Scribd – Page 23 – Bookwi.se

Earthen Vessels: Why Our Bodies Matter

October 24, 2012 by Adam Shields

Summary: Our bodies are important not just to life, but to our faith as well.

Reading book again is an under-valued exercise. I try to re-read at least one book a month. For many books, it is not possible to catch all of the nuances and points on a first reading.

So it has been my tradition the last couple years to, when available switch the format of my second reading. So if I start with an audiobook, I will move to paper or kindle. If I start with paper, I move to audio. In this case I read it in kindle version the first time and in audio the second. I find that there is enough different between the different formats that you get something else out of the change that is more than just re-reading in the same format.

In this case I enjoyed Earthen Vessels just as much as the first time. Read the first review, because I am not going to deal with any of the same content on this one.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

October 23, 2012 by Adam Shields

Summary: A brat of a girl falls into a fantasy world

One of my reading goals this year was to read more old books. Some of these I am re-reading, some I am reading for the first time. If you have a kindle or like to listen to audiobooks, there are tons of free classics available (although of varying quality.)

I picked up about 30 free classic kindle and audiobooks through a promotion (some still available) last month. Jim Dale’s (narrator for Harry Potter) version of Alice in Wonderland. This is both good and bad. Dale is a very good narrator. But some of his voices seems to be the same as some of his Harry Potter voices and that provides a little unintended humor and confusion.

Prior to this I have never read Alice in Wonderland. But I knew the basic story through the many parodies and cartoon remakes. Alice follows a rabbit down a hole. Alice drinks and eats things that make her grown and shrink. She meets the smiling cat that disappears and reappears. And then she meets a pack of playing cards where the Queen keeps crying ‘off with their head’ every few minutes.

Call of the Wild by Jack London

October 19, 2012 by Adam Shields

Summary: Classic children’s books about a dog that is kidnapped to work the Klondike Gold Rush.

I remember reading Call of the Wild as a child. I am sure it has been over 25 years since I last read it. But it still seemed quite fresh in my mind.

Jack London wrote clear prose. He feels like a western writer (like Zane Gray or Louis L’Amour). In fact I would not be surprised if I read this after reading some Louis L’Amour books. I had several uncles that were long haul truck drivers. And they spent a lot of time reading on their off time. The westerns were passed around frequently and I think that I probably read most of L’Amour’s books by the time I was 13. I am not sure if the prose feels similar because they were writing at a similar time, or because there is a similar western individualism that is flowing through the authors.

The Call of the Wild is clearly a children’s book in orientation. It is told in third person, primarily from Buck’s perspective. It is not Buck (the dog) narrating but a unknown narrator that is telling Buck’s story.

Kneeling With Giants: Learning to Pray with History’s Best Teachers

October 18, 2012 by Adam Shields

Summary: A look at 10 different forms of prayer through biographical sketches.

There are so many books on prayer. As Evangelicals have started paying more attention to historical theology, church history and church practices of other streams of Christian faith there is a need for books like Kneeling with Giants to help us understand the value of prayer practices that we may not be as familiar with.

Gary Hansen takes his experience teaching prayer practices to seminary students and melds it with good church history. In many ways the actual information is not much different from what has been presented in other books, like Richard Foster’s Prayer. But this book will appeal to those that like their history in biographical sketch. Foster can be a bit heady at times.

A Shot of Faith (to the Head): Be a Confident Believer in an Age of Cranky Atheists by Mitch Stokes

October 12, 2012 by All Old Users

Summary: A readable look at the philosophy of reason and human inquiry.

A common frustration in arguing with someone about, well, anything, is the problem of different assumptions and conflicting foundational beliefs””especially when we aren’t even aware they are in conflict. I tend to want to address the underlying issues first, to distill them down to their fundamental essence. Mitch Stokes does exactly that in what is basically a layman’s summary of the work of well-known Notre Dame philosopher Alvin Plantinga.

Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

October 11, 2012 by All Old Users

Reuben Land grew up believing in miracles. He is eleven, living in rural Minnesota in the 1960s with his father and two siblings, when his older brother Davey shoots and kills two neighborhood bullies breaking into the house at night. The day before his trial verdict, Davey escapes, and his family drives out in search of him””led by equal parts Holy Spirit and meandering intuition.

How Harry Cast His Spell by John Granger

October 3, 2012 by All Old Users

In this book John Granger succeeds phenomenally in describing–and defending the very existence of–the Christian symbolism and doctrine that veritably burst from the seams of the Harry Potter series. There is a reason the books are so popular: Rowling is writing subversively edifying Christian fiction in the tradition of all the “greats” of classic English literature, for the postmodern reader of the 21st century. A golden quote from the final chapter:

J.K. Rowling delivers difficult truths to a postmodern audience in such a way that they accept the ideas they would otherwise reject, even laugh about. The existence of the soul? The importance of choosing to believe? The certainty of a life after death and a judgment of those with atrophied souls and darkened hearts? Rowling smuggles these golden wheelbarrows and quite a bit of Christian doctrine and ideas about the human person via her story line right past the most skeptical, even cynical, readers in history. (269)

Sex, Mom and God by Frank Schaeffer

October 2, 2012 by Adam Shields

Take Away: Our ideals and reality rarely match up. Frank Schaeffer is the son of Evangelical power couple Francis and Edith Schaeffer. He is an author of a number of fiction books and several interesting non-fiction books (like his series on the military). But he is probably most well known either for his late 80s … Read more

Father Hunger: Why God Calls Men to Love and Lead Their Families by Douglas Wilson

October 1, 2012 by All Old Users

Bookwi.se Note: Welcome Seth Simmons, a new Bookwi.se Contributor. If you would like to contribute reviews to Bookwi.se read our brief guidelines.

Fatherhood is a holistic role and endeavor. It impacts politics and government, education, vocation, poverty and crime, religion, and more. There is no facet of culture that is not impacted by fatherhood–or its decline.

Douglas Wilson’s Father Hunger is a rousing and convicting call for men to lead their families. Theologically robust yet pastoral and practical, Wilson gets to the heart of the matter in his characteristically direct manner. Like Chesterton, he has a way of looking at an issue from a different perspective and unearthing the basic truths.

An overarching theme of the book is the idea of gratitude. “Masculinity is the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility” (41). “Gratitude declares the meaning of fatherhood like little else can” (59). Fathers are generous in all things. He shows how the apostle Paul compared not dirty and clean, but dirty and grateful (175).

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

September 19, 2012 by Adam Shields

Summary: A Faustian bargain to keep beauty and youth in exchange for your soul.

One of my reading priorities this year was to read more classics. I have not done very well on my other reading goals, so when Amazon and Audible released a ton of free classics to promote their new Whispersync for Voice I decided to pick up most of them and try to start reading more classics.

Honestly, other than the reference in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I had never heard of Dorian Gray (and I did not even know there is a Dorian Gray movie until I started looking around for this review.) I knew that his portrait aged instead of his body. I assumed it was some sort of faustian bargain with the devil.

The actual book leaves a lot to the reader. There is a sort of prayer that Dorian Gray says when he is first shown the portrait where he says that he would give anything to keep his beauty and youth as the painting shows. But there is no explanation, supernatural or otherwise, for why Dorian stops aging and his portrait starts aging. Similarly, we are not really told whether it is Dorian’s own nature that he becomes evil and depraved or whether there is some connection to his soul being lost in the bargain that causes him to become depraved. I assume that Wilde just was allowing his reader to make the faustian connection.