How to Spot Fake Product Reviews

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CNet has a helpful article on how to spot fake product reviews.  It is oriented toward tech products and not books, but Amazon has a serious problem with fake book reviews.  For Bookwi.se, I tend to rank the free books that I post by number of reviews and how positive the reviews are. This is … Read more

Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold

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Captain Vorpatril's Alliance (Vorkosigan Saga)

Summary: Ivan finally gets to play lead in this long running series.

Science fiction is such a moldable setting.  There are the hard science books, the space opera, the mystical fantasy books, the near term commentary and a ton more.  Readers that dismiss genre fiction are really missing out. (Slate had an article about Ursula Le Guin that made this point well.)

For me, there are two types of science fiction types that I really like.  One is the idea fiction.  Use a science fiction setting to create a world and take it to its logical conclusion to explore various ideas about society, religion, ethic and/or philosophy.

The other type is the hero story.  This is a wide group.  It can include everything from Star Wars to Ender’s Game.

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Audible.com Best Books of 2012 List

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Audible.com published their best books of 2012 list recently.  I am doing better on Audible’s list.  I have have read 6 of the mentioned books.  But there are a lot of books, 14 categories with 4 books in most categories and then six editors all got to pick their own four books.  The book of … Read more

Most Read Reviews from Nov 2012

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The most read review from November 2012. Click the titles for the full review.

Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me

Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me by Karen Swallow Prior

I love books.  I love people that love books.  I love books about books by people that love books.

Karen Swallow Prior is an English Professor, writer, and essayist.  She has written a memoir highlighting the books (and poems) that have changed her life and made her who she is today.

Each chapter highlight a book and then uses that book to help tell the story of her life.  Sometimes the book helps her to learn, sometimes the book helps her to explain.  But in each case, it is her as a reader that comes through….

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

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

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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God’s Life in Trinity edited by Miraslov Volf

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God's Life in TrinitySummary: A series of 18 essays about the implications of the Trinity of a variety of areas of a theology and practice.  Compiled in honor of Jürgen Moltmann’s 80th birthday. 

There were two reasons I picked up this book.  One, I am trying to read about the Trinity as part of my annual reading goals.  Two, I am reading it because Miroslov Volf’s name is on it.  I have been hearing about Volf for a while and just have not had a chance to read him.

Volf is a professor at Yale and is best known for his work in the areas of social Trinity and forgiveness (Exclusion and Embrace, The End of Memory and the less academic Free of Charge).  He also has controversial book on Christian response to Islam (Allah) and a well reviewed book on Christianity and the Common Good (Public Faith).

What is interesting to me about Volf is that he is academically responding to real issues around him.  Volf was born and raised in what is now Croatia.  He studied in Germany under Jürgen Moltmann and eventually came to the US to teach at Fuller until moving to Yale in 1998.

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Sound the Holiday Alarm

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A friend of mine is trying a digital experiment with his latest book.  Dan Mayhew is releasing it as a serial.  The first chapter is free and you pay $0.40 for each additional chapter. I strongly recommend Dan’s other books The Butterfly and the Stone (about parenting a prodigal), Sword of Submission (which I have … Read more

Theology of the Body for Beginners by Christopher West

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Theology Of The Body For BeginnersSummary: 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.

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