As someone who geeks out a little over Silicon Valley history and the birth of the personal computer, the first several chapters of Walter Isaacson's ...moreAs someone who geeks out a little over Silicon Valley history and the birth of the personal computer, the first several chapters of Walter Isaacson's biography of the iconic Apple CEO were particularly engaging. While the rest of the book was not quite as exciting to read, it was still worthwhile.
Isaacson's style is conversational and easy, making for a quick, fluid 571 pages. At times he leaves out details that might better inform certain situations, but this may have be necessary in keeping the focus on Jobs rather than on Apple and its products.
The book doesn't sugarcoat Jobs. Indeed, there would be no point, since his perfectionism and brutality are legendary - at least to those who are fans of Apple. He is presented here as, quite honestly, a jerk. He is also presented as a genius. He is presented as not much of a father but as a great corporate leader. All are probably true.
However, Isaacson does show his bias when it comes to the company Jobs started and saved and its products. Sometimes he seems so in love with Apple, Inc. that it annoys even me! (I'm a proud Mac and iPhone user and Macworld.com reader.)
In the end, the book certainly gives one a well-rounded view of Steve Jobs, his relationships - both personal and professional - and the company he built. Definitely a worthy read.(less)
The Walk by former NFL star Shaun Alexander is apparently written for those Christians young in their faith, but its bland, trite style and theologica...moreThe Walk by former NFL star Shaun Alexander is apparently written for those Christians young in their faith, but its bland, trite style and theologically questionable premise make it a book only someone with a fairly mature understanding of Scripture ought to attempt to slog through. Even then, there would be very little reward in the end.
Alexander’s premise is this: Since “God is not a God of confusion but of peace” (1 Corinthians 14:33 - often translated as “order” rather than “peace”), that He has created a very specific path to maturity in Christ. That path consists of this series of stages: “Unbeliever, Believer, Example, Teacher, Imparter.” (pg. 21)
Up until this point in The Walk, I had actually been pleasantly surprised. I had fully expected it to be another Christ self-help book – “Here’s how to get spiritual power for your life – to be everything you want to be!” It wasn’t, and I was glad of that.
However, Alexander completely lost me here. The passage he quotes as the basis for his sequence of spiritual maturity clearly relates to worship in the church – not the progression of a believer’s growth. While it is true that 1 Corinthians 14:33 is a statement with broader implications, there is absolutely no Scriptural support for this order that The Walk is entirely based upon. Consequently, it took me about six weeks to read this short book because I felt compelled to continually question the author’s credibility. And I continually found it lacking.
He essentially invents his premise and tells the reader it’s from God, and this plagues the entire book.
There are notes of truth throughout the book, and I would encourage any believer from a non-charismatic background to read the final chapter with an open mind. Like Alexander, I believe that there are still miracles out there. We just don’t see them happen because we have cut ourselves off from this kind of working of the Holy Spirit.
At the risk of being too harsh, The Walk turns out to be a more or less useless book. I absolutely would not recommend it.
I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review as part of the Blogging for Books program.(less)
At times beautifully written and at times full of cliché, The Waiting Place: Learning to Appreciate Life’s Little Delays by Eileen Button is a worthwh...moreAt times beautifully written and at times full of cliché, The Waiting Place: Learning to Appreciate Life’s Little Delays by Eileen Button is a worthwhile read if only for its powerful honesty.
Button – an adjunct professor, newspaper columnist, and pastor’s wife – is a competent writer, but she relies a little too much on trite sayings like “too much month left at the end of the money” (pg. 65) that she seems to think are clever.
She also leans too much sometimes toward corny sentimentality – “When we listen closely enough, we think we hear the angels cry.” (pg.121) Button is at her best when she simply tells the stories. These are stories that don’t need sentimental embellishment to bolster their power (good stories rarely do!), and the book falters when she tries to do so.
There’s little that stands out in her writing style, but I found her honesty so courageous that the book’s flaws were forgivable. Indeed, the beauty of The Waiting Place is found in her honesty. Most of us know that church people often expect complete perfection from pastors and their wives, but Button is brave enough to talk about the struggles of a white, formerly middle-class woman who finds herself applying for WIC, a mother suffering through her child’s horrific birth defect, and a pastor’s wife on the receiving end of both the grace and the venom of the church. Some of these struggles are born out of her self-centeredness, and that is what’s so refreshing about The Waiting Place. She is honest about the struggles and about where they come from.
One of my favorite passages is found in chapter 13. Her description of the church is powerful: “She is loving and life changing; she is malicious and overbearing. She is beautiful; she is ugly. She is as light as day, capable of astonishing kindness and generosity; she is as dark as night, capable of unspeakable evil.”
There is not a great deal of theological depth here, all of the stories in The Waiting Place come back to one thing. Eileen Button and her husband had wonderful dreams about where their lives were going and what God would do with them, but it’s never quite looked the way they’d hoped. That is the waiting place – the place where you wait to become. The problem is – as Button discovered and shares with us – that we spend most of our lives in that place. Button tells us that the trick is to find the beauty – the workings of God – in the waiting.
Anyone who’s read my blog for any amount of time knows of my respect for Francis Chan, and you probably know how much I loved his first book Crazy Lov...moreAnyone who’s read my blog for any amount of time knows of my respect for Francis Chan, and you probably know how much I loved his first book Crazy Love. And I – apparently – was not the only one! Crazy Love had a pretty big impact. The book sold 250,000 copies in its first year and has been translated into more than ten languages.
Needless to say, I was pretty excited to get the opportunity to review Chan’s latest book Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit, which was released on Sept. 1.
Let me get this out of the way: it’s exactly what you would expect. The title gives the whole thing away. (That’s not a bad thing!) Chan approaches this book with the same warm and relaxed style with which he wrote Crazy Love. He delivers the same disarmingly subtle profundity.
The reason for Forgotten God? It’s found in the introduction: “While no evangelical would deny His [the Holy Spirit’s:] existence, I’m willing to bet there are millions of churchgoers across America who cannot confidently say they have experienced His presence or action in their lives over the past year. And many of them do not believe they can.”
Chan argues convincingly that we have neglected the astounding gift of the Holy Spirit to the point of forgetting him. In the end, he weaves together biblical truths and life stories to show us what remembering the power of the Spirit might look like.
I only wish that characteristic profundity were a little more prevalent. There are definitely moments of truth to chew on in the early chapters, but I felt like Chan was taking an exceptionally long time to get where he was going. Prior to Chapter 7, the most touching, engaging, and thought-provoking parts of the book are really the biographies between chapters.
But it all really does pay off in that last chapter. Chan pulls together all the details to paint a picture for us of a Spirit-filled life. And some readers may actually be disappointed that he doesn’t give a by-the-numbers method for achieving it. He just wants us to ask the hard questions: look at the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23 and “ask yourself if you possess each to a supernatural degree.” Pray that the Holy Spirit would come upon you. Obey His promptings when they come. (How many of us have stifled His power in our lives by ignoring Him?) Stop depending on yourself and follow the Holy Spirit into situations that require you to depend only on Him.
All told, Forgotten God is not quite as powerful as Crazy Love, but it is definitely a worthy – and needed – follow-up. The truths in Forgotten God enable the kind of life Chan calls us to in Crazy Love. It’s the Spirit that, in Chan’s words, “Give[s:] us a love strong enough to motivate courageous action.”(less)
Frank Viola’s latest book, From Eternity to Here: Rediscovering the Ageless Purpose of God is not an easy one for me to shove into a loved-it or hated...moreFrank Viola’s latest book, From Eternity to Here: Rediscovering the Ageless Purpose of God is not an easy one for me to shove into a loved-it or hated-it slot on the shelf of books I’ve read. I was outraged, inspired, impassioned, incredulous, and challenged by this book.
From Eternity to Here tells of “the ageless purpose of God” in three parts, weaving what the author hopes is a compelling story that – as the subtitle suggests – dates from before time began.
I found two problems early on – one disappointing from an intellectual perspective, one spiritually disturbing.
First, I was a little disappointed to find a rehash of ideas popularized, though not originally conceived, by John Eldredge, an author whose works (Wild at Heart, Epic) have touched my life in pretty profound ways. Viola seems to borrow from Eldredge and others the idea that we are all born into the story that God is telling, though in his mind it’s a romance rather than an epic. To my relief, the book doesn’t take quite the straight line from this point that it appears to be on.
However, much more disturbing is the whole premise of part one – that God’s ultimate passion is His bride. Some reading this review may find nothing wrong with that statement, but based on my reading of Scripture I have to disagree with it. God’s ultimate passion is His glory. Everything that God does or commands serves the ultimate purpose of bringing Him glory.
Move on to part two, and we find that God is homeless and longs for a place to dwell. The God of the universe who is perfect and complete is homeless?
By this point, I just can’t believe the ridiculous statements I’m reading, and I’m finding ludicrous even much more mundane statements. Then, I read the statement that is very nearly the final straw for me – and would have been if I hadn’t promised to review the book! Viola writes that the house God is building or has built, which he has equated at one time or another to both Christ and the church, “becomes indistinguishable from the Builder.” Add to this the statement later that “the church is Christ,” and the most serious error of this book is obvious: Viola is putting God on our level.
The author has a lot of ideas here that I love. He speaks of the church not just as a group of people but – in turns – as a community, a colony, a family, a new species, even a single organism. These ideas are engaging, intelligent, and biblical. He writes, “The body of Christ exists to express God in the earth” and that “the conversion of lost souls is the means toward that end,” not a goal in itself.
One of my favorite statements from this book is this: “…one of the highest revelations you and I will ever receive is to see the church as Christ in corporate human expression.” Beautiful and true! The church is not an institution or a building or an event. It is us, and we are – in a very real way – the body of Christ, His physical expression in the world.
He also writes, “One of the greatest problems in the Christian faith today, I believe, is that Christians are taught to be salt and light in the world as individuals[emphasis mine:],” and, “…the great need of the hour is for Christians to begin learning how to gather together and embody Christ in a shared-life community where they live.”
These statements can be mind-blowing. Viola insists that the pictures of the church as the bride and dwelling place and body of Christ are not just metaphors but concrete truths. He sees and expresses the need for all its members to hold a much higher view of the church.
The problem is definitely not his high view of the church but his low view of God. The church is the body of Christ, but the church is not Christ. We are not to be equated with Him.
Christ embodies us – the church – but we cannot contain His limitless nature.
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This is a beautifully written and engaging book with vivid characters. It's actually pretty refreshing to see a father portrayed in literature who is...moreThis is a beautifully written and engaging book with vivid characters. It's actually pretty refreshing to see a father portrayed in literature who is more or less a good dad and a good man. Not to mention that rarely is faith portrayed so honestly and naturally.
I found myself longing for the same things the narrator longed for. And in the end - despite the tragedy of novel's climax - I was left with a wonderful sense of hope.(less)
Awesome! The book has some cool recipes, but it's real value is in between. If you want to know how and why cooking works, you need to check this bo...moreAwesome! The book has some cool recipes, but it's real value is in between. If you want to know how and why cooking works, you need to check this book out!(less)
All in all, Wizard's First Rule was an entertaining bit of fantasy. Well, if a "bit" can be in excess of 800 pages.
It's been a ...moreAll in all, Wizard's First Rule was an entertaining bit of fantasy. Well, if a "bit" can be in excess of 800 pages.
It's been a while since I read a contemporary fantasy novel. I read Tolkien periodically, but The Lord of the Rings is a far cry from most of these novels. So, I picked up WFR not expecting much.
Still, for the first 100 pages, I was disappointed. The writing was incredibly descriptive but poor. (Though not nearly as bad as Terry Brooks’ Sword of Shannara. While Shannara’s story was engaging – though clichéd – the writing was at no better than a fifth-grade level.)
There was a moment early on when WFR seemed promising, like it might rise above the genre ghetto while still maintaining its fantasy cred. The wizard, Zedd, speaks to Richard, the novel’s protagonist, about good and evil. He tells Richard that even people who do evil think they have a good reason for doing what they do. My heart skipped a beat when I read this! “Could it be,” I asked myself, “that Goodkind might actually forgo the over-the-top, evil-for-evil’s-sake bad guy and try to create a three-dimensional character with believable motives? Could he actually give this story some real power by populating it with real characters?”
Alas, the author carried that ball to the highest tower of the People’s Palace in his magical kingdom of D’hara and sent it plummeting to earth. Boy did he ever drop it!
To be fair, I think he might actually have tried. There were moments when I thought he might be trying to reawaken that early promise, but it never quite emerged the way I’d hoped.
Somehow, though, around the mid-point, I discovered that I was actually enjoying the story. I actually wanted to know what happened next. I wasn’t noticing quite as much poor writing as I had previously. I cared about the characters. I actually started to invest in them.
While Wizard’s First Rule never quite rises the typical fantasy novel, it is – in the end – an enjoyable tale and worth the read.(less)
The novella "I Am Legend" itself is very good. It seems a little quaint to today's horror reader, with the use of the typical mythological ...moreThe novella "I Am Legend" itself is very good. It seems a little quaint to today's horror reader, with the use of the typical mythological vampire - garlic, crosses, the whole bit. But it must have been profound at the time of it's publication in 1954, this idea that vampirism is caused by a germ.
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