Bookwi.se Reviewed Books on Disagreement Among Christians

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Since Bookwi.se now has more than 600 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. Links are the the longer book review.

Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World

So far in my reading about how to appropriately disagree among Christians, the best book I have read is Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World by Richard Mouw.  His basic point is that we should start with our own sinfulness in mind and not ‘the wrongness’ of the other.  This book is more about holding to a standard of decency when dealing with non-Christians.  But it is relevant to Christians as well.  One of the important thoughts in this book is that we need to be clear about not only what we are for, but the methods of how we communicate what we are for.

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Why Be Catholic by Richard Rohr

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Why Be Catholic?: Understanding Our Experience and TraditionSummary: A series of lectures on the state of the Catholic Church that was later turned into a book.

Over the past several months I have been reading about Catholicism (see below for other reviews).  Many of the book have been written by Evangelicals that have converted to Catholicism.  I chose several of them precisely because I knew that they would write with language that I as an Evangelical would mostly understand.

But it is time to start reading more widely and I want to start reading more books written by Catholics to other Catholics.  I picked this audiobook up on a whim from Audible because I had a couple dollars of promotional credit and it was on sale.

It is not actually a book.  It is a series of lectures that was later turned into a book.  It is not new either.  The lectures were given in 1985 during lent.  It sounds like they were given in a church basement to a small group of people that are concerned about their church (although the audio of Rohr is very clear).  On the whole this does not feel all that dated.  There are a few things that let you know that these are almost 30 years old.  But most of the issues are probably pretty similar.

What I always find most encouraging is that many of the poor assumptions about Catholics that Evangelicals have disappear quickly when you actually listen to people like Rohr.  This is a man that is in love with Christ, that wants to see the world evangelized that is charitable in his opinions of other Christians and has a real heart for the church.  He opens each lecture with a prayer, prayers that would be very comfortable and familiar to Evangelicals.

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

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Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me

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.

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Small Rant About Ebook Formatting

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Third generation Amazon Kindle, showing text f...

If you have read many ebooks (no matter the format) you have probably run across a badly formated book, random spacing, blank pages, page number or titles in the middle of a page, missing pages, a footnote or endnote that accidentally is in the middle of a page, illegible images.  And the high rates of misspellings because of bad Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is just unacceptable.

At one point bad formatting might have been excused because it was a new technology.  But ebooks are no longer cutting edge.  Ebooks now sell more copies than hardcovers, not just at Amazon but total.  And not just more copies, but more total revenue as well.

It is time for publishers to make ebook formatting a higher priority.  I have formatted four books for people that I know.  Each case took me about 8 or so hours and I did it for free because I was trying to help someone out.  It is not rocket science, but it does take work.

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Most Read Reviews in Oct 2012

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Below are the most read reviews (by on site pageview, it is different by the RSS feed, which is approximately equal to on site pageviews). Earthen Vessels: Why Our Body Matters by Matthew Lee Anderson (A Read Again Review) – and most read review of the last quarter Amazon Paperwhite Kindle Review (not a book … Read more

Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley

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Frankenstein, or The Modern PrometheusTakeaway: The common conception of the book has nothing to do with what is really in the book.

So here is what is probably most interesting about reading ‘The Modern Prometheus’, almost nothing that I thought I knew about the story line is actually in the book.  Many stories we primarily know through movie adaptations and not the book itself.  That is not unusual.  But the fact that almost all of the central features of the cultural understanding of the book are not in the book is fascinating.

Igor, lightning, the slow walk, the arms raised, pretty much all the features about the monster are all wrong.  Not even wrong, it is the opposite of the book.  The monster was brilliant, well spoken, desired only to love and be loved.  Even the name is wrong.  Frankenstein is the name of the Doctor, the monster is never named (I did actually know that part before reading the book.)

When I talked about the book with some friends there are pretty different opinions of it.  My sister in law loves the book.  She is a scientist and talked about it as part of a discussion about medical and scientific ethics.

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Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: A George Smiley Novel by John le Carré

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Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: A George Smiley NovelSummary: A spy forced into retirement comes back to ferret out a mole.

George Smiley is the anti-Bond.  The author, John le Carré, was actually a British spy, actively working when he first started writing.  And these books have a realism to them that is not present in the Bond books.

Smiley is middle aged, a little overweight, kind of short. He is not sleeping around, it is actually his wife that is having the affair.

Smiley was forced into early retirement after the head of the department (or Circus in the parlance of the book) was killed.  But something isn’t right and Smiley has felt it.  When a missing spy that was believed to be turned to the Soviet side turns up asking for help, Smiley knows he can’t ignore it any more.  And so begins a winding, often confusing book.

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From Willow Creek to Sacred Heart by Chris Haw

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From Willow Creek to Sacred Heart: Rekindling My Love for CatholicismSummary: From cradle Catholic to Willow Creek to radical servant to Sacred Heart.

Over the past couple of months I have been reading a good bit about Catholicism, mostly a mix of theology and conversion stories.

From Willow Creek to Sacred Heart: Rekindling My Love for Catholicism is a mix of the two.  The first half is is the story of how Chris Haw was born and raised Catholic, but then moved to Willow Christ as an early teen.  Haw went to Eastern College and became connected with Shane Claiborne.  (They co-authored Jesus for President.)

Part of the story here is a fairly radical ‘conversion’ to work with the poor.  In some ways this may be more offensive to some than his later conversion back to Catholicism.

Haw, with his wife Cassie, moved to Camden, NJ.  He worked first as a teacher at the Sacred Heart school and later he refurbished homes and became a writer.  His return to Catholicism was gradual and at least in part because he was living across the street from Sacred Heart and working with the church on anti-poverty programs

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