Catholic Matters: Confusion, Controversy, and the Splendor of Truth by Richard John Neuhaus

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Catholic Matters: Confusion, Controversy, and the Splendor of Truth

If you are just joining in, I am slowly working through several books on Catholic theology and practice.  Catholic Matters was recommended by a friend and is a very good next step for me.

Richard John Neuhaus is on of the better known Catholic writers in the United States.  He is a priest in New York and a convert from the Lutheran stream of Christianity at the age of 54.  Most Evangelicals will know him as the editor of the Institute on Religion and Public Life’s publication First Things.  Neuhaus passed away in 2009.

Neuhaus was a great believer in ecumenical activity (the idea behind The Institute on Religion and Public Life and his earlier Institute on Religion and Democracy).  He along with Charles Colson were the prime drivers behind the Evangelicals and Catholics Together statements that provided a significant part of the discussion material from Mark Noll’s Is The Reformation Over (reviewed earlier).

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Send to Kindle Extension for Chrome

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One of the lesser known features of the kindle is that you can send books, article or other documents to your kindle.  This can be useful for editing, or giving presentations, or reading articles off line. Earlier this year there was desktop apps released to allow you to send documents to your kindle without sending … Read more

32 Free Books to Give Away

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I made a committment to myself to give away the vast majority of my paper books when I am done with them.  Many of the books below were given to me by others that wanted a review.  Others I have read and reviewed.   Still others are books that I bought but have never gotten … Read more

The Lost Hero (Heros of Olympus #1) by Rick Riordan

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The Lost Hero (Heroes of Olympus)Summary: A new set of heroes are on a quest to free Hera and stop something worse than the Titans from destroying the Gods (and maybe all of humanity with them.)

The Percy Jackson and the Olympians were rightly a popular series of young adult books.  They include magic, heroes, Greek Gods, adventure and lots of historical and mythical references.

With The Lost Hero, Riordan takes the same setting and starts a new series with new main characters.  Jason has no memory of his past.  But he is son of Zeus and and already battle tested and a leader, but he has never been to Camp Half-Blood before.  Leo is a mechanical genius, but after the death of his mother he has been hiding his real power.  Piper is the daughter of a famous movie star and constantly in trouble for theft.

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Why Holiness Matters by Tyler Braun

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Why Holiness Matters: We've Lost Our Way--But We Can Find it AgainSummary: Holiness is affection for God and a way of life, not a set of rules that we have to live by.

Holiness is a difficult topic to discuss.  About halfway through the book I thought of my comments in a review of a book on Christian giving.  “Just because there has been so much bad teaching on the theology of giving does not mean that we should not talk about giving.”  And in this context, just because there has been so much bad teaching on holiness does not mean that holiness is somehow unimportant.  In fact we mostly likely need to spend more time discussing holiness.  Unfortunately authors and pastors have to deal with the bad teaching in order for the good teaching to make sense.

Tyler Braun is very directly attempting to communicate the importance of holiness to the Millennial Generation (although this is a beneficial book if you are not in that generation) because holiness has been so badly taught in the past.

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Bookwi.se Reviewed Books on Prayer

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Since Bookwi.se now has more than 500 book reviews, I felt it was time to start making the back catalogue a bit more useful.  I will continue to add to these topical indexes as trends arise and I have time.

Bookwi.se has reviewed a lot of books on prayer.  By my count there are 22 books that are directly about prayer, not including several others that are indirectly about prayer.  Unlike most of Bookwi.se topical indexes I will not give a description and summary review of every book but instead divide the list into recommended books and less recommended book on prayer.

Bookwi.se most recommended books on Prayer

Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home

Prayer by Richard Foster

If you really are serious about wanting to read about prayer this is probably my first recommendation.  It is focused on the various methods and spiritual disciplines around prayer.  Foster is seeped in historical Christian writings and liberally quotes from them and his own experience.  I have reviewed this twice.  First review, second review, but I have have read it at least three or four times.  This is a books that welcomes multiple readings.

Cover of
Cover via Amazon

A Praying Life: Connecting With God In a Distracting World by Paul Miller

This is my second most recommended book on prayer.  It is more of a practical look focus (instead of this historical and spiritual discipline focus of Richard Foster’s book).  Again I have read it several times and reviewed it twice (first, second)  If you are a parent, Miller spends a lot of time talking about praying for his children and spouse and uses his own family and prayer life as continual illustrations.

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New Kindle Speculation

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July 31st (the rumored for a Amazon Press conference for new kindle models) has come and gone.  But there are still speculation that new kindles are probably not far off. 1) There are still a number of rumors that Amazon is going to launch a new version of the Kindle Fire (most likely more storage, a better … Read more

Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How it Can Help You Find and Keep Love

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Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find-and Keep-LoveSummary: We have a way that we attached to romantic partners.  Finding a partner that is compatible with our attachment type makes those attachments more secure, longer lasting, and more fulfilling.  Oriented toward single adults more than couples.

I am fascinated by science books about human relationships and behavior.  One of the best I have read is Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me.  You can get the point by the title, and nearly two years after I read it, I still frequently bring it up in conversation.  Another interesting and more general book like this is Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex.

Book of this genre are best when they really are based in science, but they attempt to make the science real in lay person terms and ideas.  Mary Roach, who wrote Bonk, takes the tack of writing about the science through her own discovery.  She is a very present character in her books.  The authors of Mistakes Were Made were more traditional science writers.  They referenced studies and gave lots of examples but they were mostly writing from as academic narrators.

Some books get to science based or take a fairly simple idea and run it into the ground far past the attention spans of most readers (The Narcissism Epidemic I think fell into this trap.)  But ever since the original Freakenomics and some of Chris Anderson and Malcolm Gladwell’s books became popular, this style of science/self-help/popular non-fiction came out, there have been many authors that are trying to find the secret to writing good books, that are actually useful and based in real science and understandable.

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The Cry of the Halidon by Robert Ludlum

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The Cry of the HalidonSummary: A geologist is paid to survey Jamaica by a secret cabal of financiers that wants to take over the island and create their own country.  MI-5 enlists him to get to the bottom of the plot.

People familiar with the very popular Jason Bourne movies may be aware of the name Robert Ludlum.  He was the author of the original books.  He wrote 23 novels in his lifetime under a couple different pseudonyms and sold 300-500 million books in 33 languages.

I read the first three Bourne books a few years before the movies came out.  (The movies are very good, the books are very good, but they are only slightly related to one another in content.)

I knew the next Bourne movie was coming out soon so I decided to pick up another Ludlum book.  After the first three Bourne books all other Bourne books have been written by Eric Van Lustbader who licensed the characters. (Ludlum died in 2001 from injuries that he sustained in a fire.)

Ludlum likes to write about grand conspiracies, large corporations with secret agendas, shadowy spy agencies and other extremists.

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