Category Archives: book reviews

book reviews, Christianity

Book Review: “Paul Orjala”

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My reading has trailed off a bit lately, in part due to health issues and in part due to reading choices not panning out. I laid two books aside at the 1/3rd point when the subject and writing turned out to not hold my interest. I suppose general busyness helped to rob reading time, with some of the busyness due to medical appointments.

Looking for a short read, I grabbed a book my wife had recently read and recommended: Paul Orjala: The Man, The Mission. It’s one of series of annual missions books our church published (or used to), this one from 2009-10. I think I read it back then but did not in the least remember it, so it was a fresh read. The book was of special interest to me because I briefly knew Paul when I attended the same church as he and his family in 1974-75. At that time, Paul was back from the mission field in Haiti and teaching at our seminary in Kansas City. I didn’t get to know him very well. He was already an experienced missionary and professor; I was new to the congregation and denomination. We didn’t hang out in the same circles.

But I got to know him a little. He was a nice man, well thought of by all, and pleasant spoken. The book told about his boyhood in San Diego, call to missions, assignment in Haiti, years teaching, and a later in life assignment in France. In all things, Paul was a faithful and effective servant of Christ. Much of our missions education curriculum. Paul is almost a legend in our church for the effectiveness of everything he touched. That includes considerable musical talent, which I saw him demonstrate in church services.

I’m glad Lynda found this book in the house and brought it to my attention. It was a good, short read about an amazing man and his service for God. I won’t read it again, nor do I think we should keep it, but I’m very glad I read it.

book reviews, Writing

Book Review: “On Writing” by Stephen King

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A well written book. As good as any book on writing that I’ve read. Easy to read; I got through it in about a week.

At some point in the deep, dark past, I obtained a copy of On Writing by Stephen King. It’s a 2009 edition of the original, which was published in 2001. The book is new, but I don’t remember buying it. I may have won it at a writing conference I attended in 2011, as a door prize. It sat on a shelf in our “auxiliary” bedroom in the storeroom, awaiting its turn to pop up on my reading pile. Assuming I got it in 2011 (for sure it was after 2009), it only took 14 years of its hibernating on the obscure shelf for me to notice it.

I have to say, of the many books I’ve read by writers for writers—some giving the writer’s journey and memoir and some focusing on writing techniques—this was probably the best I’ve read. King begins the book with his writing journey. It’s a bit of autobiography and a bit of the writing road he traveled on, about the early struggles to make it in life with meager earnings, needing a brief teaching career to put bread on the table.

That journey description serves as a lengthy introduction to the second part of the book, that of writing techniques. King brings out thoughts on both the creative process—how to dig ideas out of life and then make stories of them—and the specific wordsmithing he sees as needed to make the stories good ones.

In the book, he answers the two most common questions he gets. From readers: Where do you get your ideas? From writers: What is your editing process like?

One caution: King has no compunction again using strong language, in his novels and in this book. He believes writing should match the reality that the reader lives. Hence, he makes regular use of swear words. I’d rather not have to read that kind of thing but plowed on through it. I have to say that he does not use curse words gratuitously. When used in On Writing, they seem to be used in a way that they are used in everyday speech—at least to the best of my recollection. It’s been many years since I’ve been around that kind of talk.

I give this book 5-stars, mainly for the excellence in organization, writing, and completeness. But it is not a keeper. In fact, I already gave it to someone in my writing critique group.

book reviews, Christianity

Book Review: Betrayed

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An excellent read for anyone curious about Judaism and Christianity.

My wife and I continue to look through our bookshelves to see what books we have on hand that look good to read but that, for whatever reason, we have passed by. In some cases, these are books we’ve had for years. One she read and recommended to me was Betrayed by Stan Telchin. I read it a couple of weeks ago and am just getting around to the review.

It’s the story of a Jewish family, second generation Americans, who have settled into this country and given up the religious practice of Judaism for the cultural aspects. Their oldest daughter goes off to college in New York, falls under the influence of some Christians, and concludes that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. The parents are outraged, as is the girl’s younger sister. The older girl challenged them all to at least look into it and come to their own conclusions.

Stan Telchin

After the initial outrage at their daughter’s betrayal, the book is the story of Stan’s study of the issue. After a search of scripture, both Old and New Testament, he concludes that his daughter is right: Jesus is the Messiah foretold by the prophets.

I won’t make this a long review. Telchin does an excellent job describing the toll all this took on the family, what he studied, what he concluded, and the final family reunification. It is an excellent, relatively short and easy read (less than 170 pages).

I give it 5-stars. But, alas, it will not stay on the bookshelf, as I don’t expect to ever read it again. Off it will go, probably to be given to someone rather than just donated.

Here is a good write-up about the book and the journey it describes at the website “Jewish Testimonies”.

book reviews

Book Review: Age of Fable

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Once a best selling book (in the 1860s-70s and maybe beyond), not one in 100 Americans now know about it.

Our dining room table is covered with boxes of books for sale. I have them listed on FB Marketplace. Sales have been good, though slower of late. All the better-known books have been bought. The ones left are more obscure, or are common and people already have them. The boxes include a number of books I’d like to read, but don’t see any way to get to them in the years I have left, so out they go. I’ve already started moving the $1 books out to the garage, to a donation pile.

One of those books I wanted to read I decided to read while it wasn’t selling. It’s The Age of Fable by Thomas Bulfinch. Here’s how the Wikipedia entry on it starts:

Bulfinch’s Mythology is a collection of tales from myth and legend rewritten for a general readership by the American Latinist and banker Thomas Bulfinch, published after his death in 1867. The work was a successful popularization of Greek mythology for English-speaking readers.

It seems like bulls were the most common thing people and gods changed into.

I know very little about Greek mythology. We covered The Iliad and The Odessey in school, and Oedipus Rex, but I’m afraid I learned little and retained less. As an adult, I’ve read a little of Lucretius and Virgle but found both incomprehensible in the English translations available to me.

But back to Bulfinch. I enjoyed the book but am somewhat afraid I wasted my time on it. I mean, who care about these mythical god named Jupiter and Juno, and about the humans they interacted with? Who cares that they had conflicts that make our world seem dull, or that they changed form to bulls, rabbits, birds, or fish to get out of jams? People keep dying and are brought back to life by some god who takes pity on them. The stories are ridiculous. Nothing in this book makes me want to pick up one of those ancient books and read it in translation. The ones I have left (a few have sold) will remain on the dining room table in hopes that someone will buy them before they go to Goodwill or wherever.

Here’s more from Wikipedia:

The book is a prose recounting of myths and stories from three eras: Greek and Roman mythology, King Arthur legends and medieval romances. Bulfinch intersperses the stories with his own commentary, and with quotations from writings by his contemporaries that refer to the story under discussion. This combination of classical elements and modern literature was novel for his time.

Don’t forget the Pegasus. That came from Greek mythology.

Much of the book was about how poets of a more recent age, such as Milton, Pope, Keats, Shelly, Tennyson, made reference to these ancient myths. I skipped over those lines of poetry, making my read faster. I’d say Milton was probably mentioned most, which may explain why I’ve had so much trouble reading, and have never finished, his Paradise Lost.

I give the book 3-stars, and cannot recommend you read it. Part of the problem is the number of character names to wade through. The first chapter alone was enough to get my head spinning. The 3-star rating is because it’s a well written book. It just turned out that the subject matter was borderline uninteresting and, as I said before, ridiculous. I’m glad I grew up after the era where knowing this stuff was considered a “classical” education.

America, book reviews, History, memories

Book Review: The Yellowstone Story

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Volume 1 went from boring to overbearing, but managed to get the story across.

It was probably in 2008, during our last trip to Yellowstone National Park, that I dropped in a bookstore outside the park and bought two books, The Yellowstone Story, Volumes 1 and 2. I read the first chapter of Volume 1 right away, got busy with other things, and set it aside. When we got home I picked it up again, read the next four chapters, and laid it aside, wondering if I’d wasted my money.

You see, the first five chapters were, to the best of my recollection, boring. They were about the years before the creation of the park, and were essentially: This party came to Yellowstone from this direction, saw this and that, and left by that direction. Chapter after chapter. No wonder I put it down.

But several months ago, I was in The Dungeon, looking for things to get rid of, and my eyes landed on a short stack of books that had been damaged by water maybe fifteen years ago. I figured I would read these (if the water hadn’t rendered them unreadable), then sell or donate them. One was The Potter’s Wheel—it was very readable. Another was Christ and the Inheritance of the Saints—it was more badly damaged and deteriorated by age, and unreadable. Two others were the two volumes of The Yellowstone Story.

Volume 1 is lightly damaged, whereas Vol 2 severely damaged. Remembering how boring Vol 1 was at the start, I still decided to read it so that I could discard it. So after finishing What If Jesus Was Serious, I opened Vol 1 to chapter 6, about 1/3 into the 326 page book, and began reading. It was the story of the formation of the park. And the story was quite interesting—for a while.

As the story of the early years of the park unfolded, the book bombards the reader with names of people and places. I found keeping them straight was impossible. Buckskin Jim, Yellowstone John. Bill the Hunter. Whatever they were, they all ran together very quickly.

If you could get through the names, the story was good enough. This was the USA’s first national park, and no one really knew how it should be run. Local folks from nearby Montana and Wyoming began poaching game and stealing timber. The railroads fought over which one could run a spur into the park. Visitors had poor accommodations and brought bad reports home. But somehow, the park survived the encroachments and ineffective leaders.

Volume 1 ended with the ending of civilian leadership, around 1885, thirteen years after the park was formed. Volume 2 must start with the first government leaders. I finished Vol 1 yesterday, but will hold off on Vol 2 (if it is sufficiently readable) a couple of weeks while family things are front and center. Vol 1 was extremely well researched, with numerous endnotes making reference to park records, letters, newspapers, Congressional and Territorial records. I started reading them but quickly gave up as being too time consuming. The book is truly written on a scholarly level. It is far from the typical souvenir book you buy at tourist sites.

So how do I rate this book, will I ever read it again, and what do I do with it? Despite the boredom of the early chapters and name bombardment from cover to cover, I give it 4-stars. I don’t think I will ever read it again, unless I read some in the early chapters to see if my seventeen-year-old judgement is the same. I’ll hang on to it until I get past however much of Vol 2 I can read, then I will dispose of them in whatever way seems best.

book reviews, Christianity, Wesley

Book Review: “The Journals of John Wesley”

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For the second time in just a few months, I ended finished reading three books at about the same time—in this case just a day apart. I finished The Potter’s Wheel one day, What If Jesus Was Serious the next, and The Journals of John Wesley, Vol 2 the day after that.

I bought a full set of the Wesley Journals, the edition edited by Nehemiah Curnock about twenty years ago when I was thinking of writing a small-group study about Wesley. The writing project died, and the journals sat on a shelf in the basement, all eight volumes. Sometime about three or four years ago, I decided it was time to read it, and pulled out and read Vol. 1. As best as I can remember, I kind of enjoyed that volume. Then, early last year, I pulled out Volume 2 and decided to read it for my morning devotions. I quickly found out that this journal, maybe especially this volume, didn’t real work well as a devotional.

I could find only one set of the Curnock edition for sale on Advanced Book Exchange. Mine will be $80 chapter than that one.

The book really consists of a mix of Wesley’s journal and his diary, along with many notes by editor Curnock. I tried to read the diary and journal chronologically. I was able to do that, but found it tedious. The diary had entries pretty much every day, whereas the journal had entries maybe every few days. Keeping track of where I was was tedious. As was reading the diary. There wasn’t much devotional about the diary, which was bland entries on what Wesley did those days. Both would be of great interest to a biographer, but they didn’t make for inspirational reading.

A typical page in the journal, where the reader has to juggle the diary, the journal, and the copious footnotes.

Actually, there wasn’t much devotional about the journal either. During the period of this volume, 1738 to 1742, Wesley was in the early days of the Methodist movement. He visited the Moravian Church in Germany, then got into disputes with them about worship practices and the fine points of salvation doctrine. He started field preaching at the suggestion of George Whitefield, then got into disputes with him over salvation doctrine. He also disputed with some early Methodists, who came to believe something different about salvation. It’s hard to take inspiration from a man who is mainly disputing with everyone.

Toward the end of the volume was a change. The diary ceased (Wesley’s biographers figure Wesley still kept a diary volume, but that a books of it is missing). The journal seemed to expand and deal more with the inspirational moments of the growing Methodist movement and less about disputes. It became much more pleasurable reading. It makes me wonder how the next volume is.

But I’m not sure I’ll find out. I’ve decided I won’t read the rest of them. I have too many things to read to think I’ll ever get to Volumes 3 through 8. Right after I post this, I’m going to put an ad up for selling the set, for a pretty penny of course. But while waiting for them to sell, maybe—just maybe—I’ll read a little of Vol. 3.

But how do I rate this series? For devotional purposes, 1-star. For historical purposes, 5-stars.

Bible study, book reviews, Christianity

Book Review: “What If Jesus Was Serious?”

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Interesting but simple doodles helped Jethani illustrate his points;

Over a year ago, our pastor did a sermon series based on concepts in the book What If Jesus Was Serious by Skye Jethani. The book is based on the Sermon on the Mount. Up until that series, I had never heard of the book or of the author. Pastor Jeni’s sermon series was very good. So when the pastors of our church put together a space where we can borrow some of their books. I checked, this one was available, so I borrowed it. And I’m glad I did.

The book consists of seventy-two chapters, each two pages long, dealing with a small part of the sermon. Jethani’s point is that, if Jesus was serious in what he said, and we really think about what each point means, we will have to change our lives. Each chapter includes a sketch—a doodle—at the start that illustrates the point.  A number of these doodles are on the book cover.

The Sermon on the Mount is worth studying over and over. To see it from different eyes, hearing a little different take on it, is good. Jethani brought out points I never thought of, so that’s good. I found only one area I disagreed with him on. In Chapter 21, he said that guardrails (i.e. self-imposed barriers to our behavior) are good, but living at such a higher plane that you don’t need guardrails is better. I’ve read too many accounts of Christians in the limelight have benefitted from having established rigorous guardrails for themselves to agree with Jethani. At the same time, stories of Christians who haven’t established and lived by guardrails have had moral failures. Maybe Jethani is right, and not needing guardrails is superior to living by guardrails, but I’m not convinced.

The main thing I didn’t like about the book was the short chapters. I think I’d have liked 3 or 4 page chapters with a little more examination of the scripture point. On more than a few chapters, I was left a bit confused at Jethani’s point. Some more explanation would have benefitted me.

Oh, and I must say that Pastor Jeni’s sermons were much better than the book. Of course, she had more time to go into each point than the books did. And, no, the sermon series was not seventy-two weeks long.

My rating? If I could put 3.5-stars, I would. But, sticking to whole numbers, I give it 4-stars. Since I read this in a borrowed book, whether or not it’s a keeper isn’t a question. But I won’t be acquiring a copy for my library.

book reviews, Christianity

Book Review: “The Potter’s Wheel”

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Printed in London in 1897. But other books have the same or similar titles.

In the further interest of decumulation leading toward downsizing, I’ve been looking for books in the house that look like they would be good reads but which I wouldn’t likely read a second time, or want to keep. I found several right in The Dungeon that meet the criteria. One I finished a few days ago is The Potter’s Wheel, a 1897 book by John Watson, D.D.

This book falls into the category of not knowing where I got it. The book I have was printed in 1897 and may be a first edition. It’s also severely water damaged. How did that happen, and where did I get this book? Did I buy it used with this water damage? Was it on one of the four bookshelves that took some water damage when our hot water heater sprung a leak while we were on vacation? Don’t know. I thought I got this book about ten to fifteen years ago from Lynda’s cousin whose father-in-law had been a pastor. But the book doesn’t have his name in it, nor any markings you would expect to see in a pastor’s study book. So where I got it will remain a mystery.

The water damage isn’t real obvious in this photo, but it’s real.

Another mystery is what this book is about. I mean, it’s a book about the Christian religion, but toward what end? As I read it, it was somewhat good as a devotional book but not as a discipleship book. What was Watson’s intent? What did he hope readers would take away from reading this? I found this discussion at a place where a used copy was for sale.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work…Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Well, after reading that, I feel rather stupid at not recognizing the apparent brilliance of this book. At another site where the book is for sale, I found this.

One of Canada’s foremost early philosophers instrumental in the Hegelian movement that dominated Canada until WW1 and one of the most influential academic figures in Queen’s University history, introducing the disciplines of Psychology, Economics and Political Studies to the curriculum.

Now I’m confused. But to add to the confusion I found this description at yet another site.

The Potter’s Wheel is a novel written by John Watson and published in 1897. The story revolves around the life of a potter named David Grant, who lives in a small village in Scotland….

Except that last one is actually a modern novel by a man named Jeremy Benson, and the selling site did a poor job listing the book.

So yes, I’m confused. The book talks about the Christian life, with little hints of how God, as the skillful potter, will mold us from lumps of clay. Except that purpose for writing didn’t come through clearly in my read. And I read this on my noon reading time, in an undistracted way.

So how do I rate this book? Very readable. But loses points for failure to achieve a clear purpose. Overall, only 3-stars. I wish I could rate it higher, because I feel like I’m missing something that I should have gotten. But this is not a keeper. It goes up for sale tonight.

book reviews, History

More On The Bounty Trilogy: It’s A Lie

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1790 depiction of the Bounty’s launch being cast off with Bligh and those loyal to him.

As I said in my last post, I really enjoyed reading The Bounty Trilogy, especially reading it as I did, switching between the three volumes to get the story chronologically. I liked the way the story in Volume 1, Mutiny On The Bounty, agreed with my memories of seeing the 1962 movie and the comic book (graphic novel) I had. That book followed the story of Roger Byam, an upper class Brit who shipped on the Bounty for the purpose of putting together a grammar/dictionary of the Tahitian language.

Byam took no part in the mutiny, but did not leave the ship with Captain Bligh due to the Bounty‘s launch being overloaded. He was one of a dozen or so non-mutineers who went back to Tahiti on the ship and were left there when the Bounty sailed on in search of a hiding place. Byam and the others were captured a couple of years later when the Brits sent a ship to hunt down the mutineers. He faced a court martial and was found guilty, in part due to a certain sailor’s absence, a sailor who had witnessed a conversation that worked against his defense. That witnessed finally arrived back in Britain, testified on Byam’s behalf, and the conviction was reversed.

I enjoyed the book so much I wanted to read more. I went first to Wikipedia and read there, but I still wanted more. One problem with the Wikipedia article is that Byam was not listed as being part of the ship’s crew. I searched some more and found several items at JStor, a site I’ve registered at to have access to scholarly articles. The first article I read was “Nordhoff and Hall’s Mutiny on the Bounty: A Piece of Colonial Historical Fiction”. Charles Nordhoff
and James Norman Hall wrote The Bounty Trilogy. The article was written by Sylvie Largeaud-Ortega, of the University of French Polynesia. It’s not really an article, but rather a chapter in a 2018 book titled The Bounty from the Beach: Cross-Cultural and Cross-Disciplinary Essays. Here’s what I learned from reading that:

It’s all a lie! The one book Mutiny on the Bounty can barely be considered historical fiction, and it certainly isn’t history. The point-of-view character, Byam, is fictional. No such man shipped on the Bounty, there was no linguistic mission on the voyage. The book, alleged to have been taken from Byam’s recollection, had no such recollection to draw from.

Oh, I am so angry about this! Ms Largeaud-Ortega has destroyed, for me, a 60 year-old memory and ruined a recent pleasurable read. I’ll have more to say about her article/chapter in my next post.

I suppose I should have known that it’s likely that a novel, and a movie made from the novel, might not be faithful to history, but in my interaction with Bounty dramatization it never occurred. And now I’m disappointed.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed reading the book and I’m not sorry I devoted the time to it. The movie was good. The old graphic novel was good. But, man, I sure was taken in thinking it was history.

book reviews, History

Book Review: The Bounty Trilogy

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I’m really glad I found this on the shelf of legacy books of my family.

Many years ago I saw the 1962 movie Mutiny on the Bounty, starring Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard. Young as I was at the time, I thought it was a great movie. I remember that I also had a comic book (a graphic novel?) of the Bounty story. But it followed a different story with a different end. I have good memories of both the movie and the comic book, remembering details of what the characters did and what happened to them.

On our living room bookshelf was a book The Bounty Trilogy, containing three novels in one book. I knew it had to be about the Bounty adventure, but didn’t know what it contained. Once I started listing our legacy books for sale, I saw The Bounty Trilogy on the shelf, listed it on Facebook Marketplace, and wished I could read it before it sold. I finished whatever book I was reading sometime last month, and decided, “Why not start it?” At an advertised price of $20, I figured it might not sell quickly. if I could read 10 pages a day, it would take me over two months to finish. I took the book from the sale shelf and started, not being sure whether I hoped it sold or didn’t.

I suppose I’m a sucker for sea exploration stories.

The three novels are

  • Mutiny on the Bounty, covering the Bounty‘s sail from England, landing at Tahiti, start of the return trip, the mutiny, the lives of some of the men who went back to Tahiti, including the capture of some and their court martial in England. It is told from the point of view of Roger Byam, an educated man who sailed for the purpose of putting together a grammar and dictionary of the Tahitian language. This is the POV that was in my graphic novel so many years ago.
  • Men Against the Sea, telling the story of those sailors loyal to Captain Bligh that were put in the Bounty‘s launch to fend for themselves. Rather than land at some nearby island that was inhabited by people hostile to European boats, Blight sailed the open boat 3,600 miles to the island of Timor, where he knew there was a European colony.
  • Pitcairn’s Island. This is where a large number of the mutineers, including Fletcher Christian (2nd in command who led the mutiny), landed to hide out. The island was mis-charted on all British maps. It was almost 20 years before an American boat found them, and another six years before a British ship. By that time all but one of mutineers had died at the hands of others.
5-Stars for this sea story. Multiple points of view were not hard to follow.

The mutiny took place on pages 98-112 of the book. I reached that point after about eight days of reading. The cast of characters split into two points of view: the mutineers and a few loyal men sailing east in the Bounty’s launch sailing west. I decided to read the two POVs simultaneously. That was easy enough, as the open launch reached Timor a couple months, and the Bounty’s contingent reached Tahiti in a similar time frame. It was only a month before those people split up, some remaining on Tahiti and taking their chance that no British ship would visit there soon, and some sailing in the Bounty in search of an isolated place to hide. At that point, I began reading in three places in the volume. That got somewhat complicated, but I think I was able to keep the three POVs straight and chronological.

The book included a few color plates.

The book was exceedingly well written. Maybe I’m a sucker for sea exploration, but I devoured this book, finishing it in less than a month. I found the story of Byam’s life faithful to the comic book. Every detail I remembered from all those years ago were in the first book, do that pleased me. Except they talked a lot more about Byam’s dictionary and grammar than I remembered.

One sad part of the book was the death of Byam’s mother, perhaps brought on by an ugly letter Bligh wrote her. She died while Byam was enroute to England to face a court martial.

Toward the end, I was reading at the rate of 50 pages a day. It’s been a long time since I’ve found a book interesting enough to devote this much time to reading. I give the book 5-stars. But is it a keeper? Alas, no. I’ll keep it listed for sale. I hope it goes to someone who really wants to read it.

But, having said all of this, look for my next post, which is a follow-up to this, telling more that I’ve learned.