Book Review: In Constant Prayer, by Robert Benson

"Get this book," my best friend told me. "I've been meaning to buy it for you--I thought of you every chapter when I read it." This is the friend who knows me better than anyone except my husband--there was nothing to do but get the book.

Benson's "In Constant Prayer" is a book about liturgical prayer, specifically about using the daily office for what most evangelicals would call personal quiet time. It's a primer on what the daily office is for people who think that is office is where you keep your desk. It's a challenge and encouragement to the Protestants to take up this ancient practice. It's a poetic meditation on beauty and challenges of choosing this form of structuring your prayer life.

It's been a long time since I read a book that simultaneously challenged, convicted and encouraged me like this one has. Here is a way to practice prayer, he suggests, for those of us who are no good at praying and aren't ever going to be on our own. It's utterly deflating and freeing. So you're not a praying artiste. You don't need to be. You don't need to reinvent "quiet time." The church throughout the ages has an easy step-by-step guide for you.

Most American Christians are not very good people of prayer. If you feel like you ought to pray more, but just can't quite seem to get it to work, try praying by the recipe with Benson and the daily office.

Five stars.

Book Review: International Children's Bible, "Big Red"

As a mother of four with concerns about discipleship, I'm interested in anything that will get my kids interacting with scripture. Touted as "The Translation Children can read and understand" and "now with fresh 3-D art," I was interested to take a look. Sadly, I was diappointed on all counts.

One of the things I've learned as a parent is that any book that I want my children to read must be built to withstand a child's handling, but this Bible wouldn't last a month with my first-grader. It's cheap paperback version with standard Bible-onion-skin pages and standard Bible six point font. It fails on the durability and readability counts. This isn't a Bible that they can grow with.

I'm ambivalent about the "fresh art for a video-game generation." The artwork looks like a set of World of Warcraft screen shots. Lots of ripped biceps and action hero stubble. I also wonder if a generation which has been systematically trained to view this style of artwork as "not real" or "only a game" wouldn't actually lead some children to have a lesser view of the veracity of scripture.

As for the translation itself, the ICB is also known as the New Century Version. It's a dynamic equivalence version--with rather more dynamic than equivalence, it seems. (A good overview of the history of the NCV can be found here.) It's not a translation that I would personally choose for my children, for a couple of reasons. One, simplifying the language down to a third grader's level of understanding is itself a translational choice. There are some passages of scripture that I as an adult do not understand--we do our children a disservice if we teach them that the Bible ought to be able to be squeezed into the box of our own understanding. As the above link points out, there are glosses that drift into full mis-translations here. Two (related by not quite the same), adults often forget that children can smell condescension a mile away, and have nothing but scorn for it. Children don't want something that has been "dumbed down" for them. They want the real thing. It's a balancing act, of course, to present children with "the real thing" in a form and to a degree that will not overwhelm or daunt them, but this isn't a translation that seems to add much to the mix. As regards "extras," the dictionary, concordance and maps are quite decent, but not enough to make up for the other drawbacks.

Two stars out of five.

Book Review: Wild at Heart by John Eldredge

It's a bit of a different thing reviewing the 10th anniversary edition of a New York Times bestseller than it is reviewing a new release. The book has obviously already resonated with a great many people and has staying power as well--they don't put out revised and expanded editions of flash-in-the-pan bestsellers. The questions a review should ask, it seems to me, tend more towards the reflective--not, "What will this book do?" but "What has this book done, and why? And is that a good thing? And what does that tell us?"

It's also a bit of different thing reviewing a book for which one is not the intended audience. This is a book for men, about men. It is a book about gender differences, and I am a woman reading and reviewing it. I can choose to believe its assertions or not. I can try to evaluate whether the worldview and system that Eldredge sets forth rings true with my observation and experience--but I cannot interact with the questions from the inside as he intends his audience (of men) to do.

Eldredge says that there are three God-given desires built into every man:

1. A battle to fight

2. An adventure to live

3. A beauty to rescue

Additionally, he says that every man is battling fear, primarily in the form of the question "Do I have what it takes?" That healthy men will operate out of their strength, through Christ to fight the battle, live the adventure and rescue the beauty. But that the wounds to a man's strength (from the world, the flesh and the devil) leave men so afraid that they are not "man enough" to pull it off that they end up either

--desperately over-compensating and trying to prove to themselves and everyone else that they can do it, or else

--abandoning it all as hopeless and left as weak, passive and ineffective.

The way out of this mess is the recognition and healing of the wounds, finding the source of true strength (God), and acceptance of the battles, adventures, and beauty that God has in store for each man.

It's easy to see why this book has been so popular and widely used. Eldredge is a good writer. Alternating anecdotes and explication, he unpacks his ideas thoroughly and carefully, making it virtually impossible to miss or misunderstand his points. Additionally, he invites the reader to go through the material slowly, taking time to process and apply the principles he lays out. This combination makes the book ideal for a church small-group study or class setting. In tone, Eldredge is relentlessly encouraging and positive. And the schema that he sets out is general enough to cover a full half of the human race, but the probing questions he uses to guide his readers through their own self-discovery and healing are the sort that are probably going to spur growth with just about anyone who interacts with them seriously and intentionally.

No single interpretive lens for categorizing and understanding people will give us the whole truth. Individuals are too complex and varied for that. Meyers-Briggs, the Enneagram, and perhaps even cat-people-dog-people can shed some light on who we are and give us tools to interpret and name and understand what we see and feel. By using multiple lenses we can see different truths and gain an ever more accurate and nuanced understanding of who we are as people. Eldredge's work in Wild at Heart (and its companion book for women, Captivating) give a valuable and truth-revealing lens to help us better see ourselves.

If you're inclined to read Eldredge's work, I would particularly recommend you do so together with Tim Keller's short (though challenging) book Counterfeit Gods. Eldredge's weak point is his theology. Wild at Heart is basically a work of Christian pop psychology--and quite a good one. While Eldredge's theology informs and shapes his views of people, I think that his worldview--his first lens, if you will--is a psychological, not a theological one. This isn't surprising, or even necessarily a criticism. The man was trained as a counselor, not as a pastor or theologian. Keller says in his promotional video on Amazon that "Idolatry is anything more fundamental than God to your happiness, meaning in life, or identity." Eldredge describes very clearly some of the ways that we go looking for happiness, meaning and identity apart from God--but he does not name them as idols--and he calls for a return to God to find identity, etc, but he writes as if simply recognizing God as the better source is sufficient. As if it were that easy. Keller recognizes how bent on idolatry the sinful human heart is. As he preached in his sermon at the Gospel Coalition in April 2009, idols must not simply be discerned--they must also be exposed and destroyed. The always excellent Keller gives some superb teaching in rooting out things that we'd rather not look square in the face.

All of us need help to see ourselves and to see God truly. We all need corrective lenses. (Scripture tells us that those who worship idols blind themselves, and though Christ comes to give sight to the blind, through our continuing idolatry we continue to screw ourselves up.) If you're looking for some self-understanding and encouragement, Wild at Heart (and Captivating) are certainly worth trying out.

Four stars out of five.

This review was written as part of Thomas Nelson's Book Sneeze Review program. I received a complimentary copy of the book to read and review. I was under no obligation to provide a positive review.

Book Review: Jesus Manifesto, by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola

(Guest post by Rob, filling in for Sara)

The best summary of this book comes from the authors themselves, in the last chapter: Christians don’t follow Christianity; they follow Christ. Christians don’t preach themselves; they preach Christ. Christians don’t preach about Christ: they simply preach Christ. The purpose of the book is to lay out why that’s so and what that looks like, in order to address “the major disease of today’s church . . . JDD: Jesus Deficit Disorder.”

Sweet and Viola do an excellent job of this; they have written a book which is truly centered on—indeed, saturated with—Jesus. Rather than resting on human wisdom, it rests solidly on Scripture, the word that contains the Word, “the cradle that contains the Christ,” in Luther’s phrase; this is not to say that they ignore the wisdom of Christians through the ages, but they only use it to expound and amplify the voice of the Scriptures as they speak of Christ. This book will make anyone who reads it with an open mind and heart aware of their hunger and thirst for Jesus; one hopes it will do the same for the American church.

This book was provided to me free by Thomas Nelson in exchange for a book review as part of their BookSneeze program. I was under no obligation to provide a positive review.

Book Review: I Am Hutterite, by Mary-Ann Kirkby

In 1969, Ann-Marie Dornn's parents took eleven year old Ann-Marie and her six brothers and sisters and left their Hutterite Colony to live in the "English" world. The decision had been years in the making. Though this book purports to be the story of Ann-Marie's adjustment to life away from her Hutterite community, it is as much the story of her parents as her. She starts her tale with the family history of each of parents individually and covers their courtship and its controversial place in the community. She writes about the establishment of Fairholme colony and the community dynamics of Hutterite colonies. We're three and a half chapters in (out of eleven) before Ann-Marie is even born, and eight chapters in before her family actually leaves the colony. Only the last third of the book is about their adjustment to the outside world. Mostly, this is a book about what it means to be an integrated part of a Hutterite community.

Or is this in fact Ann-Marie's story? Hutterite faith is definitionally lived out in community. Gemeinshaft ist der einzege Weg, they say. Community life is the only way to heaven. This is a story about belonging and choice. About family and commitment. About the difference between the ideal of community life and what happens ordinary sinful people try to live it out. About keeping individual integrity when there doesn't seem to be a right way forward. Ann-Marie-the-child loved community life, was welcomed and enfolded by it, while her parents struggled with adult conflicts, of which she knew virtually nothing. To understand Ann-Marie's story, it is clear, one must understand the community of which she was a part. The proper Hutterite understands her identity first and foremost not as an individual, but as a member of the group. Ann-Marie was wholly a proper Hutterite child and her beloved family-colony was who she was. No wonder leaving was so wrenching.

This is a well written memoir and I would happily recommend it. The common themes that play out in our human experience of love, pain, family and forgiveness are richly drawn within the very concrete experience of a specific time, place and culture. It's a quick, easy read. Four stars out of five.

This book was provided to me free by Thomas Nelson in exchange for a book review as part of their BookSneeze program. I was under no obligation to provide a positive review.

Two Book Reviews: The Marriage Code and Love & War

One of my husband's ministry mentors some years back told us that he believed that every married couples--especially pastors--ought to go in for marriage counseling routinely every three years. Rob and I haven't done that. But I have taken it as encouragement that our marriages are something with which we need to actively engage. Two new relationship books bear reading and discussion this spring--Farrels' The Marriage Code and Eldredges' Love & War. I'd strongly recommend both of them for any couple, whether healthy or struggling (though my recommendation for Love & War comes with some caveats).

The Marriage Code examines the dynamic of security and success in a marriage. Both men and women need both security and success the Farrels say, but women tend to primarily need security and use success as a means to that end, while men primarily need success and will sacrifice security to achieve it. Additionally, (as per the Five Love Languages) people tend to give what they themselves want to receive, so women, the Farrels argue, tend to try to make their husbands feel secure when what they need to be doing is helping to be successful, while men tend to try to feed their wives success when what they need to be doing is feeding them security. The Farrels then unpack this idea across a variety of issues, covering work and play, communication, finances

One of the more interesting things to me about this book is the principle that men are supposed to be successful and that one of the keys to a good marriage is for a man to feel that he is a success as a husband and a father. A man will pour his time and energy into the areas in his life where he can accomplish things and being deliberate about setting up those positive feedback loops in areas where God has called him to work is critical. Much of the language of success has been hijacked by the legalists and heretics of the American church. An orthodox, gospel-driven view of righteous success in an accomplishment driven society is sorely needed.

This brings us to Love & War. In this book, John and Stasi Eldredge give us a picture of marriage--all marriage in general and yours in particular--as a battleground of spiritual warfare. Satan wants your marriage to fail and you need to be active in fighting for your spouse, not against them. My main problem with the Eldredge's theology is this: I think they are far too prone to name as the devil that which is simply the world and the flesh. There is a real danger in anthropomorphizing certain kinds of problems and sin. That said, the Bible makes very clear that Satan is very real, that we do have a malignant, intelligent Enemy working against us. And the Eldredges have written a challenging, sympathetic, pragmatic, gritty book on the core how-tos of making marriage work between profoundly sinful and broken (that's all of us, folks!) people. Too many Christian marriage enrichment materials start with the implicit assumption that the couples working through them are Nice Christian People without significant hang-ups or issues. Give 'em a few active listening techniques and understanding and peace (voila!) will blossom. The Eldredges start with the assumption that you don't really have a clue just how screwed up you are and that the best thing that you can do for yourself and your relationship is take a good long look in the mirror. Get some humility. And expect Capital I Issues from yourself and the people around you.

Any good counselor will tell you that any real change starts with the understanding that you can't change other people; you can only change yourself. (And indeed--good theology takes that a step further; you can't change yourself in any meaningful sense. Only the Spirit of God can change you). So in order for our marriages to grow, we need to not focus on our spouse's problems but on letting God point out to us the areas where he wants to grow us and then cooperating with God to become the people he means us to be.

But if the Eldredges make the challenges to our marriages out to be worse than you wanted to admit, they also promise a pay-off better than you could have hoped for. "This is the deepest and most mythic reality in the world. This is the story of God's romance with mankind." Each of our marriages is a microcosm of the love of God, a peephole for us to see the wild, infinite, creative love that we are called to. A crack we allow in our self-protective shell that pry wide open to pour his love through us.

At the end of last year, Elizabeth Weil published an article in the NY Times about the quest she and her husband took to "improve" their marriage. For the most part, the secular experiment turned into an exercise in frustration, simply bringing into focus irritations that they were generally able to ignore. In the end, she comes to the conclusion that happiness cannot be found in ones spouse and a good marriage is one in which the spouses keep growing. This dovetails neatly with the Christian insight that we do not find our fulfillment in other people but in God. And our marriages are the primary place where we help each other along in doing that. If your desire is to grow into the fullness of who God made you to be, and for your spouse to do the same, each of these books is a good resource.

Book Review: The Egypt Game, by Zilpha Keatly Snyder

This is a review with spoilers.

My dear MIL, who loves to send books to our daughters, has picked up on the fact that any book with a Newberry medal on the cover is probably a pretty good bet for something that we'll be pleased to have our kids read, so it was no real surprise when a used copy of "The Egypt Game" showed up in the mail. But something from my long gone days as an elementary school library aide (volunteer shelving slave) rose up to the surface with the title and author. Hadn't there been some sort of controversy at my little Christian school over this book? Occult something or another? For a conservative Christian school, ours really had a remarkable selection on the shelves, counting on parents to screen what their own kids checked out rather than heavily censoring what went onto the shelves in the first place. And after all, a Newberry book is usually a pretty good read--I decided that this was one that I wanted to read myself before passing it on to my nine year old daughter.

What I found, to my delight and consternation, was a book that didn't fit in to any of my preconceived slots. The book definitely deserved the Newberry honor that it received; from a literary point of view, everything about this book is excellent. Character development is realistic and subtle, and tied together with a strong plot. The writing is clear and interesting. The story involves April, a sixth grade girl in 1960's California who is dumped on her grandmother by a mother who isn't interested in having a child around. The grandmother and reader know that this is a permanent move for April, but April wants to believe that her mother wants her, waiting anxiously for infrequent postcards and accepting at face value thin excuses. At her grandmother's apartment building, April makes friends with Melanie and they discover a mutual love for "imagining" games. An additional mutual interest in the history of ancient Egypt and the availability of an almost private vacant lot lead naturally into "The Egypt Game," an extended reimagining and role-playing of life as high priestesses in ancient Egypt. They are joined by Melanie's tag-a-long four year old brother Marshall and--eventually--several other friends from the neighborhood.

So what do we have? An excellently written book in which children make diverse friends (good!), have active imaginations (good!), are vibrantly interested in real history (good!), and want to play out their interest (very natural) by recreating altars to Isis and Set and then developing and carrying out pagan rituals, sacrifices and mummification (WHOA!). Historically, the ancient Egyptians really did worship a wide variety of false gods. Pagan rituals really did dominate and heavily influence their lives.

Let's jump ahead a minute. There is no occult in this book. There is no implication that the kids actually awaken Egyptian gods. Late in the book there a couple of sort of creepy occurences when the kids start to wonder if they might have, but then (Scooby-Doo like) it's all revealed to have all been people doing tricksy things all along, and everyone is reassured that none of it was actually real and it was all just a game. The neighborhood bad guy is caught and April develops a better relationship with her grandmother, and it's all a nice almost-coming-of-age story about family and friendship, imagination and learning. At least, I'm sure that's how the author intended it.

Problem is, from a Christian point of view, what was actually real and what wasn't? Some of those kid-constructed pagan rituals looked . . . an awful lot like real worship. God has a lot of very pointed things to say in scripture about worshipping false gods. None of them are good. Additionally, there's a lot of confusion (even among adults! even in the church!) about the nature of worship and how we practice it and what it means.

As a Christian parent, trying to guide my children in holiness, trying to help them sort out what it means to live a life of worship, I can't imagine a situation in which I wouldn't slap my kids down hard if I found them playing "Pagan Rituals." There's just no way that it can be a good idea. I don't buy the line that reading about magic in stories is going to turn kids to witchcraft, or that kids will mindlessly mimic anything they find in a book. But the message of "The Egypt Game" is much more subtle and dangerous--none of it is real, and it's all in good fun. Because make no mistake, the kids have a great time and the game is a great game. The author is sure that most all kids would be better off if they were imaginative like this. Am I going to give this book to my kids to read? Maybe when they're thirty-five and raising my imaginative grandchildren.

Book Review: Hand of Fate by Lis Wiehl and April Henry

FBI Agent Nicole Hedges, Federal Prosecutor Allison Pierce and TV news reporter Cassidy Shaw form the Triple Threat Club--friends united by their mutual passions for justice and dark chocolate. This second book of the series has them working to solve the murder of radio personality Jim Fate. The problem is not who would want kill him--the problem is, who wouldn't? A bombastic, over-opinated loud-mouth, this is a man who uses even his own hate mail to boost his ratings, handing out "Nut of the Day" awards on the air for the wackiest emails and insults he receives. Former lovers, envious co-workers, corrupt politicians and people he has bullied and mocked on the air provide a daunting list of suspects.

This was a fun read. It's billed as a thriller, but I would describe it more as a crime drama. It reminded me strongly of TV shows like Law & Order, CSI, and Numb3rs. Strong characterization is nicely woven together with almost non-stop action, and well-chosen details about law and media sketch in the professions of the protagonists well. And Portland here is written very much as itself--not just as a generic city. I appreciate the light, realistic touch that the authors give religion here. Each of the three protagonists has a different religious viewpoint (Christian, cynically de-churched and agnostic), and each is written simply and fairly. Our beliefs influence how we interact with the world around us and we don't all believe the same thing. The authors clearly intend to follow these themes out over the course of the series, but I appreciate the fact that they don't seem to be in any hurry to come to quick solutions and canned answers. Real change usually is slow and organic, after all. My one real complaint with the book was towards the end, with a twist that seemed to come out of left field. Would there have been a mystery if they had found that key piece of information on page 50 instead of 250? Maybe not. On the other hand, is it realistic that it would have taken that long for that to turn up? Um, yes. Definitely.

I'd have no hesitation in recommending this book to someone looking for a good piece of beach reading for Spring Break. I'll probably go and get the first of the series now from the library and will definitely look for the third coming out next year.

Three and a half stars out of five.

Book Review: The Voice of Psalms

The Voice Project is, according to its website, "a retelling of the Scriptures . . . not of words, but of meaning and experience." You might call it a translation project. Its team of contributors is tackling the Bible one book at a time, publishing each book separately. It represents a "collaboration among scholars, writers, musicians, and other artists."

It seemed to me that the book of Psalms might be particularly suited for this kind of project--it is, after all, the hymnal of the Jewish Temple, the lyric book and liner notes for the songs of David (and a few others). Songwriters and poets have been re-translating, re-expoloring, re-singing the Psalms for centuries. "The Voice" has reduced them to prose. Here then, is the first of my complaints on this grievous, ridiculous, self-important re-telling project. (It's too far off to be considered a translation). It doesn't even succeed at what it purports to be trying to do. I presume that the meaning and experience of the original readers (and singers) of the Psalms would have been such that they could recognize what they were reading as song lyrics. But it is nearly impossible to imagine singing what is rendered in "The Voice," sometimes laughably so. Who thought it was a good idea to render Psalm 2:12 ("you will be destroyed" in the NIV and "you will perish" in the ESV) as "you won't stand a chance." ? Just one small example of how the book is riddled with unpoetic modern cliche.

Now, about the italicized material. The introduction says that it is "not directly tied to a dynamic translation of the original language." Put another way--it's interpolation. Or, let's simplify yet again, since "The Voice" seems to be all about simplifying--it's stuff that they just added in because they felt like it. And they don't want anyone to be distracted by footnotes or whatnot--so it's right there in the text. Italics or no, which of us can really read through a passage and keep ourselves from integrating the material? It's very troubling.

There's not much worth saying about the interpretive/devotional essays spattered through the book. They're pretty typical American, legalistic apply-it-to-me-and-how-I-feel and God-wants-you-to-work-at-this type fare. Utterly ignorable.

For more educated critique of the word by word translation and theological agenda of this project, see Chris Rosebrough tackling their rendering of the Gospel of John 1 here and Romans 3 here.

One half star for good paper, font and binding. Otherwise, none. If you want a dynamic translation, try The Message.

Book Review: Five Cities that Ruled the World

How could a man this smart, how could as good a writer as Douglas Wilson write a book this bad? Five Cities that Ruled the World is a popular history giving an overview of Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London, and New York. In the introduction Wilson informs the reader that he will be showing how "Jerusalem has bequeathed to us a legacy of spirit; Athens, reason and the mind; Rome, law; London, literature; and New York, industry and commerce." He also intends to explore the Platonic ideal of city with Revelation's Babylon and the heavenly City of God marking opposite ends of the spectrum.

He then takes each of the cities in turn and . . . does what? Okay, so he writes about Jerusalem and spirit--but the concept of "spirit" is vague enough that one could write about just about anything and tie that in. The section on Athens is supposed to be about its legacy of reason and intellectual influence, but he's halfway through the chapter and spent a number of pages retelling the stories of the War with Troy and the Battle of Salamis before he even touches on their intellectual history. The chapters on Rome, London, and New York are even less tied to the "legacies" promised in the introduction. In each chapter Wilson meanders back and forth across history, from pre-history to modern times, cherry-picking battles, quotes, myths and incidents in pursuit of some agenda sensed but never quite articulated. It makes for increasingly bizarre reading because Wilson's prose is actually very good. He's often laugh-out-loud funny and his paragraphs are well constructed. But his paragraph and larger sections seem to have little or no connection to each other--at least in light of the schema he purports to be following. Where are the transitions? Where is the connective material?

Finally, mercifully, the reader gets to the epilogue in which Wilson essentially says, "Aha! See what we've accidentally discovered along the way! Isn't it providential?" Well, no. It's not. We all learned the core of essay-writing in junior high school: 1. Tell me what you're going to tell me. 2. Tell it to me in detail. 3. Tell me what you just told me. Not: 1. Tell me what you're going to tell me. 2. Wander across 5000 years of history telling me things that almost have something to do with what you said you were going to do but not quite, and then 3. Suprise! Tell me you were really on about something else all together. The book is really about . . . Freedom. Freedom is good.

I was still in the first chapter when the similarities with The Mainspring of Human Progress (a screed which constituted a large portion of my "Economics" education at my conservative Christian high school) struck me. The breezy narrative style and casual treatment of history are unmistakeable in their flavor. And I am grieved because I sympathize with the libertarian instincts of both these books. And bad books do not serve to advance the causes of good ideas; rather the reverse. And this poorly structured, agenda-heavy, historically dubious text, I am afraid, will do little but persuade Wilson's choir that their cause has been adequately defended, when it hasn't.

Two stars out of five, because at least his retellings of many historical incidents are very good as scatter shot pieces of world history--whatever purpose they're supposed to be serving.

This is a review through Thomas Nelson's Book Sneeze program.

Book Review: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

What makes a good story? What kind of story is God trying to write my life into? Am I cooperating with my life being a story worth reading, or am I fighting to remain in the "senseless, selfish ways of non-story"? Donald Miller wrestles through these questions in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. The process of trying to turn a memoir about his life (Blue Like Jazz) into a movie script leads him to examine what makes stories work as stories. He reflects on what makes stories meaningful and then evaluates how that reflects back on the way that we live our lives. If stories are our lives with all the meaningless bits left out, is there a way to live our lives so that more of the meaningless bits are left out in the first place?

This book was far better than I'd hoped for. I wasn't a huge fan of Blue Like Jazz, but I'm a sucker for pretty much anything that deals with story structure and meta-story and that post-modern sense of the characters and writer interacting. (Think Stranger than Fiction.) Miller has all of that, but ruthlessly brings it down to the level of personal challenge. What am I going to do, what are you going to do, to write a better story with your life? How do we infuse our lives with meaning? Miller has grown up a lot as a writer and--apparently--as a human being in the years since Blue Like Jazz was published. There's less of his ego tangled up with his prose, making both for better prose and for less of an impression of a writer who needs his ego taken down a few notches. The book is somewhat slow for the first forty pages or so--don't judge the entire book by the sample section that's up on the publisher's website. It's the weakest section of the book. After reading a few pages here and a few pages there for a couple of weeks, I read the last two hundred pages more or less in one sitting. I'll also note that reading it side by side with Notes from a Tilt-a-Whirl was a great experience. The two books are dealing with some similar themes from very different angles and inform each other well. Miller's conclusions, like his beginning, is not nearly as strong as his middle . . . but the man's trying to write an ending when he's still stuck living the middle of his own story. He can hardly be blamed for not having lived far enough to see the ending clearly yet. Especially in a book about living the middle more deliberately.

Four stars out of five

Reviewed for Thomas Nelson

Book Review: Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl

It took me all summer to finish N.D. Wilson's Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl. It seemed I could never get through more than a few pages without stopping to reflect on it. Hands down, one of the best books I've read in ages. How to describe a books that's been called stream of conciousness? (It's not). That opens its introduction with "What excuses can I possibly make for this book?" Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl is intentionally written to be as dizzying as its titular ride. It's a book to be felt--not analyzed. Though it would stand up to analysis. Just as distilling and titrating a bottle of Dom Perignon would give you a certain type of information. But it's not the way it's meant to be consumed. Nor, Wilson shows us, leads us, is God a being to be thought about, or proved, or deconstructed. He is one to be lived with, lived into, imbibed.

Two measures of a good book. One--how likely am I to re-read it? Very--I'm quite sure that it's one of those books that will read differently a number of times depending on what experiences I've accumulated and what I bring to my reading. Two--how many people am I thinking of who I've got to get to read this book? Lots. Regretfully, I cannot loan my single copy to my parents, best friend, music minister, cousin, and my entire book club all at the same time. The review in the current Books and Culture says that Wilson's "God is definitely NOT too small." That's a truth that none of us will ever grow out of growing into--the experience shattering gut-knowledge that God is infinite . . . Wilson demands that we experience more than we can handle, and that we stagger away, drunk and reeling from the spoken Word and the spoken World.

Five stars. Easily.

Book Review: Jack Hanna's Wackiest, Wildest, Weirdest Animals in the World

Jack Hanna's Wackiest, Wildest, Weirdest Animals is a fun true facts book for mid range elementary schoolers (2nd to 5th grade). It profiles thirty animals--ten of the wackiest, ten of the wildest, and ten of the weirdest animals in the world. It has beautiful glossy photographs of each of the animals profiled, food, habitat and size for each, and two to three paragraphs of exciting and bizarre information.

This is a great book for lovers of the weird and wonderful in creation. Well bound, with thick glossy pages, it will stand up well for reading and re-reading. My third grade daughter sat down and read the whole thing cover to cover the afternoon it showed up at our house. It is also be well suited for a parent to sit down and read aloud with their child. The information is too dense for an early elementary age school child (my kindergartner was bored), but the included blooper DVD will be enjoyed by both younger and older children. There is no overtly spiritual slant to the book, but there didn't need to be. And it was refreshing to find a modern naturalist book entirely free of pseudo-environmental propaganda. The book simply does a fine job broadening the knowledge base for those children who want to know how things are. Highly recommended for the fans of Ranger Rick or National Geographic Kids in your home. Four out of five stars.

Book Review: The American Patriot's Bible, NKJV Translation

The American Patriot's Bible (New King James Version) is Thomas Nelson's latest venture into the world of thematic study Bibles.  It has a minimal set of maps, a good concordance, a brief introduction for each book of the Bible, and a large number of essays and reflections purportedly connecting the Bible and American history.  

From a purely physical book-making standpoint, this is a nice Bible.  It has thicker than average paper for a study Bible, a decently large typeface and it looks like a durable book.  It's really too bad that such a nicely designed Bible wasn't matched with quality of content:  as a Christian study Bible, it fails on both counts.  

First off, aside from the "patriot's" material, there are virtually no study elements at all.  No biblical cross-references.  No footnotes aside from the NKJV's translators' notes.  No charts or timelines.  A shameful dearth of maps.  The introductions to each book give considerably less historical and theological context for the book than the equivalent Wikipedia articles.

Secondly, it fails to be Christian.  Michael Horton would call it Christless.  You want a Bible for Moralistic Therapeutic Deism?  Legalism?  This is it.  Its essays emphasize such traditional American values as hard work and our accountability to God.  There is plenty to encourage the idea that what God wants from us is to work harder.  There is nothing here for the broken, repentant sinner, aware of his own inadequacy, whose desperate hope is to fall at the foot of the cross and find grace.

What then of the patriotic elements?  The glowing biographies of people honoring God for their American success, the vaguely spiritual, inspirational quotes scattered throughout, the multiple glossy inserts attempting to sketch out all of American history and tie it to the Biblical narrative?  All I can say is that I found it all as dubious in its history as its theology.  This flag-waving, Chicken-Soup-for-the-Soul-ish pass at a study Bible is best left on the shelf at the Christian bookstore.

Book Reviews

So I've signed up for Thomas Nelson's Book Review Bloggers program.  It's a pretty straight forward they-send-you-free-books-in-exchange-for-publicity type arrangement.  My goals for the program are to get some free books (of course!) and also, some practice writing reviews, a form I enjoy both reading and writing.  I do my best  writing and thinking when I'm interacting with lots of stuff.  Their review guidelines are pretty stringent, so I'm envisioning doing a couple of blog posts on each book--one short one according to the guidelines and word count, and one more rambling and free-floating one, if it seems that there's more that needs to be said/considered about a book than can be said in 200-600 words.  Here's hoping that this turns out to be an enjoyable adventure for all involved . . . :)