Adam Shields

Summary: A continued exploration of coming to find out that everything you thought you know is wrong.

I have been looking forward to reading To Clutch a Razor since this spring when I read the first book of the series. I jumped at a chance to get an advance copy of the audiobook through Netgalley. While I have read Dresden Files and a few other urban fantasy books, this is not really my genre. But the themes of family curses and generational trauma and responsibility for repair are really what draw me to the book.

Dymitr is a knight of an old order centered on killing monsters. His family is the center of the leadership of the Polish arm of the order. Dymitr is different because while he has killed and he is highly capable, from a young age he thought that what they were doing was wrong. The last book he attempted to put a stop to his role, but through the work of others, he was given a new task.

This is a book that is basically impossible to discuss without spoilers. From here on out, there are spoilers. If you have not read the first book, then stop reading here. This is the link to the post about the first book, which also has marked spoilers. But you need to read that post and book first.

When Dymitr became a knight the process splits his soul and his body and his spine becomes a bone sword that he literally has to rip out of his body each time he uses it. It is a painful process but as is discussed more in this book, the Knigth's magic is rooted in pain and it is a perfect symbol of what it means to be a knight. When Baba Jaga agrees to change him to break the curse against his friend Ala, she takes his sword in payment. The sword is the physical manifestation of half of his soul and it creates a longing that, if he can't win it back, will eventually cause him to go mad. Baba Jaga places a series of tasks on him to get the sword back and those tasks start with killing his own grandmother, the head of his order.

Ala has taken Dymitr in because he saved her. She has nursed him back to health and given him a place to stay, and along the way she has taught him how to be "a monster" since he is no longer human as a result of the magic. But he is also still a knight. There is a real tension between them because as much as Dymitr has shown his desire to change, he did kill her cousin in his past. Her family was cursed because of his grandmother. His work to break the curse against her, as much as it cost him, does not fully overcome the reality that she still suffers memories of the curse.

This is a straight forward book and while a bit longer than the first, it still more long novella than full length novel. The main story follows Dymitr and Ala going to his home to try to figure out how to get his bone sword back without killing anyone. Dymitr has changed, not just physically (he is no longer human), but he also sees more about the reality of his family. There is both shame and horror at how he participated in the the mistreatment of others and how much he didn't see before.

This is a book that has more violence than I really wanted. That is often present in urban fantasy, but I still don't really want that much violence, even as I liked the book as a whole. There is a romance element to the story. Dymitr and Niko have an attraction. But neither of them is quite willing to give into the attraction. So at this point in the series, there is little more to it than longing and a couple of kisses.

Veronica Roth is exploring Polish folk tales in these books. I don't have enough familiarity to know how much is based on older stories and how much is new. These two books are definitely in the adult oriented fantasy and not the YA fantasy bucket. Not the books are inappropriate to older teens, but that the themes are just of interest to people who are older. YA is often coming of age stories of some sort. But this series is more world weary grappling with our own complicity in wrong. There is also light gay romance and very real violence. But that isn't something that would be inappropriate in more YA focused books if the themes were different. Roth is mostly known for her Divergent series and that is more YA. So the reader should not assume that just because she is the author that the books will also be YA.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/to-clutch-a-razor-by-veronica-roth-curse-bearer-2/

Summary: An introduction to Howard Thurman focusing on the role of radical inclusivity in his work.

This is the fourth book by or about Thurman I have read this year. I am pretty familiar with Thurman at this point, but I find that many of the book written about him are mostly introductory, but often do not overlap significantly. This is an incredible reality for Thurman because his work was often so diverse, that many people can write introductions to his work from various perspectives and yet not overlap with much of their focus.

Howard Thurman was a theological and philosophical forerunner of the civil rights movement and a spiritual director and mentor to its leadership. But he was also an expert in mysticism, interfaith cooperation and learning, the role of non-violence, personal spiritual disciples and other areas. As has often been reported, he was advised by an early white mentor to avoid the academic study of racial issues because it would cause people to pigeonhole him into only being “a race man.” Thurman both understood why that advice was given and resented the advice (and somewhat followed it.)

Thurman’s work simply was influenced by his social location and experience. That is not a controversial statement, but there is no way that he couldn’t have been influenced by being primarily raised by a grandmother who had been enslaved or by having to be a boarding student for high school because there were no local high schools that admitted black students. There is no way that he couldn’t have been influenced by the ways that he broke color barriers throughout his life. As Thurman pointed out in his memoir, the White mentor thought that it was possible for Thurman to not center race in his work, but didn’t really understand how race had been centered in the experience of the whole United States.

Come Go With Me has biography, and it covers many of the themes of Thurman’s books. And it traces how Thurman’s work both broke new ground and was rooted in the tradition of the Black Church in the US. It is not a straight biography and not a straight thematic review of Thurman’s literary work. It is primarily a reflection on how this theme of radical inclusivity can be something that we learn from today while giving enough background to understand the role that Thurman played in helping to construct a movement of racial inclusivity.

It is very much not overlapping with Raphael Warnock’s Divided Mind of the Black Church, but the two books do complement one another by approaching their subjects in very different ways but giving supplementary information to the reader. Warnock is doing historical theology by tracing the historical development and themes of Black theology over time. Warnock’s conclusion is that true Black theology is radically inclusive and there is always a tension between that movement toward racial inclusivity and pietism.

C. Anthony Hunt does contextualize Thurman, but he is primarily looking at Thurman as an individual, not as a representative of the whole Black church. Thurman was a mystic and that mysticism and orientation to embracing God as an unexplainable other was part of what left Thurman open to learning. He was a voracious reader and had a brilliant mind, but he didn’t limit his work to pure academic study. He traveled to India and met with Gandhi was forever shaped by the experience of travel and people that were different from him. He was experientially a mystic from a very young age, but he also studied that from different traditions academically. He didn’t just teach and lead, he acted to start a radically inclusive church in San Francisco in the mid 1940s.

I think the whole book is helpful, but it is a book that is designed to teach for a purpose. There is a clear culmination in the final chapter that is exploring what we can take from learning about Thurman today. I am going to quote two passage, not as summary, but as two of the takeaways that I personally though were important.

Thomas Merton pointed out that the test of our sincerity in human association in the practice of nonviolence and movement toward radically inclusive community is: “are we willing to learn something from our adversaries?” If a new truth is made known, will we accept it? The dread of being open to the ideas of others generally comes from our hidden insecurity about our own convictions. We fear that we may be “converted” – or perverted – by a pernicious doctrine. On the other hand, if we are mature and objective in our open-mindedness, we may find that in viewing things from a basically different perspective we discover our own truth in a new light and are able to understand our own ideals more realistically. (p156)

and

Religion is to be viewed as a process, and must now be understood in global context. It is no longer an option to confine religious thinking and practice to narrow and particular cultural contexts. In postmodernity, cultures are brought into closer contact by technology. Cousins offered the illustration of an astronaut who travels into space for the first time, and looks down upon the earth. The astronaut is overwhelmed with what they see, as they now view the earth from a new and broader perspective. Likewise, a new global reality causes us to view the world from a different (perhaps broader) perspective. (p158)

There is always a danger in books like this that they can distort the subject for the purposes of the author. But I have read enough of Thurman to know that Come Go With Me is handing the subject well. There is a very close reading of Thurman and his life. Hunt has done the work to understand him well so that he can explore how we might also learn from him well. This is not hagiography, but it is honoring of an elder that I wish more people knew more about.

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This is not really part of the main post, but I did see that the audiobook was a AI generated audiobook that was only a $0.99 add on to the kindle book and I decided to try it out for one chapter. I generally am not a fan of AI narration and this did not change my mind. I understand the value of AI reading for those who need narration for one reason or another. But as good as the technology is, it isn’t as good as a good narrator who is familiar with the subject. Words were mispronounced, pauses ended up in the wrong place. And the very nature of AI means that real narrators who had done good work, had their work taken without any compensation or acknowledgment. (a type of theft). I am not a fan of this type of work, but I do also understand why people get it. It is cheap, it is “good enough” and it can serve as a necessary point of access for people with disabilities or other constraints that can’t read the print text for one reason or another. But I will not be persuaded to support AI narration as a widespread practice.

Summary: An agnostic explores the history and philosophy of Christian mysticism to understand how mystical experience seems to be a part of being human.

This is an odd book. Simon Critchley is an agnostic philosopher writing primarily about Christian mysticism because he wants to explore the ways that mystical experience inform what it means to be human without really grappling with whether God is involved. I am going to start at the end because I think that helps to make sense of the project. Critchley moves to modern art, particularly punk music, as a type of mystical experience that he has felt, that transcends the traditional rational categories of philosophy and experience.

In some ways he is coming at the argument that Dallas Willard makes about the reality of a category of spiritual knowledge in reverse. Willard wants to suggest that divine revelation and experience are trustworthy types of knowledge and experience. I think in both Critchley and Willard's books, the rough point that the category exists has been made sufficiently to agree. But the next step is harder. Once you agree that there is a category, what do you do with it? Willard is mostly arguing against a type of hyper rationalism that I don't think carries much weight. And Critchley is arguing that the mystical experience of feeling one with "God" or the world or those around us, while also getting a sense of divine love and belonging that he associates with the mystical experience in part of the human experience and a good that draws us away from hyper individualism and maybe even depression and loneliness.

My on-going reading project on Christian discernment had little help from this book because my project is at least in part about the evaluation of that mystical experience or Willard's spiritual knowledge and I have just naturally assumed that they already exist when I am asking the question about how we evaluate them.

There was an interesting discussion of mystical experience that draws one into a relationship with the divine or infinite and the type of mystical experience that results in the annihilation of the self within the divine. Historically within the Christian tradition, both of these metaphors have been used, but I personally think the former is more aligned with the Christian tradition than the later. This can somewhat be connected to apophatic and cataphatic conceptions of our understanding of God and whether we can really use description to speak of either God or mystical experience or can we only talk about what is not. In this sense, these are philosophical questions, but at the same time, philosophy apart from theology has limits to what it can say.

Critchley is not overtly making a Christian argument and he is (by his own admission) using Christian terms and history because he and the Western philosophical tradition has been shaped by Christianity more than eastern philosophy and he has less connection to those traditions. But as a Christian, some of the discussion seems to just miss the point because he isn't going to that next step. There is no real discussion of eschatology here and I think that matters to the way he talks about mysticism. For instance when he discusses Julian of Norwich's negation of creation to affirm it, the tension that he was trying to draw is minimized by affirming creation, but holding it loosely because of the greater "realness" of the coming world.

One of the other reviewers on Goodreads talks about the way that CS Lewis uses Joy as a type of mystical reality, and I agree but I also think that Lewis' description of heaven in The Great Divorce as being more real is also a type of understanding of the way that mystical experience is a revealing in part of how the world and human experience will be "more" not just a negation of the creatureliness of the physical world.

Critchley does not ignore the modern world. He has good discussion of TS Elliot and Annie Dillard, but he speaks of them as writing about the mystical world and nature not experiencing it. The experience of the mystical that is an experience of a personal God and not just an experience of oneness with nature or beauty would require more than what Critchley can give because of his agnosticism, or at least his reluctance to fully embrace Christianity. For him, that mystical experience of God is not part of the modern discussion of mysticism.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/on-mysticism/

Summary: After winning nearly unimaginable wealth and power at the end of the last book, things do not really go that well, that is until there is another quest.

I really enjoyed Ready Player One. I liked all the references to cultural history. I enjoyed the story, the light romance, the YA feel. But I just never got around to reading this second book. I bought a kindle version years ago. I finally started it this summer when the audiobook was buy one get one free with a book I wanted and nothing else to get free that I wanted other than this. I went in with very low expectations. Just looking at the star ratings of my Goodreads friends made me keep those expectations low. A few people liked it, but most were in the 1 to 3 range.

I am not going to give away many spoilers, but I do think this had more depth than I expected. The set up to the second book is long and I think while I understand that complaint, it was a necessary part of the story. Wade at the end of the first book is barely out of his teens, but he just won a company that is worth billions. He was a likable kid when he had nothing. But when he had fame, power and resources, he quickly becomes unlikable, not just to the reader, but to everyone around him. I understand why people didn't like that choice, but I think it does make sense to the story arc.

When Wade is at his best, he is on a quest. He works with his friends, and they can accomplish the impossible together. But as an individual trying to make his way in the world, he is awful. He doesn't have the skills to run a trillion dollar company. He doesn't have the ethical development to understand the implications of new technology. He doesn't have the emotional and relational development to be attractive to Samantha (the love interest in the first book.) I appreciate that this book dropped some of the YA feel. The protagonist isn't a late teen any longer and the hedonistic approach to life that is part of the story line requires at least touching on the world of hedonism.

So the long intro made sense to me even as I understand why so many didn't like it. But the main focus is the quest. The quest is why I read books like this. I enjoy the cultural exploration of John Hughes movies and Prince music. It isn't particularly deep, it is supposed to be fun. But along the way I did think that the grappling with weaknesses and outright harm in our heroes to have a greater depth in the story line than I expected from the book.

I did not love the ending. I think the whole book raised questions about AI, life in a virtual world, the problems with a lack of attention to human interactions and then the ending just seems to forget all of the questions raised earlier and embraced technological solution as a good.

I don't really know how to evaluate the book. I understand why many didn't like the parts they didn't like. I thought it was unexpected to get good reflections on the problems of heroes and those who are really great in one area of life and really awful in other areas of life. I appreciated, in a sci-fi book, the warnings about rejection of human interactions and the problems of looking to technology to solve all our problems. But I also did thought the ending really ruined the earlier thoughtful parts. So....maybe read it with low expectations.

I originally posted this on my blog at https://bookwi.se/ready-player-two/

Summary: An adopted boy discovers not only is some of his family still alive, but he isn't even human. 

I read this several years ago and then again as a read-aloud with my son. My son is a good reader, but he also tends to only read graphic novels. I am not opposed to graphic novels, but I do want to get him into a wider range of books. He tends to fully invest in a book and finish it quickly. And frequently because he can read a graphic novel so quickly, he will reread it two or three times before we return it to the library. I am also heavily invested in reading on my kindle, and while he has occasionally read on my kindle, he prefers paper. But more than anything, I just love reading out loud. I tend to read when he is sketching or folding clothes or doing some other task that a keeps him present but not intellectually engaged.

Orion is a twelve year old boy at the start of the book. He was adopted by an older Korean woman whom he calls Halmoni (Korean for grandmother). Orion is smart and great at fixing things. He and his best friend compete in a robotics competition and he fixes people's bicycles. But he also constantly needs his inhaler and is clumsy. Walking home one night in suburban Atlanta, someone tries to kill him, and someone else shows up to protect him. And that starts a whole series of events leading Orion to be brought back to his home planet to live an assumed identity. He discovers that there is an empire with three small planets who have powers that people on Earth would consider magic, but are connected to stardust in the nebula near the planets.

As Orion seeks to fit in with his new friends and the family that is hiding him while trying to figure out who is trying to kill him, he is also trying to figure out is real identity. Orion and the Starborn plays with the "chosen one" and "adopted but really someone important" tropes that are common in middle grade fiction. These are common because they are developmentally exactly what middle grade students need as they are trying to discern their identities and separate themselves from their parents and family of origin. One of the most helpful features of sci-fi or fantasy (and Orion and the Starborn blends their elements) is that they allow the reader to see how culture and the rest of existence could be different in ways that are similar to cross cultural travel.

There is just the right amount of tension and suspense to keep a middle grade reader engaged, but also not get too scary or graphic. My son does not like violence or scary things in his books, but he does like puzzles and figuring out what is going on. The mystery of who Orion really is and the tension of knowing that someone is trying to kill him and that there is many things he does not understand because he did not grow up in this new world and culture kept my son engaged.

As always, as an adult, I love that KB Hoyle writes with depth. I have read all of her books, most more than once and while these are books that kids can understand, they invite multiple readings with lots of reference, subtle allusions, and depth that most kids (and adults) will not get on a first reading.

We are now about 1/3 of the way into the second book and we will be impatiently waiting for the rest of the series to be published.

https://bookwi.se/orion-and-the-starborn-2/

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Summary: An adopted 12-year-old boy suddenly discovers he is not who he thought he was.Middle-grade books regularly have the concept that the main character is not who they thought they were, especially if they are orphans. This is a classic literary feature because it fits into middle-grade development. Of course, most readers will not be orphans who may secretly be important, but readers can still think about what it would mean to be someone else.Orion Kim is 12 years old. He is handy with tools and can fix many things, but he is not very coordinated or popular. Very early in the book, he finds out that his grandmother is not his grandmother due to someone attempting to kill him and someone else defending him. Not long after, he finds out that he is not from Earth, but he is “starborn,” and he is taken away from the only home he has known (on Earth) and hides from his attacker on an alien world.There are classic literary devices that work because they are classic. For example, middle-grade readers may already be familiar with characters attending a new special school to learn about their new powers. Or a group of characters working together to discover the things the adults around them won't tell them. This is not to say that Orion and the Starborn is cliche; I don't think it is. But as a nearly 50-year-old who has been reading middle-grade books for decades, I can see the literary references beneath the story.I read Orion and the Starborn because I am a fan of KB Hoyle's writing. I have read her Dystopian series (Breeder Cycle) and her fantasy series (Gateway Chronicles) twice and the stand-alone retelling of the fairytale Little Mermaid (Son of the Deep). The books stand up to re-reading. And they have a depth to the story. My kids are a little young for the books, but I think this is probably the series I would start with because it is pitched just slightly younger than the other two series. Depending on how advanced a child is and whether an adult is reading the book with the child or the child is reading independently, I think this is probably a series that I would start around age 10 to 14. My kids are pretty sensitive to scary things, even minor tension they do not like. But I think by the time the next book or two in the series comes out, I will be able to read it to them.

Summary: The story of two couples, a shared pastorate and their wives in mid 20th century NYC.

There are not many books that I stay up too late on multiple nights in a row to finish, but The Dearly Beloved is one of them. It has the feel of Gilead or the Starbridge series by Susan Howatch but it did not quite rise to that level. This is a book that I devoured in audio and I will come back and read again in print. But I wanted more.

The Dearly Beloved opens with the death of one of the four, but we don't know until the epilogue when that death occurs. After the brief initial opening, we go back and the four characters are developed from their origin stories until about the midpoint of the book where the two men are jointly called to be co-pastors in the mid 1960s New York City. I could not help but think of Eugene Peterson as I read about their early years as pastors. Eugene Peterson was also Presbyterian and also was a young pastor in NYC as he worked on his PhD and tried to decide if he was going to be an academic or a pastor. Both of these pastors in the story had their PhDs, and one of the wives also had a PhD in Literature and in the opening years of their ministry she was a professor at The New School. Eugene Peterson planted his suburban Maryland church in 1962, right about the same time as these two were coming to their 100 year old church that had seen better days.

One of my favorite parts of the book was Jane, the church administrator/secretary who trained the two to be pastors together. She understood the church and the community and what it needed. She loved the church and loved the two pastors. She had her own weaknesses and biases, but she helped them find their way and kept them together as they knitted together "a call."

The book is structured in three parts, the early years of the characters and how each of them met and married. The second part is the early years of ministry and the ways that their history and faith and personality came together (or didn't). The third part is the crisis and resolution. The crisis and resolution makes sense internally, but I also felt like it was too simple for the first two parts, it ended the book too early. I don't like complaining about what is not in a book, but the build up of character and background felt like it was too big for the main crisis and resolution to be only a four year period of the late 1960s. I think there needed to be at least two additional parts that followed the couples into middle age. It is not that people do not have significant life struggle in their 30s, but when there is significant life struggle, the resolution of their 30s or early 40s will not maintain equilibrium into their 50s and 60s or beyond.

But for the weakness, this was a book that took faith, and lack of faith seriously. This was not a "christian novel" that talks about faith. This was literature that took faith seriously as part of what it means to be human. Lilly, the wife with a PhD, never found faith. Her parents died when she was a teen and the trauma of that death and the ongoing grief of their loss shaped her throughout the book. It gave her strength, but also fragility. In many ways I think that she was coded as potentially on the autism spectrum in the way that she liked order and was internal with her emotion and interactions. But as the book goes on, I think what seemed to be initially coded as autism was trauma.

Lilly was married to Charles, the privileged child of a Harvard professor and a debutant mother. There was family money, but not love. He came to faith in college and his father thought that faith was simply a way to get out from under his father's shadow. James was very different. He grew up in Chicago, the child of an abusive alcoholic WW2 vet with PTSD. His mother was an immigrant and pledged to keep that family together, but James would do anything to get out. He married Nan, a pastor's child from Mississippi in the 1940s and 50s. Her father wanted her to get out of Mississippi and understand the world and sent her to Wheaton Conservatory to study music. James and Nan met when she was filling in for an accompanist at a concert at the University of Chicago. James fell for Nan, but Nan was a Christian and to be with Nan, James went to church.

The characters were archetypes of faith. Nana initially never questioned faith. Faith was just part of the water of her life. Charles was the evangelical with an adult conversion experience and the traditional biblical evangelical faith of the midcentury moderate. James was the activist who understood faith as a calling to make the world a better place., no cause was inadequate to work on, but doubt was his constant companion. Lilly was mad at God intellectually never understood the purpose of faith until a later crisis.

I like novels that explore ideas as well as people. I don't need a strong plot if there are good ideas and good characters. I understood these characters and wanted to know them more. This is in part why I wanted a longer story with them. But I think the desire for a plot to focus the build up of the character's back story, short cut the development of the story more than I wanted it to.

The ideas in the background were largely around tragedy and faith. How, or if, God was with us in that tragedy. As the couples are thrown together and the men become deeply bonded, the women, who are not temperamentally compatible, do have to relate to one another. Under the initial tutelage of Jane, it is clear that the two men fit together, and cannot work apart. Their pastorate is a package deal. And if one goes, the other would also have to go. That development of church as shared reality is part of what makes that third section work, but what does not work about it is that the crisis is too big and I don't think that Cara Wall could figure out how to keep telling the story as the couples would have gone into their 40s and 50s, so the story jumps to their 70s for the end and it feels unfinished. Every novel like this is unfinished. There is always more that could be said. The crisis that was here was developed well and told an important story. But for most people, there is not a big crisis, but many little ones. It is life in the little struggles that build upon one another the lead to the life well lived.

This was originally published on my blog at https://bookwi.se/the-dearly-beloved/

Summary: A graphic novel adaptation of a 1940s Superman radio drama.

I don’t remember who recommended this, but when I saw the recommendation I reserved a copy at our library for my son and I to read. I picked it up at the library and my son finished it in a single sitting. I read it that night after he went to bed.

Part of why I wanted to get it was that my son, who is a big graphic novel fan, has no real connection to super hero stories. I keep trying to get him interested in super hero movies so that he would also add some super hero comics to his reading but the closest he gets is Duck Tales.

Another part of why I wanted him to read this is that I continually try to find ways to help him see the world around him. My 10 year old will be starting 5th grade in a couple weeks. My kids have gone to the school where my wife works since they started school. It is about 15 minutes from our house and not the school we are zoned for, but we choose it in particular because we want our kids in a diverse school. The school is about 10% non-Hispanic white students and about 70% low income. My kids have a diverse set of friends that I did not have when I was growing up.

My kids are sensitive and do not particularly like super hero stories because they tend to be too violent for them. I was concerned about this whether this would be too much, but he read it before I had a chance to. When he was about 2/3 of the way through the story he came up to me and asked if the Klan was a real thing or if it was just a super hero villain that was made up. It is a very real question and I stopped my work and we had a 15 minute history lesson about what the Klan was and the three eras of the KKK.

Part of what I appreciate about this story is that it is both about the Klan and an immigration story. The Klan in different part of the country did have different targets and the Klan in the 2nd and 3rd eras (after WW1 and after WW2) was active in every state. There were millions of people who were enrolled in state level Klan organization in the 2nd generation (roughly 1915 to the 1940s). What many do not understand is that during this era where were nearly 4 times as many members in Indiana as there was in Georgia. This second generation Klan was started after the Birth of a Nation movie and grew quickly over the next ten years. But then a major figure in the leadership was convicted of murder and the growth slowed. The IRS essentially shut down the formal membership structure in the late 1940s for failure to pay taxes.

But the radio drama that this Superman story is based on also played a role in decreasing the interest in the Klan. There are several pages of history at the back of the book that details the original story and the adaptation to the comic book form in this book.

This story is about a Chinese family that moves out of Chinatown after the father gets a good job with the public health department. The son is a good baseball player and is recruited to pitch for the local little league baseball team that Jimmy Olson helps to coach. The previous pitcher resents being displaced by a Chinese boy and complains to his uncle. The uncle is a leader in the local KKK and they burn a cross in the front yard of home of the new residents. The story continues with an attempted lynching.

The daughter of the family uses her skills of watching what is going on around her as she tries to fit in to understand who was behind the Klan and works with Jimmy Olson to get Superman involved in saving her brother.

I won’t spoil the whole story (although that is the main story arc) but I do want to note that part of Superman’s early stories were fighting Nazis. In this book, Superman has to fight a nazi after the end of WW2 who is in a super suit powered by Kryptonite. In my recent book club, we read White Flight about Atlanta and part of the opposition to integrated housing came from an openly white supremacist nazi group in the late 1940s, right about the same time that this story was set. It was amazing to me that so soon after the end of WW2 there were nazi groups that arose around the country. Much of the opposition to MLK Jr in Chicago was from an openly Nazi group in Chicago, but that was in 1966, not 1946.

I think that graphic novels are particularly good at telling history for kids. While this is not only oriented for kids, I think it is a bit more kid friendly than the March series about John Lewis. That series I think is still too old for my 10 year old because it is a more complex presentation of history. Superman Smashes the Klan worked just fine for my 10 year old to read on his own and for me to read on my own and we both appreciated it.

Because it was available at my library, I also got my son the first book in the Secret Coders’ series by the same author. It is a mystery series using logic puzzles in a graphic novel format and my son devoured that book as well. I will get him the rest of that series soon.

This was originally posted at my blog at https://bookwi.se/superman/

Summary: A memoir of Union Seminary professor, ethicist, community organizer and theologian Gary Dorrien.

I picked up Breaking White Supremacy: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Social Gospel at some point when it was on sale, but I never started it (in part because it is over 900 pages.) I knew that it was the second in a trilogy of the theology of the Black church and social gospel and so I wondered if I should start with the first book so I just never started it. I needed something different and I tend to like to read near end of life memoirs of theologians because I am interested in how they appraise their life and work. Because I do not really know Gary Dorrien's work, this was a bit of a a blind pick. But it is currently on sale for kindle and hardcover and it was a low barrier to entry.

Gary Dorrien grew up in a poor rural Michigan family. He was the grandchild of a mixed Native American and White couple, but did not have much contact with his Native American heritage, but did feel some of the impact of the discrimination of his family. Dorrien's mother started college but only completed a year before deciding to get married. So Gary Dorrien was the first of his family to complete college. And going on to graduate school and a PhD was very new to the family.

I am sympathetic to Dorrien's work as an organizer and a Democratic Socialist and his long work as a college chaplain before going to Union. But it is honestly quite amazing to me the number of mammoth tomes that he completed in a relatively short period after starting at Union. He had written several books before that point, but when he started at Union, his wife had passed away, his daughter had started college and he wasn't working without a break year-round running multiple programs at his college.

I also was interested to know his close relationships with James Cone and Cornel West and a number of others who I was more familiar with as authors or academics or public intellectuals. In part I think I respect his work more after reading this because he was primarily focused on doing behind the scenes organizing and intellectual history which allowed others to take a more prominent role.

Some memoirs are about life development and experiences. This memoir does includes those things. We know about his daughter and his wife being a pastor and eventually dying of cancer relatively young. But this is a book that is more about his intellectual development and his interaction with the ideas and movements of his academic career.

Some people will not be interested in that type of a memoir. But for me, this is exactly the type of book that helps me to make connections. I am currently also reading Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism by Robin Lovin. Lovin was one of his grad school friends that is mentioned multiple times in the book. These intellectual connections between people do matter in the way that their ideas develop. And things like James Cone encouraging Dorrien to write his three volume history of the Black social gospel while Dorrien also had a three volume history of liberal theology tells me that this is not just a white academic studying the Black church, but someone with context and history in and outside of the Black church.

I am not as connected to Dorrien's political orientation, but I am very sympathetic to his organization, desire to ground organizing in both Christian faith and good social and philosophical theory, and his desire for local church connection. I did not know he also has books on Anglican/Episcopal denominational history and theology. I don't love reading 800 page tomes, but I am now excited to pick up a number of Dorrien's books. I will start with Breaking White Supremacy because that is what I already have. But I try to pick up at least one other this year.

Many who lean left do not feel that connected to their Christian background. This quote from close to the end I think is a good illustration of how that connection still is important.

On the road, at Columbia, and even at Union, I meet people for whom Christianity is a ruined word. They ask me nicely, or with puzzlement, or hostility, why I am a Christian. I try to explain that I was drawn long ago into the spirit and way of Jesus, which draws me like a magnet into its gravitational force. I was caught by the gospel picture of the divine Word entering the world. I am held by the subversive peace and grace of Christ, the meaning of suffering, the challenge to oppose every form of exploitation and violence, the willingness to give my life to others, and the promise of new life that it brings. These experiences shape my understanding of how I should live. To say with Paul that faith, hope, and love remain, these three, doesn’t mean the evidence is in their favor. It means they remain, they abide, regardless of the evidence. Faith is trust and commitment. Hope gives you courage, helps you face another day. Love makes you care, makes you angry, throws you into the struggle. I need all the faith, hope, and love I can get, and I cannot get any of it on my own. Only through the ties of faith and love with others that grace my life do I have any capacity for hope. We are not in control, so it isn’t up to us to make history come out right. In drawing closer to the divine, we are thrown into work that allows others to share in the harvest, which is enough. Love divine calls out from created things the love for which all things are created to be, pouring through all the processes of life across all boundaries, exceeding what we understand. We enter the mystery of the divine by its grace, beginning in faith with that which transcends faith and draws it forth.

This was originally posted at my blog at https://bookwi.se/over-from-union-road/

Summary: The son of a judge investigates his death.

Very often during the summer I get way behind on writing about the books I read. My kids are home, I do stuff with them, I still have to get some work done, we travel, etc. I finished The Emperor of Ocean Park about a month ago but I have just not made time to write about it. I have known of the book for years but I have never made time to read it. This year I have been trying to keep more fiction in my reading diet and trying to read books that I already owned and decided now was the time to actually start reading this one.

I alternated between audio and kindle versions, but mostly read the book. The audio was well done, but it felt like it was just too slow to listen instead of read. This is not a fast book and it is quite long, so I think that also contributed to me mostly reading it.

The rough story is that Talcott Garland, a law professor at a fictional ivy league school, has to investigate his father’s death. His father was a famous judge in conservative circles. He was nominated to the Supreme Court, but had to resign from the nomination as a result of a connection with his friend. That left him embittered and more connected to the conspiracy theory aspects of the conservative world.

Stephen L Carter is a lawyer and law professor at Yale in real life. His grandmother was an influential lawyer in her own right, but this is a book of fiction. That being said, I think part of what makes this book compelling is that it explores racial realities in the upper reaches of society. The characters are Supreme Court justices, and presidents, and influential lawyers and professors and business people. But race does still influence the way the world works.

This is a well-written slow-burn mystery. The people around Talcott need him to figure out what is going on, but it is unclear if it is the good guys, or the bad guys want him to solve the mystery. There are clearly a couple different groups that are vying for information. And there are personal issues as well. Part of what I enjoyed about the book is that while this isn’t a “Christian” novel, it is a novel that takes faith aspects of Black culture seriously.

I did not know until I started writing this post that this was made into a 10 episode TV series. I have not watched that and it is not currently playing on anything that I am subscribed to, but I will look forward to watching it in the future. This is the first book of a trilogy. The trilogy is not about the same characters, but it is set in the same fictional world. I read about 1/3 of the second book, but it didn’t engage me nearly as much as the first book did. I will come back to it later, but because it does not seem to be directly tied to the first book’s characters, I think I can come back to it later without any loss.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/the-emperor-of-ocean-park/

Summary: "...the truth that God is love lies at the heart of all divine revelation."

I am often reluctant to write about books where I know the authors. It is not because the books are not good, they often are very good. But sometimes it hard to separate the book from the larger lifework of the person that you know outside of just the book.

I didn't meet John Armstrong until about 15 years ago. We had lots of mutual friends because we were both in the Chicago area and were connected to Wheaton College. But it wasn't until I moved to suburban Atlanta that we actually met during an ecumenical meeting here that John hosted and then another conference on friendship in Chicago. We have kept in connect and I try to participate as much as possible in The Initiative, an ecumenical group that grew out of John's earlier work.

I think in many ways The Transforming Fire of Divine Love is a natural outgrowth of John Armstrong's story and his focus on Missional-Ecumenism. Part of what John Armstrong is doing in the The Transforming Fire of Divine Love is narrating his story of how his interaction with both God and other christians moved him from a more closed faith to a more open faith that both recognizes the contributions of other streams of Christianity and recognizes the importance of cooperation and understanding between those steams to become the whole Church.

The Transforming Fire of Divine Love is not a memoir, but he does use his story to illustrate his point. I read Byron Borger's review in his column at Hearts and Minds books and I think that Borger gets it right that The Transforming Fire of Divine Love is interested in not just whether God is love is a true statement, but what we do with the reality of God's love in understanding our theology and our view of the transformation of the Christian's life. I also agree with Borger's point that part of the value of Armstrong's book is that it introduces the reader to the breadth of Christian theology. This is quite quote from Borger:

Love is the key, and he uses everyone from the most dense Orthodox thinkers to dear Max Lucado to sophisticated solid writers like Fleming Rutledge to flesh this out, to underscore its centrality to our faith. He draws on so many great writers that this book actually serves as an introduction to some of the finest thinkers in church history — from the ancient fathers to Kallistos Ware to Frederick Buechner to Karl Rahner to Brad Jersak.

(I have picked up three books that were mentioned or cited so far.)

The Transforming Fire of Divine Love is going to be best for someone that has some background in theology. Not necessarily degrees, but someone who has done some reading in theology. It is not a hard book as much as it is a book that takes seriously theology, not because he sees Christianity as an intellectual exercise, but because Armstrong is grappling with the ways that we have used theology to avoid the call to love.

I think the discussion of God's love and sacrifice is helpful because it raises the problem of starting with the greek philosophical concept of perfection as being unchangeable and "without passions."

Following the greatest Greek philosophers—Aristotle, the Stoics and even the Epicureans—it was argued that “God was without passions.” Tertullian even said, “The Father is incapable of suffering in company with another.” Centuries later Anselm wrote: “Without doubt the divine nature is impassible.” Thomas Aquinas said God cannot “repent, nor be angry or sorrowful, since all these denote passion and defect.” (Note the consistent proximity of emotion with defect.) Shortly after the Protestant Reformation the idea of divine impassibility was confessed in catechisms and confessions. The Westminster Confession (1647), to cite one example, states: “There is but one living and true God, infinite in being and perfection, a most pure Spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions." (p105)

As he develops this case that this historic framing of perfection as being without emotion or unchanging has impacted the way that we understand God's love, he takes seriously the history of that understanding and the ways that our modern understanding critique the older Greek view of perfection.

On the way to exploring how John Armstrong's understanding of God's love has changed over time he there are sections on thinking about God's love in scripture, in creation, through the problem of evil, through the incarnation, the trinity, and other areas. I think that most discussions of God's love end up either with an abstract theological discussion or they end up with a discussion of mysticism or the mystics, or they end up with some type of discussion of the Church as an expression of of God's love for us.

Because of Armstrong's long history of ecumenism and his other books, I am not surprised by some of the ways he talks about the church or mysticism as modes of connection to God. This is a theological book that is trying to make the case that theology is only useful to the extent that it helps us to relationally connect with God. I am going to end with two brief quotes that reflect the point of the book.

Balthasar constantly argued that Christians often treat God’s love as a truth but only in an abstract sense. (As you’ve seen this is what I did for several decades.) Balthasar reasons that for many of us love is not a truth that we allow to impact our daily lives. This is the very thesis of my book. We must allow God’s love to radically impact our lives every day, all the time. (p185)

and

The unnamed author of the classic The Cloud of Unknowing put this well. God can well be loved, but he cannot be thought. By love he can be grasped and held, but by thought, neither grasped nor held. And therefore, though it may be good at times to think specifically of the kindness and excellence of God, and though this may be a light and a part of contemplation, all the same, in the work of contemplation itself, it must be cast down and covered with a cloud of forgetting. (p247)

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/the-transforming-fi...

Summary: An exploration of Thurgood Marshall’s confirmation hearing to the Supreme Court in 1967 as way to both give a biography and context to Marshall’s work and to explore the ways that that hearing was a preview of later Supreme Court nomination fights.

I picked Showdown up because (it was on sale and) I have not previously read anything specifically about either Thurgood Marshall or Brown v Board. I have read many civil rights era histories that mention both, but none that were explicitly about just those subjects. I have been reminded several times recently about how our story of the civil rights movement is framed as Brown v Board, Emmitt Till, Rosa Parks, Birmingham, March on Washington, 1964 Civil Rights Bill, assignation of MLK Jr and the 1968 civil rights bills as if they were all self contained.

Thurgood Marshall graduated from law school in 1933 in just a few years he was working for NAACP and then also joined the board of directors of the ACLU in 1939. It is Brown v Board that he is most well known for, but as Showdown explains, there was a significant number of cases that Marshall and others argued that laid the groundwork for Brown. The work to end white-only primary systems across the country took 20 years and three Supreme Court decisions. Each one widen the crack just a bit more. The ending of the white only primary system and then the various one person, one vote decisions that ended Georgia's county unit system and requiring both regular redistricting and relatively equal size districts as well as the 1965 Voting Rights acts were decades in the making and none of those brought about a perfect democracy, but each slowly changed political realities.

Showdown is quite meandering, but that is part of the point because the context of Marshall's appointment to the Supreme Court has wide context. Marshall was appointed to the Court of Appeals in 1961, but that took 8 months from nomination until approval. In 1965 he was nominated and quickly approved as the US Solicitor General. But it was the nearly 4 months to approve Marshall to the Supreme Court that is the main focus of the book.

As Solicitar General Marshall argued to end the poll tax, Miranda, and several cases defending the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as well as other cases. It was more these cases than his earlier civil rights work that he was questioned about in his nomination. Marshall was not directly involved with the Loving case, but the decision was handed down during the nomination process. Marshall himself married a Filipino woman in 1955, Cecilia Suyat Marshall, after the death of his first wife. Being questioned about the constitutionality of interracial marriage, while being in an interracial marriage with his wife sitting right behind him was a detail that really does matter to the context of that nomination process. As much as I read civil rights history and know that we have not moved as far could be hoped, I also know that there have been changes.

This is not an essential book, but it is one that filled in a few areas that I had not previously learned about. Overall, I am not sure that the thesis quite holds up, but I do think that there is at least a point here that the problems with the current nomination process did not start with Bork or Thomas or the cases like Roe v Wade or Bob Jones, but there is a wide influence from many streams.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/showdown/

Summary: An alternate history of the midwest in the 1920s.

This is the third novel of Francis Spufford that I have read. They have all been historical fiction of one sort or another. Golden Hill was set in 1746 New York City and has a plot twist at the very end that really made the book. It was written and tightly plotted, but that main twist and some other minor plots twists moved the book from good to excellent. Light Perpetual is also an alternative history that follows a group of children who were killed by a German rocket in WWII as if they had not died. My only real complaint about the book is that the book could have been written as a straight novel without the alternate history. I bring that up because Cahokia Jazz does not have that problem.

Cahokia Jazz is set in the 1920s. The alternative history is not really explained well, but as I explored other reviews, I discovered that the central change is that a less virulent form of small pox was introduced by early Spanish explorers and that instead of approximately 90% of Native Americans at the time dying from European diseases, a much smaller percentage died. The result is that by the 1920s, instead of a minuscule Native American population, there is really three cultural groupings in this midwestern city that is roughly the same area as St Louis. The book opens with a note telling the reader that there are three racial/ethnic groups in the book and the book uses the local terms to describe them. They are, takouma (Native Americans), takata (European Americans), and taklousa (African Americans). I knew in my head the terms and I knew by the story which group was which in terms of cultural power and significance, but I think his renaming these racial/ethnic terms was a savvy way to disguise some of the plot points.

As with other Spufford books there is a top level story, but there is depth that below that. Cahokia Jazz is a classic noir detective novel. The gritty cop finds a body and has to do the hard things to solve the crime. That gritty cop doesn't like following rules and has his own history that influences the case. Joe Barrow is a gifted jazz pianist, but has become a murder detective. His partner, Phineas Drummond, who he met in "the war" is a classic dirty cop who also has PTSD.

Much of the culture and history is familiar. This is the 1920s, prohibition has led to crime and gangs. Tommy guns still shape that violence. The US exists, but the development of it is different because of the precarious nature of a multilingual and multi cultural country. The racial reality matters here. White supremacy is still assumed, but the cultural history of the Native Americans, who are now mostly Catholic, but still are influence by the cultural history. Barrow was an orphaned mixed racial man. He is part takouma who was never taught a language other than English and doesn't know any of the stories and history of his Native American side, but has connected with the jazz and culture of his taklousa side. His partner, a takata, naturally assumes leadership because of the assumptions of white supremacy.

The city has an uncomfortable equilibrium. It is primarily a takouma city with a traditional leadership structure, but while he would be a type of king, the official authority structures have changed and modern economics are attempting to take over the traditional communal systems. Race, economics, power, traditional all come together to tell a story that is both familiar, but different enough to make sense as an alternate history.

I think this is a book that is less focused on the plot twists and more focused on the front end alternate history to be the twist. As much as I can see the through line of Spufford's writing, his ability to write books that feel completely different from one another is something that I don't see from most other writers. Most other writers stick to a genre and become known for that genre. If anything I think Spufford may be known for not sticking to a genre and writing books that feel completely different from all the other books he has previously written. But all of these books are beautifully written with compelling characters.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/cahokia-jazz/

Summary: Despite its age, this is still one of the best biographies of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bethge was one of Bonhoeffer's students at Finkenwalde, and became his closest friend and he was the one responsible for compiling Letters and Papers from Prison, the book that made Bonhoeffer a widely known theologian.

It took me almost two months to finish, but Eberhard Bethge's biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, despite being over 50 years old, is still well worth reading. I read the first edition, published in English in 1970 because that was the edition my library had. But I would recommend picking up the 2000 edition from Fortress Press because the first edition was slightly abridged at only 867 pages, compared to 1068 pages in the revised edition.

If you are new to Bonhoeffer, I think Charles Marsh's biography is the best introduction, but Bethge's is the most complete. That makes sense because it is the longest by quite a bit. Marsh's biography is 528 pages, Metaxes biography (which I do not recommend) is 640 pages, Schlingensiepen's biography is 470. It isn't just that this biography is longer, although that is part of it, but this biography is just more comprehensive of areas that the others just do not get to.

Bethge was friend and student of Bonhoeffer's. He was conscripted into the German army for a time, and later was also imprisoned because of his connection to the Bonhoeffer family. (He married Bonhoeffer's niece and her father was part of the resistance movement that Bonhoeffer was also connected to.) I think that Marsh handle's Bonhoeffer's childhood and early development better than Bethge, but especially from 1932 on, Bethge is much more detailed, and much more focused on the way that German church's response to Hitler influenced Bonhoeffer's life. Other biographies hit the major developments and life events, but Bethge talks about ways church politics and especially the politics of the global ecumenical movement worked in a level of detail and nuance that was helpful to me to understand the particulars. But I also think that level of detail is probably too much for those who are new to Bonhoeffer.

My rough evaluation of a biography is that if a biography makes me want to read more by or about a figure, then it is doing its job. After finishing Bethge's biography, I am going to read a biography of Bethge and a biography of Bishop Bell that I have. I also want to read the complete Letters and Papers from Prison. I have read portions, but not all. And the edition that I have is 614 pages compared to the earlier editions that were around 400 pages. There is the Bonhoeffer's Works edition that is 776 pages as well.

Part of what inspired me to pick up Bethge's biography now is reading Mark Nation's book on the legacy of Bonhoeffer. Nation believes that Bethge got some aspect of Bonhoeffer wrong, especially the way that Bethge frames the theological changes over time and his perspectives on pacifism. Having read Bethge after Nation, I think Nation has a point. Bethge was writing about Bonhoeffer at a time when even though there was a condemnation of Hitler and Nazism, there was still come resistance to seeing the resistance movement as an appropriate response. Nation suggests that Bonhoeffer continued to be a pacifist and wasn't involved in the actual plots to kill Hitler, only the efforts to communicate to the outside world that there was a movement to remove Hitler. I think Nation has a point, but I am not sure that the evidence is strong enough to make that point too strongly. I think Bethge does show that the initial resistance movement was attempting to stage a coupe and arrest Hitler for various human rights violations and war crimes. But once the senior military leaders who were involve in the resistance movement were removed from their positions, that option was lost. A coupe was no longer possible and assassination was the only option. I have not read Bonhoeffer the Assassin? which directly addresses this point and it is edited by Mark Nation, but it is an earlier book to Discipleship in a World Full of Nazi's so I am not sure that there will be more evidence there.

I do think that Nation is right that the main reason Bonhoeffer was arrested was because of his use of his role in the Abwehr as a means of avoiding conscription. Being a pacifist and/or refusing to fight was punished by death. As a secondary offense, Bonhoeffer helped to get some Jewish people out of Germany, which was really the excuse used by take down Admiral Canaris, the head of Abwehr as a separate military intelligence agency and to subsume it into the SS intelligence agency. Bonhoeffer was a minor figure in that, but after the discovery of several diaries that recorded – in great detail, and in Admiral Canaris’ handwriting – the activities of the anti-Nazi movement since the 1930s, Canaris, Bonhoeffer, several other members of Bonhoeffer's family and many others were executed just before the end of the war. Bethge and Nation have the same basic facts but they understand some of those facts differently. That is in part why reading multiple biographies matters because there are often different ways to evaluate what is known, especially in cases like Bonhoeffer where there is controversy.

One of the biggest weaknesses of Metaxes's biography was his lack of understanding of Germany's political and church politics. Bethge was not an outsider. He was intimately involved and has that level of detail and understanding matters to understanding the context of why Bonhoeffer continues to be an interesting and important figure today. Books like Haynes' Battle for Bonhoeffer are helpful to look at how Bonhoeffer has been misused, but reading the original biographies not just the evaluation of those biographies, is really helpful.

I also agree with Reggie William's contention in Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus, that Bethge and most other biographers do not adequately address how Bonhoeffer's theology and ecclesiology were influenced by his time in Harlem. So even at over 1000 pages, there are areas where I think this biography could be expanded. I have been listening to Homebrewed Christinaity's Rise of Bonhoeffer podcast documentary and one of the interviews mentioned that there was interest in another revision of Bethge's biography to add in details that have been discovered in the years since Bethge's death. That project did not happen, but there are holes here.

The revised version of Bethge's biography is only available in paperback. And it is expensive, $80 from the publisher and over $50 from most booksellers. There is no ebook or audiobook versions. And even at that high price, multiple book sellers I looked at did not have it available to order.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/dietrich-bonhoeffer/

Summary: A stand alone sci-fi novel set in the same universe as the Ancillary series, multiple people come together by change to grapple with belonging.

As I have said many times, I like sci-fi because it is “about something.” The ideas don’t have to hit you over the head, it is often better if they don’t, but sci-fi is particularly helpful at looking at the ways that culture and perspective shape our world.

Translation State is set in the same world as the Ancillary series, but it is completely stand alone. You don’t have to have read the other books, but you will have insight into the cultures of the different groups and the politics of the universe if you have read the earlier series.

This is a book that can be thought to be about several things simultaneously in a way that makes it not clearly about any one thing in particular. One language does not have gender, so our conception of gender is not present in that language. Other alien species have different ways of procreation which has implications for how their society is set up. There are also different perspectives on what it means to be an individual. In the case of AI machines that have ancillaries, there is not “an individual” but a part of a whole.

I don't want to give away plot point more than necessary because this is one of those books where the reader isn't supposed to understand what is going on until midway through the book then the different threads start to come together. There are a mix of human and non-human characters who for one reason or another do not fit in with expectations. It is pretty easy to read rugged individualism into this framing, and that isn't entire wrong, but there is also a reading about sexual or other minorities who are pressed into behavior as if they were part of the majority group. In the end, it is the difference that saves the day, as I not surprising.

While that is a surface level reading of the book, I do think there is more depth there if you are interested in mining for it. Aliens really are alien and it is difficult to understand across biology, language and culture. But difficult does not mean impossible.

There is also an exploration of trauma as a result of differences in expectations and experience. It is alien, but there is a rough rape equivalent where the individual is resistant to future relationship and change because of the trauma of their past. There is also some violence, especially among aliens who have different biological realities, which leads to different expectations.

This is universe is not perfect, but I have appreciate the four books set within it and I would read more if there are more written in the future.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/translation-state/

Summary: Picking up right where Sensible Shoes left off, the four friends continue to find their way in the world and to find God more clearly.

Sensible Shoes is one of those series that is really one long story broken up into different books because no one would buy a 1500 or so odd page book. The second book starts right after the first book. There is a clear conclusion, but it also was clear that the story would keep moving at the end of the first book.

As I said in my post on Sensible Shoes, one of the problems of writing about spiritual formation is that it is incredibly slow and the problem of writing about it is that it either seems magically fast or boringly slow. Part of what Brown is doing here is to make sure that the reader understands that this is not a one way path toward growth.

But I do think that one of the other problems here is that spiritual growth is inherently dependent upon discernment because discernment is part of how we understand the work of the spirit in our lives. And in my estimation, discernment can bring us to different conclusion because we are different people. And I think at least some of the discernment that happens in these books is discernment I would question. It may be that one particular case of discernment that I question was a red herring where the characters didn't act as well as she should have in the situation but over time did come to a place of forgiveness toward another character.

Forgiveness is a major theme of the series. The characters need to forgive others, especially parents. But also over time, the tends to be a level of acceptance that parents, while they may not have been great parents, they were doing the best that they could at the time, or at least they were not trying to actively harm, even if there was harm. A recent Gravity Commons podcast interviewed author Adam Young about his recent book and he talked about the fact that parenting inevitably leads to trauma. Even good parents will harm their kids in some ways because that is part of the fallenness of the world. And that is how this series treats parents.

The characters are also not perfect. There are times when they are selfish or unthinking, or self protective in unhelpful ways that leads to lies or a lack of full truth. I am still in process of the series but I do not think the characters are going to become perfect along the way.

I don't love the cover art and some of the writing tropes or methods that feel a little too stereotypical. There are some theological quibbles that I have, and big problems, like the problem of evil, are never going to be solvable, but it still makes sense to grapple with those big problems. But I am engaged. As I am writing this, I stayed up WAY too late last night finishing up the third book in the series.

I originally posted this on my blog at https://bookwi.se/two-steps-forward/

Summary: An exploration of the Catholic Church and its history and future around racial justice.

Some books on Catholic thought are about the universal (catholic) church but written from the perspective of a Catholic thinking. While other books on Catholic thought are particularly about what it means to be Catholic in particular. This is the latter not the former. As a non-Catholic reading it, there are still helpful ideas and considerations that can be used outside of the Catholic Church. The chapter on culture is particularly helpful in part because the Catholic Church is so universal that it (or at least parts of it) have thought deeply about how culture and faith work together.

Other parts of the book, history and the discussion of what it means to be a Black Catholic theologian in the US, are more particular and those parts are not as immediately applicable for those who are not Catholic (or Black). But there is still value in understanding particularity. Particularity, when you can understand it allow you to see how to think and act, or at least how others have attempted to think and act, and then to see if those process of thinking and acting can be helpful for you in a different context.

This is also a book written at a particular time, 2010. That time was very particular. Obama had been elected president. And the very public deaths of Black people (mostly men) that eventually gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement had not started. Massingale was writing with tempered hope. He was well aware that the idealism of many who thought we were in a "post-racial" world was not true. But he also was aware that there had been improvements within his lifetime both inside and outside the Catholic Church. Fifteen years later, and not only Benedict, and Francis, have passed away, but the American Catholic Church is in an even deeper sense of division as a result of the continued fall out of the abuse crisis, the politics of Trump, the strain theologically between reformers and traditionalists and other issues. However, I am not sure that much of the discussion in the book is really significantly different.

I am very much influenced by the work of the Catholic Church. My spiritual direction training was at a Catholic program. I am very much influenced by Catholic social teaching. But I also am aware that as much as I find value and ideas helpful, that I am not Catholic. My particularity as a Christian does not have to be disturbed by grappling with difference. Instead the difference can help me understand myself and my own context more clearly.

I originally posted this on my blog at https://bookwi.se/racial-justice/

Summary: A retelling of Huck Finn from Jim's viewpoint.

While I have read some of Mark Twain's books, I have never read Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer. Almost all of my background for the story of Huck Finn is from the 1968-69 live action and animation series, "The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." The show used three live action characters who played Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher, but was otherwise entirely animated. You can see an example here. My memory is pretty vague, but I remember it being almost entirely fantasy. The children found magical creatures as they took a raft down the Mississippi. That was poor preparation for reading James, a retelling of Huck Finn through the perspective of Jim.

My perception prior to reading was that Jim was a slave about the same age as Huck Finn, but once I was a little way into the book I check and the original book had Jim/James in his late 20s. The story keeps to the outline of Huck Finn. Jim runs away to keep from being sold away from his wife and daughter. While at the same time and unrelated, Huck Finn fakes his death to get away from his abusive and alcoholic father.

Jim and Huck Finn find one another while they are both hiding out on an island in the Mississippi River. Jim realizes that he will be blamed for Huck's death, and at the same time knows that Huck is too young to care for himself and so takes Huck under his care as they try to get away. The book starts out in Hannibal, IL. I had previously assumed Hannibal, MO was further south, but it is 100 miles due west of Springfield IL. Missouri was a slave state and while it would have taken longer to get to than today, Springfield was where Abraham Lincoln was based prior to his election as president. The vague initial plan was to take the Mississippi River south to the Ohio River (about 200 miles) and escape to freedom.

Huck Finn was written as a satire but also a children's book. It seems it was mostly told as a series of adventures and Percival Everett in writing this retelling has to fit this new story within the constraints of the old. Huck and Jim spend a lot of time apart in the original which allows for a variety of new elements.

I did spend a little time reading through Huck Finn summaries to make sure I wasn't missing anything too important, but I do not think that you need to read Huck Finn First. The ending of James seems to deviate from Huck Finn pretty significantly.

Huck Finn was at least partially satire, but the overt racism that was part of the satire means that I many people no longer read Huck Finn. And it is why I haven't read it. I am not sure I would have read James if so many people I know had not recommended it. Telling the story from the perspective of a slave, who was continually afraid for himself and his family and who had experienced the beatings and abuse of slavery makes this very different in tone from what I think Twain was doing.

But there is still humor. When alone, the enslaved characters talk without dialect and reveal how much they keep themselves hidden from white people. Jim can read and write and his attempt to get the materials to write his story is a significant part of the plot development. There is a tension between remaining enslaved and alive and the risk of seeking freedom while risking death. That tension also carries throughout the book and shifts over time. Jim's hand is forced. He wouldn't run away if he had not found out that he was supposed to be sold down the river to New Orleans. And he wouldn't have run as he did, if he hadn't known that he would be lynched for killing Huck. And throughout the story, one event after another continue to force Jim's hand to take greater and greater risks because he knows he really has no choice.

I understand why James has become such a popular book. There are aspects that I didn't love, but I think many of them are about the constraints of the retelling method. I generally really like books that are retold from a different perspective. James was well written and realistic. At the same time, part of why this has mattered is the contemporary culture it is being written to.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/james-a-novel-by-percival-everett/

Summary: A novel about the English mystic Margery Kempe, the author of what is usually considered the first autobiography written in English.

I have been intentionally trying to read fiction every day and this has led to me reading a lot more fiction this year. Revelations is about Margery Kempe (c1373-1438?). This is a novel based on her life, roughly from her autobiography, The Book of Margery Kempe.

In that autobiography she details her many visions of Jesus or other members of the trinity as she went on various pilgrimages, including to the Holy Land. But that autobiography also details her many pregnancies and children and the abuse (and rape) from her husband. She suffered what we would now label postpartum depression and has the first of her visions of Jesus after the birth of her first child. And it is believed that she has 14-15 pregnancies with multiple children dying in infancy or still births.

She negotiated a "chaste marriage" and soon after left her husband (and children) when she was about 43. She meets Julian of Norwich and has extended conversations with her. Julian was also a mystic and author and the novel expands on that connection.

Obviously, while there is source material, much of the book is fictionalized. Unintentionally, this is another book on the Love of God that is a connection between Greg Boyle's Cherished Belonging and the novel Sensible Shoes and John Armstrong's The Transforming Fire of Divine Love: My Long, Slow Journey into the Love of God (which I am still reading.) This unintentional theme of God's love throughout my reading this spring has made me think more about how the mystical experience of God's love matters to the church and to those who never have a mystical experience of God's love.

There are, of course, people who disbelieve in or oppose mystical experiences. (One of the reviews of Sensible Shoes that I read opposed spiritual disciples which used imagination or contemplative prayer because that could lead to mystical experiences.) But I think in the history of Christianity, there is a level of mysticism that is assumed even if it is clear that not everyone has a mystical experience. I do not have an explanation for why some have mystical experiences and others do not. From my reading it is clear that some who have mystical experiences would prefer not to have them and that many who do not have mystical experiences desire them.

Margery is known both for her mystical visions and for her public displays of tears. She would regularly cry in public either while having a mystical experience or in remembering those experiences. Margery was not a nun or in a convent. She, as an individual, traveled on pilgrimages but also spoke regularly about the love of God to others. That was considered preaching, which was illegal for a woman to do, and she was tried for heresy multiple times, but never found guilty of being a heretic.

Historical fiction, even if fiction, is a helpful way to learn about the saints. In addition to Revelations, Mary Sharratt also wrote Illuminations, a novel about Hildegard von Bingen, which I read last year. I am often disappointed or frustrated with non-fiction writing about the mystics. And while, there are also limitations to fictional writing about the mystics, it fills a gap in a way that is hard to do with non-fiction writing. I still think my favorite novel about a mystic is Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin.

This was originally published on my blog at https://bookwi.se/revelations/

Summary: Exploration of the role of love, community and belonging.

I have known of Greg Boyle for a while, but I have not previously read his books. I thought I had a good idea of his perspective and approach and I just didn't think I needed to read him. But Cherished Belonging was the book chosen for the book club that I love and so I picked the book up and read it. I think I had a pretty good understanding of Boyle and that my impressions were largely correct. But I was challenged by the book.

Boyle starts early in the book telling the reader that there are two principles that frame his ministry and approach. "1) Everyone is unshakably good (no exceptions) and 2) We belong to each other (no exceptions)." (p2) While there is a bit of fluidity to how he uses "good" in the first part, mostly what he means is inherent worth and value, not moral goodness. I think if you understand him to mean, everyone is made in the image of God and therefore has value, that will be the rough meaning in most situations throughout the book. The stories he shares make it clear that he does not mean that everyone makes good choices or that they always will do the right thing at important points.

With that caveat about how he seems to mean good, I do think that the book is helpful especially in a time when basic Christian values are being questioned. Boyle is remaindering the reader that not only are we called to love, but we are call to love all, even those who are not particularly lovable. He reminds us that those who are most hard to love, generally have been the victims of abuse and harm. Those who have abused and harmed, will often harm others. And as he repeatedly illustrates in his stories, our systems of "justice" often perpetuate more harm instead of healing to those who are at the bottom rungs of our society.

"What if we didn’t punish the wounded but, rather, sought to heal them? In American society, we are faced with broken people, and we have chosen to build prisons to accommodate them. What if we did the reverse? We want to commit to creating a culture and community of cherished belonging. I’m not suggesting that Homeboy is the answer, but we might have stumbled upon the question. As Daniel Berrigan says, “Know where to stand and stand there.” Homeboy just wants to keep standing there." (p5)

Boyle believes (rightly I think) that the way that we best heal those who have been harmed through traumatic abuse, neglect, and other social harms by radical belonging and love. That does not mean that we ignore bad behavior, but that we show that our love is rooted in their value as a creation of God, not in their good behavior, and that we seek to find places that people can be in deep congratulated.

Generally, I agree with most of the book, but stylistically, Boyle is not my kind of writer. I know many people in the group I was in were deeply moved by his stories and method. But I felt a lot of his storytelling was too superficial and quick. He regularly shared three brief stories per page. He frequently drew meaning from stories that I think were strained.

But again, I was convicted regularly throughout the book. I do not love as much as I should. I do judge harshly at times I should not.

When the group first started reading the book was the start of President Trump's time in office. I am a Wheaton College alumni and Wheaton congratulated Russ Vought for his role as OMB Director. That led to significant controversy because many Wheaton alum are international aid workers or in other areas of social ministry. Vought was the primary architect of Project 2025, much of which is designed to remove international aid, social safety-net systems, public education and protections for women, minorities and the disabled. Another very large group of Wheaton alum are politically conservative and supporters of Trump and Vought's policies. As that controversy played out, I was convicted that I needed to be regularly praying for Vought. I didn't know him when I was at Wheaton, but we overlapped I believe. He was several years younger than I am. We just do not have the same theological convictions. Vought is a vocal Christian nationalist who does not believe that the constitution is valid any longer and who does not believe in the separation of church and state. He believes that Christians should have sole authority of control government and he has indicated that he does not think women should have the right to vote. He has celebrates looking forward to a time when federal workers would be too traumatized to come to work.

But I was convicted that I need to pray for him daily. I am not praying for him to succeed in his plans, I find his plans reprehensible and far from Christianity as I understand it. I am praying that he will accept God's love for him and find a community that loves him.

But as much as I was convicted by the book, I think part of the problem of the book is that is often is framed as loving others as a type of ministry and when connected with race and class this can become a type of paternalism. I don't think that Boyle is paternalistic, but I do think that the book doesn't spend enough time helping the reader to take the principles that are in use by Boyle in his context and move that to other contexts.

It is clear from the stories that Boyle isn't perfect, he does get frustrated with people he works with, he has limits, but I do think there can be a perception of super spiritualness in the book. He doesn't talk about his habits of rest or renewal or what he does to remind himself of his calling. That is a different book, but I do think it is part of what it takes to move toward the type of "cherished belonging" that he is calling the reader to. (The group I was discussing this with talked about this and several were getting together to write him about those practices to better understand his own spiritual work.)

I think this can be a valuable book to understand how belonging and love practically do work to bring about healing. I do think that this is helpful is teaching that we are not just called to love those who are easy to love, but also to love those who are hard to love. Boyle writes from his experience and setting. That experience is not a common experience and that setting is one that can by mythologized like other "missionary" books. Most people who read this are going to try to put it into practice is a standard suburban setting and they will likely need help in translation.

One minor note, Boyle uses a lot of Spanish that he leaves untranslated. Most of the time you get the basic meaning from context. But one advantage to reading on a kindle is that you can translate it in the kindle as long as you have an internet connection. I used that feature a lot in this book.

This was originall posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/cherished-belonging/

Summary: Urban fantasy about what the role of guilt and repair is for those who have been raised to harm.

When Among Crows is the first of Veronica Roth's books that I have read since the Divergent series. I read the Divergent series soon after they were released in the 2011-13 era. I think I read all of the series at least twice and I saw the movies. But since then, while Roth has written a number of additional books, I just haven't bothers to pick them up.

I saw When Among Crows was on sale for kindle and I picked it up because it was short and because it was a modern urban fantasy based in Chicago (similar to Desden Files) and it was loosely based on Slavic folktales. I also picked up The Witch and the Tsar at the same time and it will be my next fiction book. Both books use the folktale character of Baba Yaga and I picked them up together to see how different authors handle the retelling of similar stories.

Similar to other urban fantasy, there are more creatures than just humans living in our world, but not everyone can see them. Dymitr opens the books. He is human and on a quest, but the object of that quest is not fully revealed until very close to the end of the book. Along the way, Dymitr seeks out help from various creatures that feed on human fear or pain or sadness.

This is not a young adult book like Percy Jackson or The Carver and the Queen Emma C. Fox or KB Hoyle's fairytale series, this is more like Dresden Files' level of violence and dark fantasy themes, but with less humor than Dresden Files. There isn't any sex, but there are a few kisses between a gay couple and that doesn't go any further.

This is a bit between a long novella and a short novel at 175 pages. I read it in three brief reading sessions. I was facinated by the main theme of the book, revenge, guilt and atonement. It takes a while to get into who is guilty for what, but all the characters have killed or harmed others. Some have killed or harmed out of self defense. Some have killed or harmed because they were taught to fear others or that others were trying to harm them and so you needed to kill or be killed.

It isn't fully revealed until later and it would be a spoiler to discuss, but relationship across boundries is the cause of coming to see a different perspective. And once you see a different perspective, your guilt and the role you have in repair of harm does matter.

Urban fantasy does not tend to take a light view of magic. Magic can be well used or badly used, but regardless, there is always a cost. This book continues that general genre trend.

I lived in Chicago for years. This book uses the polish immigrant story to explore how old world fairytale creatures came to the new world. But the city was not as much of a character to the book as I would have hoped. The next book in the series comes out later this year and by advance page count (which can be wrong) the next book is closer to 300 pages, or nearly twice as long. I look forward to picking it up when it is released.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/when-among-crows/

Summary: Percy Jackson and gang's latest project is pet sitting.

Wrath of the Tripple Goddess is the second of a subtrilogy within the larger Percy Jackson series. This subtrilogy is set during Percy Jackson's senior year of high school and the background is that he has to get three letters of recommendation from gods to get into the demigod college, New Rome University, where Percy and Annabeth want to go to college. Percy Jackson was able to get his first letter of recommendation, and this is about getting his second. Because gods only give boons as a result of some quest or challege done for them by a human or demigod, Percy, Annabeth and Grover have to accomplish something for a god. In the last book, they found a stolen challice. In the Wrath of the Triple Goddess, they have to pet sit for some magical creatures at the home of one of the gods.

Thematically, this is a halloween book, so it is a bit spookier than some, although it isn't very spooky. Generally, I think this subtrilogy has walked a good balance of writing about Percy when he is 5-6 years older than the intiial series, but keeping it oriented toward younger readers so that its content is not too old, but it engages readers who are now older than they were when the initial series came out.

There is good character development here. I am happy to learn more about Grover and Annabeth and Percy and there are characters from earlier books that come up along the way that show that there are ramifications for previous actions.

I have been intentionally reading more fiction and as much as I have enjoyed reading some young adult fiction, I am ready to read something with more depth. If the third book in the subtrilogy were already out I would probably gone straight to it, but it will not come out until fall 2025.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/wrath-of-the-triple...

Summary: A series of loosely connected essays about the influence of the rule of Benedict and Benedictine spirituality on the church.

I have read a number of Rowan Williams' short books. Most of those books were based on lectures and compiled into books later. This seems to be different in that it appears to be a series of essays that was compiled into a book and just doesn't have the same level of coherence as I tend to expect from Williams' books. That isn't to say they are bad essays, I learned a lot about the history and influence of the Benedictine order. But I think as long as you go into the book with an expectation of essays that are loosely connected and not as a more intentionally shaped book, you will be rightly primed for what the book is.

One of the reviews I skimmed through complained about the last essay, which is less about Benedictines broadly and more about a particular Benedictine author's book. I agree with the comment, but I also found that essay the most engaging of the book because it was about a book trying to grapple with mysticism in the early 20th century (about the same time that Evelyn Underhill was writing her book on mysticism.) Williams was helpful in pointing out that we tend to think of mysticism phenomenologically or sometimes epistemologically, but that isn't how all people at all times have thought about mysticism. Those are both useful ways to explore mysticism, but they do limit the concept of mysticism if those are the only methods of exploration.

The Rule of St Benedict is probably the thing most people are aware of, even if they haven't actually read it. There is a good discussion of the rule, but you probably do want to have a little familiarity with the rule before you start. I have read it all, but it has been a while ago and I probably should have stopped and read it all again before reading the book.

Most of the first section reflects on the rule and the ways that the rule shaped Benedictines to stability and obedience and virtue. These sections are all helpful but because I am not brand new to Benedictine spirituality, that was less new than the last two chapters. I have already mentioned the last chapter on mysticism as my favorite chapter. But the chapter of the history of reforms within Benedictine order was helpful because much of that was new to me. As someone that is always interested in reforming system, understanding the influence of both successful and failed reforms is helpful.

Overall, this wasn't my favorite book of Williams, and I am glad I picked it up while it was on sale. But there was value for me reading it even if I think it will be too narrow for many readers.

I posted this originally on my blog at https://bookwi.se/the-way-of-st-benedict/

Summary: A book that is hard to recommend, because it needs a lot of caveating. The right person will find it helpful, most will not.

I have a ambivalent attitude toward reading the mystics. I value mystical thinking and practice, but I tend to find reading them an exercise in frustration. Mystics are often vague and contradictory. They often use language in unusual ways. But there is often still real help there.

Part of my ongoing reading about discernment is about how we apply what we learn even when there is not definitive directions. I was listening to a talk by Sean Rowe, the new presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and he said (my paraphrase) that we like to talk about discernment, and discernment is good, but the point of discernment is to eventually chose a path and follow it. That is a helpful point and one that I think DeMello needs to hear (or say).

What DeMello is doing here is not saying, "give up and stay where you are," but "acknowledge where you are and pay attention." His rough summary is that we don't change by trying to force ourselves to do hard things, but by paying attention and allowing the Holy Spirit to bring awareness to us.

A lot of the emphasis early in the book is not on changing to "get something" but to become content in all things. Again, this is both true and problematic. It is true to the extent that we should be content in all things, but not true to the extent that we simply accept injustice without complaint. I feel like this is similar to Dallas Willard's advice/comment that a mature person should be very hard to offend. And to the extent that you should not personally be offended, I agree. But to the extend that we are not offended about the things that offend God, I disagree.

The shift to part two raises a lot of concerns. In part one, his language is about beliving in yourself. He doesn't use the language of manifesting, but I think he is using some of the ideas that overlap with manifesting. I get concerned about that type of rhetoric because while there is some truth to needing to believe in yourself and be confident that something is possible, there are limits. Simply beliving that good things will happen will not make them true. But the rhetoric at the start of section two is even more problematic.

"What causes unhappiness...there is only one cause of unhappiness. The false beliefs in your head." I understand in context what he is trying to say. He isn’t explicitly denying that wrong things in the world exist. But he is framing unhappiness as how we respond. Stephen Covey’s point about our response is the space between the stimuli and our action is similar to what DeMello is trying to say. There is a need to help people see that the space between stimuli and response exists, but I don't think it is helpful to put everything on that space.

In particular now with the current administration's explicit plan to overwhelm the news media and the bureaucracy with a barrage of orders and news so that it is impossible to have an adequate response, we do need to emphasize that space between stimuli and action. But it feels like he is playing games with semantics, not unlike the “Sin of Empathy” discussion. Empathy has a common definition. But the “Sin of Empathy” crowd is redefining empathy to be sinful by defining it as a type of codependent enmeshment or abusive manipulation. It is entirely possible to have a discussion about codependent enmeshment or abusive manipulation without denigrating the virtue of empathy.

In that similar way, DeMello seems to be redefining Happiness not as an emotion or a type of joy or pleasure at the world, but solely as a divine gift of contentment. There is a God given gift of contentment that the mystics have told us about for a long time, but that isn’t usually described as “happiness” and to define it that way using that word seems to intentionally create confusion.

Much of the rest of the book has similar problems of either using words oddly, or asking us to withdraw from our emotional response to adopt a type of Buddhist-like detachment. I understand that some people may find that helpful. But I think many Chrsitians have already been taught to mistrust emotions and those Christians who already mistrust emotions do not need additional instruction about the problems of emotion. Emotion is part of how we were created. Emotions can be distorted because of sin and experience. But the solution to that is healing, not continued distrust of emotion.

I originally posted this on my blog at