Offsite Review: The Evolution of Adam: What The Bible Does and Doesn’t Say About Human Origins

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The Christian understanding of creation, original sin and our first parents is very controversial.  Peter Enns has been at the center of the controversy for the past couple of years.  Brian LePort has a short review of Enn’s recent book The Evolution of Adam.  But he also links to a long series of posts that … Read more

Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin

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A Wizard of Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle)Summary: A young wizard must find himself to make right a wrong he created.

Wizard of Earthsea is one of those classic books that I remember reading as a young teen. Like An Abundance of Katherines, it is a coming of age story. But unlike the other two books that I read this past week from the same era (Goldfinger and Stainless Steel Rat) it did not feel dated.

At the end of the book, Le Guin commented about the history of the book. This was the first book that a publisher had asked her to write, and she was reluctant. She had not written a book specifically for teen before this. And while she had written fantasy, the idea of fantasy as a genre was very new.

Lord of the Rings had only recently been published in the US. And the idea of young adult fantasy was just getting started. Lloyd Alexander had won the Newberry Medal for the High King the year before A Wizard of Earthsea was written.

In Le Guin’s little history she noted that she was subtlety trying to tweak the establishment. She followed the basic structure of a young adult version of a wizard, but she made him non-white. In fact all of the good characters in the book are not white. The only explicitly White main character is one that we see as a young girl and later as a young woman. And both times she betrays Ged to try and steal his power.

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Initial Thoughts On Kindle Fire 8.9

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Kindle Fire HD 8.9My sister-in-law received her Kindle Fire 8.9 on Saturday.  I have not had a lot of time to play with it.  But here are a few initial thoughts.

1) Feels much more polished than the initial Kindle fire. I have spent a good bit of time playing with the original kindle.  It always felt like a first generation product.  But the new Kindle Fire 8.9 is thinner, has a great screen, and just feels like a better product.

2) I stil don’t like the carousel interface. It is fairly easy to use, but it isn’t a great system.  I do not like that new books automatically show up in the carousel.  If the kindle fire is a shared device, then there are books that show up on the kindle as soon as you purchase them, whether you want them on the kindle fire or not.  If you are an adult and you share the kindle with your kids, it is likely that there are books that are appropriate for you, but not for them.  You can remove the books from the carousel, but you cannot prevent them from showing up initially.

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2012 National Book Award Winners

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2012 National Book Award Winners (Link to all the finalists)

The Round HouseFiction: The Round House by Louise Erdrich

499 pages, 95 of 96 reviews are 4 or 5 star

One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe’s life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared.

While his father, who is a tribal judge, endeavors to wrest justice from a situation that defies his efforts, Joe becomes frustrated with the official investigation and sets out with his trusted friends, Cappy, Zack, and Angus, to get some answers of his own. Their quest takes them first to the Round House, a sacred space and place of worship for the Ojibwe. And this is only the beginning.

Written with undeniable urgency, and illuminating the harsh realities of contemporary life in a community where Ojibwe and white live uneasily together, The Round House is a brilliant and entertaining novel, a masterpiece of literary fiction. Louise Erdrich embraces tragedy, the comic, a spirit world very much present in the lives of her all-too-human characters, and a tale of injustice that is, unfortunately, an authentic reflection of what happens in our own world today.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

Nonfiction: Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

290 pages, 188 of 242 reviews are 4 or 5-star

From Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo, a landmark work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century’s great, unequal cities.
 
In this brilliantly written, fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human.

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Family Christian Stores Buys Itself

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Christianity Today is reporting that the largest chain of Christian retail stores has purchased itself from its previous private equity owners.  Family Christian Stores has had a rough patch.  There are still nearly 300 stores (for comparison Lifeway has 163 stores). In 1993 Zondervan publisher and the stores separated ownership.  Family Christian Stores grew primarily through acquiring … Read more

Offsite Review: Godly Republicanism: Puritans, Pilgrims and a City on a Hill

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Books and Culture magazine is one of the best magazines for longer form book reviews, seriously articles on history, science and philosophy and in-depth interviews.  It and Englewood Review of Books are the only two physical magazines I read. (Although I primarily read the web editions of both.) Mark Noll was one of the founding … Read more

Goldfinger by Ian Fleming

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GoldfingerSummary: An over the top villain tarnishes an otherwise decent Bond novel.

James Bond is one of those cultural items that everyone ‘needs’ to know.  We know that Bond gets the girl(s), that he likes his vodka martini’s shaken not stirred (usually with a lemon twist).  He always wins, he has cool gagets, cool cars, looks good in a tuxedo, always seems to be undercover, but still uses his regular name, etc.

Last year I read my first James Bond book, Dr No.  It was more like the movie than I expected but I still basically liked the book.  I am a fan of spy book, but more the John le Carré, Jason Borne, and Milo Weaver variety.

In the books, James Bond is racist, sexist and usually is against comic book style villains instead of other spies.  In the movie, Goldfinger gathers together all of the mob bosses in the US so that he can get the man power to knockover Fort Knox.  In the book it is similar but even more similar to a group of super villains from a kids cartoon.

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The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison

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The Stainless Steel RatSummary: There is no one better the catch a crook than another crook.

When I was a kid I read a good bit.  A lot of it was fairly worthless pulp science fiction.  I have never been that snobbish about poorly written books.  I like Twilight, Harry Potter and a host of other books that many people complain about.  While I really do appreciate a well written phrase, there is more to writing in my mind than perfect writing.  A story needs to be told.  The reader needs to be engaged.

The Stainless Steel Rat was a series that I know I read in or around middle school.  But I had absolutely no memory of the series.  I noticed that the first book was available at my library on audiobook and I picked it up out of pure nostalgia.

The story is not all that original (or at least it does not feel original now).  In a future world, crime has almost entirely been stopped.  Those few criminals that exist are captured and  ‘re-educated’.

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