November Reading Log

Lots of reading this month, from pop culture essays to novellas to pastoral theology and more. With a new baby coming in a week, December's log may be a lot shorter (or, if this baby is an easy one, maybe longer!) But for now, here's what I was able to read in November!

I WEAR THE BLACK HAT: GRAPPLING WITH VILLAINS (REAL AND IMAGINED) by Chuck Klosterman

Darth Vader. The Joker. Walter White.

Ours is a culture fascinated, even shaped, by its villains. Intellectually, we wonder what makes them tick. Emotionally, we get some perverse, voyeuristic pleasure from watching them do things we would never do. And spiritually, we use them as a measuring stick for our own righteousness—so long as they are the Bad Guys, we can know we are the Good Guys.

In I Wear the Black Hat, essayist Chuck Klosterman examines the concept of villainy from a number of different angle, questioning what makes a villain, why some capture our imaginations while other fail to do so, and ultimately asking the big question: in my own story, am I a hero or a villain? With his signature blend of humor, self-awareness, and cleverness, Klosterman gets you thinking about big questions without ever making it feel like a philosophy class. In the grandest sense, this is a book on the nature of evil, yet on the surface, its subjects are O.J. Simpson, Death Wish, and the Eagles. The contrast between the highbrow topic and the lowbrow case studies is what makes the book so compelling.

Like most of Klosterman's work, I Wear the Black Hat is clever but not brilliant, a book that edges towards profundity at times only to immediately back away. It never fails to entertain, but there are times when you will finish a meandering essay and ask, "Ok, but what was your point?" If you want to comprehensively examine Life Big Questions, stick to history's greatest thinkers. But if you want to have some fun while also doing some thinking, I Wear the Black Hat is time well spent.

MORNINGS ON HORSEBACK by David McCullough

Well, this is a little embarrassing. After spending two weeks reading this book, presumably for the first time, I learned from my Goodreads account (verified by my handwritten reading list and this blog) that I had already read this book...this year, in fact. Oops.

So here's what I wrote back in January. Gotta admit though, the fact that I reread 470 pages without anything ringing a bell does seem to be a knock against this book. Or maybe just against my memory. Let's go with the latter.

BROTHERS, WE ARE NOT PROFESSIONALS by John Piper

In one regard, this is an extremely impractical book. In another sense, it's one of the finest books about pastoring I've read.

Brothers, We Are Not Professionals is essentially John Piper's advice to young and prospective pastors, each chapter a different command that you must follow if you want to be successful. There are plenty of books like that, handbooks and manuals and how-to guides for those needing guidance on everything from preaching to pastoral care to administrative leadership. Normally such books are intently practical—this is how you make a budget, this is how you baptize someone, this is how you run a staff meeting, etc.

But Piper's book is quite different in that regard. His advice is instead purely theological, focused on how preachers can glorify God and love their congregations. You'll find no advice about customer service or fundraising or conflict management here, just expository writing about what it means to shepherd God's people well for his glory.

Ultimately, the big point of Piper's book is summarized by its title: brothers, we are not professionals. In a 21st century context of perpetual busyness, where there's always another email to send or phone call to answer, Piper harkens back to the days of the Puritans, when a pastor's job was simply to study, proclaim, and apply God's Word. He has no use for the pastor as CEO, rejecting the concept outright and pointing readers toward a more biblical ideal.

I should say that I didn't agree with everything in here. In the name of meeting people where they are, I think there's a certain amount of "professionalism" people expect from their pastor, and outright refusing to accommodate those needs seems like a recipe for failure to me. Piper's titular insistence that all pastors are "brothers" was unsurprising (Piper literally wrote the book on complementarianism, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womandhood) but nevertheless distracting and frustrating. And Piper's career-defining and Calvinistic doctrine of "Christian hedonism," as usual, is infused in every chapter, sometimes to its benefit but other times to its detriment.

Nevertheless, I found this book a helpful corrective to the kinds of pastoral how-to manuals and church growth books that litter shelves (including my own). It is uninterested in fitting in or adapting to the culture, only to explaining what the Bible says about the pastorate. For pastors weighed down by the "practicalities of the job," this book offers a challenging, crucial reminder: it's not a job. It's a calling.

THE VERY PERSISTENT GAPPERS OF FRIP by George Saunders and Lane Smith

FOX 8 by George Saunders

George Saunders, author of collections like Pastoralia and Tenth of December, is the modern master of the short story. For decades now, he has delighted readers with the inventiveness of his prose and the humanity behind each story, earning a reputation as arguably America's best writer. So one Saturday this month, I sat down to enjoy two such stories, each published on its own rather than as part of a wider collection.

The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip is a children's story. Like all good children's stories, it features a strange but easily understandable world, children who are much smarter than adults, and a problem solved by being kind and doing the right thing. With a narration style meant for reading aloud, Saunders tells the story of three families who, after some trial and error, learn what it means to be good neighbors to one another. The story is accentuated by the illustrations of Lane Smith, the Caldecott winner best known for The Stinky Cheese Man and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, whose eclectic art style, combined with Saunders' surreal story, gives the whole affair a Roald Dahl-meets-Tim Burton vibe. It's all great fun, and wraps up neatly and gently: "And soon she found that it was not all that much fun being the sort of person who eats a big dinner in a warm house while others shiver on their roofs in the dark. That is, it was fun at first, but then got gradually less fun, until it was really no fun at all. "Father," she said. "I guess we'll be having some company.""

Fox 8, while not explicitly a children's story, has the same sort of fable-like quality, telling the story of a fox whose home is destroyed by human development and whose curiosity about humans leads to tragedy. This story is typified by Saunders' trademark humor and a moral as basic as it is resonant: humans, be nicer. But the star of the show is the writing style, which never gets old. Here's the first paragraph, just to give you a taste:

"Dear Reeder. First may I say, sorry for any werds I spel rong. Because I am a fox! So don't rite or spel perfect. But here is how I lerned to rite and spel as gud as I do!"

Delightful. George Saunders is just delightful.

THE GREEN MILE by Stephen King

The Green Mile is not my favorite Stephen King book, a title held for now by The Dead Zone (with Carrie close behind). It's not his most thrilling book in the can't-put-it-down sense; that's reserve for Misery. But at this moment (with the caveat that I still have 60+ King books on my to-read list), I might say it's his best book.

Originally published in six serial installments, the way Charles Dickens used to write, The Green Mile is a prison novel infused with magical realism. Narrated by Paul Edgecombe, a decent prison guard at the Cold Mountain Penitentiary, it tells the story of a year when three inmates awaited their executions by electric chair on the prison's death row, nicknamed "the green mile." When the second of those inmates, the hulking, childlike, enigmatic John Coffey arrives, the lives of everyone around him change forever.

Coffey possesses a supernatural power to heal, drawing the darkness out of a person and expelling it as light. As this power is revealed, Edgecombe and his fellow guards are forced to reckon with what it will mean to execute someone who seems to be a gift from God. Is Coffey innocent of his crimes? How does he do what he does? And, in the end, does any of it matter?

Stephen King is best known for writing horror stories, the kinds of thrillers that you buy in mass-market paperback, devour on a long flight, and then toss aside. But this conventional wisdom disregards the author's talent, which is on full display in The Green Mile. In theme as well as format, this book is a more ambitious project than the average King book, delving into the spiritual without ever compromising the story. When I read the last, profound sentence, I could only exhale—whew!—at the ride I'd been taken on and the satisfaction at how he'd stuck the landing.

Maybe you've seen the movie adaptation (I haven't, but will soon) and think you can skip this one. But let me promise you this: if you choose to read The Green Mile, you won't be disappointed. Some Stephen King books are disposable entertainment. This one deserves a permanent place your bookshelf.

ESSENTIAL MARVEL TEAM-UP VOL. 3 by

Now we're talking.

After 40+ issues of mostly mediocre Bronze Age stories featuring team-ups between Spider-Man and another (usually C-list) Marvel character, I was not really looking forward to two more volumes of the same. But then, swooping in to rescue a moribund book and pique my interest, came the dynamic duo of writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne, best known for their seminal work on The Uncanny X-Men.

The pair, who collaborated for 12 issues, immediately bring a level of energy, dynamism, and professionalism the book had been lacking for some time (and that it immediately lost when they went on to bigger and better things). In their short run together, they introduce such figures as Captain Britain, the villainous Arcade (who would famously reemerge during their Uncanny X-Men run), and Captain Jean DeWolff, Spidey's pal on the police force who fills a Commissioner Gordon archetype.

Byrne's art, which would come to define an entire era of comics, arrives fully formed, with no growing pains whatsoever. His detailed, realistic style, featuring clean lines and a knack for storytelling, stands in stark contrast to the heavier house style of the time, and is worth the price of admission on its own. Claremont's writing is excellent and, especially compared to his later work, understated. He would later be known for walls of text that hid the art, but here he (or his editor) shows great restraint, allowing Byrne to move the story along.

I imagine that anyone reading these issues is doing so for their historical value, as the first pairing of Claremont and Byrne before they'd set the comics world ablaze with Uncanny X-Men. But for somebody who didn't see it coming, the issues themselves were a pure delight, and I was sorry to see their run end after 12 issues. We'll see what comes in Essential Marvel Team-Up Vol. 4, but I suspect I've already seen the book's high point.