Just 4 books this month, since one of them was a 1,000+ page doorstop (albeit one that was super entertaining.) And while you won't find any comics at the bottom like you're used to, that's only because I'm smack dab in the middle of a series that spanned several years and hundreds of pages. Look for a review in next month's log.
Anyway, on to April's reading!
4 Articles I Like This Month
"The White Darkness: A Solitary Journey Across Antarctica" by David Grann, The New Yorker. 88 minutes.
A remarkable story of legacy, struggle, and perseverance, this article profiles the efforts of Henry Worsley to emulate and even surpass his hero, the arctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, by crossing Antarctica single-handed. Long, but worth the time if you like real-life adventure stories.
"The Silence: The Legacy of Childhood Trauma" by Junot Díaz, The New Yorker. 20 minutes.
The most impactful thing I read this month by a mile. A heartbreaking, intimate, soul-searching, brutally honest story, told by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, of how being raped at age 8 changed his entire life. If you ever follow up on my reading recommendations, don't miss this one.
"'Who Can Explain the Athletic Heart?': The Past and Perilous Future of Sports Illustrated" by Michael MacCambridge, The Ringer. 24 minutes.
Once unthinkable, the death of Sports Illustrated as a print magazine (much less a relevant one) now seems virtually inevitable. In this article, Michael MacCambridge, author of The Franchise, the 1997 history of the magazine, examines what made Sports Illustrated the powerhouse it was for decades, why it has declined over the last decade, and and what it must to to survive.
"The Plunging Morale of America's Service Members" by Phil Klay, The Atlantic. 31 minutes.
Do you care about the military? You would probably answer defensively, "Of COURSE I do!" Ok, so a follow-up question: name the 3 countries in which U.S. combat troops are currently deployed. In this article, Phil Klay (a Marine veteran), examines how difficult it is for most people who enthusiastically and affirmatively answer the first question to then answer the second, making the compelling case that the only Americans who seem to really care about American wars anymore are the men and women fighting them. His question is how much longer we can ask our troops to die for causes we've lost interest in...and when our disinterest will start to affect their ability to fight. (*By the way, the answer to the second question was Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.*)
THE GREAT OMISSION: RECLAIMING JESUS'S ESSENTIAL TEACHINGS ON DISCIPLESHIP by Dallas Willard
I've mentioned in previous reading logs that I'm slowly working my way through some of my assigned texts from seminary, books that I had to speed through at the time instead of getting to take the time they required. In most cases, rereading those books at a more deliberate pace has been a great experience and has changed my perception of works that I'd previously regarded negatively.
Well, you win some and you lose some: The Great Omission was as disappointing as I remembered it being. I first read this book as part of a class entirely devoted to reading and discussing the works of Dallas Willard, a noted Christian author and professor whose writings on discipleship and spiritual formation fundamentally shaped many believers, including noted fellow authors like Richard Foster and Eugene Peterson. That class was one of my favorites in my time at seminary, and I loved several of the Willard books we read—The Divine Conspiracy, Willard's most famous book, may well be my favorite book on discipleship. So I came to this book (the first time and the second) with both high expectations and a good grasp on what I'd be getting.
Unfortunately, The Great Omission failed to meet those expectations by delivering nothing new from Willard, nothing he hadn't already said in The Divine Conspiracy. This book seems mostly like a Greatest Hits CD, reprising some of his best insights (and even best one-liners) from that earlier work, with little to add. Furthermore, because some of the chapters are taken from previous lectures or papers (i.e. they were not written specifically for this book), the tone and voice varies from chapter to chapter, making for an inconsistent reading experience. As I said before, I think Dallas Willard is great for the most part, yet reading this book for 30 minutes a day felt more like homework than joy.
Here's the deal: I suspect The Great Omission was written/edited as a primer for people who hadn't read anything by Dallas Willard before, that this was intended to be a sort of Dallas Willard 101 course. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's a great idea, since reading his whole bibliography would take years. But I think the author and publisher could have done so in a more organized and more original way, and I wish they had. I'll hang onto this book, but doubt I'll pick it up again anytime soon...and if anyone wants to borrow it, I'd recommend just grabbing The Divine Conspiracy instead.
A GRIEF OBSERVED by C.S. Lewis
You know how there are certain movies/TV shows on Netflix that you want to see eventually, but you're just never in the mood? Documentaries about factory farming, films about child soldiers, miniseries about the Holocaust—you've heard these are objectively good, you mean to get around to them eventually, but when the time comes at the end of a long day to choose between one of these or rewatching The Office for the 7th time...well, you'll get to the heavy stuff eventually. Some day.
That was how I felt about A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis's brief, intimate reflection on his own mourning following the death of his wife, Joy Davidman. It's a slim book, something you can get through in an hour if you're a fast reader (in fact, the afterword in my edition is nearly as long as the book itself). But it's sat on my shelf for years now waiting to be read, constantly passed over for something more, well, fun. But after the death of a dear friend and church member this month, I decided it was finally time to see what C.S. Lewis had to say about grief.
The book is laid out in four chapters, although I'm at a loss as to what prompted it to be organized this way, because the book is not nearly as systematic as a typical Lewis offering. Instead, what poured forth from Lewis's pen is an almost rambling series of reflections on the pain of his loss, the theological questions his grief is making him ask, and the simultaneous desire to both honor his late wife and move on with his life apart from her. These reflections, while as intelligent as their author, are more emotional than intellectual—Lewis is not trying to "explain" grief so much as walk through it with the reader by his side.
This is probably my favorite C.S. Lewis nonfiction book, because it contains all those things which people adore about his writing—intelligence, imagination, and a gift for language—without the too-clever-by-half tics that sometimes aggravate me about his other works. This is a C.S. Lewis stripped bare of pretension, dropped from his ivory tower into the mire of mourning, and the reader is better served as a result. Lewis is thoughtful and honest here, and ultimately that vulnerable honesty elevates this book to heights his more famous works (Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, etc.) never quite reached for me. For anyone who's ever lost a loved one, I suspect reading A Grief Observed could be helpful, less for the answers it gives than the questions it asks.
What makes Baptists unique? I'm sure you could come up with a series of snarky answers (I know I could), but in an age when denominationalism is declining across the board, it is nevertheless a question worth asking. Are all denominations basically the same, as many postulate?
When you get beneath the surface, the answer is no. There are certain beliefs and practices which have historically set Baptists apart from our Methodist, Episcopal, Pentecostal, and Catholic brothers and sisters. In Back to Bedrock, the late Paul Powell, former dean of my beloved Truett Seminary and one of the lights of Texas Baptists life for decades, seeks to explain those Baptist distinctives.
His chosen format, appropriately for a former pastor, is a series of twelve sermons, dealing with everything from what Baptists believe about God and salvation to narrower subjects like stewardship, cooperation between churches, and the role of ministers. Each sermon draws from Scripture, naturally, but also has as its epigraph a quote from the articles of faith and constitution of the first Baptist association in Texas. These historic documents, as well as the minutes from that association's first meeting, the bill of inalienable rights they drafted, their rules of decorum, a table of early church leaders, and a circular letter written by Baylor president and pastor Rufus Burleson are all contained in an appendix at the end of the book.
The messages are trademark Paul Powell: concise, pulled from Scripture, and chock full of stories to help bring the points home. Anyone who reads through these messages, which despite Powell's scholarly credentials are meant for general consumption and not just for academics, will learn a lot about what Baptists believe, why we believe it, and about the individuals who helped form our denomination and its subsequent national, state, and local conventions and associations. For my fellow Baptists, whether you're well schooled in Baptist history or think we date back back to John baptizing in the Jordan (we don't), I happily recommend this book as a primer.
UNDER THE DOME by Stephen King
What if your hometown was suddenly cut off from the rest of the world? That's the premise of this 2009 novel from Stephen King: in an instant and without warning, an impenetrable dome materializes over the small Maine town of Chester's Mill, with no one able to get in or out. In no time at all the institutions, laws, and people begin to change, and what was once a sleepy burb becomes an apocalyptic nightmare.
Imagine Lord the Flies but with adults, and that's what you get from Under the Dome, a parable about the dangers of humanity when our better angels are cast aside. The local used car dealer and town selectman becomes a Hitlerian tyrant, the short order cook at the diner becomes a colonel, the police force is transformed into thuggish stormtroopers, and a local meth lab becomes an Armaggedon-like battle scene...all because the checks and balances of normal society are removed by the dome.
It all makes for an endlessly interesting story, told with Stephen King's typical brilliance for pacing, characterization, and plot. Still pigeonholed in the popular imagination as a horror writer, this book is a reminder of what his fans already knew: Stephen King is a gripping storyteller in any genre. Clocking in at a hefty 1,074 pages, I raced through Under the Dome and could have read another 500 pages without complaint.
Is it perfect? Nah—sometimes King's writing is clever to the point of self-indulgent, sometimes his characters talk like the witty voice in his head instead of like real people, and almost all the characters are one-dimensional good guys or bad guys. But none of these criticisms make the book any less fun to read. Under the Dome is a great story told well, and for anyone looking for a fun summer read, I'd point you here without reservation.
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