Category: Book review

I came to Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game late, even though I’ve been a sci-fi fan all my life. What impressed me was its emotional depth and philosophical sophistication for a book that was in the young adult genre before that category hit the big time in recent years.
Continue reading “The End of Ender’s Game “

One of the most dramatic events of the twentieth century was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. What is less well known is that two other great men died the same day — Christian scholar and author C. S. Lewis, and novelist and pantheist Aldous Huxley.
Continue reading “Fifty Years Ago Three Great Men Died”

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan has exploded on the scene as the #1 bestseller on several lists and become a media feast. This book suggests that Jesus was just a failed revolutionary and that the apostle Paul should be credited with making him into “Christ.” This is not news on several levels.
Continue reading “News Flash! Zealot Isn’t News”

Why are some academics so addicted to bad writing? Why do they churn out passive verbs like promises from a politician? Why do they multiply abstract nouns like mosquitoes in summer? Why can’t they escape from the jungle of jargon? And maybe most important, why can’t they be funny?
Continue reading “Stylish Academic Writing 3: Why So Bad?”

Is my writing flabby or fit? Am I a lean, mean writing machine, or have I invaded heart attack territory? I went to Helen Sword’s WritersDiet Test to find out. And find out I did.
Continue reading “Stylish Academic Writing 2: WritersDiet Test”

More and more I am convinced that the doorway into understanding the New Testament is the Old Testament. It’s not a new idea. I think Jesus had something to do with it. But it’s one of the reasons we made this a major feature in our recently released LifeGuide in Depth series, including A Deeper Look at James, that my wife, Phyllis, and I wrote. An example can illustrate the point.
Continue reading “The Wisdom of Solomon”

In an era of extreme, vitriolic rhetoric, when someone offers calm, straightforward fairness, it is like a cool, refreshing breeze on a hot, muggy day. That is what Gerald Rau provides in Mapping the Origins Debate on the very contentious issue of evolution and creation. He offers a model not only of clarity in thought but of civility in presentation.
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Writers and publishers have always had a love-hate relationship. Mark Twain once offered “the perfect recipe for a modern American publisher” as follows: “Take an idiot from a lunatic asylum and marry him to an idiot woman and the fourth generation of this connection should be a good publisher.”*
Continue reading “Good Prose 3: The Business of Writing”

For thirty-five years I’ve been recommending William Zinsser’s On Writing Wel. It is the essential book on the craft, especially for new writers. Zinsser zeroes in on all the myths, bad habits and misunderstandings people have when they start writing.
Continue reading “Cut the Clutter”