Entitlement

   I recently finished Entitlement by Rumaan Alam.  The review from the New York Times on the Amazon page calls it a 'psychological thriller'.  If you choose to read this book, I think the word 'thriller' is unlikely to be one of the words you use to describe it.  Given that it currently averages 3.3 stars out of 311 reviews, I'm guessing that it's unlikely you'll read this book.  I don't blame you.  There are plenty of other books out there that are actually thrilling.  I also finished Richard Osman's We Solve Murders, which was thrilling.  But if you want a book that makes you think, Entitlement will work for that, depending on how comfortable you are with subtle confrontation.  The book prods.

  It's a story about a woman, Brooke Orr, in New York who starts a new job in her mid-thirties working for a foundation.  The foundation is a newly formed effort by a billionaire who is looking to change the world.  Or manage his tax liabilities, depending on one's perspective.  What makes the book interesting is the way that being around the billionaire changes Brooke.  She begins to see the way wealth and power influences people, the way it changes the world they live in.  She begins to see herself as equally deserving of privilege and power.  She starts to demand things.

  It makes one think about how the Scriptures don't tell us that money is the root of all evil.  It's the love of money that is the root of all evil.  What we choose to love changes us.  As Tim Keller says, whether fundamentalism is good or bad depends on what your fundamental is.  If it's a self-giving God who pours himself out so that others may have life and have it abundantly, then that type of fundamentalism will drive you to fixate on serving others.  If we choose to love money and begin to expect the world to treat us differently based on the amount of it we have, then that changes us, too, and not in a good way.

  I also recently re-read C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce.  It's a tale of interactions between people choosing whether or not to go to heaven.  Those in heaven have come to implore them to choose heaven, to choose to grow into the people God has made them to be.  They talk about how the choices they make will color backwards, transforming the way they see all the choices beforehand.  If they choose grace and goodness, then that will trace its way back to the roots and everything before will be changed.

  The choices we make change us, often in subtle ways.  Our friends notice it, as Brooke's did in Entitlement.  But we often think it's our friends that have changed, not us.  We view it as part of maturation, and attribute things to our friends lack thereof.  But we're always changing, growing, picking up new things and setting others down.  Entitlement is a warning, in many ways, that the power and privileges that come along with money will twist the soul, despite our intentions and the thought that we can control it.  We must be careful around fire -- we cannot hold it without getting burned.  

Endurance

  I'd heard about the exploration of Antartica in 1914 led by Shackleton, but I never had more than cursory knowledge of the trip.  I finished Alfred Lansing's Endurance last week, which is the full story of the incredible voyage, and it's one of the most remarkable true stories I've ever read.  I have absolutely zero interest in a polar expedition, due to my strong desire to not lose limbs to frostbite, but I admire the courage and determination of those who lead and participate in such journeys.  

  Shackleton's journey took a turn for the worse when he and the 27 members of his crew became stuck in the pack ice, drifting at the mercy of polar ice for months before their ship was eventually crushed by the ice.  Then they were left to try and hike as far as they could before taking to the boats, eventually landing on Elephant Island, an inhospitable spot in the midst of an angry sea.  Once there, 6 men set out in a small boat to navigate 800 miles across the violent Southern Sea, one of the most ambitious feats of navigation in recorded history.  Then, once they somehow landed on South Georgia Island, three of the six men had to hike 29 miles across mountainous/blizzard conditions to reach help.  

  Somehow, Shackleton didn't lose a single crew member.  Every time I turned the page, when I thought things were as bad as they could get, somehow they got worse, but the crew persevered.  It's amazing to think of the obstacles they overcame.  In the final voyage to South Georgia Island, it seemed like every minute brought potential calamity, but they solved each problem, one by one, and they were all rescued.

  It makes me think of Lamentations 3, when we're told that God's mercies are new every morning.  We so often have no idea what we'll face each day.  When they first got snared in the ice, if you'd told Shackleton and the crew what awaited them, they might have given up.  But they didn't know what awaited them, and they simply dealt with the challenges, day by day.  They found a way to manage.

  A very wise woman once told me that worry is negative prayer.  May we trust in God that we'll have the strength to manage what's in front of us, and let the future take care of itself.  We don't know what awaits and we'll only discover the resources when we get there.  

In the Heart of the Sea

   Well, I finished Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea, the true story of the Essex, the ship that inspired Moby Dick.  It was... hard to read. It's hard to imagine what the whaling life was like -- captains and the crew would leave for two year voyages around Cape Horn to search for whales in the Pacific Ocean before returning to their Nantucket base.  And reading about the process for killing and disassembling a whale is somewhat stomach churning, even if I've read about it in other books.  I always end up feeling sorry for the whale.  

  Ultimately, what makes this so hard to read is the trial endured by the cast members after a whale rams the Essex and it sinks far from land.  They are initially divided up into 3 whaleboats, and the captain makes the wrong decision to sail for South America rather than Tahiti.  They were worried about rumors of cannibals in the Marquesas Islands, and Philbrick does a good job explaining how this incorrect information likely led to the death of several crewmembers who probably would have survived had they sailed west to the Islands rather than making the long journey east.  The harrowing accounts of life in a whaleboat for months with few resources and increasingly desperate crewmembers is sad and tragic.  

  Here's hoping for some lighter material in the next few books!

Tides of War, New York, and other books

   I've read too many war books this year.  

  I started out the year by finishing Ian Toll's excellent trilogy on the war in the Pacific.  Later on, I read Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts, describing Berlin just before WWII.  Lately, I've read biography on Genghis Khan, Erik Larson's excellent new book around the events at Fort Sumter that led to active hostilities in the Civil War, and I just concluded Steven Pressfield's Tides of War, a bit of historical fiction around the Peloponnesian War.  Too much violence, I think, so I picked up Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea, the true story of the whaleship Essex that inspired Moby Dick.  Having read (and not enjoyed) Moby Dick, perhaps I'm simply looking for a more enjoyable read around ships and whales.  I may have completely turned Caleb off from ever reading Moby Dick by the way I described it to him, but I consider that a favor to the next generation.  I've never read a book that I considered in such desperate need of an editor.  

  Pressfield's Tides of War is a glimpse into an ancient war, at a time when Athens and Sparta were at war with one another.  It's told looking backwards, through the eyes of a soldier who fought endlessly for both sides, caught up as one individual in the midst of an ever-churning war.  That's the one thing I take away from all these books -- the human cost of war is tragic.  So many lives are thrown into the grinder, and I can't help but think on each man lost.  Each one had hopes and dreams, a family and a past, but his future was lost in the face of the war machine.  It opens my eyes to be grateful for those in the modern day who serve our country and put themselves in danger.  How do we properly thank them for their willingness to serve, to risk, to set aside their hopes and dreams to protect those of others?  

  I've clearly slacked in keeping up with the book reviews.  On Friday night, I finished my 33rd book of the year.  Edward Rutherford's New York was one that I recently enjoyed, as it tells the story of the great city through the story of one family, from generation to generation.  We see how the various social movements, as well as wars, impact the city and the people inside of it.  It's very well done.

  As was David McCullough's Path Between the Seas, the telling of the building of the Panama Canal.  I had no idea the French had tried earlier to build it.  It seems wild to have set off with as little data as they did, but they believed that if they threw enough people at it, eventually they would conquer.  The French underestimated the jungle! The personalities of some of the characters involved made the tale come alive, and the sheer audacity of the effort is well captured in this book.

2023 Year in Review: Books I Read and Mostly Enjoyed

   Every year, around this time, although usually earlier when I'm not so busy, I look back at what I read the previous year and offer a top 10 list of favorite books.  When I look back at 2023, I read 58 books totaling 20,347 pages, but I didn't enough great books that I'd add them to the top 10 list.  So it'll be a shorter list this year, and mostly and reminder to make sure you're reading good books!  I'm going to try and raise the bar this year on books that I read in hopes of having a better option for this list when I write it next, in 2025.  I'll almost certainly have fewer books to choose from, as I've currently finished half as many books as I had by this point last year -- certainly not insurmountable, but when I look at that and the books I just checked out from the library, it's not looking like I'll be moving through books at the same pace.  The good news is that I finally finished the first book of Ian Toll's trilogy on the war in the Pacific (Pacific Crucible, which was excellent), which I'd been telling myself to read for at least two years.  I've started Erik Larson's book on the Galveston hurricane (Isaac's Storm) in 1900 and have Candace Millard's River of the Gods and David McCullough's Mornings on Horseback to follow, so it's looking like a higher quality start to the reading year.

  The first book I read in the year was John Man's biography of Saladin.  I'd highly recommend it if your 12th century middle eastern history is a little rusty, like mine was.  I know very little about the Crusades, and even less about those on the other side of the Crusades.  This was an eye-opening account of the dynamics of power and a ruler trying to unify the Islamic world.  Saladin possessed some desirable qualities, especially in light of some of the atrocities of the Crusades.

  The next book I read after that was Joel Dicker's The Enigma of Room 622.  This was very clever and a delightful mystery that bounced from a writer's retreat to the drama of Swiss bank succession.  I read a lot of mysteries last year and I love the way the action turns the page, but this one rose to the top of the pile due to the ingenuity of the plot and the clever twists that made me think.  I appreciate the work that went into this -- it didn't feel lazy, like some of the others I read.

  Looking back at my list, the year started out so strongly... maybe that's why it's so disappointing to realize that the last 11 months of the year didn't contain as much quality as the first month did.  Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire, a fictionalized account of the Spartans defense of the Persians at the battle of Thermopylae, was fantastic.  I'd highly recommend it as one of the best books I've read in recent years.  It's amazingly human and yet doesn't shy away from the realities of war and the exhaustion and fatigue that come with it.  His Tides of War is on my list for this year.

  After January, it was slim pickings for a while.  Michael Horton's Recovering Our Sanity was a solidly grounded reasoning as to why we need to reject the culture of fear and let our faith ground us in the modern age.  I read Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August, about the lead-in to WWI -- it's heartbreakingly tragic to think of all the wasted death and the sense of inevitability of it all.  This gave me an appreciation of the recent history before WWI that led into it -- I don't think I had an appreciation for how the previous fifty years shaped the attitudes within Europe at the time and how eager it seemed like many were to go to war.  

  H.G. Parry's The Magician's Daughter was an intriguing read about a girl caught between two worlds.  Adrienne Buller's The Value of a Whale explored the sometimes absurd calculations that come along with some of the environmental movements.  She rightly castigates us for trying to put a monetary value of nature and urges us to take seriously the need to improve our stewardship of the environment, because all the money in the world cannot replace aspects of the environment that we are quickly losing.  Her insight into the drawbacks of carbon offsets was helpful to me as a novice in understanding that market.  

  I read two David Grann books.  The Wager was a wild read about a shipwreck off the coast of South America.  It's hard to imagine what life was like in those days, and the choices the sailors had to make often had no good outcomes.  Killers of the Flower Moon was incredibly well done, although a heart-breaking tale about the corruption that comes along with wealth and the incredible lack of respect given to the Native Americans.  What was done to them is inexcusable and so hard to read.  I haven't yet seen the movie, as it's hard for me to sit still for that long, but Grann did an excellent job telling the story.

  John Cleese's Creativity is worth reading for any engaged in creative pursuits -- it can be read in an hour and gives some helpful pointers.  I'll always recommend (I hope!) Abir Mukherjee's series set in India.  I read the most recent edition in June, Shadows of Men, and they're always beautifully written and give such a sense of place.

  Amor Towles' The Lincoln Highway was an engaging read, but I took issue with the way it ended, and that soured the book for me.  It needed another chapter, in my opinion.  Overall, the book was fine, but A Gentleman in Moscow stands head and shoulders above this one.  Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist is an important book to read in this age of pessimism.  It's at least ten years old, but similar to Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death (which is a great read if you haven't yet read it), it's only become more important as we all revert to thinking the end is near, driven on by social media and the news telling us about every tragic event around the world.  Ridley relies upon the data and describes how life continues to get better, year after year, and the rational argument is to expect things to continue to improve.

  Two others that were fun reads were Mel Brooks' All About Me and Tim Harford's Fifty Inventions that Shaped the Modern Economy.  I've always enjoyed Mel Brooks' work, and reading about his youth and the work he invested to arrive at the point where he could start making films was revealing when thinking about the sheer number of hours invested in perfecting his craft.  Brooks gives a sense of delight to this work, and it's always fun to experience a craftsman at his work.  Harford is one I found through his podcast Cautionary Tales, which is always good for hearing about a tragedy that you didn't previously know about!  He brings a fresh eye to history, and this book offers up insights into things we take for granted that make our world work.

  There are a few books I read that were interesting but I expected more from.  Walter Isaacson's The Code Breaker was an interesting exploration of CRISPR technology that led to the MRNA vaccines, but so much of it was over my head.  It's fascinating to explore scientific breakthroughs and realize that while one person often gets the fame, there are usually a number of others who are on the same verge.  Sophie Hannah wrote new books with Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot as the main character.  I checked out four from the library and felt obligated to read them all, and they were fine, I guess.  Some of the plots were almost too complex.  I appreciate that she's trying to have the spirit of Christie, but often I simply felt tired by the end.  Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead was simply sad.  The reality of drugs and oxycodone and what it does to lives and communities is heavy.  I was glad I read it, but also happy to move on to something lighter when I was finished.  That's a privilege, I recognize.  

  That's 2023 in books.  There's certainly a number of others I could discuss, and many that were forgotten as soon as they were returned to the library.  I hope to re-read the greatest fiction book of all time this year, which will be a delight when I can re-open Dumas' masterpiece.  I look forward to all the adventures that await this year!

A Bunch of Books

   I started out the year on a roll, writing up posts for the first few books I read.  And then life happened... here we are, 6 months later, and I haven't posted a book review since January.  I can take comfort that not many people have noticed, I suppose!  Here at the halfway point, I'm 24 books in, with just over 8,000 pages read.  

  I recently finished up Mel Brooks' autobiography All About Me, which was a really fun read.  I'm a huge fan of his movies, and hearing the stories behind them was a delight.  What was most interesting was the story of his rise to being a producer -- he put in a lot of work to get there, and it wasn't easy.  It's a helpful reminder that people who make it to the top of any field have usually poured themselves into their careers, often at cost to family life or other commitments, and that overnight success is rarely overnight.  

  Before that, Abir Mukherjee's latest book, The Shadows of Men, was beautifully written, as always.  It's a really interesting detective series set in colonial India, when tensions are high and an English and Indian detective are working together while caught up in the ways their cultures are at odds.  I love the sense of place in these books, and the way that cultural conflict plays out, particularly in the way dismissed people reveal how vitally important they are.  It's a reminder to really see people, not just to look at and through them, and to value them as individuals.

  I waited for ages for the library to have Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and I was ready to love this story of video game designers who create an immersive world.  I found it... forgettable.  It felt like it was trying to be very profound, but it didn't resonate with me.  Amazon reviews indicate I'm clearly in the minority on this one, but I was disappointed.  It kinda just felt needy.

  I'd been carrying around Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August for ages.  I finally made it through the heartbreaking tale about the origins of WWI.  As an American with little knowledge of European history outside of the major events, the book helped place WWI in the midst of the larger history of conflict between France and Germany, and I understood better how inevitable the war was.  I couldn't help but read it with heartbreak, knowing the horrors of trench warfare that was to come as a result of the decisions made.  Having been to Verdun and stood beside the ossuary filled with the bones of those chewed up by the machine of war, it's tragic to read the decisions that sent so many to their deaths.  

 H.G. Parry's The Magician's Daughter was a fun read, a story of a girl who lives in the midst of magic and is raised by a man trying to restore magic to a world losing it.  It's an action-packed tale of friendship and heroism that was hard to put down.  This is what I expected Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow to be.  

  Finally, Michael Horton's Recovering our Sanity is a book that teaches us how to fear.  Horton, professor of Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary, orients our fear towards God.  When we talk about fear of God, it's not the same as fear of spiders, but a respect and admiration that leads us to love.  When we properly fear God, we acknowledge that God alone has power over us and the world, and when we grasp this, we're not afraid of anything else in the world, which allows us to live unfettered and unafraid of all the things the world tells us to be afraid of.  It's a short read that is a critically important message in the social media world where every other message is a new urgent reason to be afraid of government and neighbor and disease and everything else.

Gates of Fire

   On the way back from Dallas on Tuesday, I finished Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire.  It's an old historical fiction story about the battle of Thermopylae, the Spartan battle against the Persian invaders that helped preserve Europe from decimation at the hands of Xerxes and his troops.  The movie 300 tells the same story about how an outnumbered Greek force held the Persians off for days, at the eventual cost of all of their lives, although the movie mostly made me feel vastly inferior for not spending every waking hour at the gym.

  It's a sobering thought to watch the movie or read the book and think about those brave Greek soldiers stoiclly going to their deaths, bravely resisting a horde many times their number, offering their lives to preserve their country, even with the knowledge that they would perish in the effort.  It reminds me a bit of the end of the movie Glory, when the soldiers are on the beach about to charge, facing overwhelming odds and with little hope of being alive at the end of the day.  What does one think about in such moments of peace before the trumpets of war sound and violence reaches up from the pit to ensnare its victims in the icy grip of death?  What memories abound in the heart while the eyes take in the sights and sounds of weapons at the ready?  How do the feet obey orders while the soul screams?

  There's an interesting discussion related in the book.  Pressfield writes from the perspective of a squire attached to one of the Spartan leaders, and at one point, the Spartan is asking his fellow soldiers what the opposite of fear is.  I don't know what comes to your mind -- courage is the easy answer, but it's not the conclusion reached here.  No, the opposite of fear, Pressfield suggests, is love.  The Spartans stay in the fight and overcome the desire for self-preservation because of a love stronger than fear, a love for the soldier next to them and a love to preserve their homeland.

  I think about this in relation to Augustine's thoughts that the essence of sin is disordered loves.  We love the wrong things, and so we find ourselves enveloped in sin, because those loves lead us to places we wouldn't have planned to go where we do things we never thought that we would do.  If we loved things properly, if we loved God first and others next, then we'd love and serve and worship in a way that made humanity sing with harmony.  But we love ourselves and pleasures more than these, and so we cheat one another and selflessly pursue for ourselves.  We plunder and brawl to get, rather than serving to give.  Because our loves are disordered, we're driven by fear.

  The best line the Spartans have, which I think is discussed in Dan Carlin's Hardcore History episode on the Persian Empire (King of Kings III), is when Xerxes (which is a fantastic name for a dog, in my opinion) comes and asks the Spartans for their spears, imploring them to serve him rather than end up dead beneath the wheels of the Persian war machine.  King Leonidas' reply?  Molon Labe, which means "Come and take them." 

2022 Book Review

   Here it is, the post that everyone has been waiting for!  Books in review for 2022.  The good news for the year is that I still haven't read a book as bad as Eugene Sue's The Wandering Jew, which I finished at the end of 2020 and still cannot believe how bad the last 700 pages were.  I'll let go of that someday, but not yet.

  In 2022, I read 53 books, totaling 19,111 pages.  I wish I could say that the book per week average meant that I took a measured approach and read a little every day, but that was not at all how it worked.  Instead, I end up finding a few good books and missing plenty of nights of solid sleep due to staying up too late into the night.  I binge on books.

  I didn't have a top 10 list this year -- I didn't read as many great books as I did in 2021.  I read a lot of books this year that didn't stick with me -- I finished them, returned them to the library, and then promptly didn't think about them again.  So instead of a top 10, I've listed a few notable books below.

-Far and away, the best book of the year was Kate Quinn's The Diamond Eye.  Fantastic story of an amazing woman fighting as a sniper in the Soviet army and then becoming best friends with Eleanor Roosevelt.  Cannot recommend this one highly enough.  

-I stumbled across Abir Mukherjee's A Rising Man, and then read the next three books in the series.  It's a post-WWI British detective working in India.  The mysteries are good stories, but the standout quality of these books is the sense of place Mukherjee is able to provide through his writing.  Beautifully written books that make you feel as though you are there, which is all the more amazing given that India and Ohio have slightly different climates.

-Charles Mann's The Wizard the Prophet was a very interesting read.  He focuses on two fundamentally different approaches to the environmental movement.  The Prophets focus on a doom and gloom approach, predicting the end of the world, while the Wizards are focused on the ways technology help overcome the environmental challenges we face.  This is a book you read that makes you think about how you see the world and what kind of approach you'd take to challenges.

-Suzanne Simard's Finding the Mother Tree is a reminder of how amazing nature is.  Trees care for one another, which should force us to think deeply about the forest as a living organism more than a collection of different plants.  Perhaps if we were to take that approach, we'd hesitate before removing forest for developments and enter such realms with appropriate reverence.  

-The Secret Race, by Tyler Hamilton, was impossible to put down.  Hamilton detailed his usage of steroids as a world-class bike rider, and the careful steps taken to stay ahead of drug testers.  I'd never realized the pressure to do steroids, and Hamilton made me think about my opinions about those who use them, especially in a world like cycling, where it is impossible to be competitive without steroids.

-Peng Shepherd's The Cartographers was a fun exploration of how maps change the world.  Do maps have power to create reality?  

-I finally read Erik Larson's Devil in the White City, about a serial killer during the Chicago World's Fair.  The part about preparing for the World's Fair and building a ferris wheel was amazing. The part about the serial killer was terrifying.  Overall, it seems like everything Larson writes is worth reading and well-written.

-I read a bunch of Anthony Horowitz's writing this year, including the three James Bond novels that he wrote.  It seems like he's turning out a book a month!  All of his mysteries are fun adventures.

  That's the list for the year.  As always, the world expanded when I read, and I got to escape reality every time I turned a page.  I look forward to what I'll dive into this year!

The Enigma of Room 622

   Joel Dicker's The Enigma of Room 622 is a great mystery.  It's on a long list of books that I figured I'd read over a week or so and ended up devouring in a few days because I couldn't put it down.  It centers an author who goes away to vacation and notices the hotel has a room 621, 621A, and 623, but no room 622.  Pretty soon he and his self-proclaimed assistant are exploring the story behind the murder that took place in room 622 years ago.

  My takeaway from this is how dangerous our appetites can be to the health of our souls.  As someone once said, the only word our appetites know is more.  How often have those who were content lost everything when they've chased even more?  It's so easy to get caught up in wanting more, and so hard to resist the siren song of keeping up with others, even when we're chasing something that we didn't even want at one point.  But those roots start small, and they sink deeper into our lives, when they've soon taken over and we're obsessed with a chase, even at great cost to us.

  It's what makes the 23rd Psalm so interesting.  When the Lord is our shepherd, we do not want.  How amazing is the thought of being fully satisfied and wanting for nothing?  That's a life worth striving for.

Saladin

   Can we all agree that Disney's animated Robin Hood is the second-best Robin Hood, bested only by Robin Hood: Men in Tights?  I've seen three or four Robin Hoods, and I never gave much thought to all the discussion about John trying to capture the throne away from Richard III, who was off fighting in the Crusades.  Maybe it's hard to be too focused on historical realities when you're watching Robin Hood's merry men sing about their tights or you're thinking about the archery skills of an animated fox.  Or maybe I was simply trying to ignore the brutal realities of the Crusades, which surely are at or near the nadir of the faith, with promises of salvation to all who died fighting in the Crusades.

  Somewhere, I'd seen a recommendation of John Man's biography Saladin:  The Sultan who Vanquished the Crusaders and Built an Islamic Empire.  It was a short, quick read, and a fascinating look at those on the other end of the Crusades.  Man paints Saladin as a heroic figure -- not perfect, but able to balance the demands of trying to rule in a dynamic, contested geography while battling the Europeans for rule over Jerusalem and other nearby areas.  Saladin comes off as far less bloodthirsty and more merciful than the Crusaders, who exercise no restraint when fighting for an area.  Saladin takes a longer-term view -- he doesn't want to let a slaughter happen in an area where he'll have to rule, and at other times, he simply doesn't seem interested in exterminating his foes, exercising civility and restraint.  

  Man's biography is a window into a period of history I knew very little about -- I didn't connect this to Robin Hood until close to the end, when Richard III comes to fight for Jerusalem, and I realized that John's attempt to seize the throne was taking place while Saladin was fighting off the Crusaders.  It's well worth the short investment to learn about a time and place that may be a mystery to many.

The Woman in the Library

   How well do you know someone?  

  I finished reading The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill last week.  Four strangers are bound together by a scream overheard in a library, and as their lives intertwine, they discover threads connecting their lives previously unknown, all the while striving to know what happened to the woman whose death was accompanied by the scream.  At the end of every chapter, there is correspondence between the author and a reviewer, and it takes a turn for the macabre each and every chapter.

  All of it makes me think about how well we know people.  We choose what we reveal to one another, and our identities in different parts of our life can be very different if we would like.  We display a personality at work that may or may not correspond to the person we are in the evening or on the weekend.  People know part of our story that we tell, and we can omit the painful parts if we like.  But then what do we do when the truth comes out?  Do we recognize that everyone is hiding something?  Or do we run?

  When we come before God, we don't have the chance to hide anything, although I think we'd often like to.  But we are fully known by God.  Thankfully, we're loved in spite of our weaknesses, in spite of our failures... but it's easy to feel embarrassed before God.  We're not perfect.  Often, we're not even close.  Sometimes, I know what Jonah feels like -- we want to run from God, to hop the next ship to Tarshish and start over, or like Moses, to run into the wilderness.

  We discover the futility of running from God.  God is already there, arms open wide, with grace beyond grace.  We are fully known and fully loved.

  May we extend that same grace to one another.  May we not hide our brokenness, but rather let the light shine through the cracks, that others may know the wonders of unconditional love.

Summer 2022 Book Review

 Well, I'm a little behind on book reviews... so here's some one-sentence book reviews on books I've been reading since mid-June.  Honestly, you should just skip to the end... lots of mediocre books, a few strange ones, and one incredible book.

The Lioness, by Chris Bohjalian:  The story of a Hollywood star who travels on a safari in Africa that goes terribly wrong.  I was hoping for some wild twist or something unexpected.  There were some moments of suspense, but I never really connected with the characters.  It was ok.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein: Supposed to be one of the original sci fi novels about an uprising on the moon.  The most interesting character to me was the super computer that had a personality.  My expectations were too high here, I think.  It was fine.

The Investigator, by John Sandford:  Letty Davenport is an investigator, sent to solve unique problems by a senator.  In this one, she's trying to solve some oil thefts and ends up uncovering a scheme to cause chaos at the border.  Really liked the main character, thought the novel was a fun read.

The Bone Orchard, by Sara Mueller:  Um.... this was strange.  It's about a house of ill repute where the proprietor has grown several different bodies and there's a rebellion because a king has died and there are a number of things I still don't understand.  This was a little odd.

Forever and a Day, Trigger Mortis, and With a Mind to Kill, by Anthony Horowitz:  I first came across Horowitz when he wrote Moriarty in the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  These three are James Bond books, written in the style of Ian Fleming.  They're great James Bond books -- I read them all years ago, and these were enjoyable in the same tradition.  If you like James Bond, these are great.

Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel:  A time-travel novel.  Another where I never really connected with the protagonist.  The central question is whether we're living in a simulation or not.  It's interesting to observe these arguments when Christian values are removed.  If there is no resurrection, if the Gospel is not true, does it really matter?

The Diamond Eye, by Kate Quinn:  THIS WAS FANTASTIC.  YOU SHOULD ABSOLUTELY READ THIS BOOK.  THE BEST BOOK I'VE READ THIS YEAR!!!!  The fact that it's based on a true story is even more incredible.  It's the story of a sniper in the USSR army in WWII who eventually becomes besties with Eleanor Roosevelt.  I thought everything about the book was great -- I cared about the protagonist, wondered where the plot was going, was amazed at the hardships she overcame and the things that she did...  the whole book was fantastic.  Highly recommended.

The Cartographers (Peng Shepherd)

   What a great book.  

  In the beginning, I thought I knew where it was going.  I assumed The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd was another mystery.  An engaging tale that will keep the pages turning, but not memorable.  I've read a lot of these books over the years, and after a few pages, I generally know where they're going and enjoy the path along the way.

  But this one surprised me.  It took some sudden turns, venturing into the magical, asking questions about the purpose of maps and how relationships are transformed by pivotal events.  How do maps shape the world?  What power do they have?  

  And how do secrets change relationships?

  There are some imperfections about the plot, and the characters aren't as refined as I would have hoped, but overall, it was a thoroughly good read that I enjoyed and devoured!

City on Fire (Don Winslow)

   I've never read The Godfather, but I've seen the movies.  Not what I want to watch on a relaxing Sunday afternoon, but in a certain time and place, they're great drama.  The way the relationships twist and turn, the glimpse into a world that is completely foreign -- it's captivating.  

  Don Winslow's City on Fire is like that.  It's a novel about a battle between the Irish and Italian mobs in Providence, Rhode Island.  It starts small, and then one slight by one party must be answered by the other, and it escalates, because any slight against one's honor must be met with strength.  Any sign of weakness is blood in the water, and there are plenty of sharks in this tale.  Some are trying to make their name, while others are just trying to skate through, just trying to survive.  It's a small world, but it's all that some people know, and they're trying desperately to keep the walls from collapsing.  City on Fire is hard to put down for that reason, because everything is falling apart, but when everyone you know and everyone you love is on the line, do you run and save yourself, or do you stay and fight, even if you know that you'll lose?

The Secret Race (Tyler Hamilton)

   Every once in a while, I come across a book that is absolutely amazing, even moreso because I wasn't expecting it to be so engaging.  The most recent example I can think of is David McCullough's The Wright Brothers.  I read it because I figured it was an important part of American history I should know about, especially living in Ohio, but I didn't think the story would be so engaging.  Couldn't put it down. If you haven't read it, you should.  It's way better than whatever else is in this blog post.  (I'm nominating that for the understatement of the year.)

  I picked up Tyler Hamilton's The Secret Race from the library, and it sucked me in.  I couldn't stop reading it.  Like everyone else on the planet, I was completely caught up in Lance Armstrong's domination of the Tour de France.  I'm not a serious cyclist (I own a bicycle, but the thought of riding 57 miles in the upcoming Pelotonia fundraiser for cancer research this fall intimidates me.  But you should donate to my ride anyway.), but Lance's story was so captivating.  The guy who recovered from cancer to dominate an event that demands a herculean effort from any participant -- how could you not support that?  I remember waiting for updates every day, being amazed at the times an American was posting in a sport that had been dominated by Europeans, with the exception of Greg LeMond.  

  I was staunchly on team Lance when it came to accusations of doping.  Plus, the denials were so bold.  How could you not believe someone who denied accusations so confidently?  And I figured that someone who had survived cancer would be extra sensitive about what went into his body.  I always assumed that doping was a minority in the sport, and that it was possible to win without doping. (USADA later revealed that I was wrong to believe that Armstrong won without doping.)

  Tyler Hamilton, who rode with Lance in several Tours, tells his side of the story in an honest way.  It's incredibly transparent.  In Hamilton's view, no one could win these events without doping -- it simply wasn't possible.  All the best riders were doping, and so one had to dope to compete.  If you wanted to build a successful career in cycling, you had to do it.  It was black or white.

  And if you're in those shoes, what do you do?  How do you react when faced with the choice of doping or not?  Do you give up what you've been working towards?  Or do you take something that makes you better?  The pressure is immense.  

  Reading Hamilton's book made me feel sorry for those put in that position.  It was never an easy choice.  To hold onto your dreams mean you had to sacrifice.  In the end, Hamilton paid a huge price. His decision cost him an immense amount.  It's easy to look back now and think about how different choices could have led down different paths.  It's easy to look in from the outside and say what he should have done.  

  But there, in that moment, when presented with that choice...  

  That's a hard place to be.

  And Hamilton's book helps me think a little more and have a little more mercy for those who make the wrong decision under pressure.  I think that's a good thing.

Book of Night

   Have you ever been at a picnic on a pleasant summer day, where it's not too hot but the sun is shining and all is right with the world, and you've had a hamburger fresh off the grill that was absolutely edible, completely fine, and nothing more?  At the end of the hamburger, you've realized that the hamburger wasn't great, but you ate it, and you're enjoying the day, so it's fine.  Maybe it wasn't the best hamburger, but it was good enough to eat and didn't detract from the enjoyment of a beautiful day, so you don't regret it, but if the hamburger had been a little better, well that would've been good, too, right?

  That's how I feel about Holly Black's Book of Night.  I read it in a couple of days, so it was clearly good enough that it was hard to put down easily.  It's a fantasy/mystery about a time when some people have learned how to manipulate their shadows, and the plot is engaging, with some twists and turns along the way to resolution.  It's close enough to real that you can almost imagine what it's like, which I think is the sign of a great fantasy book. 

  But I think what holds it back is that there are some technical things about the people who manipulated their shadows that I still don't understand.  By the time I arrived at the end of the book and they were revealing who was what and what they'd done, there were characters that I didn't understand and I wasn't sure who was human and who was kinda human and who was something else.  I felt like I needed a legend or guide that explained some of the terms.  That would've helped.

  Either way, it's interesting to think that some of the malicious shadows were forms that people had pushed all their negative emotions into.  I spent some time thinking about this.  We try and hide so many of our negative emotions.  Sometimes, we're afraid that people will think we don't have our acts together.  Sometimes, maybe we're afraid what they might make us do.  We worry about ourselves, and we worry how people might react to us if they discover that we're weak and vulnerable and afraid and angry.  

  In so many ways, we're all longing for a society where we can be ourselves, where we can be honest.  I hope the church is a place where we can be vulnerable and still be loved.  We are loved as we are, not as we should be, as hard as that can be to accept.  We don't have to push things into the shadows.  

Dragon Teeth

   When I was in 4th grade, I gave a book report that was almost certainly exceptional.  I'd read Michael Crichton's Sphere, and I did a book report in rap, complete with backwards hat.  It is one of the countless memories that I have where I give thanks that video recordings were relatively rare at the time.  

  I recount this merely to say that I've been reading Michael Crichton books for a long time, and I generally enjoy them.  I remember Sphere being a little strange, but I loved Jurassic Park, and I remember the second Jurassic Park (The Lost World) being phenomenal, while the second Jurassic Park movie was, perhaps, less than phenomenal.  My all-time favorite Michael Crichton book is The Great Train Robbery, which is on a very, very, very short list of books that I've read more than once.  Of the 498 books that I've read since 2011, there are less than 5 books that I've read multiple times.  

  Caleb and I stopped by the library to pick up some Diary of a Wimpy Kid books for him the other day, and I saw Dragon Teeth by Michael Crichton.  I'd never seen it, so I grabbed it, and read it the other night.  It's a wild book, a mix of fact and fiction, with a college student who ends up joining a summer archaeological expedition to Montana on a bet.  It's at the time of George Custer's defeat at Little Bighorn, otherwise known as not a great time to venture out west, and it is set amongst a rivalry between two college professors who are attempting to sabotage each other's expeditions to secure lasting fame for themselves.

  When I was getting ready for bed, having finished around 3/4 of it, I told myself that I'd finish the rest in the morning.  Then I crawled into bed... and made the mistake of picking it back up, because I couldn't leave it without knowing how it ended.  Wyatt Earp makes an unlikely appearance, and my takeaway is that so often, we're caught up in things bigger than ourselves.  All we can do is control what we can control, care for the people immediately surrounding us, and try to make it through, recognizing that we're all bound to get caught up in the world's chaos from time to time.  It often doesn't seem fair, but we still have to deal with life as it comes, not necessarily as we want it.  As a Christian, I truly believe that one day I'll be able to look back and make more sense of things, but in the short-term, I have to trust God and stay faithful, day by day, even when I don't fully grasp what's going on.

Finding the Mother Tree

  I've learned a lot about trees in the past 18 months.  I read Richard Powers' The Overstory back in 2020, which was a captivating combination of fiction and fact, learning about the ways trees communicate and how interconnected the forest is.  I have a tendency to think of the forest as a collection of individual trees, but Powers opened my eyes to see that it is a far more intricate thing.

  I recently finished Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard.  Simard starts the book with timber-industry clear cuts, a somber scene as one pictures a clear cut devoid of what had only recently been a vibrant forest, alive with noise and movement.  Simard introduces the reader to the concept of how fungus works to weave together the roots of trees.  Trees in the forest don't survive on their own, and even different species are working together to share the carbon necessary for growth.  While trees and plants are certainly competing for light and resources, they're also working together.  A tree doesn't survive on its own.  

  By the end of the book, Simard has introduced the concept of a mother tree.  A mother tree is an old, established tree that is pushing resources to saplings around the mother tree.  Their roots are interconnected, and it seems that the mother tree can differentiate between trees that are her own offspring and those that are not.  The mother tree shares her resources, and in her dying, she pushes carbon down into the roots of those trees with which she is interconnected, supporting life even in her dying.  

  One doesn't have to look very hard to see the connections with the church.  This story is one we've been singing for centuries, perhaps because it is the truest story that has been told, one that echoes through every corner of space and time, through the pages of history, and even in the natural world.  We are not on our own.  We exist to support the life and growth of one another.  We are called to live sacrificially, to share selflessly, because we have grown through the sacrifices of others.  

  Even in death, we find life.  The death of Christ is what pushes life to us.  

  So may the beauty of a tree and the beauty of the forest be to us an astounding reminder of what God has done for us and the challenge of discipleship that Christ has set before us!

************

An update on the quest for 15,000 pages:  In finishing this book, I'm at 12 books & 4,488 pages for the year. 

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

   What would you give up for the thing you want most in life?

  In Addie LaRue's life, she was willing to give up her soul to be free.  

  Only in this case, to be free meant that no one could ever remember her.  She went through life as a shadow, passing across people and places but never lingering, leaving little more than a temporary impression of her presence.  She had no ability to build relationships and was unable to carry anything with her.  She was free, yet at great price.

  V.E. Schwab writes an intriguing tale in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and it leaves one thinking about the things in life that you'd give anything for.  Maybe it was freedom, or young love, or money.  As you age, you often look back and realize that such a thing wasn't worth the hours you spent pining for it.  It reminds me of the old Garth Brooks song Unanswered Prayers, where he reflects upon how hard he prayed for a relationship that didn't work out, and how things have turned out just fine, despite thinking at one point that the world might end of such a prayer wasn't answered.

  This book reminds me not to get too hung up on worldly hopes, and to be careful what I wish for.  Sometimes, the things we think might solve all our problems only end up creating more problems!  Sadly, such is the fate of too many lottery winners.  We're occasionally better off not getting what we want.

Five Decembers, by James Kestrel

   It snowed on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and I curled up on the couch with a cup of hot tea and a good book.  Life was good.  

  James Kestrel's Five Decembers is a crime novel like no others -- it's the experience of a police detective trapped in Japan during WWII, having been wrongfully arrested in Hong Kong the night before the Japanese invaded.  The detective, Joe McGrady, was in Hong Kong investigating a murder in Honolulu whose trail led through Wake Island as he pursued a mysterious killer with an unknown motive.

  At some point while I was reading this, I realized how easily I get lost in books.  Hours pass without noticing as the rest of the world fades from focus.  Books grant that in a way so few other things do -- the ability to forget everything else and become immersed in a fictional narrative world, where characters drawn from someone's imagination suddenly become the most important thing and their fate hangs in the balance between chapters.  Just one more chapter, I tell myself for the 15th time.  

  I'd love to write like that one day, because it seems like such a wondrous gift to be able to give to people, especially in a world so stressful, so demanding.  If you can give someone liberation for an afternoon, for a day, that seems like a good thing.