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.