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Note: Bookwi.se contributor Emily Flury posted a review of this book earlier.  This review is from Adam Shields.

Summary: A humorous satire about a group of teen beauty pageant contestants that crash land on a deserted island and have to figure out how to survive.

It is summer. And I am mostly in a mood for vacation reading.  Vacation reading for me is funny, usually light, reads.  I often lean toward young adult or action/romance or maybe some fantasy books during the summer.

After reading Emily’s review, I picked up Beauty Queens from the library on audiobook.  This is a book that I think needs to be listened to.  I have not seen a paper copy, but I have no idea how it would properly communicate the story the way that the audiobook does.  There are commercials, flashbacks, pageant background interviews, not the mention the actually story line.  In audio form, it works really well.

This books is satire.  A group of teen beauty pageant girls crash land on a deserted island.  All of the adults and chaperons and most of the pageant contestants die in the plane crash.  But a small group of them survive and have to figure out how to live on a deserted island.

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Takeaway: Asserting that the Gospel is about Jesus, does not minimize the need for salvation, the need for evangelism, the need for social ministry or God’s transforming power.

In my desire to expand my knowledge (and keep myself entertained), I read a lot of books.  In my head, I know that many times I need to ruminate on a book more to really get the point and put into practice what I have heard from it.  But too often I just keep reading.  After all I have a blog to write.

So I made a goal for myself to re-read one book a month.  I suck at meeting goals.  I have only re-read 10 in the last 18 months and only 2 this year.  But when I re-read, I like to read in a different format. The first time I read King Jesus Gospel I read it on my kindle.  This time I listened to the audiobook.

First things, first.  I think this is a very important book. I think that the message, that we need to place Jesus as Savior, Lord and Messiah and full-filler of the story of Israel, is vitally important.

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Summary: 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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Summary: 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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If I could sum up this book, I would say that it gives a wonderful example of how beauty can come from tragedy. The book is about two families, each of whom lose a spouse to cancer but then find their way to each other for comfort, healing, and love. I feel that the authors would want you to know that getting through the tragedies of losing a spouse and then continuing with their lives to find hope and love only happened because of their faith.

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Takeaway: A reminder that we are not God.  We need to submit to God and not try to get our idea of God to submit to us.

Books that help us correct our false ideas about God are everywhere.  There are so many because we have a sinful nature that tries to recreate God in our image.

Imaginary Jesus uses humor and a fictional memoir filled with false Jesus characters and the main character has to find the right one.

The Good and Beautiful God: Falling in Love With the God Jesus Knows by James Bryan Smith uses our understanding of the relationship between the Son and the Father to correct our understanding of God.

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Takeaway: Subject matter and writing style and content do not always match.  Odd to hear tragic, violent and heart rending action in such beautiful prose.

I am clearly following popularity when I read Cormac McCarthy.  I had not read him before I watched No Country for Old Men.  I then listen to the book as an Audiobook.

The Road has the same narrator, but the southwestern rural drawl did not seem to fit the character quite as well.  But it grew on me.

What I like so much about McCarthy’s writing is the lyric (almost poetic) descriptions of the narrative.

He is beautiful to listen to, even as the incredibly tragic or violent actions are happening.

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Takeaway: Christians need to allow their heroes to be real people.  Putting people up on a pedestal not only harms those looking, but those on the pedestal.

I honestly do not know much about Francis Schaeffer.  I have read one short book on the importance of ecumenical cooperation that I really liked.

But otherwise, I have stereotyped Francis Schaeffer as a bit of a kook, even though many hold him as one of the greatest Evangelical thinkers of the last century.

So I was not really all that interested in this book.  I had heard it was a screed against Evangelicals and a book by a child tearing down his parents.

But eventually I worked my way around to it.  And I am very glad that I did.  It is one of the best memoirs I have read in a while.  Frank (son of Francis and Edith) is clear at the beginning of the book that he is writing a memoir.  These are his memoires. He is not focused primarily on telling the story of his parents or writing a biography, but telling his own story as he remembers it.

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Summary: The conclusion, this time, is real.

The end of The Truth of The Matter (book #3), felt like a conclusion.  Because there is a book four, I knew it was not.  But it appeared that the terrorist ring had been broken up.  Charlie was found by the good guys and he would be heading home soon, cleared of murder and ready to enjoy his regular life.

It was not to be.

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