be nearly as good.    

Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman (TV/Book Review)

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Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison by Piper Kerman

Orange Is the New Black is a memoir written by Piper Kerman that chronicles the year that she spent in a minimum-security prison.  The book starts with Kerman describing her college years and the events that ended up landing her in prison and ends with her release from prison after serving twelve months of a fifteen-month sentence.

In the memoir, Kerman describes many of the unique people she meets and events she experiences in prison.  I found it undeniably entertaining to read about the Russian cook, the Dominican bunkmate, the politically geared warden, and delinquent electric shop manager, among others. Listening to Kerman describe how her life became a series or routines and rules, some unspoken and others tentatively ignored, gave me a very intriguing insight into the life of someone who resides in prison.

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Eat That Frog: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating by Brian Tracy

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Reposting this review because Eat That Frog is the daily deal today and on sale for $0.99 for the audiobook at audible.com

Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less TimeTakeaway: Inefficiency at work often means taking away time from home.

Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook

I am a procrastinator. I can procrastinate better than almost anything else I do. I think it is one of the reasons that I am a good reader, because reading is usually a means of procrastination for me.  I am not sure when I picked up this book. I think it was free on audible at some point (probably 3 or 4 years ago).

I was looking for something short and it was the shortest of all of my unread audiobooks at only 2 and a 1/2 hours.

Tracy says at the begining, it is likely that very little in this book will be new inforamtion.  The problem is that you have to actually put the infomation into practice before it makes a difference in your life.  Clearly that is one of my issues.

He also said that not everything works for everyone and a large number of things will often prevent us from accomplishing anything.  So I picked out three things and I have been trying to do them.

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Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

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Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell is a well-beloved book and seen as an integral part to American literature. The book is essentially a coming-of-age novel and one that tells mainly of survival. The rather lengthy novel begins with Scarlett O’Hara at the age of 15 and carries her through many trials and tribulations such as loss of love, war, death, poverty, hunger and sometimes simply bad luck.  With the American Civil War and Reconstruction of the South as the backdrop, the novel appeals to wide audience as it contains themes of romance, drama, comedy, suspense, history and adventure.

I both read the novel and saw the movie for the first time when I was a young teenager.  I have seen the movie a number of times since then (although not in over ten years) but I have not read the book since then.  My initial thoughts are that the book was much better than I remembered and the movie was not quite as good as I remembered it being. Both the movie and the book are quite long and I have had this 48-hour book siting in my library for at least a year and a half and have only now gotten up the courage to tackle it. The movie is 4 hours long and includes an intermission.  I remember that I went to see the movie with a friend who had never seen it before and during the intermission we walked out to the lobby and she said, “œWell, that was a great movie.” Both my mom and I just stared at her because we didn’t know how to tell her that there were two more hours to watch.

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Land of the Blue Burqas by Kate McCord

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Kate McCord is the pseudonym of the author of In The Land of Blue Burqas, a memoir of her five years in Afghanistan. McCord chronicles her experiences detailing what it’s like for a foreigner, specifically a foreign woman to live and work for an NGO in Afghanistan. Her stories are enthralling and even a bit frightening. This book unlike anything I’ve read before; this is an incredibly comprehensive, insightful and relevant book on learning and understanding Afghan culture through Western eyes.

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Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

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Reposting my 2013 review because Flowers for Algernon is today’s (May 28) Audible Deal of the Day. You can buy the audiobook for $3.95 (no membership required, use your Amazon login if you do not have an audible account.)
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel KeyesSummary: Classic young adult novel about a man that gains and then loses intelligence.

Several years ago I revisited a lot of the young adult literature that I loved as a child or teen. Revisiting those books helped to renew my interest in young adult literature. So now I regularly read 2 or 3 young adult novels a month.

I still occasionally go back and revisit novels that I have not read in 25 or 30 years. Flowers for Algernon was on sale at some point about a year ago and I picked it up. But after reading 10 pages or so, put it down.

I picked it up again and read it over the Memorial Day weekend. Originally I read Flowers for Algernon in either 7th or 8th grade english class.

Reading it again, I am somewhat surprised and wonder if I am properly gauging the age range for young adult literature.

In Flowers for Algernon, Charlie is developmentally disabled adult (as we now term it, but in the book he is frequently called retarded or other variants) is given some type of operation that makes him smart.

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Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

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Great Expectations | [Charles Dickens]Summary: A Classic novel about wanting what is not good for you.

For some reason that I can’t really explain, I always have felt I did not like Charles Dickens.  But the only two books that I can remember reading of Dickens (Great Expectations and The Tale of Two Cities) I liked. Maybe it is like feeling like you do not like a food, but never actually trying it.

Like many classics, I was first exposed to Great Expectations as an abridged children’s book.  I am pretty sure I read at least one additional abridgement in high school or college (not for school but pleasure) but I think this is the first time I have read the whole book.

With so many versions of the story in my head (I have seen at least one if not two of the movies in addition to probably two abridged versions), the basic story is not a surprise.  Simon Vance (as always) did an admirable job narrating the audiobook.  And like many classics, I think it could have easily been cut by at least a third without a problem.  But according to Wikipedia, Dickens originally intended it to be twice as long, but his publisher restrained him. (Thank goodness).

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