Scheduling

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Posts will likely be pretty light over the next two weeks. I am with my family from today to next week And then on vacation with my wife’s family the week after. I will probably post book reviews but not many free books.

Signs of Life: 40 Catholic Customs and Their Biblical Roots by Scott Hahn

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Signs of Life: 40 Catholic Customs and Their Biblical RootsTakeaway: The more I explore Catholic belief, the more it pushes me to think about my own beliefs.

If you have not noticed, I have been reading about Catholic theology, practice and conversion lately.  This is a personal project to understand a stream of Christian faith that is large, important and often quite misunderstood by Evangelical Protestants.

The subtitle of this book: 40 Catholic Customs and their Biblical Roots, seemed like a perfect book to further my education.  And it was useful, even if not really what I was expecting.  It is designed to be read like a daily devotional.  There are forty short chapters with an explanation of the custom and a little devotional quote from a modern or ancient Christian figure.

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They Eat Puppies, Don’t They? by Christopher Buckley

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They Eat Puppies, Don't They?: A NovelSummary: A novel about a defense contractor lobbyist and a political commentator who get together to whip up furor over China in order to justify more weapons programs. 

Christopher Buckley is one of my favorite authors.  But this is not one of my favorite of his books.

Buckley’s books follow a similar path.  Washington insiders, in a cynical, but somewhat believable way push a line that seems absurd, but much of the time you could actually see things working out in real life like they do in his books.  It is satire.  What makes Buckley one of my favorite authors is that he ridicules all sides of the political spectrum, he keeps his books funny and in the end his heroes usually see the error in their ways.

But this book is not as funny as most of his other books.  It is satire, and you can see him poking fun at lobbyists, at the defense industry, at the media.  But it is not sharp, it is not very funny and it feels phoned in.

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The Unity Factor: One Lord, One Church, One Mission by John Armstrong

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The Unity Factor: One Lord, One Church, One MissionSummary: A brief book about why the church needs to pursue unity as part of our Mission.

“We must understand that the unity of the church is not an end in itself. Unity is a sign and an instrument of the first fruits of God’s purpose to reconcile all things in heaven and on earth through Jesus Christ.”

Unity of the church is important to me.  It is one of the reasons that I have been reading about Catholic theology lately.  It is one of the reasons that I specifically try to read outside my theological stream.  John Armstrong has written this brief book about why and how Christians should pursue unity.

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New Kindles in July?

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Yesterday CNet reported that they have a ‘reliable source’ that said that there would be both a new Kindle tablet and new e-ink Kindle  released on July 31st. This basically matched my earlier estimate based on the cost of refurbished kindles.  According to an earlier DigiTimes article the new Kindle Fire will have a higher … Read more

When Beauty Pursues You by Elora Ramirez

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when Beauty pursues youSummary: A brief, poetic look at the pain and redemption of growing up as a girl seeking to be cherished.

For someone that reads as much as I do, and someone that has so many books on my To Read list, I find it odd that I don’t always know why I start reading the books that I read.

Tonight I read this very short little book because I said I would (the author contacted me to ask me to review it.)  I did not have anything else I wanted to read, so I picked it up.  It was  finished in less than a hour.  And it was very good.

I am not the target audience, it is primarily written to women, especially women that feel broken.  But I appreciate the writing.  I am a nanny for my two nieces.  I love caring for these two precious girls. For all of the stress and bother and calls to ‘be a lion’ or ‘no, stand like this’, I want to be a figure that encourages and strengthens them.  Reading about women that have not been cherished and cared for helps give me encouragement to keep going.

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The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

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Summary: A competition/duel between two magicians that work at the Night Circus, a circus that arrives without warning and only occurs at night. My feelings about this book fluctuated depending on where I was in the story. The Night Circus is about a strange competition between magicians that is played out in the happenings of … Read more

Small Faith – Great God by NT Wright

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Small Faith--Great GodSummary: A reissue of a 1978 book. A decent intro to many of Wright’s ideas, but not as fully developed as later books.

This books is primarily based on a series of early sermons that NT Wright gave in the 1970s.  The oldest of them was originally delivered a year before I was born.  They were first compiled into the first edition of this book in 1978.  They were released in 2010 with only very light editing and a new forward.

What struck me most is how many of Wright’s ideas were already in place when he was in his late 20s.  So if you have not read much of Wright, this would actually be a decent introduction.  It includes some of his thoughts on heaven, many of the major points of his book After You Believe and some hints of some points from Simply Christian.  Wright more recent work on Jesus and Kingdom and his more famous older work on Paul are not really mentioned.

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How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps by Christian Smith

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How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult StepsTakeaway: If you are thinking about joining the Catholic church this has many good questions, clarification and guidance.

I am on a project to understand more about the Catholic church.  I have two motivations around this, 1) a friend of mine recently converted and I am reading understand more about his decision and 2) I am convinced that much of the Evangelical opposition to Catholicism is rooted in ignorance of the Catholic church and not really on theology.  So I apologize to those that have no interest in Catholic theology, but I will probably read at least another half dozen books in the next couple months.

I have been paying attention to Christian Smith for a while.  He is a Sociologist specializing in Christian youth culture and maturation.  But I had not read more than a couple of articles (more about his research than by him) before I read his book Bible Made Impossible last year.  It was a massively frustrating book for me.  He points out many of the problems that Evangelicals have with the bible and its use.  In the end I think he is right that we need to read the bible with a Christological hermeneutic, but that is difficult to describe in practice.  I think he strongly hinted at his conversion in the book because coupled with the Christological hermeneutic is the need for a church voice (or authority) to regulate the reading (ie the Catholic Magisterium).

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