October Reading Log

  

My reading schedule has been feast or famine lately. I read one of the books below in just four sittings (some long flights and train rides on a family trip helped). Another took nearly two months, with me going weeks between chapters for no reason at all. But, in spite of busyness at church, Rangers playoff games keeping me up past my bedtime, and the general ebbs and flows of life, I did get some reading done. Take a look below!

INSPIRED by Rachel Held Evans

The Bible is often described as a "handbook for life," a collection of propositions that can both explain the path to eternal salvation and help you win friends and influence people. But, as the late Rachel Held Evans reminds in Inspired, we come to know it first as a collection of stories. The Bible tells us about Noah's ark and Moses' burning bush and Daniel in the lion's den. It tells us about kings and shepherds, prophets and priests. And ultimately, it tells the story of when God's Son put on human flesh to save us.

Inspired is Evans' love letter to the book she built her life upon, the book she grew tired of seeing used and abused instead of read. Writing largely to the audience now known as "deconstructionists" (she was sort of a John the Baptist for that movement), Evans acknowledges the complexities of Scripture and decries those who have used it as an instrument of harm. But she refuses to abandon it altogether, arguing that part of faith is wrestling with the challenging parts of Scripture—neither accepting them mindlessly nor tossing the baby out with the bathwater, but instead doing the hard work of finding God in the hard-to-reach places.

This is a book full of the kinds of questions some might find sacrilegious (but not, crucially, irreverent.) Evans was not afraid to poke the bear, and you may not agree with some of the conclusions she reaches in her exploration of the Bible. But none can deny her love for the Lord or her immense talent—the writing sings throughout this book, causing you to think and to feel. The Bible is a book of stories, and Evans was a gifted storyteller.

Inspired is a warm, deep, thoughtful book worthy of your attention, and its message can be summed up best by its closing paragraph, if you'll permit me to spoil it for you: "We may wish for answers, but God rarely gives us answers. Instead, God gathers us up into soft, familiar arms and says, "Let me tell you a story."'

CROSSROADS by Jonathan Franzen

In Jonathan Franzen's best novels—namely, The Corrections and Freedom—he explores big topics through the lens of crumbling families. In Crossroads, the first book in a planned trilogy, he returns to this template in a novel that tackles depravity, grace, and redemption through the trials and tribulations of the Hildebrandts.

Russ is the restless associate pastor at the mainline church, outshined by a charismatic new youth director and considering an affair with a divorced parishioner. His wife Marion is seemingly the steady, unglamorous rock of the family, but holds within her a traumatic past. Eldest son Clem, away at college, has enlisted in the army, a decision he knows will infuriate his parents. Daughter Becky is wrapped up in a high school crush that is suddenly and inextricably tied to a spiritual awakening. And Perry is the prodigal son, an intelligent boy who is dealing drugs to middle schoolers even as he aspires to become a better person.

The ins and outs of this family—individual chapters are told from each character's perspective—reveal just how broken the collective family is, despite how they appear to be holding things together from the outside. But even as they seem to be careening toward a moral reckoning, there are little moments of grace that prevent this from being a nihilistic, depressing book. Russ is weak and selfish, but there is a moral foundation underneath his narcissism. Becky is hopelessly naïve, but the faith she finds is heartfelt.

This is a book that, as the title suggests, finds its characters at a critical moment in their individual lives and their family's. They don't always make the best decisions when they come to those moments—in fact, they rarely do. But in spite of their foibles, they find grace. There's hope there.

WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING by Haruki Murakami

I've been trying to get back into running after an extremely long layoff, so I thought I'd reread this memoir from novelist Haruki Murakami. I first read it 5 years ago; you can read that original review here.

THE MAMBA MENTALITY: HOW I PLAY by Kobe Bryant and Andrew D. Bernstein

In the final years of his career, Kobe Bryant's legacy crystalized: he was the ultimate competitor, an athlete with an unmatched work ethic and will to win. Other basketball players might have more talent, but none would ever outwork the Black Mamba. The Mamba Mentality, a post-retirement coffee table book of photos, helped to set this reputation is stone, with Bryant laying out in bite-sized paragraphs his approach to practice, teamwork, playing through pain, and more.

The photos, all taken by Andrew D. Bernstein during his time as the Los Angeles Lakers' official photographer, are exactly what you want from this kind of book. Dynamic and flashy at the rim, quiet and intimate in the locker room, Bernstein captured Kobe well, and the book offers a good contrast between the glamor of stardom and the grind of hard work. Most people buy these kinds of books for the pictures, and you get good ones here.

But this book, whose subtitle purports to explain "How I Play," is looking to be more than a photo album. In the captions that accompany the photos—some as short as a paragraph, some more like brief essays—Bryant (and, yes, this certainly sounds like it's authentically Kobe, not a ghostwriter) lays out with no nonsense how he went about his business. For hoop heads, there are some fascinating insights here, as you learn when and how Kobe practiced, how much time he spent studying film, etc. And for even the casual reader, you'll walk away compelled by Bryant's monomaniacal drive.

In short, this book helps cement Bryant's legacy as the NBA's ultimate gamer, a legacy which has only grown following his untimely, tragic death in January 2020. Jordan won more championships. Lebron won more MVPs. Wemby has more talent. But nobody worked harder than Kobe Bean Bryant.

ESSENTIAL MARVEL TEAM-UP VOL. 2

More random team-ups between (mostly) Spider-Man and (mostly) C-list characters! The writing is still mediocre, the art is still forgettable, and the stories are still half-baked. So did anything change between the first 25 issues of Marvel Team-Up and the next 25?

The big shift was a move away from self-contained issues to multi-part stories stretching over 4-5 issues and, improbably, featuring multiple team-ups before each story's conclusion. Maybe it was an attempt to get more monthly readers instead of those simply curious about the guest star on any given month. Maybe they wanted to to mimic the more drawn-out storytelling in other books. Maybe the writers were just having a hard time fitting their stories in 20 pages every month. Whatever the reason, this shift does not redound to the book's credit, making an already slapdash comic feel like its creators were making things up as they went along.

As was the case from the book's inception, these issues of Marvel Team-Up are far from essential, and are indeed a half step worse than those collected in the first volume. But if you're not feeling too picky and you want to watch the reading equivalent of two toys being smashed together, this books remains dumb fun. More to come with volume 3 next month!