August Book Log

Buckle up; this is almost certainly the most books I've read in a month since I started writing these logs in December 2016. A 34-day sabbatical will do that, especially when 5 of those days are intentionally spent in solitude, doing virtually nothing but reading and writing.

So below are a bunch of books about rest, pastoring, and the dual themes of time management and work-life balance. Oh, and then a couple of books just for fun :)

THE SABBATH by Abraham Joshua Heschel

This has been on my to-read list for a long time, and my sabbatical seemed a perfect time to dive in. At barely 100 pages, you'd think it's the kind of book I'd breeze through in a couple days. But in truth, it was one I consumed with small sips throughout my sabbatical rather than a few big gulps. I'm convinced that's the right way, given both the subject matter and the writing's depth.

The Sabbath is not a Christian work, but a Jewish one, though the broad strokes can certainly carry over between faiths. Abraham Heschel was a rabbi, professor, and mystic in the Orthodox tradition, and one of the world's most prominent Jewish theologians post-Holocaust. In The Sabbath, he seeks to look at the fourth commandment from all angles, and makes a compelling argument that it is partly through Sabbath keeping that a believer in God sets themselves apart as holy—because while the world is grasping after space, God is sanctifying time.

It's a heady work, and relies more on philosophy, parable, and mysticism than Scripture, so my fellow evangelicals may find it wanting on that score. And indeed, there are elements I'd certainly take with a grain of salt. But the concept of sanctifying time through regular Sabbath was a fascinating one for me, and I appreciated Heschel's thoughts. If, like me, you don't think Christians take the Sabbath seriously enough (if they think about it at all), this is worth a read.

 
 

FIVE SMOOTH STONES FOR PASTORAL WORK by Eugene Peterson
WORKING THE ANGLES by Eugene Peterson
UNDER THE UNPREDICTABLE PLANT by Eugene Peterson
THE CONTEMPLATIVE PASTOR by Eugene Peterson

One of the most persistent themes of Eugene Peterson's writings is that the American church doesn't understand what a pastor is supposed to be doing—including, sometimes, the pastors themselves. Instead of regarding pastors as spiritual guides, believers seek to make them religious professionals, nonprofit CEOs, motivational speakers, and the like. So in these four books (the first three are an intentional trilogy; the fourth is a sort of capstone), Peterson turns to Scripture for a better understanding of how the pastor can navigate a culture that does not understand or appreciate his God-given calling.

In Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work, Peterson looks to the Old Testament's Megilloth—the five scrolls of Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther—for wisdom in the pastoral roles of prayer directing, story making, pain sharing, naysaying, and community building. Readers wanting basic, a+b=c biblical exposition may be frustrated by Peterson's more freewheeling approach to the text, but will have a hard time arguing he doesn't understand it. With this books as a guide, Peterson ably explains some key pastoral functions, none of which match the business world's understanding of how a pastor should be spending his or her time, but all of which lead people to God.

Working the Angles keys in on the three pastoral acts that, according to Peterson, are so basic that they affect everything else the pastor might do: prayer, reading Scripture, and giving spiritual direction. He accurately points out that these are, on the one hand, understood to be the pastor's primary responsibilities but, on the other hand, are rarely as valued in the moment as more managerial tasks. In other words, if you miss a finance meeting because you got caught up in prayer, you will be reprimanded, not encouraged. Of the three books in the official trilogy, this was the one I'd have marked up the most had I had a highlighter handy. Written before The Contemplative Pastor, this volume feels like its unintended prequel.

Under the Unpredictable Plant, which I first read for a class in seminary, uses the book of Jonah as a guide through the topic of vocational holiness. This book is somewhat more personal that its predecessors, as Peterson talks about his own experience realizeing that his personal piety was not measuring up to his role as a pastor. As in the previous books, this one is a call to pastors to avoid the siren song of "ministerial professionalism," where the pastor becomes a glorified small businessperson, and to embrace a role in which character and closeness to God are valued more highly than ROI.

Finally comes The Contemplative Pastor, one of Peterson's most cited books. This one, in many ways, is summarizing and synthesizing the prior trilogy, offering Peterson's vision for what a pastor ought to be like: unbusy, subversive, and apocalpytic (meaning revelatory). One last time, Peterson rages against the pastor as middle manager, responsible for keeping paying customers happy and growing the business. With wit and winsomeness, he calls pastors to slow, thoughtful, prayerful, and loving care for their churches in the Lord's name. It's hard, countercultural work, to be sure. But he's convinced me it's worth aiming for.

 

MEDITATIONS FOR MORTALS by Oliver Burkeman
FOUR THOUSAND WEEKS by Oliver Burkeman

Oliver Burkeman, who first made his name with a cheekily named weekly column in The Guardian entitled "This Column Will Change Your Life," got famous on these two books, both of which seek to help people become more productive by discarding modern preconceptions about how to do that. Both books are more philosophical than practical, more about principles than plans, but I found both useful in their own way.

Though it was the second to be published, I read Meditations for Mortals first (no reason, I just picked it up first.) In this book, Burkeman introduces and explains his notion of "imperfectionism," which essentially boils down to this word of advice for high achievers trying to do everything at once: take a chill pill. Rather than trying to squeeze 40 hours' worth of personal development into every day, Burkeman advocates for focusing on what matters most to you and then living your life as it is, rather than as you think it should be. Laid out in 28 chapters meant to be read daily over a month gives it the format of a secular devotional book, and while I didn't read it that way, I imagine doing so would be helpful. For those prone to anxiety that they're not doing enough, there's a great deal of wisdom to be found here.

Four Thousand Weeks, similarly, seeks to reframe the productivity conversation by arguing that trying to find meaning (or productivity) in every minute of the day leaves you more exhausted than fulfilled. The average person, Burkeman says, is given four thousand weeks in their life, and the key is understanding that some of those weeks will be better than others. Rather than beating yourself up over a "wasted" week, Burkeman urges readers to look at the bigger picture. While bordering on fatalistic at times, this book is a cold splash of water for those too enmeshed in hustle culture.

In retrospect, you probably don't need to read both of these books—the overall message is essentially the same—but I found them to be helpful bookends for my sabbatical. Their reminder about the nature of time was a useful one for me, and Burkeman's criticisms of hustle culture are valid. There's more to life than 'getting things done,' and these books encourage you to make the main thing the main thing.

 

DEEP WORK by Cal Newport
SLOW PRODUCTIVITY by Cal Newport

Cal Newport has become something of a guru for those who think hustle culture is inherently flawed, offering insights through articles and books about how it is actually more productive long-term to work fewer and more foused hours than to burn out with a frenetic and fractured lifestyle where you try to be available at all times to all people for all reasons. So during my sabbatical, I read his best known book, Deep Work, and then reread the follow-up, Slow Productivity, which I had previously read last year. 

The two books essentially chart the same course (indeed, this time I wound up skimming Slow Productivity more than reading it closely): find small blocks of time when you can concentrate intensely, eliminate common distractions like social media from your life, allow yourself true down time, and be where your feet are (i.e. working during work and resting during rest). The key to productivity, according to Newport, is not how much you are working, but how focused you are. 3 hours of "deep work" is better than 8 hours of unfocused multitasking.

For someone reading these books on sabbatical, the concept of deep work was obviously appealing, and I can see how those with a lot of freedom in how they set their time would find it appealing. However, just as was the case when I first read Slow Productivity, I remain skeptical that there are a lot of people who can get away with applying Newport's principles without losing clients/customers or getting in trouble with your supervisor. Rightly or wrongly, our society values hustle culture and hasn't bought into deep work, so it feels like applying the lessons of this book wholesale would lead to some unintended consequences before it makes you a better worker.

I'm on board with Newport in theory, and there's certainly something to be said for valuing quality over quantity when it comes to knowledge work. But these were the kinds of self-help/leadership books where I found myself initially nodding while reading, only to put the books down and immediately think, "Wait, but what about..."



AT YOUR BEST by Carey Nieuwhof

After really enjoying my first Carey Nieuwhof book last month, I had high hopes for this one, my final piece of self-assigned sabbatical reading. If Didn't See It Coming was the wakeup call regarding burnout, my hope was that At Your Best would be the prescription, offering practical tips on how to use limited time well and stave off overworking, undue stress, and burnout. Unfortunately, this book fell into the classic self-help/leadership category: this should have been a 2,000 word blog post, not a 200+ page book.

Nieuwhof begins with the insightful point, borrowed from Cal Newport, that human beings aren't meant for 8-10 hours of deep work each day; most of us are good for about 3. Furthermore, he says that most of us know when we're at our best, whether that's first thing in the morning, right after lunch, or at 10:00 PM. Equally, we know when we're close to useless in terms of productivity. The key then is to do your deep work when you know you will be in the so-called Green Zone, the hours you work best, to save low-effort and automatic tasks for the Red Zone, when you're at your worst, and do everything else in the in-between Yellow Zone.

And...that's it. That's pretty much the whole book in a paragraph. It's not a bad argument, but there's not much meat on those bones.

Nieuwhof, a former pastor, writes with an easy-to-read, persuasive voice, and I never felt like I was wasting my time while reading At Your Best, but by the end it just felt like I had devoted hours to something I should have spent 10 minutes on. And given the subject matter, wasting time reading this book is a little too ironic to stomach. There are good thoughts in here, but you'll get most of what you need from the dust jacket.

THE ILIAD by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles

Like a lot of people, I walked out of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey ready to dive into a Greek epic. But since I'd already read The Odyssey last year, I decided now was as good a time as any to read Homer's other famous work, The Iliad. As with The Odyssey, I opted for the Robert Fagles translation, which until Edith Wilson came along was the most modern version, putting Homer's words into a free verse that often reads like prose.

I won't lie, folks. This was a slog.

First of all, I must confess my ignorance. I thought The Iliad was the story of the Trojan War, from beginning to end. Nope. In fact, the whole epic poem, told over 24 books, takes place over the final weeks of that war, with much of the action happening in about four days. Also, the Trojan horse is nowhere to be found, to my surprise and disappointment (you want Virgil's Aenid for that tale).

What The Iliad is actually about is, as the introduction to Fagles' translation states, "the rage of Achilles," how the mighty warrior feuds with the warlord Agammemnon and then sits out a series of crucial battles before swooping in at the end, after the death of a dear friend, to lay waste to his enemies. It is a story that simultaneously glorifies war and showcases its costs, which (along with Homer's poetry) is probably why it has endured for so long.

That weighty theme doesn't make it any more fun to read, though. While not a difficult read in the vein of Ulysses or Gravity's Rainbow—line by line, Fagles' translation is as accessible as advertised—I found it to be repetitive and dull, filled with battle after battle that never seemed to go anywhere and a catalog of Greek names that would make a phone book blush. Switching to audiobook midway through helped my reading, but didn't make me enjoy it any more.

Overall, if you want to try Homer, definitely start with The Odyssey, which I liked a lot more and has a tighter focus and fewer characters. I'm glad to be able to say I've read this, but I didn't enjoy the process.

ESSENTIAL AVENGERS VOL. 4 by Roy Thomas, John Buscema, Sal Buscema, Neal Adams, et al.

The fun of Essential Avengers Vol. 3 continues as the team exits the Silver Age and makes their way into the Bronze. Generally that's bad news for Marvel books, but this volume has the benefit of ending with one of that era's most beloved arcs.

With every issue in this volume written by Roy Thomas, the vibe of the book is pretty similar to what you'll find in the previous 20+ issues, as is the flexible roster: in any given story, you get some mixture of Vision, Goliath (née Hawkeye), Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Black Panther, Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America. Many of the stories are self-contained (a short-lived early 1970s experiment at Marvel, based on the notion that they might be losing readers confused by serial storytelling), which means a lot of issues feel a little rushed. The art, by John and then Sal Buscema, isn't as impressive as John's work a few years earlier, but is nothing to sneeze at. It's all fine, perfectly fine.

Then, starting in issue #89, Thomas begins a story that would come to be known as "The Kree-Skrull War." It sees the longtime rival alien races erupt into full-blown war across the galaxy, with Earth serving as a beachhead for their conflict. By the time it reaches a crisis point, everyone from Captain Mar-Vell to the Inhumans has been brought into the mix, Ant Man has had to take a "Journey to the Center of the Android" (shrinking down and navigating Vision's internal organs), and onetime sidekick Rick Jones is mentally summoning Golden Age superheroes to serve as the cavalry.

Most importantly, the key issues (except, unfortunately, the finale) are drawn by Neal Adams, whose cinematic realism is a sharp departure from the Buscemas' house style, but serves as a breath of fresh air. The aforementioned "Journey to the Center of the Android," in particular, is a tour de force, a double-sized issue that you linger over just to drool at the pretty pictures. Adams is best known for his work at DC Comics, but his contribution to the Kree-Skrull War is arguably some of his most important.

Much of what's found in this volume is forgettable Bronze Age material, but the Kree-Skrull War elevates it to a must-read for any Marvel fan. For a fan of comics history, that's one story you can't miss.