Two books covering the same subject in different ways.
Among the books we have in our house are those that belonged to my late mother-in-law, Esther Cheney Barnes. She didn’t have a huge library, maybe 150 books or so. They have been in boxes the last ten years, I looked at them a couple of times, but didn’t want to mess with them.
Over the last six months, Lynda has been going through her mom’s books, sorting into keepers, reads and discards, duplicates of ones we might already have, and get rid ofs without reading. Two small books among those covered the same subject: the lives of the apostles. One was The Master’s Men: Character Sketches of the Disciples, by William Barclay. The other is Thirteen Men Who Changed the World, by H.S. Vigeveno. Both books are short, under 160 paperback pages. That was perfect, I thought, for taking on our last trip.
The two books, while covering the same subject, handle the source material very different. Barclay’s book is essentially a topical Bible study. He looks at what we know about each apostle from the gospels and Acts. Besides the Twelve, he includes a write up about Nathaniel and James son of Alpheus. But he does not include Paul the apostle. After giving the Biblical record, Barclay give information contained in early church records. When he does this, Barclay is careful to separate legend from info biblical accounts.
Vigeveno’s book reads more like creative non-fiction than a Bible study. He takes the same tact as Barclay, first presenting what we know from the Bible than adding what we know from legend. But Vigeveno tends to accept the legends as truth and incudes legendary information in the character sketches. He writes well, and the book is engaging, but Vigeveno’s book is a little less reliable than Barclay’s is.
1959 and 1958 were the dates of publication of the two books. The paperback books I read were from 1973 and 1980. So I think it’s fair to say those of you reading this review are unlikely to run across either of them. If you do, should you read them? I say yes. They are both entertaining short reads about a biblical topic.
But are they keepers? In my mind no. I don’t ever see myself reading them again. So off to the sale/donation pile they go.
An excellent historical account of a traumatic time in our country. Well worth the read.
When we made our road trip back east, the final two nights in New England were in a resort on Cape Cod. In the lobby of the main building was a table of books. The resort made them available to guests. Lynda grabbed one for us to read. Having just finished a Watergate related book, she picked up The Final Days by Woodard and Bernstein.
Years ago, I read a lot of Watergate books, and found I enjoyed the topic. I lived through it, though at the time of the break-in and the first unraveling of the cover-up, I was a busy college student, taking a full load of courses, working a lot of hours, having just started going out with my first girlfriend, and the news about Watergate, if I even heard it, made no impression on me.
So this book was immediately interesting to me. Lynda, having read less on the subject, was also interested. We read some aloud in the resort those two nights, then in car while driving home. It’s a long book, so we didn’t finish it on the trip. Reading it aloud became our afternoon and evening activity during the two weeks between our trips, and we got it done.
I think the book was the basis for a movie, perhaps of the same name. I remember seeing that movie. Hence, as we read and the story line seemed familiar, I was able to tell Lynda what was coming next, and I was usually correct.
This tells about the last six months of the Nixon presidency. The cover-up of the Watergate break-in—that is, keeping the seven people involved in the break-in quiet through the payment of hush money—began to unravel in April 1973, when John Dean, the main architect of the payments, revealed he was talking with federal prosecutors. The firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox came in October 1973, but it was not until spring of 1974 until most of the things going on became public knowledge. Nixon announced his resignation on August 8, 1974 and left office the next day.
The book concentrates on the last six months, but of necessity tells of other activities. Much time is spent on the taping system Nixon had that recorded much of the dirty work of the cover-up and Nixon’s involvement. The court wrangling, various decisions on how to minimally comply, and the toll it took on the lawyers and other in the administration are all covered in some detail. I enjoyed reading about it all.
The authors’ sources were unnamed, but it was easy to guess who some of them were. They were well-connected to the administration, especially to the legal teams. I liked how various “underlings” were brought into the story and what their roles were. I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense, but sometimes the secretaries or aides not involved in policy decisions played unsung roles and it was good to know about them.
One key topic was resignation vs. impeachment. Those around Nixon, both his lawyers and other key staff, realized he could not remain as president after having committed the crimes he did. But convincing him to resign rather than fight it out was a delicate process of helping him to see that his actions in the coverup were not as innocent as he claimed. Perhaps he drifted into the coverup somewhat innocently, unthinkingly, but he still was a key participant.
The books is excellent. I give it 5-stars, and recommend it for any Watergate buffs who haven’t read it yet—or anyone who wants to know some details of that part of our history. But it is not a keeper. Despite its lack of a cover (lost when we got the book), I’m putting it in the donation pile. I don’t think I’ll ever re-read any of my Watergate era books.
I continue to work my way through the writings of C.S. Lewis, hoping to get through them all in my lifetime. I got a late start on it, so am having to read them a little faster than I would like. Thus, I’m not sure I have the comprehension I want of his works.
The most recent book of his I completed was God In The Dock. This is a collection essays Lewis wrote over his lifetime, many of which were published in magazines, a few being pulled from things never published. The book itself was published posthumously by Lewis’s editor, Walter Hooper. The book is divided into four parts: theological essays; semi-theological essays; and essays on ethics rather than purely Christian. The fourth part to the book is excerpts from a number of letters that Hooper felt made a good addition to the book, consistent with the other subject matter.
I read this book in three different time spans, one each for parts 1 and 2 and a third for parts 3 and 4. I think this was a good way to do it. It kept me from becoming bogged down reading the same kind of things all over again. And the short nature of essays made it easier to concentrate on what Lewis was saying in them, as compared to his longer works that caused me to zone out.
One essay that particularly stood out to me was “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment”. Lewis wrote it in 1949 when the U.K. was debating whether incarceration should be retributive or healing. Lewis makes a good case that maintaining a prisoner in jail until he is “healed” can be a form of tyranny. Never declare the patient healed and you can hold him forever. The article, which was published in an Australian magazine, prompted response letters and a rejoinder by Lewis. Oh, he did live to argue and debate! I intend to study this sequence of article and letters more to get a better handle on the subject. It’s always good when you can
I think Hooper did a very good job in putting this anthology together. But it does get a little confusing. The version I had was in an even larger anthology titled The Timeless Writings of C.S. Lewis. But God in the Dock was also published as a stand-alone book. But as I look at the contents, it seems that several essays varied depending on the edition of the book.
Also, Lewis had one specific essay titled, “God in the Dock”, from which the book title is derived. That creates some difficulty. When someone says, “Lewis said this in God in the Dock, are they referring to the essay or the anthology? And which essay within the anthology? It makes citing the work somewhat difficult.
I give the book 5-stars. Although some of the essays weren’t stellar, that will be true in any anthology. I’m keeping the volume in my growing C.S. Lewis collection. Most likely I’ll never read it again cover to cover, but I’ll re-read different essay in it and perhaps write my own in response.
The first of Lewis’s Christian apologetics books, and I didn’t understand it.
One of my life goals is to read everything that C.S. Lewis wrote. I’m a long way from meeting that goal, but inching along, book by book, essay by essay, article by article. I’m sort of going in order that the books were written—though not exactly. I’m putting off reading his fiction, the space trilogy, in favor of non-fiction. I may not stick with that, but that’s what I’m doing right now.
So, after finishing and reviewing my last book, I decided it was time for a C.S. Lewis book. The next one in order was The Problem of Pain, his 1940 book, written by request, to help explain to the common man what Christianity was all about. The world was at war—at least Europe was , so Lewis took up the challenge. Thus this was his first book written on what we call Christiam apologetics, a fancy word for defense of Christianity.
Alas, I struggled with the book, much as I did the first two or three times I tried to read Lewis’s later book Mere Christianity. Lewis lost me early on when he mentioned the “Numinous”. Here is, I think, his first reference to it.
In all developed religion we find three strands or elements, and in Christianity one more. The first of these is what Professor Otto calls the experience of the Numinous.
Huh? What the heck is a Numinous?
Lewis took a long paragraph to explain what Numinous was, but this brought no clarity to me. Since this was in the Introduction, it seemed, as I read, that grasping what that meant perhaps was essential to understanding the whole book. Since I didn’t understand it, I suspect it caused me to partially shut my mind off. I read the rest of the book, but truthfully I didn’t comprehend what I was reading.
Alas, I never really recovered from the partial mind shutdown. I say that to my shame. I know this is Lewis’s way, to bring up terms and -isms in a shorthand way, expecting his less-well educated audience to somehow grasp the concept. I kept feeling that in Mere Christianity, and in a very deja vu kind of way with The Problem of Pain.
So, how do I rate this book, is it a keeper, and will I ever read it again? 3-star, yes, and yes. I think I really need to understand this to understand Lewis. I’m sure there’s good stuff in it, stuff that will help me in my Christian walk. But I won’t get back to this very soon. It’s on to the next book, whatever that is.
3-stars is the best I can give this. It could have easily been 2. Yet I’m going to read it again to see if I’m being too harsh with it.
Back in January, I went to an event at our church titled: “How to Navigate the 2024 Election Year”. The evening involved dinner and a book, as well as a guest speaker. His name is Eric Costanzo, and one of the books to choose between was his, Inalienable: How Marginalized Voices Can Help Save The American Church, coauthored with Daniel Yang and Matthew Soerens. That’s the one I chose. The event was okay, not great. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I went mainly to be supportive of our pastor.
So I read the book, taking over a month to go through it. It was published in 2022, which means it was mostly written in 2020 and 2021. I found the book a little difficult to read. One was the frequent references interspersed—but the authors said in the first chapter they would do that, so it wasn’t a surprise. The other was the frequent use of buzzwords. I have a internal buzzword meter that is kind of fine-tuned. Use a buzzword once and I ignore it. Use it twice and I get a little irked. Use if four or five times in every chapter and I have to fight the urge to puke. That’s where this book is.
The first chapter takes the place of an introduction, with the title “Why the American Church Needs Saving”. Very early comes the phrase, “many evangelical Christians in the United States have silently tolerated or openly embraced nationalism, sexism, and racism, ‘compromising our values for power.” That’s pretty clear for the premise they hope to prove.
Since I am part of the evangelical church, I guess he’s talking about me. Seems that whatever I—we—have done in our Christian walk is all wrong. Yet, in the entire 221 page book, they skirt the issue of who is responsible and give no action steps other than listen to the voices of the “global south,” which is defined in the book as those parts of the world lying south of white Europe and white America.
In an attempt to not offend people, they don’t give names of who is to blame. It’s clear that they are opposed to the evangelical church’s embrace of right-wing Republican politics. They condemn that embrace, as I do. But they don’t mention names, and they really don’t get into specific issues. It would have been nice for them to have picked a date, place, and time when the American church started to go bad to the point that it needs saving, because, assuming they are correct, that would give us a point in time to go back to, figure out what we did wrong, and make corrections going forward.
As to racism, the point is well taken. Sunday mornings tend to be the most segregated moment of the week, and that’s sad. Why is that so? The book didn’t really say, but they strongly imply it’s white racism that is the root cause. The authors seem to imply that forced diversity is the answer. I’ve always been a proponent of natural diversity, where, as an individual of reasonable intelligence and loving care, I come to recognize my prejudices, set them aside with God’s help, and embrace all people as equals before God.
To me it seems wrong-headed to say, Hey, our congregation is too white. We need to find some blacks, Asians, and Hispanics to reach out to. But I may not know any. Why? Simply because in my day-to-day roamings—to the grocery store, the doctor, on my walks, or wherever the chores of a given day take me—I may not meet people who are different than me, or the circumstances may not be right for discussing church with someone.
The other, main problem I see in the book is the continuation of the war on the individual. My review is much too long already, but throughout the book the authors work in that the existence of marginalized groups is due to individualism. I reject that, but explaining why will take more than one post.
Two other things about this book that irk me. While it includes many references to and quotes from their primary sources, the notes are endnote rather than footnotes. I hate endnotes. If it’s important enough to make a reference to it, it’s important enough to have it right on the page where I can easily see it without flipping a hundred pages away. And second, it does not include a list of suggested reading. The quote from probably two hundred sources (see the endnotes to find the names), but don’t suggest the 5, 10, or 20 that will help the reader the most in continued study of what’s wrong with American evangelicalism.
As it is, I give the book 3-stars. I almost gave it 2, but I realize the authors are trying to do a good thing here and address a problem they see. I’m not discarding the book. I hope to read it again, in the not too distant future, in hopes of learning something I missed, and to better understand the authors’ opinions.
The book was republished with a new cover in 2008, and may have been updated from the 1994 edition I read.
Due to the current remediation work taking place at our house, we had to take all the books off the built-in bookshelves in the living room. The workmen then took the bookshelves out to get at the damaged areas. As I pulled books off the shelves, I saw some I didn’t realize were there. Most of the books went into boxes temporarily. They currently decorate our dining room floor, with no end in sight.
One such book was Guard Your Heart by Dr. Gary Rosberg. Published in 1994, this book came out in the midst of several men’s ministries, including Promise Keepers. Rosberg wasn’t part of that, but he was the founder of a different movement called CrossTrainers.
The book is excellent. You would think a book now 30 years old might be a little dated. Perhaps it is, but I found it to be excellent. Dr. Rosberg, a practicing counsellor (well, he was at the time; could be retired for all I know, though his website doesn’t indicate that) points out many things that men struggle with: juggling work and home; workplace difficulties; allocating time; maintaining spiritual vitality.
The book looks at what Rosberg calls “frontal attacks” and “sneak attacks that men he surveyed say are what they experience in their Christian life. Each of several of these attacks are covered in separate chapters. I found the advice given useful to me, even though the book was written for younger men who are still in their careers.
I rate the book 4-stars. It loses one star simply due to its age—there are probably slightly better books written in the last five years dealing with the same issues. But don’t get me wrong: this is very good and well worth the read. Alas, however, it is not a keeper. To the donation pile it will go.
Someone will think me sacrilegious, but I couldn’t get into this one.
As I’ve said many times on this blog, a time of downsizing from our living circumstances is coming. As part of that, we need to get rid of about half of our 3,000 to 4,000 books. That number is after we have sold or donated many already. I figure well over 1,000 books are already gone. So in choosing books to read, I scan our shelves and try to choose something that looks interesting but is something I most likely won’t want to keep.
A number of our books are what could be called Christian classics. So a couple of months ago, when it was time to start a new book, my eyes fell on The Confessions of Saint Augustine. Written over 1,600 years ago, this meets the definition of Christian classic. I thought, it’s probably something every Christian should read. I started it in early 2023, read it on four days, put it aside, and picked it up again in late November last year.
Why did I lay it down after four days? Because I found it hard to read and understand. The book I read it in was translated by John K. Ryan. The original, of course, is in Latin. I suppose the readability will depend on the translation. Or is it possible that all translations can’t do more with the English construction than the original language gives you? I suppose I would need to read a different translation to find out.
Why didn’t I like it? Perhaps it’s due to passages like this one.
In truth, I should have wished, had I then been Moses—for we all come from the same clay, and what is man, unless because you are mindful of him?—I should have wished, if I had been what he was, and had been enjoined by you to write the book of Genesis, that such power of eloquence had been given to me, and such ways to fashion words that not even they that cannot yet understand how God creates things would reject my words as beyond my powers; while they who can already understand, no matter what true interpretation they have arrived at in their thought, would not find it passed over in your servant’s few words; and if some other man by the light of truth had perceived a further meaning, it should not fail to be understood from those same words.
And that’s just one sentence! The whole book is like that.
I found myself reading and not comprehending at all. The Confessions consists of thirteen books, each book broken down into multiple short chapters. I started each book with renewed determination to understand what I was reading. Alas, by the second chapter I would once again be reading the words but not comprehending.
When I was about halfway through I thought about giving up. But I pressed on. Sometimes the paragraphs put me to sleep; sometimes they were just incomprehensible. The main reading took me from Nov 29 to Jan 18. Rarely could I read as many ten pages at a sitting.
Well, this is quite a downer of a review. As you can tell, this book is not a keeper. But no worries: I have two more copies of it. Maybe, in a few years, I’ll pull out one of the others and see if another translation will be easier. But this mass-market paperback is going in the donation pile.
Mine was an e-book, downloaded for free. This wasn’t the cover available to me when I put the ebook together.
Twas not so long ago that I posted a review of the Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. 1. At the time, I said I was going to look and see if I had downloaded Vol. 2 and formatted it for Word. In fact, I had. I used the “Send to Kindle” app from Amazon and soon began reading it.
This volume covered the years from after the publication of Origin Of Species in 1859 to Darwin’s death in 1882. It includes a couple of appendixes, one listing Darwin’s publications: books, pamphlets, scientific papers, etc. In the same manner as Volume 1, the book is a mix of biography and letters. Darwin’s son Francis provides much commentary from personal experience. The letters, while extensive, are not more important than the biographical entries.
As this volume begins, Origin has just been published. The early part of the book concerns the next three years or so, when Darwin was being alternately praised and lambasted. Many people, including men or science, rejected Darwin’s findings. Some went partway, but others more or less said Darwin was a kook. Many of the letters are to two of Darwin’s best friends, Hooker and Huxley, both of whom took the lead in promoting evolution as a scientific reality. Another correspondent in this category was Asa Gray, an American.
As the years increased since the Origin was published, other subjects began to enter into the correspondence. Darwin had other books on totally different subjects that he published between 1859 and 1882. Many letters went out about these as he was conducting research, writing the books, dealing with the publisher, promoting the book, and discussing it with friends and colleagues. When it wasn’t bogged down with scientific names, this correspondence was quite captivating to me.
Occasionally, well, more than occasionally, the letters went beyond my comprehension. Here’s an example, from an 1860 letter.
The effect which the carbonate of ammonia produces is the segregation of the homogenous fluid in the cells into a cloud of granules and colourless fluid; and subsequently the granules coalescing, dividing, coalescing ad infinitum.
One thing that stood out to me was the almost religious nature of some of the letters, where evolution was the religions. Darwin frequently said things like, “Thank you for spreading our doctrine,” or “our doctrine has certainly caused reactions from many.” Those aren’t quotes from the book, but represent how Darwin wrote to several people.
Reviews of Darwin’s books, especially the Origin, was a frequent topic. Some of his correspondents were those not favorable to his “doctrine”. He was always patient with them in his letters, as if hoping to convert them by persuasion.
So, after having read both these volumes, what do I conclude? I’m glad I read them. It helped to flesh out some understanding of Darwin beyond what they say in science books. I don’t imagine I’ll ever re-read these, however. I give a combined rating of 3.5 stars. It would be 5 stars except for organization, and the sacrificing of letter space in favor of biography.
Abelard and Heloise, publishers may think your letters are interesting enough to publish, but I’m not going to waste any more time on them.
Given my love of reading letters, it should surprise none of my readers to know that I picked up The Letters of Abelard and Heloise for my reading enjoyment. I bought it used for 75¢. Good thing, too, given how the book turned out.
I had never heard of these two. Peter Abelard, b. around 1079, was a French philosopher. Schooled in the liberal arts, he fell in love with Heloise. She was from Paris. Somehow they met and had an intimate relationship. Surviving letters suggest he wanted to marry her, but she refused. Believing that marriage amounted to legal slavery or the wife, or that the wife was essentially nothing more than a gold digger, she wrote to Abelard:
God is my witness that if Augustus, Emperor of the whole world, thought fit to honour me with marriage and conferred all the earth on me to possess for ever, it would be dearer and more honourable to me to be called not his Empress but your whore.
That’s quite a statement to put in print, but that’s how she felt. His reward for her being his mistress was castration by a mob employed by her uncle. Before that, they had a child together. After his mutilation, he became a monk and she a nun. For the rest of their lives they lived apart. Abelard established a convent and put Heloise in charge of it. They rarely met after their going into religious orders, but exchanged a number of letters. These have been passed down to us.
My copy of this book, a Penguin Classic, includes a lengthy introduction, which was good to read, but was about twice as long as I would have liked. Before the letters was an item Abelard wrote about his trials and tribulations. That item wore me out. The English translation from the original Latin was okay, but I didn’t find the story engaging.
Then I got to the letters. One from Heloise was first, the one with the quote above. Abelard responded, the Heloise to him—all long letters—and by that time my mind couldn’t take any more of it. I rarely give up on a book, but I did this one. I quit on page 139 of 295.
I’m not going to hang onto this book in hopes I’ll read it in the future. I have too many books, and too few years left, to keep reading books that don’t hold my interest. 2-stars for this one.
Regular readers of this blog (all two or three of you) know that I love letters. Not just to receive them, or write them, but to read them in historical collections. Some years ago, I acquired electronic files of Carlyle’s letters with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Somewhere I picked up a print copy of one of the two volumes, and then a print copy of other letters of his.
The Carlyle Letters Online is a project I’ve used frequently, with many hours of pleasurable reading and research.
From an internet search, I learned about the Carlyle Letters Online. This is a project to put all of the letters of Thomas and Jane Carlyle online in a searchable and highly usable database. This followed the print edition of the letters, which took place from 1970 to 2023, is composed of 50 volumes.
The online version began in 1999. By that time, many letters by the Carlyles that had escaped earlier detection and collection had been found. The number of letters in the online collection is over 9,000 in all, more by Thomas than by Jane.
This review is really only over the first ten volumes of the online collection. which cover the period from 1812 to 1838. I have no idea if I will ever get to the other 40 volumes. In fact, I confess to not having read every letter in Volumes 1, 2, and 3. At that time, I was trying to find letters about specific topics. Beginning with Volume 4, I have read every letter in each volume. It’s taken me a few years to do this, reading one or two letters many nights right before going to bed.
Many of the letters are to family members. Though Carlyle was a man of letters, in the volumes I’ve read, there weren’t many letters to literary men. There were some, of course. By 1838, Carlyle was just starting to gain a following. Soon his circle would expand and include more than Emerson, Mills, and Sterling. I’m anxious to get into those letters.
Thomas often writes in typical Victorian language: flowery, hard to understand, complicated sentences, many references that are now obscure. Sometimes the letters were hard to understand, at least beginning to end. He used a lot of private references we would call coterie speech.
A sample of how using the index works. Very useful and efficient.
Fortunately, the CLO has copious footnotes on many subject, making the obscure more understandable. It also has a good indexing system. A few years back the index showed on each letter—links to the items in the letter that were indexed. Type about anything Carlyle-related in the index and it brings up results with links to the letters you’ll find that item in. The illustration with this paragraph shows an example of references to one of Carlyle’s less well-known essays.
I don’t know how much time I’m going to put into reading these letters for a while. After finishing Vol. 10 I’m taking some time off from reading them. Oh, I still open the database from time to time and read a letter. I’ll get back to it in a bigger way, maybe next year some time.
While the collecting of the Carlyles’ letters took over a century, and is not over yet, it’s a massive project that has a very specialized audience. I don’t necessarily recommend people rush out and buy either the print letters or start perusing the online letters. For me, they are a source of pleasurable reading.
