July Reading Log

 

This was an exceptionally busy month—between a weeklong mission trip, a weeklong conference in Alabama, SMAK week at the church, and a short getaway to the beach, my schedule was dictated to me rather than set by me for most of the month. The result: a lot of days with little to no reading. So enjoy a brief reading log this month!

1 Article I Like This Month

"Baseball, Barbecue, and Losing Freedom This Fourth of July" by Howard Bryant, ESPN. 12 minutes.

In this sober, heartbreaking meditation on American freedom, longtime sportswriter Howard Bryant reflects on what the last few years, in both sports and society, have taught us about the fragility of the American experiment, especially for people of color.

Reading Through the Fantastic Four- #356-370, Annual #24-25

Following the epic Walt Simonson run, it fell to Marvel's editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco, along with artist Paul Ryan, to usher Marvel's First Family into the 1990s, the decade where the comics industry reached its financial zenith and creative nadir. And, at least for the first year or two, things were still going ok! (as you'll see in the next few months, the longer their run lasted, the more the book fell prey to the pitfalls of '90s's 'storytelling.')

DeFalco and Ryan start things off with a bang with one of the most famous retcons in FF history: the revelation that Alicia Masters, who had married Johnny Storm in issue 300, was actually a Skrull spy all along. This shocking twist, while clearly just an excuse to reset things back to the normal status quo (Alicia as the Thing's girlfriend, Johnny footloose and fancy-free) makes for an effective story, and helps rid the book of arguably the most misguided story element in John Byrne's otherwise legendary run. Johnny as a married man was intended to mature the character, but his relationship with Alicia always felt forced and out of place, and the elimination of this issue is an editorial favor from DeFalco to the fans.

The next story, in which the FF invade the so-called Inniverse, the universe between molecules, sees them take on a gem-wielding tyrant named Occulus. It's all very Lee-and-Kirby, and holds a soft spot in my heart as one of the first FF sagas I ever collected. Nothing groundbreaking here, but it's fun!

This month's reading ended with a lengthy crossover into the universe-spanning Infinity War saga, in which all Marvel's heroes were having to deal with doppelgangers of themselves. The issues themselves are fine, but are a sign of problems to come: Marvel overwhelming readers with expensive, overly complicated events.

All in all, DeFalco and Ryan sought to bring the FF back to basics in the first dozen or so issues after the zaniness of the Simonson run, and they are largely successful. DeFalco is a capable comics writer, heavy on the soap operatic melodrama, and Ryan is a workmanlike penciler whose clean lines echo Byrne's work in the 1980s. Their run, as you will see, will end disastrously, but it got off to a good start!

READING WHILE BLACK by Esau McCaulley

If you've ever been to an African American church, you know it's a fundamentally different experience than a traditional white church. The sermons are longer, the music is louder, and the food is better, to name just a few differences. But more than those stylistic differences, the African American church is a place where the exodus takes center stage, where the mild-mannered philosopher Jesus most white churches have worshiped since the Reformation gives way to the prophetic Lord who sets the captives free.

The trouble, author Esau McCaulley says, is that more and more African Americans are struggling to reconcile orthodox Christianity—especially evangelical Christianity—with their social beliefs. How, they ask, can the 'white Jesus' of the American South possibly share anything in common with the one they grew up hearing about? Are they better off just moving on from faith?

McCaulley argues in Reading While Black that there is a place for a conservative, orthodox reading of the Bible that speaks to the African American experience, and that racial progressivism is not only compatible with Christianity, but pairs beautifully with it. In chapter after chapter, McCaulley shows how Scripture condemns white supremacy and how the African American story actually helps speak to some of the parts of Scripture that white evangelicals are puzzled or bothered by.

As McCaulley sees it, there is much for African Americans to learn from the Bible—and much for white Americans to learn from their interpretation. And true reconciliation will come not when one of us 'wins,' but when we learn to gather at the table together, learning about God from one another.

So should you read this? I'll be blunt. If you think Critical Race Theory is a fundamental threat to our nation, you're going to hate this book. But if you are willing to go in with an open mind, ready to listen to a different experience than your own, I wholeheartedly and unreservedly recommend Reading While Black.

ANGELS & DEMONS by Dan Brown

Look, sometimes you just want to curl up with a big, dumb thriller. So when I saw three of Dan Brown's Robert Langdon books on clearance at my local Half Price Books a few weeks ago, I made some impulse purchases. This month I started with the original, Angels & Demons, the table setter for the far more famous, far more controversial The Da Vinci Code.

Angels & Demons establishes the plot within the first hundred pages: Robert Langdon, an Indiana Jones-esque symbologist (not a real job) is brought to the home of CERN's large hadron collider after its director is mysteriously murdered and marked by the mark of the Illuminati. Before long, Langdon and the director's daughter uncover a conspiracy to murder a series of Catholic cardinals and then annihiliate Vatican City, all while the Vatican conclave is meeting to decide who will be the next pope.

It's big, dumb, badly written fun. But fun nevertheless. When Brown wrote this book, he never could have imagined it would one day be a Tom Hanks blockbuster, but it reads like one, with lots of cliffhanger endings to chapters, races against time, and international set pieces. Basically, it reads like most grocery store thrillers.

If I sound snobby, I don't mean to...it's a fun book, and I devoured it. Dan Brown is very good at getting you to turn the page. But I forgot most of this book roughly 20 minutes after I finished it. It's the epitome of disposable entertainment...definitely entertaining, definitely the kind of thing you'll find on clearance at Half Price Books. Worth your time? Absolutely. Worth hanging onto? Meh.

CAN'T HURT ME by David Goggins

This book came to me as the result of falling down a TikTok rabbit hole, and for once the algorithm did some good. I've written before about my healthy skepticism for self-help books, but Can't Hurt Me is a refreshing departure from the usual tropes of that genre.

90% memoir and 10% advice, Can't Hurt Me is the story of how David Goggins, after a truly traumatic childhood and a meandering early adulthood, found strength within himself and became a Navy SEAL and how he has continued to push himself past every boundary along the way to become an ultra-athlete. As Goggins tells it, every obstacle he has ever faced has ultimately been a mental one; his central argument is that most of us only us 40% of our capacity on a daily basis and that it is by tapping into the remaining 60% that he has managed to do the seemingly impossible time after time.

Whether writing about his abusive childhood, his experience graduating from SEAL BUD/S training after enduring the program's Hell Week three separate times, or the various ultramarathons he has run, Goggins' intensity is as captivating as it is startling. The way he tells it, pain and suffering are paths to achievement, and it is not by dodging them, but overcoming them, that you achieve greatness. And unlike most motivational speakers and authors, Goggins has the story (not just the words) to back up what he's saying.

As you might imagine, Goggins leans heavily on machismo and hyper-individualism, and as such this book is best read critically, but it would take a heart of stone not to be motivated by his story and the lessons he draws from it. If you're stuck in a rut, Can't Hurt Me could be just what you need to get on your feet.