Bookwi.se

Summary: Very helpful, quick overview of John Paul II’s theology of the body.

I purchased this about a year ago after I read Matthew Lee Anderson’s very good Earthen Vessels: Why Our Bodies Matter to Our Faith (first review, second review).  I was looking a basic introduction to John Paul II’s Theology of the Body and Christopher West has written several books on it.

The book sat on my bookshelf for a year but I read it very quickly once I picked it up. Overall I this was a good book.  I highlighted and marked up the book quite a bit (and then left it with my Dad while visiting for Thanksgiving, who was also interested in reading it.)

So I don’t have the book notes.  From memory, the strong points are Marriage as a divine gift, the strong idea about how celibacy fits into that sacramental view of marriage, the way that God designed the body and the ways that sin and redemption of have affected our subsequent view of body.  All of that really is good, fits well within the Christian (and Evangelical) theology and I think strengthens our theology.

Many place the book was quite beautiful in its descriptions of the body, marriage, sex, and God’s love for us.  I think that beauty is something that is often missing in our Evangelical descriptions of the body.  We get erotic, physical, dangerous; we miss the beauty.

Read more

I started The Casual Vacancy with eyes wide open to the fact that this was no Harry Potter novel–and yet, even though I wasn’t offended by the much more adult tone (and content!) that Rowling establishes right out of the gate, I was a little surprised by it. No matter how prepared you are, it’s just weird to hear the f-bomb dropped by one of Hermione Granger’s literary cousins. What didn’t surprise me at all, though, having read and loved multiple analyses of them, was Rowling’s masterful plotting and the literary alchemy she weaves to engage the reader and drive the story. Indeed, that is what merited my 4 stars for the book.

Pagford is a small town that seems idyllic on the surface, but underneath the veneer of folksy charm the place is roiling with class warfare, sexual tension, violence, back-stabbing and duplicity. Rowling’s characters are broken, wounded, cynical, crass, self-centered, petty, and strangely sympathetic. The reader gets a first-person perspective from everyone as each maneuvers around the other, reading (and often misreading) the circumstances from a unique and limited vantage point–to hilarious but often tragic effects.

Read more