December Reading Log

 

2023's reading ended not with a bang, but with a whimper...that's what happens when you spend a full week of the month in the hospital, where's there's nothing to do yet you can't concentrate enough to read. So the year ends with a pretty short log, just 3 books. Take a look!

BALL FOUR by Jim Bouton

Right on schedule, I started desperately missing baseball roughly a month after the end of the World Series. To ease my suffering, I turned to one of the most influential books ever written about the sport, Jim Bouton's Ball Four.

First published in 1970, this memoir shook baseball's foundations, offering an unfiltered portrayal of life in the big leagues. With an unvarnished, matter-of-fact voice, pitcher Jim Bouton expounds upon everything from clubhouse culture to struggles with management to what ballplayers are up to off the field. In a time when Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were still seen as larger-than-life, iconic role models, Jim Bouton was a mythbuster, taking readers behind the curtain and showing what ballplayers were really thinking and doing when the cameras weren't rolling. His account was so revealing—and credible—that MLB commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force Bouton to discredit his own book, urging him to publicly declare its stories were entirely fictional (Bouton declined.)

I was already familiar with Ball Four's reputation and impact but, more than 50 years after its initial publication, found its contents relatively tame, albeit entertaining. The book is essentially a diary, chronicling everything from offseason contract negotiations to spring training to a demotion to the minor leagues and subsequent call-up back to the majors. In the spirit of the gonzo journalism that was all the rage at that time, the narrator is also the main character, exposing larger systems through the voice of an informed everyman—not a professional journalist, but an actual ballplayer willing to reveal the truth. As a result, Bouton writes with the authority of the an informed source but the accessibility of an ordinary person.

Most importantly, the book is funny. Bouton is a witty narrator with a natural gift for storytelling, so his revelations come off less like a sensationalist's tell-all and more like a buddy shooting the breeze at the bar. This book is a delight, one whose anecdotal nature makes it more suitable for reading 5 minutes at a time rather than in long stretches. Baseball fans everywhere need to take the time to pore through its 400+ pages—some books just need to be understood, but this is a book that demands to be read.

HIDDEN CHRISTMAS: THE SURPRISING TRUTH BEHIND THE BIRTH OF CHRIST by Tim Keller

What is Christmas really about? It's a question asked by everyone from Charlie Brown to the harried shopper wondering why he's racking up debt to the parishioner in a pew at his local church's Christmas Eve service. Amidst all the busyness and tradition, we want Christmas to mean something, for there to be more to it all than commercialism and sentimentality.

In Hidden Christmas, the late pastor and author Tim Keller walks through the gospel texts to explain in a concise, insightful way why the birth of Jesus changes everything, why the Incarnation is not only worth celebrating but worth believing. With a Bible passage as the starting point for each chapter, this book is essentially a collection of sermons (and indeed, this book is an adaptation and synthesis of the Christmas sermons he preached over the course of his ministerial career.)

Keller had a gift unparalleled since the days of C.S. Lewis for presenting the Christian faith in a winsome, intelligent way that treated his readers like adult learners—he neither talked down to his readers nor sent them scrambling for a theological dictionary. Keller balanced his own convictions about faith with unfailing respect for those who did not share them, and the result is that his evangelistic efforts never felt like a sales pitch but instead like a sincere announcement of good news.

In less than 150 pages, Hidden Christmas turns the Christmas story over and explores its many different angles, all with the intention of showing you that Jesus is Lord. For the believer and the nonbeliever alike, it's an instructive, joyful primer on events we know well but could understand better. A great devotional read for anyone during the season of Advent.

ESSENTIAL MARVEL TEAM-UP VOL. 4

After 4 months and more than 100 issues, I'm still not sure what this title was ever supposed to be. A secondary Spider-Man book featuring his Amazing Friends? A vehicle for C-list characters to get a chance to shine? A throwaway money grab by a company that knew anything with their premiere character on the cover would sell books?

Whatever Marvel Team-Up was intended to be, it definitely reached its creative peak in the Chris Claremont-John Byrne years, before they left for the greener pastures of Uncanny X-Men. This fourth and final Essential volume is back to the slog of Bronze Age mediocrity—which would be more forgivable if these issues were from the 1970s instead of the early 1980s. Every issue—by this time we're back to single issue, standalone stories—Spider-Man, through some vagary of chance, teams up with another Marvel hero, usually one who isn't popular enough to warrant their own title, to take on some lower-tier villain. The writing is as slapdash as the art, and the creators are all either B-players trying to make their bones (Steven Grant, Bob McLeod) or over-the-hill veterans looking for an easy paycheck (Sal Buscema, Carmine Infantino).

Though the title would run for another 50+ issues before Marvel mercifully ended its run, it's clear that by this stage of the book's life, everybody had given up on any illusion of it 'mattering,' either creatively or canonically. These are the kind of disposable stories that used to define comics before the Silver Age, the sort of issues you'd give your kid to read on a long road trip and that he'd toss in the trash with his Coke bottle once he was done.

The harshness of my review probably makes it sound like I hated reading four volumes of Marvel Team-Up, which isn't exactly true. It wasn't bad, just bland, the white rice of reading experiences. I've certainly read better, but I've definitely read worse. If I have a bone to pick, it's with Marvel for deciding this demanded 4 volumes of reprints. Essential? Hardly.

Remembering Christmas (Friday Devotional)

Keep hold of instruction; do not let go; guard her, for she is your life.

- Proverbs 4:13

Growing up, we always had a live Christmas tree in the living room, refusing to give in to the convenience of the fake, store-bought, permanent kind that so many of our friends had. Every December we’d drive out to a tree farm, pick out an 8-10 foot pine, Dad would cut it down, and we’d haul it home. For the whole holiday season, that tree would sit in our living room, adorned with ornaments and bedecked with wrapped presents.

But always on the morning of December 26, that tree was promptly dragged out to the curb for pickup. And once it was out the door, there was no mistaking where it had been—there was a not-insignificant trail of pine needles throughout the house marking its presence. A visible reminder of another Christmas come and gone.

With the holiday behind us—your tree may still be up, but the presents that once rested beneath it have all been distributed by now—the natural tendency is to pack Christmas away for the next 11 months. When you regard Christmas purely as an event, the obvious inclination is to regard it as something which has come and gone, something not worth thinking about again until next fall.

But for believers, Christmas is not just about the traditions of a holiday, but about the meaning behind them. At Christmas we take the time to remember that God came to be with us as a human being and we look with eager anticipation to the day when his home will be with mortals once again. At Christmas we dwell upon all we have been given and take it upon ourselves to give back. At Christmas we are given perspective about what really matters most.

To confine those things to one month out of the year would be spiritual malpractice. So as December gives way to January and the calendar flips from 2023 to 2024, look for ways to remember Christmas in March and June and August. The tree may be gone, but there’s still a trail of pine needles—don’t sweep them up too quickly.

A Fresh Hearing (Friday Devotional)

 

But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.

- Luke 2:19

A Christmas Story. Miracle on 34th Street. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Home Alone. It’s a Wonderful Life. Elf. I could keep going, of course—after all, I failed to mention The Muppet Christmas Carol and White Christmas and The Santa Clause, to say nothing of beloved animated TV specials like A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Christmas movies, whatever your favorites, are as inextricable from the holiday season as lights and presents. Just like we sing the same carols year after year, we watch these same films over and over too, unbothered that the stories never change and that we know what happens next at every turn. Being able to recite the whole script from memory isn’t a bug, but a feature—because you’re not watching these films to learn something new, you’re watching them to be reminded of something precious.

There is another Christmas story—the Christmas story—that is just as familiar, just as repeated, and far more important than Hollywood’s holiday tales. When you read the gospel accounts of Jesus’s birth, you already know the story beats: Gabriel’s visit, Joseph’s dream, the manger and the shepherds and the heavenly host. You’re probably not going to hear anything new to you when somebody reads Luke 2 this Sunday.

That familiarity makes it tempting to tune out, to assume that since you know all the information you have nothing to learn. But the Bible is no dead letter—Hebrews 4:12 tells us the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. You will find no new words in the gospel stories this weekend, but that doesn’t mean the Holy Spirit won’t use those familiar old words to change you.

Luke 2:19 tells us that Jesus’s mother treasured up the events of the nativity and pondered them in her heart. This Christmas, perhaps you should do the same. After all, sometimes you don’t need a new story, just a fresh hearing of the familiar.

Holy Infant, So Tender and Mild (Friday Devotional)

 

Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

- Philippians 2:6-7

You don’t realize quite how fragile babies are until you’re confronted with that fact.

My son Isaac was born last Thursday morning, delivered by C-section at Baylor Hospital in Dallas. While his arrival was a few days ahead of schedule, the surgery itself was perfectly routine—the doctor and nurses were joking around with us, music was playing in the OR, and Lindsey and I were excited but not especially nervous. When the doctor presented Isaac to us at 2:51 AM, all 9 lb. and 7 oz. of him, everybody’s comments—including ours—were about how big he was, how healthy, how strong.

But as the minutes turned into hours, we hit a snag. Every time the nurses checked his blood sugar, it was lower than it was supposed to be, requiring supplementary care—glucose gel, enriched formula, etc.—to get it up to where it needed to be. After a 4^th failed blood sugar test, the pediatrician on call broke the news to us—Isaac would need to be moved to the NICU to receive a dextrose drip until his body started to figure out how to regulate its own blood sugar.

So for those precious first days of life, our baby boy had an IV in his little arm, a pulse oximeter wrapped around his tiny foot, and three different leads stuck to his chest to measure vital signs. He was watched over by an amazing team of nurses, but was unable to leave the NICU—including to meet his brother and sister. It wasn’t until Sunday night, after more than 3 days of observation and progress, that he was released to our care and we were able to breathe easy. For 3 long days, we were reminded just how small babies really are.

At this time of year, we remember a different birth, one that in so many ways was far more precarious. There was no operating room, no surgical instruments, not even a doctor when Mary delivered Jesus. There was no hospital, much less a NICU, to treat him if he’d gotten sick. When Jesus was born on that not-so-silent night, it was far from the serene, romanticized, sentimental picture we imagine today. It was dangerous. It was frightening. There was blood on the ground.

But the same Savior who would eventually go to the cross took no shortcuts on the road to our salvation. From Bethlehem to Golgotha, Jesus—though fully God—was also fully human, entering the world as a baby. He knew all the frailties of infancy just as he would know all the temptations of manhood—but for us, he traded the glories of heaven for the travails of earth.

The Word which was from the beginning, the Word which was with God and was God, the Word through whom all things all things were made—the Word became flesh and lived among us. The Alpha and Omega became a baby. Think about that the next time you look at the small, feeble body of an infant. I know I will.

Small Problems and Big Prayers (Friday Devotional)

 

Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.

- 1 Peter 5:7

“And God, I really hope I find my lunchbox tomorrow.”

That was how my son ended his bedtime prayer on Sunday evening after the usual words of thanksgiving for a good day. You see, on Friday he had come from school with his backpack unzipped and no lunchbox inside. Let me tell you, it was a crisis. This was his brand-new lunchbox, less than a month old, whale-themed (he’s obsessed with ocean life right now) and precious to him.

He was so concerned that we went up to his school Saturday morning and checked the lost and found bin—thanks to an event at the school that morning, we could stroll right in and look. Unfortunately, we had no luck, and his classroom door was locked. So all he could do until Monday was wait, worry—and pray.

To some, praying about a lost lunchbox is a waste of breath. They would say that bringing such petty concerns before the Creator of the universe is irreverent and silly, that prayer should be reserved for weightier matters. Lost souls, yes. Lost lunchboxes, no.

But Scripture tells us to cast all our anxiety upon the Lord, that no care or concern is too insignificant to bring before our heavenly Father. God cares for us, and he wants us to talk to him about the things that are weighing us down.

Petitionary prayer is not reserved for a certain class of problems, as though God only has the time for the “important” issues. Your Father wants to hear from you, whether your cares are big or small. Every prayer is important to him because you are important to him. Even when all you need is a lunchbox.

P.S. The lunchbox was in my son’s classroom when he got to school Monday, safe and sound. Truly an answer to prayer!

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.

The Season of Giving (Friday Devotional)

 

Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

- 2 Corinthians 9:15

Black Friday. Small Business Saturday. Cyber Monday. Giving Tuesday. At this time of year, it seems like we’re being asked on a daily basis to buy something, support something, or donate something. It is, after all, the season of giving.

But as you purchase presents and plan parties and make end-of-year offerings to your favorite charity, it’s important to reflect upon why this is a time for giving. It’s not because it’s a social obligation or because the calendar dictates you do so. We give because so much has been given to us.

It’s during Advent—the season beginning this Sunday that prepares us for Christmas—that we reflect upon the hope, peace, joy, and love that God ensured for us by sending his Son to this world. This world was corrupted by the sin that humanity introduced into it; eternal life with the holy God was a distant dream forbidden by our wickedness.

But God so loved the world that he gave his only Son (John 3:16). Jesus emptied himself and took the form of a slave, assuming human likeness (Philippians 2:7). The Word became flesh and lived among us (John 1:14). Not because we earned his favor, not because we deserved his love, but as an act of divine grace, God gave us the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ his Son.

As recipients of that grace, we are now given the sacred responsibility of being witnesses to it and ambassadors for Christ. Every day you have the opportunity to love your neighbor, to serve your community, to make this fallen world a better, more redemptive place. Every day you can honor the one who has given you everything by giving to others.

So whether it’s Black Friday or Cyber Monday or What Now Wednesday, take the time to give some grace. You have received it in abundance from God—now’s your chance to share the wealth.