February Reading Log

It was a short month, but I managed to get plenty of reading in. Take a look!

5 Articles I Like This Month

"The Month of Giving Dangerously" by Elizabeth Greenwood, Longreads. 25 minutes.

The author of this piece, seeking some mixture of purpose, connection with humanity, and empathy, spent a month saying "yes" to every opportunity she had to give. Whether it was tossing a few bucks to a panhandler, picking up the dinner check with friends, or giving an obnoxious stranger the benefit of the doubt, her goal was to give constantly instead of making excuses for not doing so. The experiment makes for a fun read, with some interesting insights sprinkled throughout.

"Touching Death: The Turbulent Life of One of America's Last Snake-Handling Preachers" by Jordan Ritter Conn, The Ringer. 26 minutes.

In the hills of Appalachia, the worship services of some Pentecostal churches are marked by singing, preaching, speaking in tongues...and, if the Spirit moves them, picking up venomous snakes and drinking poison. Based on an application of Mark 16:18 (a verse that is questionable to begin with, since it's not found in the earliest manuscripts of Mark's gospel), this practice is a uniquely American tradition, and one that alternately fascinates and horrifies outsiders. This profile of one of the those snake handlers does not disappoint in either regard.

"What Teenagers Are Learning from Online Porn" by Maggie Jones, The New York Times Magazine. 31 minutes.


A fascinating, horrifying examination of how watching pornography skews teenagers' understanding about male-female dynamics, dating, and sex. Worth reading for its statistics alone, it helps that it's extremely well-written. Nobody, from hair-on-fire moralists to lax libertines, likes to talk about porn, but this article will convince you it's time to start the conversation.

"America's Future Is Texas" by Lawrence Wright, The New Yorker. 77 minutes.

I know, I know--who wants to read the New Yorker take on Texas politics? Have no fear, Lawrence Wright is a Texas Monthly veteran, so he knows what he's talking about. And what he's talking about here is the sharp right turn Texas politics have taken in the last generation, as well as the long predicted (but still illusory) blue wave to come. Equal parts history lesson, legislative reporting, and political analysis, anyone who takes the time to read this article (it took me months to finally get to it; the article came out in July of 2017) will be rewarded.

"The Boys Are Not All Right" by Michael Ian Black, The New York Times. 4 minutes.

This short op-ed, written in the days following the Parkland shooting, goes deeper than the tired, circular arguments about gun control and mental health, arguing that a root issue behind the regularity of mass shootings is a national confusion about what it means to be masculine. This confusion, he argues (prompted mainly by the positive strides feminism has taken in the last generation), moves insecure boys and young men toward either withdrawal or rage, and rage leads to violence. Whether you agree with everything in this piece, readers of any political persuasion will likely find a kernel of truth somewhere--and walk away from it with questions and concerns.

JESUS THROUGH MIDDLE EASTERN EYES: CULTURAL STUDIES IN THE GOSPELS by Kenneth E. Bailey

Whether you realize it or not, your understanding of Christianity is fused with the conditions, values, and assumptions of Western civilization...this despite Christianity's originating in ancient Palestine. The West has given Christianity an abundance of incredible theology and hermeneutics, but so has the East. And if we take time to listen to those who live and breathe and have their being in the region where Jesus did the same, we might surprised what we learn about parts of the Bible we thought we knew forwards and backwards.

That's the idea behind this tome by Kenneth E. Bailey, the late New Testament scholar who boasted roots in both the East and the West (he was born and raised in the United States, but lived and taught for 40 years in Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, and Cyprus.) Using the wisdom of Middle Eastern commentaries only available in Arabic, historical research, and his own observations of life in the Middle East, Bailey walks through nearly 30 different gospel passages, from Jesus's miracles to his parables, offering fresh perspectives from a different point of view than the traditional western interpretations.

In most chapters, I walked away with at least an interesting exegetical tidbit I'd never read elsewhere; in some I was given an entirely new understanding of a passage I thought I had all figured out. This book, which I had been putting off reading for years, intimidated by its size (436 pages) and academic heft, is an invaluable reference tool, and one that was a pleasure to dive in every day over the last month. Highly recommended for preachers, teachers, and academicians.

HOW TO BE A PERFECT CHRISTIAN: YOUR COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO FLAWLESS SPIRITUAL LIVING by The Babylon Bee

*I wrote a brief review of this book for the Baptist Standard. So as to neither plagiarize nor repeat myself, allow me to simply link to that review here.*

9 INNINGS: THE ANATOMY OF A BASEBALL GAME by Daniel Okrent

When you think of a good baseball game, there's a good chance your mind immediately goes to the postseason, when the lights are bright, the air is crisp, and every moment matters. It's a period of intensity, suspense, and and drama. But before that month of adrenaline, every fan first must endure the slow, methodical, and yes, sometimes boring games of midsummer, when the season is no longer new but still nowhere near its finish line. And in truth, those lazy Sunday afternoon games may say more about a player, a team, and the sport itself than the World Series ever does.

That's the premise of 9 Innings, a classic baseball book by writer (and creator of fantasy baseball) Daniel Okrent. Using a random June game between the Milwaukee Brewers and Baltimore Orioles as a framing device, Okrent tells the stories of everyone from the groundskeepers to the players to the managers to the owners, all while narrating the flow of the game. Featuring everyone from future Hall of Famers (Rollie Fingers, Robin Yount, Paul Molitor) to a future commissioner (Bud Selig) to players and executives long since forgotten, Okrent does a deep dive into what makes a team tick on and off the field.

Unfortunately, while I appreciated this book--it's objectively well written and meticulously constructed--I didn't enjoy it as much as I'd assumed I would. I can't quite put my finger on why, but Okrent's writing style never clicked with me, and at times reading this book was, for me, akin to the fifth inning of a blowout--lots of checking my watch and calculating how much longer this might last.

Nevertheless, reading 9 Innings did what I expected it to do: it made me wish for baseball's speedy return. Spring training is underway, which means the real season is close at hand...and with it those slow June day games. They can't get here soon enough.

WONDER BOYS by Michael Chabon

Part farce, part stoner comedy, and part drama (with some notable autobiographical elements thrown in for good measure), Wonder Boys didn't win me over until the last 40 of its 386 pages. But in the nick of time, Michael Chabon landed the plane as only he can.

Wonder Boys is a 'long weekend' story about Grady Tripp, a writer-professor lost in the weeds of his next novel, a 2,000+ page behemoth with no end in sight. Grady is a loser in every sense--his third marriage is falling apart, his mistress just told him she's pregnant, his best friend and editor is losing faith in him, and he's not sure his novel is actually any good. But on the weekend of a writer's convention at his college, friends and events (everything from the shooting of his mistress's dog to a Passover dinner with his wife's family to a break-in of his old car) push him toward some sense of self-realization and even, perhaps, enlightenment.

This book is all over the place, as unfocused as its main character, and that drove me crazy as I was reading. Around page 150 or so, I actually put the book down and muttered aloud, "What is this?" But Chabon is, for my money, the most talented writer of prose out there, so I soldiered on out of respect for the writing. I'm glad I did, because everything really does come together at the end, as unlikely as that might have seemed 100 pages earlier. In fact, the ending winds up being quite touching, a surprise considering the screwball nature of the story.

If you've never read Michael Chabon, I wouldn't start here (start with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, his Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece and my all-time favorite novel). But with that being said, I am glad I read it, because for a book that seemed for most of its duration to be about nothing at all, it winds up having something to say after all.

SUPERMAN SUNDAY CLASSICS: 1939-1943 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster

Nowadays, when you say "comics", you mean one of two things: comic books or comic strips. To overgeneralize, comic books are the home of superheroes like the Avengers and comic strips are the home of cartoon animals like Garfield. But for a while, Superman strode both worlds, fighting crime in both the pages of Action Comics and the local newspaper. This book collects the Sunday strips from the first four years of those newspaper strips.

In terms of writing and art, there's not much difference from what I read in October, when I dove into Superman's earliest comic book stories. And that makes sense, since Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were pulling double duty at the time, creating stories for both the monthly book and the Sunday strips. Parts of these stories have not aged well, but for the most part they're fun, retro adventure tales, usually told over the stretch of 8-12 full page comic strips.  With the notable exception of Luthor, Superman does not take on any super villains in these stories, instead battling mob bosses, corrupt landlords, enemy agents, and the like. The strip takes a noticeable turn toward the patriotic in the last 30 pages or so, when the champion of truth, justice, and the American way suddenly starts battling fascists, including a "what if" story in which Superman hauls Hitler and Stalin before the League of Nations to stand trial.

As with the previous Superman Golden Age collection, I found that a little bit went a long way for me with these stories (I read 8 pages every morning), but they were more fun than you might expect. As both an artifact of early comics history and simple entertainment, this collection was worth the time and made for a fun reading experience.

SHOWCASE PRESENTS: SUPERMAN VOL. 1 by Otto Binder, Bill Finger, Wayne Boring, Al Plastino, et al.

Comics aren't for kids anymore. In fact, they haven't been for quite some time--for at least 20 years, Marvel, DC, and other comic book publishers have mostly given up on trying to reach elementary school kids with their books, relying instead on 25-40 year old males to keep them afloat. The sad result is that there aren't many books on the stands that I'd feel comfortable putting in my son's hands by the time he's old enough to ask.

But when that time comes, this is the book I'll hand him first. While Marvel made its mark in the 1960s by trying to appeal to an older audience, the Silver Age DC Universe was still definitively written for children. Fights were bloodless, romance was sexless, and villains were more buffoonish than frightening...and every superhero had a pet (or in Superman's case, basically an entire menagerie: Krypto the Super-Dog, Comet the Super-Horse, Streaky the Supercat, Beppo the Super-Monkey, etc.) It all makes for self-contained stories that are cartoonish, unrealistic...and utterly charming.

Of particular note in this volume of Silver Age stories (presented in black-and-white; the Showcase Presents line was DC's answer to my beloved Marvel Essentials) are "imaginary stories," tales outside the canon of the DCU in which we learn what Superman's life would have been like if Krypton had never exploded, or if he and Lois actually got married, or any number of other unthinkable scenarios. Also notable are the first appearances of Braniac and Bizarro, two villains who continue to plague Superman to this day.

The writing and art in this volume are "house style," meaning it all looks and sounds pretty much the same from issue to issue. Nothing too ambitious is happening in these issues. But don't let that dissuade you from picking it up--these issues won't make you think too hard, but they will make you smile. And when you're picking up a comic book, sometimes that's more important anyway. Especially for kids.

BLACK PANTHER VOL. 1: A NATION UNDER OUR FEET by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Brain Stelfreeze

I wanted to like this. Really, I did. I mean, it seems like a match made in heaven: Black Panther, the first black superhero (not to mention the titular character of the biggest movie in the world) and Ta-Nehisi Coates, the most talented, famous, and influential black writer around (not counting Barack Obama.) This book was seemingly destined for greatness.

I just wish I knew what was going on in it. That's the fundamental problem with this book: it is NOT friendly to readers unaware of Black Panther's recent history. I went in better informed about both T'Challa and Wakanda than the average new reader, and I was utterly lost for the majority of the four issues this volume collects. To his credit, Coates has clearly done his research, but no effort is made to get the reader up to speed...which, since this is the first volume of a new series, seems like a fair thing to expect.

As best I could tell, the story begins with Wakanda in a shakier position than it's been in decades, the result of several recent conflicts and the death of T'Challa's sister Shuri, who had recently reigned as queen in his stead. This volume shows the birth of a series of internal rebellions and how T'Challa begins to deal with them. Or at least, I think that's what's going on.

The art's great, and anyone who recently saw the movie will see that the cinematic vision of Wakanda borrows from these issues. The dialogue is interesting. But ultimately, I spent more time trying to puzzle out what I was reading than enjoying it. I'm told the later volumes are improvements over this one...but I'm not sure I'll be along for the ride.