Category: Books Page 10 of 19

Summerland

On February 18, 2013

For a while I’ve been urged to read something by Michael Chabon, a Pulitzer prize winning contemporary novelist. When I picked up his 2002 novel Summerland and scanned the blurb on the back, I knew I had my point of entry. A fantasy novel with baseball at its core – it begged to be read.

Summerland I’m not qualified or able to give a proper review of the book. Reviewers tend to suggest that the book fell short of its potential. As a ‘young adult’ fantasy, it is measured by a certain Hogwartian Wizard. The book was sometimes hard to grasp because so many of the creatures and characters had to be explained. Much new had to be learned before the pieces began to make sense. The pace picked up, however and I found myself well immersed in the last third and intrigued to see the end.

Perhaps this was not Chabon’s, or the genre’s, best. I’m not qualified to tell. But there were gems buried here that made the book a delight for THIS reader.

I know little of Chabon, but he has to be a lover of baseball. He has to be one who understands and appreciates the game.

“A baseball game is nothing but a great slow contraption for getting you to pay attention to the cadence of a summer day.”

He writes with such delight in his subject and in the game:

“The truth was that Sasquatches have never been passionate about baseball.”

And he sees how baseball can be the context for explaining so much else:

“Can you see love? Can you touch it?”
“Well,” Ethan said, hoping it was not a trick question. “No, love is invisible and untouchable, too.”
“And when your pap puts on that big Roosters jersey of his, and sits there watching you in the bleachers with the smile never leaving his face? And slaps palms with you after a game even though you struck out four times looking?”
“Huh?” Ethan said.
“Some things that are invisible and untouchable can nevertheless be seen and felt.”

Most fascinating, though, are the themes in the book which, if not Christian in origin, are able to be read in a Christian way. The villain is a creature named Coyote who, in our world, is known as Satan, who says:

“I would like to put an end to existence as we know it.”

His ultimate aim is to poison the universe at its root, but along the way, he ruins what makes life enjoyable. Any traditional baseball fan will appreciate that Coyote entered one world and began to whisper to the inhabitants that the game was boring:

“Is there anything duller in the game of baseball than watching the pitcher hit? Pitcher goes up there, if she even gets the bat off her shoulder it’s to give it a few weak waves like she’s shooing a little moth away. And then, big surprise, three or four pitches later, she’s out. Well,…why does the pitcher have to hit?…Let somebody else hit for the pitcher. One of the old-timers, somebody whose legs, maybe they’re not what they were….

Now we know the origin of the designated hitter rule. It IS the end of the world as we know it.

Coyote’s goal is to undo the creation. Whether he is able to do so or not, I suppose, should be left unsaid here. But the last section perhaps is reflective of what I have heard elsewhere, that Chabon is a fan of Tolkien and Lewis. Reading it made me wonder if he might also be a fan of N. T. Wright, or of the Bible itself.

Cracker Jacks and baseball are forever linked. One may not like everything that is in the box of Cracker Jacks, but there is always a prize that makes eating them worthwhile. So, too, is this book full of prizes worth seeking.

My Precious-es

By Randy

On December 18, 2012

In Biography, Books

In the late 80s I borrowed from a friend the first volume of a biography of Winston Churchill by William Manchester entitled The Last Lion. When I had devoured that, I rushed off to the library to borrow and read the next volume. But this volume, which I presumed to be the final volume, ended in 1939. A third volume, I heard, was in the works.

Last Lion And so I waited. And waited. And waited.

Eventually, I wrote a letter to Mr. Manchester through his publisher Little, Brown, and Company to ask when I could expect the third volume to be published. After a time, I received a personal, hand written reply (rare, even in those pre-email days) from Mr. Manchester’s personal assistant. Mr. Manchester, he regretted to inform me, had had a stroke, and would be unable to complete his work on the third volume. I was saddened by the news both of his disability and of the loss of the capstone to this tremendously written life.

Recently, however, I learned that the third volume had been published, completed by Mr. Manchester’s personal friend, journalist Paul Reid. Whether it measures up to Manchester’s original hardly matters. It completes that which was left undone, and for that I am glad.

The first two volumes were books I read but never owned. Books that mean something to me I like to own and to see and to hold. But to buy them new now would cost over $60 (from Amazon) and over $30 used.

But today. Today I walked into Brightlight Books, Orlando’s gem of a used bookstore to see if, on a lark, they had the books. Remarkably, they did. Top shelf, dusty, and labeled as having been there over a year, which means in Brightlight’s pricing policy, steep discounts. Both volumes are first edition, first printing, with dust covers and only minor wear. And I bought both for $8.00.

I’m giddy over my new “precious-es”, which I must now re-read. Can’t wait.

Notes about Jobs

By Randy

On November 10, 2012

In Books

I don’t know if I will ever get to post anything substantive regarding the Walter Isaacson bio of Steve Jobs. A superb read, and stimulating for those who lead organizations striving for impact and beauty. Like a church.

Steve jobs book cover Of course, not all the lessons are positive. Some are sober reminders of perspective. Jobs changed our world – about few can that be said – in ways I deeply appreciate. And yet, though he changed the world, I have to wonder: did he ever shoot hoops in the driveway with his son? Makes me reflect on my priorities.

My normal bio and history diet includes dates like 1705 or 1905. I confess it is odd to read a bio that has sentences beginning with “By 2005…” with characters still alive and still functioning in the roles identified in the book. Very odd.

I look forward to discussing this book with others who have read it. (Among others, I’m looking at you JT, the one who insisted I read it.)

1776. 4th Down. 3 Seconds on the Clock. Washington Drops Back to Pass…

By Randy

On October 22, 2012

In Books, Writing

On Saturday morning I had no schedule. The family was away and I was alone. I sat on the couch intending to drink a cup of coffee and read for a bit. I drank a whole pot and read a lot. I read to the end, in fact, of David McCullough’s 1776. If I may indulge a sports analogy, I read like I was experiencing an 80 yard touchdown drive during the final 38 seconds of a football game. Though I knew how the game, I mean book, would end, I read away with tension thick.

This is the fourth of McCullough’s books I’ve read. That it is not his best is irrelevant, and only speaks to the quality of his other work.

McCullough’s intention is to take the reader through the first full year of the American Revolution from the military point of view. Congress in this book plays a minimal role as the focus falls upon George Washington’s desperate attempt to hold together an army of untrained and undisciplined men come together with disparate motivates and conflicting regional loyalties. That the army survived to see 1777 is nothing short of miraculous.

Washington’s failures and blind spots and weaknesses are on display. But also one sees his patience, his political wisdom, and his intuitive leadership skill. Much the same is seen in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s equally good Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Both Washington and Lincoln lead men of varying abilities and loyalties through a time of crisis. There are lessons to be learned here.

Leadership is not the only skill to be learned from these pages, however. I am captivated by the story-telling skill of McCullough, Goodwin, and others I’ve read recently, such as Walter Isaacson and Laura Hillenbrand. It would be worthwhile to return to each book and assess how they accomplish what they do.

Sure, I’d like to lead like Washington or Lincoln; but even more, I’d love to write like McCullough, Goodwin, Isaacson, or Hillenbrand.

Books in the Queue

By Randy

On August 24, 2012

In Books

It’s that time again when I scan my shelves and wish lists for books crying out to be read. I’ve culled the pile to a manageable 3000 pages. Here’s what’s in the queue for my ‘pastoral reading’. There are reasons for each of these, some of them fairly idiosyncratic. If something I ought to read is missing, then by all means let me know. As well, if there is something here you think I could just as well avoid.

Books2Read

The Silence of Larry

By Randy

On August 13, 2012

In Books

Larry Crabb’s The Silence of Adam was a mid-90s contribution to the then urgent debate about what makes a man. I confess that I engaged the book with some fear wondering if I would pass the test of masculinity.

But then again, over the years I’ve grown more ambivalent on this subject. Certainly there are differences between men and women, but those who claim the ability definitively to draw the distinction are often claiming more than they can support.

I appreciate deeply the context that Crabb builds for the reader. The world is a confusing place and often the choices facing men (and women) are not between the clearly right and the clearly wrong, but between confusing and conflicting paths all of which seem to be open to them. He does a great job in disarming what he calls ‘recipe’ theology, the idea that there are five easy steps to the solution to any problem. Recipes are worked out in the light, he says. But we live our lives in the clouds of mystery and darkness and chaos.

The key to manliness, Crabb helpfully suggests, is godliness. I cheer him here. To be a man, we are to come to love God and to live out his reality before our families and others around us. The greatest impact we can have is to live as a child of God and guide others in doing the same. Life is not something we can control – but we do have a heavenly Father whom we can come to know in the midst of those uncontrollable realities.

All of this is good. But apart from the tedious insistence that each chapter be begun with some story of some anonymous man making a mess out of his life, I have only one criticism. I wish it were a minor one, but it is not. Christ is absent. Larry is silent on the gospel.

Oh, he mentions following Jesus, and even speaks of the cross as an example of Jesus’ willingness to take action that needs taking. But in this way the cross becomes a path to follow, not a hope to embrace. I have no question that Crabb believes the gospel, but nowhere in all the calls to manliness or godliness does the book take the reader to the cross.

We are failures as men, as fathers, as sons, as elders. And the only place where in my failure I can find renewal is to look to the cross and see there that my heavenly Father acted on my behalf through his Son even when I could not act. And even now, when I fail, that failure does not lessen his affection for me or diminish the value of his act.

There is nothing that can make me want to be godly than to see that I have been loved with an undeserved and deep, unfathomable love. Nor is there anything that can encourage me to persevere through my inevitable weakness and failure than to call to mind the death and resurrection of Jesus, who persevered on my behalf. And to know that, I need to be reminded to look to the cross.

All of this is missing. What is ironic about this lack is the message that Crabb says he received from a sorrow-filled 84 year old man:

“God has given me something far better than the relief of my pain. Dr. Crabb, he has given me a glimpse of CHRIST. And it’s worth it all. Whenever you preach, make much of Christ.”

Somehow, this book fails at this very point. Without the gospel, without the central role of Christ in the living of life, the book is weakened beyond usefulness. And that makes me sad.

If however, we IMPORT Christ into the pages of the book, much is illuminated. One could do far worse as a man than to become a student of theology – of that rich, life changing study of God that J. I. Packer reminds us humbles and deepens us. To know and to love and to pursue God is at the very core of what it means to be a man. I’m grateful for the reminder of such a message.

Bonhoeffer vs. Metaxas

By Randy

On August 7, 2012

In Biography, Books, Writing

Eric Metaxas’ massive 2010 biography of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy) was received so favorably that Christianity Today could report that six months after its release it had sold 160,000 hardcover copies, even though published by the American evangelical publisher Thomas Nelson. (It is still selling at a volume that keeps it in the top 1000 of all books sold on Amazon.com.)

Evangelical reviewers were effusive in their praise. A reviewer in Books and Culture introduces it as a “riveting biography” which holds “…the reader’s attention from the first page to the last….” A Kings College lecturer praises Metaxas in the pages of the Wall Street Journal for his “…passion and theological sophistication….”

But it was the recommendation of friends with comments like this contained in an email: “if you haven’t picked up Metaxas’ Bonhoeffer book yet, its stinkin awesome” that had the greatest impact on my choice to read the book.

My only agreement with the reviewers, however, is that the book is indeed massive (550 pages). Beyond that, our opinions diverge.

Bonhoeffer indeed was a fascinating person, as the subtitle suggests. He was a man of deep and firm conviction whose devotion to his God led him to take action that both troubles and inspires us. He was a German Christian pastor and theologian who early on saw the evil in Hitler’s rise to power. He struggled deeply with how a Christian and the church should respond to the evils which we in retrospect can see so clearly. He chose a path of opposition and defiance. For his association with a plot which led to an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Hitler, he was executed at age 39 just two weeks before the war was over.

We respond to such a life. He was a faithful Christian, a devoted son, a passionate author, a humble servant of those in need. At his death he was engaged to be married to a young woman whom he had hardly had the chance to embrace, so thoroughly had the war separated them. To read of such a life is to reflect on our own and the choices we think we would have made, and the ones we do in our own point in history. Bonhoeffer challenges us all.

It is not just his life that matters here. It is the theology that motivated that life. Metaxas has stirred up a hornets’ nest of controversy regarding Bonhoeffer’s theology. “Eric Metaxas gives us a Bonhoeffer who looks a lot like an American evangelical…,” says one reviewer. Non-evangelicals tend to think that Metaxas is hijacking Bonhoeffer’s legacy and wresting him from the theologically liberal camp where they think he belongs. And so the battle rages.

Though Metaxas makes a good case I will let the theological battles be fought elsewhere. Whether he was or was not ‘evangelical’ is of little consequence to me. What matters to me is that in the reviewers’ zeal to address Bonhoeffer’s courage or to praise the book for its claiming him for ‘our side’, they overlook the fact that the book could have been so much better. As it is, the writing detracts terribly from the content. It seems to me that the book has received attention because of the interest of its subject and despite its stylistic and presentation flaws.

Metaxas’ slavish devotion to a chronological telling of Bonhoeffer’s life strips the vigor from the story. He strings together paragraph after paragraph, each of which is tied to the prior by chronological markers. Random references to places he stopped on his travels and gifts he bought for Christmas may be true enough in the chronology of his life, but such detail adds nothing to the story.

Further this bondage to chronology can kill the narrative drama. The last years of Bonhoeffer’s life were marked with plots and espionage and secrecy and threat, the stuff of novels. When the final attempt on Hitler’s life fails, Bonhoeffer is imprisoned and eventually killed. It could have been a grippingly told tale. However, because Bonhoeffer writes some things while in prison which are key in the theological controversies, Metaxas interrupts the narrative to engage the debate concerning these theological matters. Far better to tell the story of a man’s life through a series of overlapping thematic panels of content. A chapter on the theological controversies could tell one story while traversing a wide chronology, and then the story of the political intrigue could be told without interruption. I think only someone working on a doctorate in theology would feel that the book holds “the reader’s attention from the first page to the last…” It doesn’t.

Secondly, this tends in the distinct direction of hagiography (well critiqued here). Whenever we tell the story of someone we hold in high regard and with deep affection, it is hard to be objective about the subject matter. But we must be objective, and we must report the faults in a subject as well as his virtues. Did Bonhoeffer have faults at all? All men do, but his certainly are obscured if not completely omitted in this book.

Thirdly, I expect a biographer to tell the story of his subject by distilling the events and works of his life into a coherent narrative. Though Metaxas really aims at this, his effort is stymied by his over-dependence upon quoted material. Page after page is filled with quotes from letters and sermons and articles. One longish chapter has, by my estimate, 1260 total lines of text of which 590 (nearly half) are quotes. In fact, the biography ends with the entire manuscript of the sermon preached at his memorial service. Much of this is no doubt material worth preserving. But preserve it in an appendix. As it is, it bogs down the story by requiring the reader to do the distilling that is the biographer’s job.

Finally, Metaxas needs to ‘kill his darlings‘. Metaxas is so fond of clever turns of phrase that one loses sight of the seriousness of the story in the triteness of his language. Well turned phrases can enhance a story, but poorly chosen clevernesses detract. And they detract in abundance here.

At one point he says that Hitler “…would now with a flourish produce from his hindquarters a withered olive branch and wave it before a goggling world.” (356) From his hindquarters?

In speaking of the hopes attached to a plan to explode a bomb in a plane in which Hitler was flying, he walks through the events which “…would explode the bomb and then: curtains.” (427)

He tells of a church publication that had “…gone over to the dark side…” (325) Of the deal that Neville Chamberlain made with Hitler, “…it was ‘peace’ on the house, with a side order of Czechoslovakia.” (314)

Writing is hard. And harder still is it to write and then receive the insight of others as to how to improve one’s writing. And still harder is to be forced into making changes based upon the insight of another when that other is a clearheaded editor. I don’t blame Metaxas for the faults listed above. I blame his editor. A good editor would have forced him to address the stylistic weaknesses and would have reduced this from massive to manageable. A good editor, that is, could have made this into a book that was indeed “stinkin’ awesome”.

Serendipity and Biographies of Note

By Randy

On July 16, 2012

In Biography, Books

How does one comprehend the serendipitous overlap of various threads of his life? I haven’t a clue. See if you can follow those weaving the portions of my life together.

1. Two years ago, my son announced that he wanted to be the next Einstein. (He is not short on ambitions.)

2. Recently, somewhat in keeping with the above, he has taken a deep interest in particle physics. Quarks, muons, and anti-matter pepper his conversation. It’s all a mystery to me.

3. Steve Jobs died. (The connection here is really tenuous.)

4. Walter Isaacson publishes a wildly popular bio of Jobs. I learn that Isaacson had previously published a well received bio of Albert Einstein. My brain takes note.

5. On Father’s Day, my son gives me, bless his heart, a gift certificate to Amazon. An hour later he has bought for me Isaacson’s Einstein biography. It seemed a perfect way to spend his Father’s Day gift. Einstein His Life and Universe Walter Isaacso

6. A few weeks later, I am a hundred pages in, hanging around 1905 trying to comprehend special relativity, when suddenly particle physics is THE hot topic in the news. My son’s obscure interest is now in the headlines. I resolve to read more physics when I finish with Einstein.

7. Einstein is my fun, home, off-duty reading. Every fall, however, I line up a list of books needing to be read in direct support of my pastoral ministry. History and biography are a part of that reading plan, which dictated that I begin last week Eric Metaxas’ Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.

8. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in 1906, 20-something years Einstein’s junior. Both were German. Both would encounter Germany’s rising anti-semitism. Only one would survive.

9. I found myself, therefore, reading two biographies at the same time dealing with the same period of European history. Unplanned, but intriguing.

10. And I found myself able to compare two biographers. Both biographers are dealing with fascinating men with lives of significant import.

11. I came to Metaxas’ bio with great anticipation since several friends had recommended it highly. My wife started to read it, but couldn’t finish. She wrote that off as a deficiency in her. It isn’t.

12. As a writer, Isaacson shines. His bio, even when dealing with complex scientific theory, flows and when dealing with the life of the man, reads with ease and pleasure.

13. Metaxas on the other hand could have used a good editor to cut detail, to trim (or eliminate) quotes, and to arrest his temptation to be clever, which easily becomes trite. (Someone should have stopped him before he had Bonhoeffer ‘bid adieu’ to Paris, for example.)

14. One gives a good report. The other tells a good story. I’m a sucker for the story every time.

But I’m thankful for the serendipity – I think we call it God’s ‘most holy, wise and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures’ – which has allowed these lines to intersect so fluidly in my life.

+++++

UPDATE: One more serendipitous note – Bonhoeffer grew up in the Grunewald district of Berlin and attended Grunewald High School.

A Plea for Gutsy Editors

By Randy

On May 15, 2012

In Books

After wading through all 1,074 pages of Stephen King’s Under the Dome
some time ago, I began to wonder if perhaps King was SO big that there no editor with the guts or authority to urge him to tighten up his work.

Monday morning I finished Larry Crabb’s Shattered Dreams, a book with some startling and challenging and helpful observations – repeated about 18 times each. Perhaps he, too, needs the love and attention of a firm and gifted editor who is unwilling to be cowed by his reputation and tell him to his face when he is being repetitive without mercy.

The Power of the Book

By Randy

On April 16, 2012

In Biography, Books

There was a time that people died to make accessible a book we take for granted. I’m somewhat ashamed to write that sentence because I’m not sure this knowledge, as profound as it is, will change my behavior. But it should.
William tyndale biography david daniell hardcover cover art
I have been working through David Daniell’s Yale University Press William Tyndale: A Biography. This biography, set in the history of the early 16th century, when Luther was hot, reminded me that it once was a crime to translate and publish the Bible into English. Men gave up their lives to translate, print, and distribute this book which I so take for granted. That I knew this before, I am sure. But I had pushed this uncomfortable knowledge to a dim and infrequently accessed corner of my brain.

Daniell’s biography is thorough and passionate. That it is thorough led me to skim those portions containing detail far beyond my level of interest. But its passion drew me in and kept me.

Daniell is Tyndale’s belated publicist. Tyndale has been given short notice over the years. We know of the King James Bible, the so-called ‘Authorized Version’. And we know of John Wycliffe because of the mission organization that borrowed his name. But Tyndale’s influence runs much more deep and wide than either of these.

Tyndale learned Greek when only a few Englishmen knew it, and Hebrew when almost none did. He translated from those languages, not from the Latin. His gift for written English has rarely been matched. Though the AV, produced 70 years after Tyndale, adopted much of its memorable language from his, in many cases where they differ, Tyndale sounds stunningly more modern. Tyndale would opt for clarity over some artificial notion of literality. The AV reversed this, and revered though it may be, it is revered mostly for phraseology introduced by Tyndale, and forgotten at the level of its own revisions.

Daniell notes:

One key to Tyndale’s genius is that his ear for how people spoke was so good. The English he was using was not the language of the scribe or lawyer or schoolmaster; it really was, at base, the spoken language of the people. In this he was unlike all other Bible translators, in English certainly. To give an example: David, as we saw, was ‘brown with goodly eyes’. The comment speaks down the centuries: the young man was a looker, and one can hear someone saying it. The whole sentence is ‘And he was brown with goodly eyes, and well favored in sight’. By contrast, this is what the Authorised Version has: ‘Now he was ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to.’ That is the sort of sentence that gets the Bible a bad name. No one, ever, spoke that, or could do, with a straight face. As a sentence, all it can do is live in a big book on a brass lectern and be read out on one of the Sundays after Trinity.

(Daniell’s prose isn’t half bad either, apparently.)

Tyndale, it is famously said, wanted the Bible to be accessible to the ploughboy as well as to the scholar. That, of course, was what the establishment feared. He succeeded. Memorably. And this led to his execution.

Of his legacy, Daniell laments:

We have at this point, however, to utter a cry of grief. It was of a scholar of this towering stature, leading all Europe in his knowledge of Greek, matched now by an equal command of Hebrew, uniquely gifted in tuning the sounds of the English language, who had achieved so much but who still had some of his greatest work to do, who was, soon after this, by a vicious, paltry and mean villain tricked into death. It is as if Shakespeare had been murdered by a real-life jealous Iago half-way through his life, and the great tragedies had never been written.

Daniell makes a convincing case that the comparison with Shakespeare is not inappropriate.

Tyndale died because he believed in the power inherent in the Word of God. God grant me the grace to share even a portion of that passion and conviction.