July/Aug/Sept
19.-23. The Four Gospels, and Acts
Background:
This summer I visited Europe for the first time. During my home assignment months back in the States, I had a great opportunity to participate in a family reunion trip to southern Norway and meet part of my grandmother's side of the family. Already being on that side of the Atlantic, I joined a younger sibling on a two-day business trip to Italy, and we flew back to the US from Amsterdam, having traveled through France and Belgium to get there. This whirlwind Euro trip was fun, though our hastily-assembled itinerary involved a lot of train riding, and I took advantage of that extra time to do some Bible reading.
Thoughts:
I haven't included scripture in other places on this book list, whether devotional and/or reading for lesson planning and sermons, etc., since I wasn't reading those passages of the Bible "as a book", but for teaching or other purposes. In this case, with the bucolic countryside of eastern France passing by in a pleasant monotony as viewed from a train window, I decided to start reading through the New Testament book-style, rather than in small bites with lots of commentaries and contemplation. I went through the four gospels and Acts, and got a good ways into Romans before the long-train-ride leg of our journey was over, and enjoyed it very much.
I have no especially deep insights to share from that period of reading, although I was encouraged by the sense of continuity: Jesus came and ignited something, and that fire has spread through our world ever since. Truly, when He was lifted up from the earth, did He draw all men unto Himself. Now hospitals in remote jungles bear the sign of the cross, urbane and mocking atheists trouble themselves to blaspheme His name above any other, and majestic cathedrals impress my Taiwanese friends when they visit Europe. That all these things have been accompanied by human sin and mistakes by the Church may be worth mourning, but the Bible doesn't show us a world that lacks these things, except as a glimpse of what lies beyond final judgment.
I could also say that there is so much going on in scripture in terms of recurrent themes and intentional patterns and what the Spirit has woven into the ongoing narrative of the text. I think it's important that our times of looking deeply and up close at the Bible should be balanced with reading longer passages to get both perspectives.
24. The Leopard - Giuseppe di Lampedusa (Audible)
Background:
Having returned to the US, I drove around North Alabama visiting friends and supporters and speaking at some English and Chinese Churches. In I listened to this interesting tale of Garibaldi-era Italy. It began a sort of theme of the second half of the year of filling in some gaps of my historical knowledge; in this case, until coming across this story I had no real sense of the history and culture of Italy between the Renaissance-era Italian city states and the united Italy which existed by the time of WWI. (This story being set in Sicily, it would only take one or two chapters of an alternate history novel to get from the ending of this story to introducing Don Corleone's family from the Godfather series)
The Basics:
A colorful tale that follows the story of a "Prince" or lord of Sicily, Don Fabrizio, and the decline of the Sicilian aristocracy of whom he is a leading figure. It's a beautiful, slow tale, full of depictions of the luxurious and sumptuous lifestyle lived by the aristocracy, which is balanced masterfully with the anxious sense of encroaching problems and dysfunction and the end of an era. At the beginning we meet the Don in or just past his prime, and by the end both he and the Sicily he knew are no more. That sounds sad, and it is depicted with appropriate solemnity, but the book is a celebration of life and beauty in a time and place already exotic to us now.
The Good:
Imagine a compact little version of War and Peace, set in Sicily and not Russia, and with a much smaller cast of characters, and you have something like this book. On the one hand there are the descriptions of the life of Sicilian aristocrats, with dances and the details of food and clothing and reflections on the importance of certain social niceties. On the other hand the great changes taking place on the Italian mainland do find their way into the tranquil, sun-scorched setting, and to varying extents the lives of the main characters are affected. I enjoyed it very much as a mixture of insights into an era and into the human condition, contained in a well-told and not overly long story.
The Questionable:
This isn't exactly a page-turner, it's a poignant tale of the decline of an era and way of life. That's simply not going to interest some people, and I probably would have enjoyed it much less if it were not for the effort that Edoardo Ballerini put into the Audible version I chose. His voice brought to life the excitement and exhaustion of high-class parties, the middle-aged Don's masterful personality yet increasing tendency to fret, the tension of old wealth and new wealth uneasily coexisting as the latter replaces the former, and the simple delight of good food shared with family around the table. Even so, it's a very visual story, and one in which social occasions and the reputation of families and opinions of trusted peasants are important points of narrative tension, so know that going in.
The Bottom line:
This is a well-told story about a Sicilian aristocratic family in slow decline (as they increasingly realize it), and also the ending of classical era Italy. It has historical value as a detailed description of period life and social conventions, and also you will find yourself drawn slowly in to care very much about the Don and his family. I enjoyed as an Audible book, and recommend the Italian narrator if you want to give it a listen.
25. The Heretics of Saint Possenti - Rolf Nelson
Background:
I wrapped up my US visit with a couple of weeks in Dallas, and was able to visit some Chinese churches and friends from my seminary years, and preach one Sunday morning. I then headed back to Taiwan and after very quickly applying to renew my resident visa, made a subsequent seminar/retreat trip to Indonesia. I was getting tired of traveling by this point--I spent most of the past 6 years doing evangelism and church-planting in a specific city district in the largest metro area of Taiwan, then suddenly this summer I was on 27 different flights on 3 continents. (It was a blessed few months I will never forget, but as it ended I was also ready to be in one place for a while). Feeling a little drained, I chose a book that seemed more "pulp" but was connected thematically to The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher, a book I'd read in 2018 for the purposes of policy discussions with some local expat Christian leaders.
The Basics:
A "what if" near-future tale of a burned-out parish priest who notices good men seem to be hard to find in his church. After a mugging sends him into a spiral of self-reflection and confusion about his worldview, he ends up starting his own monastery to bring in struggling veterans and get them back on their feet again. But this isn't your typical monastery...
Thoughts: In early 2017 a popular and controversial book generated lots of conversations in the Christian Right and outside it. This book was The Benedict Option, and one central theme of the book was that Christians today could learn some important lessons from Saint Benedict and the Benedictine Order. The Heretics of St. Possenti is a kind of fictional exposition on that theme from a Red-State-Roman-Catholic perspective, which imagines a new Catholic order being founded as a creative take on that kind of rural community Dreher imagined, and how that might come about. Since the book makes some very straightforward ideological claims, I feel it's better to address those up front so anyone interested knows what it's about:
The term "woke" is typically used to describe young people figuring out the world is a damaged place and deciding they're going to be very vocal about how not okay they are with that fact. Typically they react in directions established by current popular left-wing ideology. There is a somewhat mirror-image phenomenon online, associated with the term "red pill," which is the perspective this book is written from. That unapologetically right-wing perspective is dished out pretty heavy-handedly through much of it; if you have ever read anything by Ayn Rand, you'll get the idea. This is not a subtle book, it intends to inform you of certain problems in the world and certain ways of thinking about them, mostly through dialogue from friends the bishop meets along the way who educate him on these matters (without quite turning and looking at the reader, but it gets close in various places).
There are some sections where the Bishop and others discuss certain Bible passages which are used to support the narrative on the book, and as usual, some of these are worth considering and others rest on shakier exegesis or proof-texting. I would say more effort was put into these sections than on many other parts of the book. I do support certain conclusions the author reaches, but I am extremely careful with exegesis, and I can't really approve of an exegetical method which delves deeply into original language text in some cases, yet retreats to the "well I'm no scholar, but as a simple man it seems" in others. Both can be valid depending on the context, but switching back and forth as convenient just shows you have already reached your conclusion and you're going as deep or shallow into interpretation as necessary to support your ideological point. As I have written previously on this blog, our ideological and other convictions aren't determined by our understanding of Biblical truth but often vice versa, and it takes consistent, serious, long-term effort to reverse that tendency.
The author of this book has very straightforward concepts of who the "good guys" and "bad guys" are. Depending on how aware you are of right-wing/red-pill sensibilities, you may find parts of the book offensive, boring, or at least rather clumsy in their presentation. If the idea of the men's rights movement makes you hot under the collar, or if you consider the idea that some immigrants are problematic to be hateful, this book will probably make you angry or sad or both at the same time. You have been warned.
Aside from the "message fiction" aspect, this book does have some enjoyable sections (the scene of recovering vets singing matins together under the starlight is especially memorable), and proposes a creative solution to the real world problems of men with broken lives, and churches "having a form of godliness but denying its power." If you aren't of the political Right but want to understand the worldview from an insider perspective, this book might be very helpful in that sense. If you are of the political Right, you may enjoy the book, though it's also unapologetically Catholic and saves a few reprimands for we rebellious Protestants as well.
The Bottom line:
This is an interesting premise for a story, but that story is more or less told in service to the book's ideological stance. If that doesn't bother you (whether because you take a similar stance, or because you're not easily triggered by such things), and if the idea of a new militant order of Catholic monks who help strugging vets get back on their feet--and sustain their monastery by ammo sales in the mean time--sounds like fun, you might enjoy it. For me, I'd like to see other creative takes on what people taking the Benedict-Option-style community building idea to 11 might look like, but less infused with Ayn Rand style ideological expositions and simplistic ethnic stereotyping.
October
26. Sodapop Soldier - Nick Cole
Background:
This quick read was a low-effort way to pass some time on my last few flights of the summer.
The Basics:
There is a genre one might call "gamer fiction" (Ready Player One being a well-known example) and this novel is something along those lines: a near-future fiction about a professional gamer playing two very different computer games at the same time, one as his "day job", and one as his side gig. After he receives a certain account on an illegal "anything goes" game, he finds himself caught up in a power struggle which goes in multiple unexpected directions.
The Good:
It's not boring. The author spins an improbable but mostly well-told digital yarn of a simple man whose professional skills at online gaming lead him into a larger web of complications which have him simultaneously pursuing the good life and trying to not to die.
The parts where he and his team are urgently working together against the odds to defeat the online forces of another megacorporation conveyed the excitement of online gaming well. To anyone who doesn't understand what many men and some women find so compelling about multiplayer or co-op style gaming, this book does get that across. There are pop culture references scattered throughout, and the writing style is high-energy and positive. I can't find any specific information on how old the author is, but it's a Gen Z kind of book, where the cynicism present is due less to years of life experience and more to having seen the darker side of human nature the internet so easily reveals, and where anything might be possible if you have skills and hustle hard enough.
The Questionable:
During my years in Dallas I helped with a youth group at a medium-sized church with mostly Asian families, and we had this problem where kids from financially well-off homes would get old enough to really start feeling the lure of "the world" in the biblical sense. As soon as they got a car (usually an expensive newer model) they vanished, never to be seen again. Some of them became truly unapologetic materialists, and church or religion of any kind had nothing to seriously interest them anymore as they strove to live what was considered the best life for privileged young people in the current year. The closest they came to religion was the "church of hustle" where you were expected to work hard, put yourself out there, take chances, join an upwardly mobile team, etc. all in exchange for worldly success and leveraging your abilities to see what you could achieve.
To a young person with enough resources to get into that game, and with a zest for living life and seeing what's out there in the world, that siren call seems nearly impossible to avoid without parents who are strong believers with a good relationship to their kids, and even then some kids latch onto worldly goals and strive after them with all their heart, sometimes returning to Church only after many years of their parents' prayers.
Books like this tick me off a little because they're written from the perspective of that shiny and uber-attractive lie. The protagonist is that guy who saves the world (sort of) and gets the girl (or lots of female attention, at least) and finds a way to make it up to the literally-higher class areas and eat the good food and sample the good life. The best I can say for it is that it's "honestly materialistic"--the author almost seems to be writing himself into the character as someone who simply wants it as good as he knows some other people have, and who genuinely enjoys nice food and nice things, not as status symbols but for themselves. (What I mean by "honestly materialistic" is along the lines of what Paul was talking about "if Christ were not raised." Lacking God, the kind of nice-guy hedonism the book's protagonist aims for would be a very reasonable way of life.)
Sodapop Soldier is a "fun" book aimed at that younger audience; the ones who want a shot at what the worldly world has to offer, the good life and attention from beautiful women and the pluck to run with the big dogs when the chance comes along. Reading it in 2019 helped me realize that as I get into my mid-30's the wealth of shalom looks increasingly attractive when compared to the riches of mammon.
In terms of the book's shortcomings as a book, as someone who has a lot of experience with computer games, the long passages describing events in-game and the carefully rendered detail in the levels were understandable, but the dark and wicked aspects of the black market the protagonist encounters while playing the illegal game were wearying (knowing that world exists doesn't mean reading about it is fun, though it does succeed in heightening the tension for a certain phase of the novel). The excessively deus ex machina / Matrix-style ending of a certain plotline of the book was a bit disappointing as well.
The Bottom line: A gamer action novel that tries to get all kinds of things packed into one book and somewhat succeeds. It's well-written for what it is, but the "nice-guy hedonist" worldview isn't what we need more of in 2020, though it's very Gen Z and so we'll probably see more of it anyway.
27. Beautiful Outlaw - John Eldredge
Background: I had begun this book last year and bogged down part of the way through. Returning to Taiwan after a summer of traveling, I was ready to settle back into local ministry. Remembering this book, I went back and finished it, and I'm glad I did.
The Basics: It's a John Eldredge book about the humanness of Jesus. Eldredge looks at the life of Jesus and explores His personality, contending that Jesus' divinity did not leave him without a sense of humor, righteous indignation, or even intellectual playfulness.
The Good: This book is a strong call to know and love Jesus, and understand Him especially in His humanity. Eldredge wants us to understand Jesus is fully human, not in the abstract sense but with a real personality. As with all of Eldredge's books, reading it also conveys the warmth of the author's good wishes towards his readers.
The Questionable:
It is nothing against John Eldredge to say that I sometimes struggle to enjoy his style. I have a sort of hyper-rational personality, which means a lot of his friendly overtures and low information density leave me feeling pleasantly impatient, for lack of a better term. It's a good book and a good reminder, but it could be half its length. Jesus is a real person, but He is different from what Eldredge imagines too, because the reality of a person is never like what we imagine a person to be. I am content to not need to fill in those gaps (I have written about the danger of doing so based on popular conceptions, artistic traditions, or our imagination) but for people who need some godly imaginative aids here then Eldredge's book is a good candidate.
The Bottom line: If you struggle with seeing Jesus as a kind of concept or figurehead, or unapproachable symbol of righteousness, etc. then this book should be sufficient to flesh Him out as a real, lovable person, someone who knows us and can be known.
28. Life Together - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Background: For a while now I have been working on a new ministry strategy based on all my experiences on the neighborhood church plant I've spent a few years helping with. Part of this new strategy will involve a team who lives a life of obedient discipleship, and while thinking about that someone mentioned this book and it sounded like a timely reading.
Thoughts:
Bonhoeffer starts the book with a reminder, frequently commented on in our time, perhaps less so in his own, that Christian life is designed to be lived in community. It seems Christianity in the West is highly bifurcated -- there are traditions in which Christianity and community are more or less identical, and those in which community is viewed as an optional part of your "personal faith." There are parts of the Church that in recent years have rediscovered and specialized in community. I suspect they would engage with this book the most enthusiastically, since it's mostly not a pitch about Christian community--one because it's Bonhoeffer, who doesn't waste time persuading when it's clear he is correct (heh), and two because he rightly takes the importance of Christian community as a premise and spends a lot of the book talking about the details of community, how daily life ought to look like, all kinds of practical bits that I hadn't ever given a lot of thought to, and many that I don't necessarily agree are essential.
Bonhoeffer does tend to lapse into that mode where he's going to tell you exactly what the wrong ways are and what the right way is, in detail. When it's Bonhoeffer doing this, often one wants to respond with "Amen!" But in this book he tends to do so for questions of practice. (Can one legitimately assert a particular universal orthopraxy for Christian community?) The points in the book where he begins passionately espousing specific ways to tackle the adventure of doing Christian life together took a bit more effort to get through, since they were practical but written for his own readers (one gets the feeling of reading over the shoulder of his original audience). The ending chapters were very good, however.
The Bottom line: It's Bonhoeffer, and his topic is as relevant today as it was when he wrote it. Very much worth a read and some contemplation.
29. Taliessin through Logres
Background: After my deep dive into the fiction works of Charles Williams in February, I went back to read one of his long poems. I was probably too tired to appreciate it fully, but I'm not sure I'm poetically fluent enough to enjoy it either way.
The Basics: A multi-tiered poetic journey into Arthurian epic which links the Matter of Britain with a poetic ideal of Byzantium.
The Good: A fellow Inkling with Charles, Logres is the name C. S. Lewis uses for "England within England" in the Arthurian context he establishes in That Hideous Strength. Some of those ideas are mirrored in the tale of Taliessin.
Charles Williams is a mad genius, and his long, several-part poem plays with historical and mythopoeic ideas in the context of Arthurian legends and a metaphor of Europe as represented by a human form and truth as represented by geometric realities.
The Questionable:
I found a guide to reading this series of poems online. The guide recommend several readings just to get started on appreciating it and waiting to try to figure out anything close to the author's intended meaning(s) until deep into this process. That may be a joyful task for some, but it has truly been observed that Williams' poetry is not very accessible. What that means for me is that I have to be in a certain mindset to enjoy this kind of poetry, and for me the very particular mindset required to absorb and enjoy Williams' poetry in this work comes perhaps not even once a year.
The Bottom line: Poetry that's too advanced for me to fully enjoy, but sitting under a waterfall can certainly be an enjoyable experience in itself without needing to understand where all the water is going.
30. The Shape of a Pocket
Background: During her summer visit to meet my family in the US, my fiancee needed to find a certain author's original quote for her write-up of an art exhibition here in Taiwan. We found the author and the book on Amazon and I bought it out of curiosity, intending to read it later. It waited for a few months while I was busy with the things described above, and then I had time to explore it. It was a good decision, far from my usual reading habits but a book that I enjoyed very much.
The Basics:
A collection of essays by John Berger on a wide variety of topics in art and culture. This includes his interesting, indirect correspondence with the revolutionary leader Marcos of Mexico's Zapatista movement.
Thoughts:
It's an eclectic array of subjects, from Frida Kahlo to Egyptian death paintings, written by someone who finds everything he writes about fascinating. That in itself makes it enjoyable.
John Berger is something of a "super-leftist," and his ideological companions by extension include the greatest mass murderers of the 20th century. But reading him is a reminder of all the strengths the Left once possessed and by which Leftist thinking became de rigueur throughout western academia. He is possessed of those morals which propelled the leftist revolutions and the idealism which led many to join them.
More to the point of this published collection, his writing reveals a quiet yet lively mind which enjoys solitude and contemplation, yet he writes with a passionate love for humanity and the common struggle of man as he understands it.
There are some portions of the book written as transcriptions of radio talks, which work less well in print than as a radio address, and what Berger intends as the humorous bits have to be experienced vicariously.
The Bottom line: This collection of essays by a British leftist thinker on various artistic and political subjects and his own unique perspectives was enjoyable for me in the way that a couple of the museums I visited in Europe this summer were; I'd never have gone to that place just for that museum, but in seeking things to do in that area, I found some fascinating things worth further contemplation.
That wraps up part II of this review, I'll save my top book recommendations for the end of that part III.
