C.A. Gray's Blog, page 12

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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The Ice Swan, J’Nell Ciesielski

This podcast comes from this blog review of The Ice Swan. 

Check out this episode!

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The Strangest Secret, Earl Nightingale

This is short, but absolutely fantastic.

I had never heard of Earl Nightingale until I listened to Bob Proctor’s book, and he mentioned him and this title specifically numerous times. It reads like a long essay, and it is essentially “The Secret,” except from a Christian perspective, with many Bible verses quoted to back up his point. The bottom line is that your life follows your dominant, emotionalized thoughts. Your thoughts become your actions, your actions become your habits, and your habits steer the course of your life. This is easy to say in a sentence and forget, but listening to the book is like meditating on the concept until it sinks down into your subconscious mind… which is exactly what you need for the concept to do you any good.

I listened twice in a row, and I’ll likely revisit this little book many more times.

My rating: *****

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Change Your Paradigm, Change Your Life, Bob Proctor

Today’s podcast comes from this blog review of Change Your Paradigm, Change Your Life. 

Check out this episode!

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Christy, Books 10-12

Christy #10: Stage Fright

This one was such a gimmick. Christy has her class read Romeo and Juliet, and then Doctor MacNeill walks in as she is reciting Juliet’s lines, as it turns out that she played Juliet on stage in high school… and it also turns out that Doctor MacNeill’s aunt is the director of the Knoxville Players, who just happen to be putting on Romeo and Juliet. She comes to visit, and invites Christy to come out and be part of the show as a bit player… only of course they end up without a Juliet, forced to use Christy instead (as if she remembers all the lines from high school. I’ve had nightmares of exactly this scenario, where I find I’m playing the lead role in a show I was in in high school, and it’s opening night, but of course I don’t remember the lines.) Then for good measure, Neil goes back with them, and there’s a love triangle, and a jealous stage hand tries to sabotage Christy’s performance… it doesn’t fit the Cutter Gap story at all. It takes the same characters, but it reads like fan fiction. The extrapolation is just too far to work, for me.

My rating: **1/2

Christy #11: Goodbye Sweet Prince

Another extrapolation story from the original characters that we loved so much…

I can see why this was the second to last novella ever written, as clearly they were running out of ideas. The story revolves around Prince, the mission’s stallion. The mission is running out of funds, and has to sell Prince for the proceeds. Ruby Mae especially is highly distraught. Prince, it turns out, gets sold to an abusive man, and runs away. The kids hide him until the new owner comes looking. Then Ruby Mae challenges him to a ride, and she out-rides him, so according to the rules of the deal, they get the right to buy him back. It’s very simplistic, childlike, and happily-ever-after in an over-the-top, cheesy kind of way.

But, if you’re looking for a clean, uplifting read for an elementary or maybe a middle school student, it might work.

My rating: **

Christy #12: Brotherly Love

This is the last novella in the series, and it doesn’t wrap things up at all… I think they just stopped because there probably wasn’t enough interest. And I see why…

It wasn’t poorly written, it just introduced a brand new character, Christy’s brother George. He was mentioned in the novel in passing, I think. Here the conflict centers around at first Christy’s envy of her brother’s easy way of capturing the hearts of everyone around him, and also her suspicion that there’s something he’s not telling her when he ends up in Cutter Gap out of nowhere. Turns out he stole some money… or so she thinks… and had to flee school. Then his roommate turns up, and Christy’s frantic parents write her, and the real story comes out.

All of the stories are written simplistically enough to be easy, very quick reads.

My rating: **1/2

Language: none

Sexual content: none

Violence: none

Political content: none

 

 

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Christy Novellas 10-12, C. Archer

This week’s podcast review comes from this blog review of the Christy Novellas, books 10-12. 

Check out this episode!

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Change Your Paradigm, Change Your Life

I’m on my second listen of this book. It’s terrific.

There’s no super new concepts for me in this book. I’ve read a lot of self-help books and have studied scripture from a charismatic perspective for a good decade now, but this really brought it all together. It’s recorded in a question-and-answer format of interviews with Bob Proctor. He covers a LOT of scripture, which I love, and which helps to counterbalance references to The Secret and what otherwise might be a lot of New Age sounding ideas about the power of words, vibrations, etc. But if you can strip away some of the phrases that might have become associated with a particular set of ideas, there’s gold here.

The concept boils down to the importance of repetition, of meditation, and on engaging your imagination until it sparks hope. Hope becomes faith, and all things are possible for those who believe. These are principles that God baked into the universe, and they are impartial; anyone, regardless of their religious persuasion, can tap into them and make them work. The key is, getting to the point where the image or idea or belief you want makes it from your conscious mind down into your subconscious mind. The only way to do that is through repetition. It’s like brainwashing, only in this case you’re brainwashing yourself, intentionally, and for a positive purpose.

My rating: *****

Language: none

Sexual content: none

Violence: none

Political content: none

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Christy, Catherine Marshall

This week’s podcast review comes from this blog review of Christy. 

Check out this episode!

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The Ultimate Guide to Methylene Blue, Mark Sloan

Today’s podcast review comes from this blog review of The Ultimate Guide to Methylene Blue. 

Check out this episode!

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The Abolition of Man and The Great Divorce

I’d really give Abolition of Man four stars, and The Great Divorce five, so I’ll go with 4.5 for the combo.

A speaker at a gala we went to recently mentioned The Abolition of Man, and I realized I’d never read it. It’s very short, but rather like a very scholarly expansion on an idea that I believe Lewis put forth in “Mere Christianity” about why there must be such a thing as a moral code and an absolute reality outside of our own beliefs and perceptions. But it wasn’t just about this… I had a hard time following the point he was trying to make in a number of places, probably because he was arguing against something that was I guess very common in his day and age and he assumed it would be familiar to his readers. Best I could follow, the argument was that people kept trying to make everything in life a means to an end rather than ever an end in itself, and if they go on that way forever, they will end up conquering humanity itself–but in the act of doing so, they will have rendered themselves obsolete. Or something. I couldn’t quite see how this could be managed in anything like concrete terms though.

The Great Divorce was far more entertaining, told as a fantasy. The main character fell asleep and went on a trip first to hell, and then on a field trip to heaven. This I listened to because at Sunday school last week, our teacher showed us a video on the five historical views on hell, and I realized based on this book that CS Lewis takes the metaphorical view of hell, with a little bit of purgatory thrown in (though not really the classical conception of it.) I knew that one of Lewis’s heroes of the faith was George MacDonald, who appears as a character in this story too, and it’s mentioned that he takes another of the views of hell: that of universalism (didn’t know anybody truly held that position.)

I disagree with all of these positions, but it wasn’t really the point of the story, as Lewis made it very clear that he’s by no means arguing what heaven and hell are or are not – it’s entirely a work of his imagination. What I found so fascinating about the story was both the psychological perspective on what it means to be in a unique hell of one’s own making, and also the contrast of the super-reality of heaven to the mere wisp and vapor of hell. This was very similar to the way he depicted heaven in “The Last Battle” in the Chronicles of Narnia as well.

My (combined) rating: ****1/2

Language: none

Sexual content: none

Violence: none

Political content: none

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