September Reading Log

I obviously didn't read as much in September as my sabbatical-filled August, but I still got a few books in...and I liked almost everything I read this month! Take a look below.

 

THE RUTHLESS ELIMINATION OF HURRY by John Mark Comer
SABBATH MEDITATIONS by John Mark Comer

Coming out of my August sabbatical, I decided to stick with the theme from that month, this time with two recent books by pastor and author John Mark Comer. The first, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, is his bestselling take on the spiritual life. He spells out how our modern, frenetic, anxious lives stand in stark contrast to what Jesus promised for his followers: an easy yoke and a light burden. The key, in Comer's telling, is a willingness to be countercultural and reject some of the world's narratives: choose minimalism over consumption, Sabbath over hurry, solitude over stimulation, etc. By his own admission, Comer is not breaking new ground here, mostly just repackaging the works of his heroes like Dallas Willard and Richard Foster in a millenial patois. Nevertheless (or maybe for that reason) I found this book compelling and challenging, and I would recommend it to anyone who finds themselves often feeling stressed and hurried.

Sabbath Meditations is formatted like a devotional book, with readings from Scripture, quotes from spiritual fathers and mothers, etc. This is more of a compilation than an original work, but I may have actually enjoyed it more than The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry for its specific focus on the Sabbath day and insights into why and how to practice it well. Indeed, reading through this book inspired me to lead our family to practice Sabbath with far more intentionality than we ever had previously.

NIGHT SHIFT by Stephen King

Something I have learned over the last 20 years or so: I generally don't care for short stories. For me, one of the joys of reading is spending loads of time with familiar characters and watching their stories play out. Unfortunately, in a short story, the entire experience is akin to the first 20 pages of a book, where you don't have your bearings yet and you're still figuring out the characters and the plot. By the time you start getting attached, the story ends.

Nevertheless, Stephen King is one of my favorite authors, and he writes a lot of short stories. So in September, I tackled his first short story collection, which gathers tales he wrote for various genre magazines both before and after he hit it big with his debut novel, Carrie. It's almost exclusively horror stories, ranging from monsters in the cellar to more suspense-driven, naturalistic tales.

My aversion to the medium meant it took me far longer to read this brief (especially for the normally wordy King) collection; despite its meager 336 pages, I needed half the month to finish this. What's more, some of these stories, like the Bachman books, show us a King still figuring out his writing voice.

With that being said, there are some great stories here, from the Lovecraftian "Graveyard Shift" to the eerie "Quitters Inc." to the truly bizarre "Lawnmower Man." King's imagination for horror and suspense knows no bounds, and so collections like this one are a good way for him to get out ideas that aren't fully formed enough to warrant a full novel.

King completists and fans of short stories should enjoy this collection. It's not my favorite book he's ever written, but reading these 20 tales was still time well spent.

BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley

When people talk about dystopian classics, there are two names that have become part of our cultural vocabulary: George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (come to think of it, The Hunger Games may have reached this point too, but let's give it 50 years and see if that lasts). 1984 is a fable about totalitarian governments, prophesying a surveillance state which crushes dissent. Brave New World imagines a less forceful form of government control, where citizens are desensitized, distracted, and entertained, having traded freedom for bliss. While 1984 was required reading in high school, this was my first time reading Brave New World.

In Huxley's telling, the world is ordered by eugenics, with a strict caste system based on your potential to serve the greater good. Citizens are kept sedated on soma, a marijuana-esque drug that keeps everyone mellow and disengaged. Finally, the world has become a place where basically all discomfort, starting with childbirth, has been overcome through technology—it is a world numbed by pleasure. Huxley's world-building is what people still remember today, and the world he imagined is what they often compare our own lives to in the digital age.

Unfortunately, the book's plot doesn't match the setting in terms of intrigue. Essentially, the novel explores what happens when someone outside the norm (a "Savage") is introduced, someone who cares about literature and prefers pain with freedom to strictly enforced pleasure. But the characters are not especially memorable and the pacing is start-and-stop. Huxley's vision is to be admired, but his writing left me cold.

This is required reading for anyone looking to read important 20th century literature, and I'm not about to tell you otherwise. Particularly the first 50 pages, where Huxley lays out his dystopian world, is both educational and entertaining. But if you're only going read one dystopian novel, go with 1984.

THE SUMMER GAME by Roger Angell

For 50 years, the best baseball writer on the planet was the fiction editor for The New Yorker. Roger Angell was one of that magazine's most iconic voices, lending both his talent and his general joie de vivre across generations. But it was with his periodic baseball essays that he made a lasting legacy for himself, earning himself the nickname "The Poet Laureate of Baseball."

The Summer Game is the first collection of those essays, beginning with a 1962 trip to spring training and carrying on into the early 1970s. Angell sought to write from the fan's perspective, rarely venturing into the locker room and often not even into the press box. But it is his prose, somehow both elevated and accessible, that really captures the game's romance—Angell routinely manages to evoke the tradition, beauty, and sentimentality of the game without ever drifting into self-importance.

The essays herein often wind up being season recaps, usually following the World Series. As such, there are aspects that are a little dated, and when he gets into writing play-by-play of specific games, they can get a bit dry some 60 years after those games happened. But when he is profiling teams or speaking to the game's bigger picture, the writing soars and you're transported back in time.

All of Roger Angell's books are a must-read for baseball fans, and this first volume is often named as his best. In real time, the baseball season can let you down, as it did for this Rangers fan in 2026. But Roger Angell never disappoints.

 

ESSENTIAL AVENGERS VOL. 5-6 by Steve Engelhart, Roy Thomas, Rich Buckler, Sal Buscema, et al.

Following the epic Kree-Skrull War, there was a pretty steep dropoff in quality on The Avengers, with the book immediately descending into standard Bronze Age fare and the art going from peak Neal Adams to seemingly whichever artist was handy that day. Thankfully, it didn't take long before Roy Thomas, now swamped by editorial duties, turned the writing duties over to Steve Engelhart. In Engelhart's hands the book dares to go big, particularly with two stories.

The first, which I had previously read in 2017, was the Avengers-Defenders War, a summer crossover event in which Dormammu and Loki conspired to pit Earth's Mightiest Heroes against the ragtag team helmed by Doctor Strange, Hulk, and the Silver Surfer. It's a largely inconsequential story despite the scale, and mostly feels like a kid pitting his action figures against each other—Captain America vs. Namor! Thor vs. Doctor Strange! etc.

More ambitious is the Celestial Madonna Saga, which begins with the introduction of Mantis to the Avengers alongside the team's onetime foe, the Swordsman. In time it's revealed that Mantis' mysterious origin is more than it seems and that she may in fact be the Celestial Madonna, destined to give birth to a universal savior. The story, like many in Engelhart's run, pits Kang the Conqueror against the Avengers and expands upon Marvel's cosmic lore, both by providing the origin story of the Kree and Skrull races and by introducing the Cotati, a plant-like race. Best of all, it all ends with Mantis marrying a tree (ok, a Cotati. But come on, it's a tree.) The '70s were wild, man.

As Bronze Age comics go, Engelhart's run on The Avengers is pretty good—experimental enough to be interesting without going off the deep end (tree marriage notwithstanding), and with plots that are always propulsive. The art is second-tier in these two volumes, but it's serviceable. All in all, these are worthwhile reads for Avengers fans.