May Reading Log

Given how busy this month was (preached in view of a call at South Garland Baptist Church at the beginning of the month, bought a house, went on a 2 week European vacation, moved out of our apartment, and prepared for my first Sunday as pastor at SGBC), I wasn't expecting to read as much this month as I normally would. But thanks to a lot of time on planes and trains in Europe, I wound up reading about as much as usual, to my delight. Take a look!

2 Articles I Like This Month

"Faith, Friendship, and Tragedy at Santa Fe High" by Skip Hollandsworth, Texas Monthly. 42 minutes.

The moving story of the friendship between an evangelical freshman from Santa Fe, TX and a Muslim foreign exchange student from Pakistan, and of the shooting which ended one of their lives. Powerful stuff from the always excellent Skip Hollandsworth.

"Let's Teach Our Teens to Show a Little Kindness" by Ioanna Roumeliotis, The Globe and Mail. 5 minutes.

An achingly gracious call to arms by a parent tired of seeing his autistic child bullied. Frustrated by the failure of conventional responses to bullying, the writer sees only one way forward: in a world that gives so much attention to cynicism, snideness, and meanness, we must must make kindness cool. A simple yet thoughtful message.

OF MICE AND MEN by John Steinbeck

In January, I tackled—and deeply enjoyed—East of Eden, arguably Steinbeck's opus. So this month, with limited reading time available to me, I decided to read through two of his novellas. I'll get to The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck's most famous book, eventually, but I'm in no rush.

First up was Of Mice and Men, which I actually read previously in middle school. At the time, it was required reading for the summer and, me being me, I put it off until the week before school started. I remember how the book sucked me in at the time, and I wound up reading it in one sitting. I took a little longer with it this time, but it was still a quick read, and it packed the same emotional punch (despite me knowing the ending this time around.) Telling the story of Lennie, a giant, mentally disabled farmhand, and George, his traveling companion, Steinbeck weaves themes about innocence, loneliness, and dreams of a better life in the tragic tale of how an accident forces their dreams to confront cold reality. If you've never read this, do yourself a favor and pick it up; you can't help but be moved by it.

As for novella #2, The Pearl, well, I planned to read this the week before we moved. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. Maybe next month!

WORKING: RESEARCHING, INTERVIEWING, WRITING by Robert A. Caro

In the fall of 2018, I became mildly obsessed with Robert Caro, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner whose magisterial, multi-volume The Years of Lyndon Johnson was captivating me on a daily basis. The books, which had long intimidated me with their size (all told, they're more than 4,000 pages, with a final volume currently  in the works), proved to be not only fascinating and well-researched, but a master class in storytelling. Before long, I was not only reading the books, but spending my lunch breaks watching Caro interviews and lectures on YouTube. Like I said, I was slightly obsessed.

Working is a compilation of the kind of material he was often asked about in those interviews and that he volunteered in those lectures, stories about interviewing interesting subjects, his writing process, and what intensive, turn-every-page research looks like. Some of the material is new for the book, but much of it is recycled from previous magazine and newspaper pieces, now collected for the first time.

So in one sense, I didn't get much new here. Other than a chapter at the end which previews his final LBJ volume, I'm not sure I learned anything from Caro that I hadn't heard or read him say elsewhere. But as has proved to be the case with everything I've ever read from Caro, the way he tells a story is just as important as the story he's telling. With a novelist's eye for detail and a journalist's sense of immediacy, he manages to make the mundane come alive, and his passion for his subjects reels you into the narrative.

If, like me, you love "process stories," i.e. stories about the details and routines of a person's work, you'll eat this up. Caro gives great insight into not only the historic people he researched, but the way he went about that work, whether that work came in an exclusive reading room at the New York City Public Library, the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, or an office he rents in the Bronx. I read this entire book in one day (albeit a day day spent on planes and trains, with ample time to read), and would have loved to read more. Great stuff, and I can't wait for the fifth volume of the LBJ series.

A MOVEABLE FEAST by Ernest Hemingway

It's become something of a cliche for Americans in Paris to read A Moveable Feast, an account of Hemingway's time in the City of Lights, during their stay. So, having never read it (or, for that matter, anything by Hemingway) I decided to embrace the cliche during our 2-week European vacation. Every morning we spent in Paris, I started the day by making a pot of coffee and curling up with this book with the Eiffel Tower in full view.

Part of the fun of reading A Moveable Feast is reading about all of the places Hemingway spent time during his years living in Paris with his first wife, Hadley Richardson, many of which remain popular spots for tourists and Parisians alike. Whether he's writing about borrowing books from Shakespeare & Co., a bookstore frequented by him and other members of literature's Lost Generation, eating at cafes along the Champs de Mars, or attending the horse races at Auteuil, the book serves as something of a narrative checklist of places to visit while in the cultural capital of the world.

But the real joy of the book is Hemingway's descriptions of his writing process, the tremendous care he took to be disciplined in his work while also living life to the fullest. Whether he is sitting in a cafe drinking an aperitif, name dropping another member of the Lost Generation (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein were all friends of his) and talking about his visits with them, or sitting at home by a fire, Hemingway always seems to think of himself as a writer first. Telling stories—and telling them honestly—was both his livelihood and his calling, and he took it seriously.

Having never read Hemingway before, I nevertheless knew his style by reputation, and it was as advertised, straightforward and undecorated. But what struck me—what makes him Hemingway, and not just a guy who didn't like long sentences—was how honest his writing is, absent of pretension or desire to impress. He's telling it like it is, unworried by whether he'll offend or by how it makes him (or others look). That's not to say he's trying to offend, like some literary shock jock, just that he is more concerned with telling the straight truth than with telling a tidy, attractive story.

Paris, Hemingway said, is a moveable feast, a joy you take with you long after you leave it. This book, I suspect, is the same way.

BOOKS V. CIGARETTES by George Orwell

It's funny...George Orwell is unquestionably one of the most important authors of the 20th century, but I suspect you can't name anything he wrote except 1984 and Animal Farm (I know I couldn't.) Those novels, while seminal, are only parts of a larger career which included hundreds of essays. Books v. Cigarettes, part of the Penguin Great Ideas series of slim, affordable volumes of classical literature, collects seven of Orwell's essays, with mixed results.

The first three are all about Orwell's relationship to books. The titular essay, published a year after World War II ended, sees Orwell systematically picking apart the argument that books are too expensive for the common man by pointing out how much people spend on other vices and frivolous pursuits and arguing that, whatever else you may say for literature, it offers incredible bang for your buck. "Bookshop Memories" is a cautionary tale about his stint as an employee in a bookshop, telling about the strange customers who frequent such establishments and warning lovers of literature from making a career out of the bookselling business. Similarly, "Confessions of a Book Reviewer," my favorite essay in the collection, cautions readers from become book reviewers, with Orwell explaining that when your job is to not only read but recommend books, it changes the way you read—and not necessarily for the better.

The next two essays are political in nature, and disturbingly relevant for today. "The Prevention of Literature" deals with the role literature plays in subverting totalitarian thought, and how literary prose more than anything else helps keep free thinking alive when the state or culture demands conformity. "My Country Right or Left" is a forgettable essay about the importance of patriotism on both sides of the political aisle.

The final two essays are snapshots of a specific time and place, with "How the Poor Die" offering a glimpse of the horrendous conditions of British public hospitals in the early 20th century and "Such, Such Were the Joys" doing the same for English boarding schools. The latter is done as a memoir that clocks in at over 60 pages (half the length of the entire collection), though the prose makes it a quick read.

All in all, this collection probably doesn't represent the best of Orwell (I don't exactly understand what prompted Penguin to choose these 7 essays out of the 500+ he wrote), but they're all enjoyable and insightful in their own way, and it was a quick read. Nevertheless, your English classes had the right idea: when it comes to George Orwell, start with Animal Farm and 1984.

BASKETBALL (AND OTHER THINGS) by Shea Serrano

In so many ways, the Internet is a sewer. But occasionally it offers the world an amazing gift. Shea Serrano, formerly of Grantland, is one of those gifts, and his Basketball (And Other Things) is one of the most delightful books I've read in a long time.

The book's premise is a series of questions about basketball (almost exclusively the NBA), ranging from the serious and insightful (Which was the most important duo in NBA history? What's the most important NBA championship?) to the...less serious and insightful (Was Kobe Bryant a dork?). Each chapter tackles one of these questions with varying degrees of analysis, speculation, and laugh-out-loud humor. It's Internet writing at its best, but bound in a paperback book and complete with colorful illustrations by Arturo Torres.

I read this book almost entirely on European trains, and it was perfect for those commutes—easy to read for an hour if I wanted, but equally easy to read for 5 minutes and then put back down. For NBA fans, this is a must read and my favorite basketball book I've ever read. Serrano's first book, The Rap Year Book, has rocketed up my to-read list, so keep an eye out for it in a future reading log.

What's Important (Friday Devotional)

*Note*: The rest of my month will be consumed by an international vacation and an impending move, so this will be the only devotional this month. I will resume sending these out every Friday starting June 7.

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?”

- Mark 8:34-36

When you think about Margaret Wise Brown, you probably think first of Goodnight Moon, the bedtime classic written by Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd. Next to mind is probably The Runaway Bunny, authored by the same team of writer and artist. If your knowledge of Brown’s bibliography goes deeper, then you may also be familiar with award winners like The Little Island, My World, and The Golden Egg Book.

But perhaps my favorite Margaret Wise Brown book is 1949’s The Important Book. In this short picture book, Brown poetically describes everyday things, singling out at the beginning and end of each passage what she believes matters most about those things. For example, she says:

“The important thing about rain is that it is wet.

It falls out of the sky,

And it sounds like rain,

And makes things shiny,

And it does not taste like anything,

And is the color of air.

But the important thing about rain is that it is wet.”

Brown’s passages about the rain, the sky, grass, and apples got me wondering, what would my page say if I was in The Important Book—what is most important about me? All of us are different, which means all our pages would sound different. For some, the descriptions would have a lot to say about your work. For others, your family life would take center stage. For still others, everything from your dreams to your hobbies to your politics might make the descriptive cut.

But for disciples of Jesus Christ, the first and last sentence of your Important Book page ought to be the same as any other Christian’s: “the important thing about me is that I believe Jesus is Lord.” Whatever else falls on your page, Jesus must be what starts and finishes it, because the gospel is not something you can compartmentalize as just one part of your identity. Rather, the gospel is something that changes you from the inside out, something that utterly transforms you.

Whatever else you have, whatever else you achieve, nothing is more valuable than knowing, trusting, ad following Jesus. Whatever else makes up your identity, may you always know what—and who—is most important.

April Reading Log

So....pretty busy month for me. Reading is usually something I'm very disciplined about making time for, but not so much in April. I'd expect the same to be true for May. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nevertheless, that doesn't mean I didn't read anything. Take a look!

THE EMOTIONALLY HEALTHY LEADER by Peter Scazzero

Full disclosure: leadership books are not my cup of tea. It's not a hubris thing—I'm under no illusion that I have my leadership style all figured out—but rather a sense that your average leadership book is really just a pamphlet's worth of information that the author padded with bucketloads of self-serving anecdotes. Most leadership books, in my experience, reward skimming more than close reading.

With that being said, The Emotionally Healthy Leader, a book recommended to me by a cohort of fellow Texas Baptist ministers, was better than most in the genre. Written by a New York City pastor, the book deals with the importance of what is popularly known as "self-care" for your leadership ability. In Scazzero's view, being emotionally (and physically and spiritually) healthy is 1) not a given for leaders and 2) crucial to effective leadership.

Most compelling for me was the section on Sabbath—why to practice it, how to practice it, and how doing so actually makes you a more effective leader. Sabbath was something I took seriously for a season, but my commitment to it fell by the wayside after Andrew was born and I took on a new role as stay-at-home dad to go with my pastoral duties. As I transition into a new job, I intend to set some Sabbath boundaries early, and this chapter was helpful in seeing how to do that.

For the leaders—especially in ministry—who feel stretched thin, this book is a good reflection on the importance of balance in life. Like most leadership books, you could probably solely hit the highlights without missing anything vital, but those highlights are worth a look.

ALEXANDER HAMILTON by Ron Chernow

With tickets to see the touring production of Hamilton in Dallas on April 12—a night I'd been looking forward to for years—I resolved to finally get around to reading the source material, Ron Chernow's hefty biography of the Founding Father. I pulled it off—just barely, finishing on the morning of the 12th—and left with mixed feelings about a book I'd heard so much about.

On the one hand, this book is packed with fascinating information and insights about our nation's first Secretary of the Treasury, who was responsible for laying the groundwork for a financial system that still bears his imprint today. From stories about his upbringing—which the musical employs as a motif but doesn't actually portray—all the way to a meticulously reconstructed account of his fatal duel with Aaron Burr, there's a lot to read. And for a fan of the musical, it was especially fun to compare Lin-Manuel Miranda's dramatic depiction of Hamilton's life with the historical reality (by my estimate, the musical's about 90% accurate.)

However, I must admit that I respected this book more than I liked it. For all the depth of his research—and there's no disputing that Ron Chernow is one of the world's most fastidious historians—I found the book dry, especially given how interesting the subject was. While some sections soared, such as the chapter about Hamilton and James Madison's writing of The Federalist Papers , others got so mired down in minutia that I found my eyes glazing over a bit. The research in this book is astounding, but as a writer, Chernow doesn't quite measure up to contemporaries like Doris Kearns Goodwin, Robert Caro, and David McCullough.

If you're a history buff, and especially if the American Revolution and subsequent decades are your bag, you won't find a more informative look at the life of this Founding Father. If you're more casually interested, don't be frightened but be warned: the musical's a much easier road to hoe than its source material.

MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN by Jonathan Lethem

When his boss, a Brooklyn wiseguy and adoptive father figure of sorts, is fatally stabbed to death, Lionel Essrog, a glorified errand boy with dreams of being a real detective, takes it upon himself to find the murderer. Sound like a pretty conventional, hard-boiled mystery novel, right? It would be, but for the twist that makes the story more interesting: Lionel has OCD and Tourette's syndrome, and must wrestle with his tics and compulsions even as he tries to sort through his clues.

It is this look at a certain type of mental illness that Motherless Brooklyn relies on to make it more than just an ode to Philip Marlowe. Having Lionel serve not only as the protagonist but also the narrator is a daring choice, and one that makes the book more compelling as you read. Indeed, I found Jonathan Lethem's depiction of Tourette's more interesting than the actual whodunit of the plot.

All in all, this was a pretty forgettable book for me, a sort of novelistic precursor to the Monk TV show (which I never watched.) Part noir, part MFA prompt, this is a good book, just not the kind that appealed much to me. If you're a mystery fan, you're welcome to borrow my copy.

CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale

For the past 3 decades, few writer-artist collaborations have proven to be as reliably excellent as those by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, who have given us everything from Batman: The Long Halloween to Superman for All Seasons to the Marvel "color books" (Hulk: Gray, Spider-Man: Blue, Daredevil: Yellow, etc.) But every team needs an origin story, and for these two the story begins, of all places, with Challengers of the Unknown.

For those unfamiliar with the Challengers (which I can safely assume is 99% of the people reading this), they were created by comics icon Jack Kirby in 1957 as a team of scientists and explorers who took on everything from monsters to aliens in their pursuit of adventure. Often considered a prototype for the Fantastic Four, they lived on the fringes of the DC Universe, brought in from time to time for nostalgia's sake but never playing a particularly important role.

Anyone expecting Loeb and Sale to introduce themselves with a by-the-numbers revival of the team must have been surprised. What they offered instead was a series as daring as the Challengers themselves. The story follows the team in their retirement days after their headquarters is destroyed by an unknown enemy, killing two of the Challengers. The remaining team members go their separate ways, with one becoming a murderous vigilante, one descending into alcoholism and mindless luxury, and the other becoming a Doctor Strange-esque mystic. Needless to say, this is not the happy-go-lucky fare of the 1950s. Eventually the team comes together, aided by a sleazy tabloid reporter who spent the early part of his career tracking their exploits, to overcome their demons and take on the villain who sent them down their dark paths.

As unconventional as the plot is, the art is the real star of the show. While his pencilling is not as refined as it would become in later years, Tim Sale's layouts are stunningly creative—in my mind, no one since Jim Steranko has experimented so successfully with how to tell a comic book story in an original way. While never interrupting the flow of the story, Sale breaks out of the typical nine panel grid and makes the page his own. The results are captivating.

Partly so I could appreciate the art, I read this book slowly, and really enjoyed it. You don't need prior knowledge of the Challengers (after all, let's be honest, who really knows anything about these guys?) to appreciate it, just a good pair of eyes. This wasn't necessarily the series that made Loeb and Sale famous, but it's more than a worthy introduction to their collaboration.

ESSENTIAL SILVER SURFER VOL. 2 by Stan Lee, John Buscema, John Byrne, Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers, Joe Staton, and Ron Lim

Let's start with this: the number of comics from the late-1980s that could be considered "essential" can be counted on one hand, and this ain't one of them. That being said, it's pretty fun.

In the late 1960s, Stan Lee and John Buscema teamed up for an ill-fated 20-issue run on the Silver Surfer, a comic that never quite caught on with fans (probably due to its unorthodox format: double-sized, twice as expensive, and shipping every other month.) Though its content was excellent, the series' failure meant that the Surfer was doomed to nearly two decades of life as a guest star in comics like The Fantastic Four, Thor, and The Defenders. But in the late 1980s, with the comics industry booming, Marvel decided the time was right to let the Surfer fly again. The first 18 issues of that series, along with a couple of one-shot appearances beforehand, are collected in The Essential Silver Surfer Vol. 2.

The series, written by Steve Englehart and with art by Marshall Rogers and Joe Staton and then later Ron Lim, sees the sentinel of the spaceways finally escaping the earthly prison his former master, Galactus, had sentenced him to, free at last to explore the stars. Immediately returning home to Zenn-La and his beloved, Shalla Bal, he finds that he is not welcomed with the open arms he'd expected and must chart his own course. In subsequent adventures, he finds himself embedded in the middle of a new Kree-Skrull War, he clashes with the ancient Elders of the Universe, and finds two new potential love interests in the onetime Avenger (and Celestial Madonna) Mantis and Galactus's new herald, Nova.

If that was all a pretty overwhelming dump of names and back story, well, so is this comic. Far from holding the reader's hand, it plunges you into Marvel's cosmic universe and expects you to keep up, and the deeper into the series you get, the more unmanageable it becomes. I enjoyed the series' early issues, but was feeling pretty lost in the weeds toward the volume's conclusion...and I'm far from a newbie to this stuff. I have a hard time imagining how you'd follow the plot if you hadn't already been reading Marvel comics for years.

But despite the sometimes suffocating amount of continuity, this is a fun comic. Far from "essential," it nevertheless gave a long-neglected character room to pursue his own adventures again, and gave writers like Englehart a playground for Marvel's cosmic beings. Good times, and a nice escape for me in a month driven by home inspections, mortgage arrangements, and quotes from moving companies.