C.A. Gray's Blog, page 10

Discerning the Voice of God, Priscilla Shirer

Today’s podcast review comes from this blog review of Discerning of The Voice of God. 

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Review of The Only Woman in the Room

I picked up this book by word of mouth. It was good, fascinating that it’s a true story… but with some drawbacks. I sort of wonder how much is true and how much embellished…

The story follows the women who would come to be known as Hedy Lamarr, famous Hollywood beauty. She was born Hedy Kiesler, a Jew in Austria pre-WWII. She was a stage actress, and caught the eye of Fritz Mundel, known later as “the Merchant of Death.” He was an arms dealer who sold weapons of war to the highest bidder, and it was believed at the time that he was courting Hedy that he was the only one standing between Hitler and Austria, with ties at that time to Mussolini. Hedy’s father convinced her to marry Fritz, and she was actually enamored with him during their courtship too… but very quickly after they married, he changed, and started treating her like a piece of meat.

Here was where I started to wonder what was true and what wasn’t. I had thought the title referred to the fact that Hedy was able to eavesdrop on Mundel’s guests and later report what they’d said once she’d escaped to America, but the bias of the author suddenly made me aware of another meaning: she is alone in a man’s world. It’s not at all hard to believe that Fritz Mundel would have been a monster, would have raped his wife, would have been horribly jealous, but also would want to show off her beauty. Women certainly were treated much worse back then than they are today. That said, it was clear that this was a feminist’s take on her life, which cast all the horrible treatment of her into question.

I already knew the story involved not only Hedy’s flight to America from her abusive husband after it was clear that he was going to align himself with Hitler after all, and also her debut in Hollywood. Throughout the book up until that point, it references her “scientific ideas” that she tinkers with from time to time, though this is always very non-specific. It isn’t until Hedy feels guilty for the fact that she absconded from Austria without alerting any of the other Jews that she decides that she will come up with an alternative, radio-frequency based torpedo that is far more accurate and unjammable, and use it to help the allies, with the view of shortening the war. She enlists an unlikely ally in this process, a composer, because of his ability to think outside the box. When she and George submit their brilliant plan for a patent and to the Navy for implementation, they use the name Hedy Kiesler rather than Hedy Lamarr, to avoid rejection due to her fame and beauty. When it’s rejected anyway, they appeal… only to discover that it was rejected, “because she is a woman.” I have a hard time buying that as the sole reason. I just feel like there had to be more to the story, and the author’s obvious intense bias leads me to be suspicious of that conclusion.

That said, it was still a fascinating biography.

My rating: ****

Language: I think there was a little?

Violence: present but not gratuitous

Sexual content: present but not gratuitous

Political content: depending on your perspective, possibly heavy

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You Are Not Depressed, You Are Unfinished, Ardeshir Mehran

Today’s podcast review comes from this blog review of You Are Not Depressed, You Are Unfinished. 

Check out this episode!

The post You Are Not Depressed, You Are Unfinished, Ardeshir Mehran appeared first on C.A. Gray.

You Are Not Depressed, You Are Unfinished, Ardeshir Mehran

This book caused me to revisit my overall paradigm on treating mental/emotional conditions, and made me realize that I was missing one important piece: the subconscious mind (which, in retrospect, should have been quite obvious.) The author would argue that his paradigm addresses the body as the seat of emotion, and not the subconscious mind, though I suspect the subconscious mind isn’t housed exclusively in the brain anyway. He puts forth an alternative approach to mental health, combining somatic therapy and his own unique concept of Emotional Rights, the violation of one or several of which leads to depression (or anxiety, or both). He uses somatic therapy to access the subconscious mind (or the knowledge of the body, or however you want to think of it–at any rate, something not available to the conscious mind), allowing it to focus therapy to the relevant issues, rather than trying to get at it through the conscious mind via talk therapy. In this way, only what the person is ready to deal with is likely to come up, sidestepping the possible issue of re-traumatizing someone in the context of talk therapy by digging up more than they are yet ready to address.

I suspect that the Holy Spirit can speed up this process considerably, but only if the therapist knows and believes this, or the person involved knows and believes this. Nevertheless, the idea that the true source of anxiety or depression can be only one of so many possible unmet needs, and if you can categorize them, you can address them systematically, is both obvious and revolutionary. If only we could get the rest of the mental health profession to approach it in similar terms.

My rating: *****

Language: none

Sexual content: none

Violence: none

Political content: none

The post You Are Not Depressed, You Are Unfinished, Ardeshir Mehran appeared first on C.A. Gray.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman

Today’s podcast review comes from this blog review of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. 

Check out this episode!

The post Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman appeared first on C.A. Gray.

Discerning the Voice of God, Priscilla Shirer

I am surprised — stunned, actually — at how much I liked this book. For one thing, I have a prejudice against “churchy” women, the ones that every women’s group chooses for Bible study coursework and to which every woman in the group nods her head in enthusiastic agreement. As a rule, I find these studies, and the material upon which they’re based to be at best, shallow and fluffy, and at worst, there’s usually a lot of nonsense about God “allowing” (read, causing) dreadful things to happen in our lives for His own inscrutable purposes. I wouldn’t have downloaded this at all except that it was free on Audible, and I’m always interested in the topic.

Priscilla is a lot more no-nonsense than I expected, though. She made the terrific and obvious point right off the bat that a lot of people don’t hear God because we don’t bother listening, not really believing there’s anything to hear. We think of prayer as us bringing our requests to God in a monologue, and that’s it. It was a good reminder to me to be more intentional about creating space and silence, so that God has a chance to speak back.

That was probably the best part of the book, though I didn’t find myself violently disagreeing with it except maybe in one section. I’m pleasantly surprised and now open to reading other books of hers, as well.

My rating: *****

Language: none

Violence: none

Political content: none

Sexual content: none

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The Poisoner’s Enemy, Jeff Wheeler

Today’s podcast review comes from this blog review of The Poisoner’s Enemy. 

Check out this episode!

The post The Poisoner’s Enemy, Jeff Wheeler appeared first on C.A. Gray.

The Poisoner’s Enemy

My first introduction to Jeff Wheeler books was the Kingfountain series, so I was glad to see that there was another from that world. This one followers the poisoner who guided Owen in the first book of that series, Ankarette Treneowy. She is really indistinguishable from Wheeler’s other heroines–they are all infused with goodness and integrity, very “everyman” (or every woman in this case). The world they are in is filled with political intrigue. Many of them end up in heartbreak from which they must pull themselves up by their bootstraps and do what’s right anyway. They’re all kind of morality tales, but they don’t read that way — they are just good stories, that happen to convey very Christian principles without appearing to try. Knowing where Ankarette was at the beginning of “The Queen’s Poisoner,” and the end of her story, I knew she wouldn’t get her happily ever after, so I was more prepared for that than I am for some of Wheeler’s other heroes and heroines. Still, an engrossing fantasy tale.

My rating: ****

Language: none

Sexual content: none

Violence: none to speak of

Political content: none

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The Strangest Secret, Earl Nightengale

Today’s podcast comes from this blog review of The Strangest Secret. 

Check out this episode!

The post The Strangest Secret, Earl Nightengale appeared first on C.A. Gray.

Review of The Ice Swan

Man, I wanted to like this… and I did, for probably the first 2/3 of the book. It was the cover that intrigued me first, and the title. Then the concept: an escaped princess from Bolshevik Russia, who also happens to be a ballerina, finding love with a Scottish surgeon in Paris in wartime. What’s not to love?

At first, the pacing was great, and the characters were compelling too. I was especially engaged by the story line of Winn, the physician on the cutting edge of heart surgery, who bucked the established recommendations at the time and engaged in daring surgeries that had the promise of saving lives, even at the risk of his license. Much of this resonated with me, as there are many elements of current medical “standard of care” that I think are, at best, not patient-focused. Yet many physicians in the regular medical system feel like they’re forced to comply, or lose their livelihoods. Winn’s experience was a terrific dramatization of this.

Svetlana finds herself in dire straits, in debt because of her childish mother’s extravagant gambling, and thus forced to marry a mob boss. She thinks she has no way out, until Winn, a man to whom she is drawn but has kept at arm’s length, offers to marry her to protect her. It’s an old trope, but it usually still serves as a very interesting premise nonetheless.

Unfortunately, the story went RIGHT down the tubes after that, very fast. I can’t remember the last time I’ve read such a terrible love story. The characters, which were well written before, devolved into cardboard, with no psychological complexity at all. They stated exactly what they were thinking and feeling, in the moment–no dissembling whatsoever. When they felt loving, they waxed nauseatingly poetic about it. But that was all too fast, so they had to have a contrived misunderstanding: he meant to tell her the truth about the conflict regarding his medical license, but he delayed telling her because she begged him to be in the moment with her. Then she found out some other way, and she decided she could NEVER, EVER trust him again (so out of proportion to what actually happened, such that Svetlana became exasperating and insufferable.) Finally, enter the old lover for Svetlana, just so we can check the old love triangle box too… but, surprise! He turns out to be a villain, so that Winn can play the dashing hero… ugh. I normally listen at 1.8 speed. I sped up to 3.0 at the end so I could just finish already. If it had been that bad from the beginning, I’d have given up within a chapter or two, but it was a bait-and-switch, and by then I was so close…

Sadly, I can’t even say I was too terribly surprised when I learned that the publisher was Thomas Nelson, which is exclusively Christian content. This was in no way a religious book, just a clean love story… but Christian fiction tends to be unbearably cheesy. Usually this is in service to a Christian message, but apparently not exclusively so.

My rating: **1/2

Language: none

Sexual content: none

Violence: none to speak of

Political content: none

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