Words Can Kill ... And So Can Bullets, Of Course: Some More Summer Book Reviews

I'm finally learning to read on my tablet.  Sigh.  Giving in to the modern world.  I bought one of the early Kindles -- and hated it.  I never finished a book on it.  Just could not stand it.

But that was then.  This is the 21st century -- and many pre-release review copies of books (both by people I know and those who don't) are only available as e-books.  So, since my suitcase was full when I headed to Bald Head Island recently, I loaded my Kindle on iPad with new books from NetGalley.

One was good.  Two were really good -- for completely different reasons.  And one (that shall go unmentioned) was dreadful.

First the good.  That was Top Down: A Novel of the Kennedy Assassination by newsman Jim Lehrer.  Lehrer's premise is that the agent who ordered the top off the Kennedy limo (since it had quit raining) is haunted by that decision and is descending into a private mental health hell.  A newspaper man who covered the assassination and asked the agent if the top was going to stay up or down is enlisted by suffering agent's attractive and tenacious daughter to help her father.

As someone who was alive in 1963 and remembers -- as everyone of age back then does -- where he was when he heard the awful news out of Dallas that November day, I hoped to learn something new or at least get a different look on the events of that day.  What I got was a good summer time read -- this would be a fine beach book.  But, sad to say, it doesn't come out until October 2013 -- a little late for beach reading.  It's not a bad book.  It's a tale told well enough, but not well enough to make it a must read.

Next the two really good.  One is really good for, in part, taking me into a world I know nothing about really and making me want to stay there.  That world is the one of Maine state game wardens.  Now, in the interest of integrity, it's a world I visited before after meeting Kate Braestrup at a writing conference.  Her Here if You Need Me: A True Story tells of her life as a chaplain to the Maine state game wardens.  And it tells it very well -- so much so that when I saw Paul Doiron's Massacre Pond and read the description (The beauty and magnificence of the Maine woods is the setting for a story of suspense and violence when one powerful woman’s missionary zeal comes face to face with ruthless cruelty.) I thought I'd take a chance.

I'm glad I did.  Like Dick Francis did years ago with horse racing, I found myself drawn in by a master story teller.  Mike Bowditch, the game warden, is a likable protagonist caught in a web of intrigue ... oh how cliche-ish (but true) ... between Maine state game warden politics, moose-hugging rich environmentalists with seeming no regard for the local logging industry, local logging industry big-wigs who help out with Big Brothers but may have a seamy side, a very attractive young woman, the woman he really loves, and ...    Well, it's a pretty good size web ole Mike is caught in -- which makes for a good story -- beach or otherwise.  And the good news for beach readers, is that Massacre Pond will be out in July.   And it's origins are in a true tale.

The second really good book is about the power of words.  Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can lead us to homicide.  Lexicon, by Max Barry, features a street-wise hustler (Emily Ruff) who is trained to have a persuasive way with words.  Very persuasive.  This grrrl of the streets is not always trust-worthy -- or is she?  The novel is all about the power of words and their effect on us.  It's also a cautionary tale about all the data gathering that is going on all about us.  I'd say, given the recent NSA revelations and the hunt for Edward Snowden, the publisher scored a wonderful release date (June 18, 2013).

Lexicon is a bit dystopia in the vein of Margaret Atwood's novels and also similar (in the theme of the power of words) to Ben Marcus' The Flame Alphabet.  You can read my review of the latter here.  Its readability puts it closer to Atwood than Marcus' ponderous book and so I really enjoyed it.  Yes, you have to suspend disbelief.  But any of us who work in words -- fiction or non -- invite readers to do that somewhat every day.  And we who work in words know their power -- and hope to use them (benignly and beneficiently, in my case!) to persuade readers.  Emily Ruff is just a bit more casual -- at least at first -- about how she uses words.  Lexicon is thoughtful thriller.  It's no War and Peace, but it's a better than usual summer time read that entertains, makes you think and is available now. 


Stay tuned for more reviews ...

Quakers and Church Planting -- Two Reviews

As part of my work for FGC's New Meetings Project, I've gathered a stack of books about how to start new churches.  I blogged a bit about some premises gathered from Ten Most Common Mistakes Made by New Church Starts by Jim Griffith and Bill Easum.  After reading that book, I moved on to The House Church Book: Rediscover the Dynamic, Organic, Relational, Viral Community Jesus Started by Wolfgang Simson.

I had great hopes for this book.  After all, I have had some experience in helping to start a "house church" (Friends in Fellowship that meets at Ploughshares Farm) and I think the house church model may be helpful to Quakers as we think about ways of seeding new meetings and worship groups.  That idea seems to me to be very much in keeping with how the early Friends did their "church planting" work. 

So I opened this book with great anticipation -- only to find that it's just horrid and unhelpful. Its scope is as small as its premise -- and is far from "dynamic, organic, relational, viral" and "Jesus" (to quote the cover). There's a mean-spirit about this book -- criticising and dismissive of all other expressions of what it means to be church. Disdainful that God might be at work in other forms.  And the author's "biblical" premises for his positions seem to me as if he's reading some other Bible than mine. I finally put it down in disgust without finishing it.  It will be one of the few books that gets literally recycled -- I don't want anybody I know to read it.  Or anybody I don't know -- so it's not going to Goodwill or Friends of the Library.

In some ways I feel I should have known better than to expect good things from this book.  It's forward is by George Barna and the book is published by his company.  I've long had a negative bias  against his church research (after all, I do hang around with social scientists of religion and American congregations and was once a member myself of the Religious Research Association and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion) and my friends do not tend to have a high regard for his methodology.  Plus he always seems to have something to "sell" -- both figuratively and literally.  I should have avoided this book and I recommend you do, too.

Reading Finding Organic Church: A Comprehensive Guide to Starting and Sustaining Authentic Christian Communities by Frank Viola was time much better spent (at least I didn't find myself throwing the book down in disgust!). 

Viola offers a number of helpful thoughts (including practical arrangements for starting a new group -- where to meet, time, etc.), an detailed view of what he considers "apostolic" church planting based on his reading of the New Testament, and the idea that "organic" is the way to go. The organic, as he describes it, method of church planting seems to me to have much to commend it and indeed reminded me of early Quakers establishment of meetings and the way our meetings today (at their best) conduct worship (fully participatory by those attending) and business (striving toward a sense of the meeting -- though Viola used the term consensus, which is something close, but not equal to the sense of the meeting). Some of Viola's s suggestions could come straight from a "Quaker church playbook" were there such a thing. But, he seems not to have heard (or at least, studied) us at all.

Some things about this book were off-putting. The main one is his use of the male pronoun -- "he" this, "him" that. He says in the preface that he "has no problem with the idea that women can engage in apostolic work" but that "it's simpler to write 'he' than "he or she." Lame -- both as an excuse and for lazy writing.  So I think women who read this will find it tough going. 

Another thing is what I consider his tortured reading of the New Testament to make it conform to his "apostolic" method. I think that he makes a lot of assumptions about what scripture says and infers that are not laid out as clearly in the Bible as he implies they are.  Many of them are good thoughts -- it's just that it's more eisegesis than exegesis. 

Viola's also a bit repetitive -- especially when giving the biblical basis for his model, which he contends begins with how the Trinity interacts. A bit of a stretch there, too, I think.

Still, there's a good deal of helpful material here, much of which I hope to adapt for use by the New Meetings Project.  If you can read past his seeming gender and Biblical biases, I think you'll find it worth the read -- at the very least it will help you think about issues surrounding starting new Quaker groups (and maybe revitalizing some older ones) today.

-- Brent

Awaken Your Senses -- Early Reviews

The first reviews of the new book are coming in -- and I couldn't be more pleased. Here are some excerpts!

Awaken Your Senses: Exercises for Exploring the Wonder of God J. Brent Bill and Beth A. Booram. InterVarsity ... Modeling the best Sunday School teachers, Bill (Sacred Compass) and Booram (The Wide Open Spaces of God) get close to God via the five senses. The journey could so easily have been a skip instead of a sail; however, they truly manifest the book’s purpose: “to help more of you experience more of God.” The two ministers and workshop leaders accomplish this so well with natural sweetness from the inside, not with treacle glopped on top. Starting with the cover illustrations—a rose, a bird singing treble, threatening thorns, and a bitten pear, each image superimposing on another—the book divides naturally into five parts. ... Within each chapter, the authors alternate essays, their voices nearly indistinguishable except for Bill’s wittier bits; they touch on the personal, such as Booram’s sacred hospital smells. Each chapter includes spiritual exercises. The two cite the Bible’s raising up of the five senses, augmented with quotes from many sensate Christians. It adds up to a deeply pleasing book. -- Publishers Weekly.

Awaken Your Senses: Exercises for Exploring the Wonder of God J. Brent Bill & Beth Booram ... I had a very early version of this and was so taken with it I told a few folks this summer that it will be one of the books of the year. ... [Beth and Brent] walk us through an array of wonder-full meditations and experiences that combine a sensuous engagement with creational givens---taste, hearing, touch, smell, seeing---and ways these activities can help us know God. There are two things going on here, it seems---helping us be attentive to the world around us, practicing a sensuous worldview and embodied sort of discipleship, and the ways in which this sort of attentiveness can facilitate a deeper relationship with God. Beautiful! I'll bet you know somebody for whom this will be a godsend. It'll wow 'em, for sure. And that cover---you have to see it "for real." Splendid. Kudos, again, to InterVarsity Press. -- Byron Bolger of Hearts and Minds Books.

Awaken Your Senses is now available at local independent bookstores like Hearts and Minds and, of course, at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powells, InterVarsity Press, and more.

Order a copy online in the next five days and I'll be happy to send you a free signed bookplate!

Holiday Blessings!
Brent