February Reading Log

   

I'm still on track to break my record for pages read in a year after a productive February. I kept things interesting this month, bouncing from genre to genre and interest to interest...take a look and see what I mean!

THE COME UP: AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE RISE OF HIP-HOP by Jonathan Abrams

For at least 30 years, hip-hop has been the dominant genre in popular music, so much so that it has also blended into everything from sports to movies to fashion. More than just music, hip-hop is a whole culture, one that you can like or dislike, but cannot ignore.

So how did we get here? How, in barely 50 years, did hip-hop go from its birth in a Bronx apartment to the dominance it now has over popular culture?

In The Come Up, writer Jonathan Abrams tells the story through an oral history, hundreds of interviews stitched together into a 500+ page narrative that covers 5 decades and at least 4 different regions of the United States. Told by everyone from music executives to artists to journalists, the oral history offers a boots-on-the-ground perspective on hip-hop's rise, told not by an impartial historian, but the people who witnessed it themselves.

As is always the case with an oral history, the success of the book is dependent on the people being interviewed—how reliable they are as narrators, how entertaining they are as storytellers, and how close they were to the action. I'd give The Come Up a B in this regard—there are a lot of artists I'd have been interested to hear from that Abrams couldn't get a hold of, but the people who did sit down for interviews were compelling and informative. Lots of great stories, plenty of good quotes.

One word of caution—this is not a great place to start if you have no foundational knowledge on the subject matter. There are a lot of names, and if you're hearing them for the first time then I imagine it would be like drinking from a fire hose. But for those wanting a solid overview of hip-hop's history with some insider nuggets, I recommend The Come Up.

THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME by Victor Hugo

Disney's 1996 animated feature The Hunchback of Notre Dame has a reputation among fans (and parents) as an unusually dark kids movie, with more mature themes than you'll find in contemporaries like The Little Mermaid or Aladdin. After reading the source material, Victor Hugo's 1831 novel of the same name, let me assure you: they toned it down.

The story centers around three characters: the beautiful Esmerelda, the deformed Quasimodo, and the lustful archdeacon Claude Frollo. Both Quasimodo, who serves as the bellringer in the famed cathedral Notre-Dame de Paris, and his foster father Frollo fall in love with Esmerelda, a Romani dancer. However, her heart belongs to the gallant Captain Phoebus. When Frollo makes his move to win her love—by stabbing Phoebus and kidnapping Esmerelda, naturally—Quasimodo rebels against the man who raised him. The story ends—spoiler alert for a nearly 200-year-old book—not with Disney's happy ending, but with Frollo having been shoved off the cathedral's ramparts, Esmerelda hanged, and, years later, Quasimodo's skeleton found cradling Esmerelda's. Like I said...dark.

As a story, there is much to recommend about The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Hugo's characters are memorable, the themes resonant, and the story easy to follow; I can see why Disney thought they could turn this into a movie. However, as a 500+ page book, there is a lot of fluff here—indeed, any modern editor worth her salt would turn this tome into a 120-page YA novel. Lengthy descriptions of Paris' streets and Notre Dame's architecture get tedious after a while.

Furthermore, while the central characters are memorable, they are also extremely flat. Each can be fully described in one word, really—Quasimodo = tragic, Frollo = creepy, Esmerelda = beautiful, Phoebus = jock. If that feels reductive, I promise I've given you a pretty solid summary of each. There's just not a lot there.

While I'm fundamentally opposed to abridged books, this is the kind of novel that gives me pause on that position. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is definitely a story worth telling, and not with Disney's ending, which transforms a tragedy into a happily-ever-after. I'm just not sure it's a book worth reading.

THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA by Philip Roth

Everybody loves a good historical hypothetical, right? What if Napoleon won at Waterloo? What if the Union lost the Civil War? And, in the case of The Plot Against America, what if isolationist war hero Charles Lindbergh, not FDR, had won the 1940 presidential election?

This hypothetical is the launching pad for a story that is both personal and wide-spanning, an examination of America's relationship with its Jewish population and a chilling reminder to never forget how dangerous and near antisemitism can be. Built upon a realistic premise—Lindbergh did indeed consider a career in politics at the height of his fame, and was an outspoken voice against the U.S. engaging in any way in the "European war"—it is told through the eyes of a 10-year-old Jewish-American boy from Newark whose parents idolize FDR and are horrified when Lindbergh is elected, assuming it will lead to the sorts of horrors being visited upon the Jews in Germany. As the book progresses, you slowly see how Lindbergh's presidency—both his policies and his rhetoric—divide the nation and even the narrator's family. By the time the book is nearing its conclusion, the prospect of concentration camps in the United States is not farfetched.

And then, in the book's penultimate chapter, the whole thing goes off the rails, as Roth abandons his narrator's personal story and shifts to President Lindbergh's mysterious disappearance, the conspiracies that arise as a result, a near coup in the U.S., and more, all before hastily and tidily putting things back in order, with FDR in the White House for a 3rd term and everything back to normal just in time for Pearl Harbor. The whole chapter feels like a fever dream, as though Philip Roth had grown impatient with his simmering story and was ready to blow it all up so he could move on.

The bizarre ending notwithstanding—and I realize that's a big allowance—this book is all about how quickly a nation's bonds dissolve when the reins of leadership are handed over to a celebrity who cares about "real Americans" but not all Americans. Published in 2004, it is, ahem, prescient. While the deus ex machina ending keeps me from loving it, it's overall an excellent story, and a good one to read this election year.

SEASONS IN HELL by Mark Shropshire

In preparation for the first season when the Texas Rangers get to describe themselves as "defending champions," I decided to pick up what is widely considered the best book ever written about the team, albeit as it existed in its earliest iterations, when they still played in the charmless Arlington Stadium and barely qualified as a major league outfit. What I didn't know is that Seasons in Hell would wind up being the funniest baseball book I've ever read—move over, Ball Four.

The book's author, Mark Shropshire, was a part-time sportswriter for the Fort Worth Press and a full-time hedonist during the three seasons he narrates in the book. In the tradition of Hunter S. Thompson, he pairs the stories of the Rangers with his own booze-soaked stories of the press box, the road, and the team plane. The easily offended will be repulsed by his narration, but Texans with a taste for tall tales will eat it up with the necessary grain of salt.

Rangers fans are introduced to a variety of characters, but the stars are undoubtedly the managers, first the candid Whitey Herzog, who was always up-front about the chances his woebegone roster had for success, and then the volatile Billy Martin, who led Texas on a surprising if unsuccessful pursuit of the pennant in 1974 only to flame out in dramatic fashion the next year just in time to get hired by the Yankees. Also featured heavily is David Clyde, the star high school pitcher who owner Bob Short insisted be called up straight to the big leagues without any time in the minors. Barely mentioned are 1974 MVP Jeff Burroughs or ace pitcher Ferguson Jenkins, presumably because consistent excellence doesn't make for very good copy.

If I have one criticism of the book, it's that Shropshire's snarky hedonism starts to feel like schtick after a while—the book, while not exactly War and Peace at 241 pages, is still perhaps 50 pages too long. Nevertheless, I had a great time reading this, and Shropshire did an admirable job painting a picture of an era that feels like ancient history now. This is a must-read for all Rangers fans—we may be champions now, but you need to know your roots.

7 PRACTICES OF EFFECTIVE MINISTRY by Andy Stanley, Reggie Joiner, and Lane Jones

As books on church leadership and practical ministry go, this is one of the most, well, practical I've yet encountered. Authors Andy Stanley, Reggie Joiner, and Lane Jones all rose to prominence as pastors at North Point Community Church in Atlanta (Stanley and Jones are still there; Joiner has gone on to found Orange, a publishing imprint focused on family ministry), and this book is written to pastors. However, those seeking a book with lots of biblical quotations, spiritual insights, and devotional thoughts will want to look elsewhere—for better and for worse, this is a book that deals exclusively with the nuts and bolts of organizational leadership, while the role of faith, prayer, and the Holy Spirit are assumed rather than stated.

While the book barely references Scripture, it does open with an extended parable, an approach they also used in their book Communicating for a Change. The story, about a pastor who attends a baseball game with the enigmatic owner of the ballclub, sets up the titular seven practices that are then delved into more deeply in the how-to section. It's a transparent-bordering-on-tedious way to introduce the subject matter, but does help elucidate the universality of the principles and keep the whole book from being a how-to seminar.

From there the authors get into the seven practices that, according to the owner in the parable, will help make any organization more effective, including a church. Bouncing between explanations of the practices and examples of how they used them at North Point, the authors convincingly explain the importance of things like clarifying the win, narrowing the focus, and teaching more for less. Pastors and other staff members will likely have no problem imagining how these practices could be better employed in their own churches.

The book's chief weakness is also paradoxically the strength it advertises: the idea that these principles would work for any organization, including the church. By intentionally steering clear of spirituality, this reads like a business book that just happens to be written by pastors. There are undoubtedly insights that churches could benefit from here, but the refusal to even allude to the role of the Spirit or the importance of prayer beyond the book's introduction is off-putting and frustrating.

Like any self-help book, 7 Practices of Effective Ministry is what you make of it. If all you want are the list of practices, you can read the table of contents and get what you need. If you're looking for a springboard for a staff retreat, this will get some good discussions going. But if this book is the end-all and be-all for you, you're going to miss some important things every pastor needs to know about leadership. After all, practical ministry has to account for both of the words in its name: practicalities and ministry.

ESSENTIAL IRON FIST VOL. 1 by Chris Claremont, John Byrne, et al.

Some characters just never become stars. The concept can be good, the costume can be cool, the most talented creators can try their hand, and still...something just doesn't click. Iron Fist, whose adventures I followed this month in the Essential volume collecting his solo adventures in the early-to-mid-1970s, is one of those characters, forever relegated to the B-side of the album despite seeming to have the ingredients for greatness.

When Danny Rand was introduced in the pages of Marvel Premiere, he was clearly just an attempt to capitalize on the kung fu fad that Bruce Lee had kicked off (pun not intended) in Hollywood. Still, his origin was more imaginative than it had to be. Writer Roy Thomas imagined a mystical city, K'un-Lun, which only appeared on earth every 10 years, where the greatest martial artists trained. Danny's father, it was explained, had come upon K'un-Lun years ago only to leave it of his own accord. When he sought it out again, both he and his wife perished in the attempt, leaving Danny to enter K'un-Lun alone and to learn the martial arts and acquire the mystical power of the iron fist.

That's not bad, right? If we're being honest, it's better than "he was bit by a radioactive spider!"

By the time Iron Fist spun out of the pages of Marvel Premiere into his own book, the reins were handed over to a team of up-and-coming creators, writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne, who would soon become superstars as the team behind Uncanny X-Men. In their hands, Iron Fist was given a supporting cast, the private investigators Colleen Wing and Misty Knight, and tilted away from being a kung fu character to a more mainstream superhero. But despite their best efforts, Iron Fist was in danger of cancellation after 15 issues, leading the Marvel brass to make the decision to team him up with another character, Luke Cage. That partnership is where both characters would ultimately come into their own and make their most enduring mark on the Marvel Universe.

When I look at Iron Fist, on paper he should have become an iconic character. But after reading this Essential volume, I have to concur with the fans of the time—it's hard to explain, but something's missing. The je ne sais quoi that a Spider-Man or a Hulk has is lacking, and even John Byrne's art can't bring it out. This was far from a bad book, but neither did it stand out. Some characters just aren't meant to be stars, I guess.