Book review – Page 2 – Andy Unedited

Ink-Stained Dreamers

As a lover of books and a lover of history, I found Adam Smyth’s The Book-Makers a delight. By zeroing in on a dozen and a half practitioners of the trade, Smyth gives us both a happy overview and fascinating stories of these often quirky individuals. My full review appears in the January-February 2025 edition of Christianity Today, which can also be found online. Here are a couple parts of the review that the editors left on the cutting room floor.

The chapter on an early bookbinder, William Wildgoose (yes, that really was his name) begins and ends with the tale of a wayward volume that was first housed in the famous Bodleian Library in Oxford, only to return unexpectedly three centuries later. In 1905 a young man comes in wanting advice on rebinding his ancient book. When the sub-librarian and assistant librarian inspect it closely—and then more closely!—they discover that this was once in the Bodleian’s collection, sold off as new printings became available. The book has been remarkably preserved through generations. And like someone who found a priceless pearl in a field, the Bodleian raises an enormous sum now equivalent to $300,000 to buy it back. The volume? Shakespeare’s First Folio, bound by William Wildgoose in 1623.

While zines go back a hundred years, Smyth features examples of the last few decades. The creators of these periodicals intentionally positioned them outside mainstream publishing in content and production values, often being photocopied and stapled. They knew that online existed, but they were committed to the tangibility, the physicality of their publications. They believed it provided a more multi-sensual experience that is not diluted by the digital.

Perhaps the author chose to highlight them for this very reason, as Smyth’s volume is in many ways a celebration of the physical book in all its dimensions.

A Beautiful, Heartbreaking Book

In A Matter of Death and Life, Irv and Marilyn Yolam offer a beautiful, heartbreaking book. In alternating chapters this husband and wife of 65 years write about Marilyn’s final months of fighting cancer. In the last half Irv alone tells his story.

Because this is very much a memoir, they give little advice on how to cope with death and sorrow. They simply relate their own experiences and reflections. For that reason, I find this much easier to read than many books on the topic. I can enter into their story, remembering my own, and grieve with them.

Irv, being a career therapist, brings a unique double perspective as both one who suffers and one who walks alongside others. Not surprisingly, he honestly tells how hard it is sometimes to follow his own counsel. His reflections on sex, memory and its loss, and facing our own death during grief are also worthwhile.

During the course of all this, he reads some of the books he has published and finds his own past case studies illuminating. I was especially struck by “Irene” who refused to accept counsel from someone like him who had not (at that time) suffered loss. Though the two continue to meet, they hit something of a stalemate. In retrospect Irv now believes his own grieving would make him a better therapist with her even if his counsel wouldn’t change.

Though I give the book a warm recommendation, I did find two things a bit concerning. First, a couple times Irv says most of his clients moved to a healthier place after a year, maybe two. Second, he comments that those who had a good marriage are often able to move forward more quickly than those who have not. I just hope that readers who don’t fit these patterns will realize they are his generalizations. Not everyone experiences grief in these ways. And there may be nothing wrong with those who don’t.

This warm, honest, insightful book movingly intertwines two stories of facing our own death and grieving the death of a loved one.

Why the Christmas Story Bothered Me

The following is adapted from a December 2014 post in AndyUnedited.

The Christmas story always bothered me.

It never made sense. No, I’m not talking about the virgin birth. Not the angels singing to shepherds. Not the star in the sky. Not the wise men.

No, it was the part about there being no room in the inn. It never made sense. Middle Eastern hospitality is legendary. Strangers, travelers, those in need—you can count on the deeply ingrained culture of showing generosity and graciousness to those who need a meal or a warm bed.

They would never, ever turn away a pregnant woman—especially a woman who was a relative visiting her ancestral home in Bethlehem. Many close and distant relatives would have been living or visiting nearby to care for her. Turn her away? Send her to a barn? Never. It wouldn’t happen.

Then what did happen? In Luke 2:7, the Greek word traditionally translated as “inn” is better rendered as “guest room,” which is how the NIV puts it. Middle Eastern peasant homes were one large room though sometimes a guest room or “mother-in-law room” was attached. But since the guest room was already occupied, the owners of the house did the only sensible thing—they vacated the main house and gave it over to Mary and Joseph’s use.

The couple would not be alone either. When it came time for the baby to be born, Joseph would wait outside while women in the community would come and assist Mary. Luke didn’t mention the community because his readers would have known that without having to be told.

Then what in the world was a manger (a feed box for animals that Luke mentions) doing inside the house?

The single, main room of such a house typically had two parts: a smaller ground floor level and a larger level raised a couple feet for cooking, eating, and sleeping. Peasants would bring their animals into the lower level of the house at night for two reasons—to keep the animals safe from thieves and to provide warmth for the family sleeping on the upper level when it was cold.

Cut into the floor of the upper level where it meets the lower level was (wait for it) a manger. A place for hay to feed the animals.*

Some years ago I was describing this to a friend, and her eyes got huge. “That’s the kind of house I grew up in!” Her family had been missionaries among peasants in Syria. You can still find such homes there today.

Yes, Jesus was not born in a palace, but neither was he born alone in a barn. He was born in a common home of the people, a home that was opened up to him through a delightful demonstration of hospitality. When we welcome into our lives both family and strangers, the needy and the self-assured, we are living the Christmas story.

For the Christmas story is not one of “no room in the inn.” Rather it is one of wondrous welcome and generosity.

—

Image credit: Ambroz from Pixabay.

*See Kenneth E. Bailey, “The Story of Jesus Birth: Luke 2:1-20” in Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008), pp. 25-37.

A Flawed, Swaggering Book

I love big, bold books that offer a sweeping view of history. Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel is a stellar example. Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is not.

Harari does cover (as promised) the last 70,000 years of human history from the first proto-homo sapiens to the possibilities of future human genetic and bionic engineering. Yet his swaggering, blustering style (while entertaining) blocks the light he might otherwise shed on a variety of important topics.

His overall structure has merit. He begins with what he calls the cognitive revolution of perhaps 40,000 years ago. Sapiens expanded their inventions, art, and language far beyond any other animal. This allowed for cooperation that made up for deficiencies in size, strength, and speed.

The next major shift was the agricultural revolution of about 12,000 years ago which allowed sapiens to shift from roving hunter-gatherers to settled farmers. Harari’s controversial view is a thoroughly negative take on what most see as the foundation of cities and civilizations. He claims it was a poor trade in nutrition, safety, happiness, and justice.

The third transformation is the scientific revolution of 500 years ago. While most civilizations were previously based on received knowledge from the past, science celebrated ignorance which could motivate the search for knowledge. Europeans became supremely curious about the world, went exploring, and promptly conquered those who were not interested in new ideas, new tools, new weapons, or new discoveries.

Many reviewers have noted his slapdash treatments. The Guardian points out, for example, that his interpretation of the 1827 battle of Navarino in the war for Greek independence is wildly distorted, as even Wikipedia will attest. Marcus Paul also says, “He gives the (imagined) example of a thirteenth-century peasant asking a priest about spiders and being rebuffed because such knowledge was not in the Bible. It’s hard to know where to begin in saying how wrong a concept this is.” Instead, monks, friars, and abbeys “were central to the learning of the universities.”

The biggest problem in the book is introduced early, in chapter 2. According to Harari, every idea is a fiction, a social construct—nations, corporations, gods, values. None exist except in our imaginations. Ok, but . . .

On what basis, then, does he later claim that the slaughter of billions of domesticated animals since the advent of industrial agriculture may be the greatest crime in history? According to his own way of thinking, crimes (notions of justice) must also be fictions. After all, we (including Harari) only make up such rules. They don’t actually exist. But we use them to punish people, justify conquest, or write books claiming we are the ones who can offer an objective, dispassionate view when everyone else is wallowing in subjectivity.

Harari’s problem is that by his reckoning neither the subjective (which he denigrates) nor the objective (a perspective he subjectively values) exist since both are ideas. His own assumptions undo his many, overconfident historical, scientific, and moral judgments. All his self-assured pronouncements about religion, politics, and ethics must themselves be fictions. They become just as imaginary as his own supposed objectivity.

Sapiens has value. But it is so difficult separating the wheat from the chaff that it’s probably not worth the time.

A Classic Adventure Tale

I almost never read a book more than once. Yet I thoroughly enjoyed my fifth journey through Watership Down with my neighborhood book club. As I mentioned earlier, this classic adventure tale of friendship, loyalty, perseverance, and courage is so compelling you forget it is a 400-page book about rabbits!

Some of my favorite aspects of the book include:

♦ The wonderful cast of diverse characters we grow to love—the big, gruff, good-hearted Bigwig; the often-misunderstood Fiver; the raucous and faithful Kehar; the encouraging storyteller Dandelion; the clever Blackberry; the “court jester” Bluebell; the young and earnest Pipkin; and more—all of whose gifts are bound together by the wounded leader Hazel.

♦ Hazel’s courage and generosity of spirit seen especially when he goes alone to their archenemy Woundwort, not just to offer a truce but a visionary, constructive way forward that would benefit all.

♦ The beautiful arc of the plot from early crisis to major climax to final resolution. (Even the very first and the last sentences are parallel!)

♦ How the main storyline is paralleled throughout by stories of rabbit lore and mythology—with the two finally intersecting so touchingly on the last page.

♦ Favorite Moment: Bigwig’s dramatic announcement to his enemies that he is not his warren’s chief rabbit, leading them to imagine that some other larger, even more fearsome leader must be nearby.

♦ Favorite Line: When Woundwort fails to defeat Bigwig and then tries to bribe him, Bigwig tells him, “Silflay hraka”! (p. 448)

What did you love about the book?

A True-to-Life Allegory

What would happen if Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress met Kreeft’s imaginative world-view dialogue Between Heaven and Hell? I think we’d get Richter’s provocative and entertaining Christopher’s Journey.

We follow our protagonist on an allegorical journey to the Mountain of God encountering questions of good and evil, right and wrong, hope and despair, the spiritual and the material.

On his trek, Christopher is joined by a colorful collection of characters who each carry a distinct lens through which to view the world. Timothy values rationality, the life of the mind, and what science can prove. Chanter sees beyond good and evil to a singular existence that puts him at peace. Dwayne is full of youthful idealism and energy. Martin is a salt-of-the-earth companion packed with humor and good sense. On their path they meet thieves and brigands, desert heat and an impassable bridge.

Christopher (“Christ carrier”) also brings with him a stone which he has seen used powerfully by his mentor in performing miracles. Yet somehow it remains inert in Christopher’s hands. This produces doubts and uncertainties that Christopher cannot shake and which drive him on his pilgrimage.

As we might expect from an allegory subtitled “A Theodicy” (an attempt to explain the goodness of God in the face of evil), we do not find the fluid plot or fully developed personalities of a modern novel. But we do meet unexpected twists in the tale and encounter characters who are more than one-dimensional.

This is not a book of easy solutions. A good deal is left ambiguous and unresolved which some may find unsatisfying. Yet while there is truth in life, having much that is unanswered is also true to life. We as readers are left to struggle through these questions ourselves, which in any case we all must do.

—

Kent Richter is a writer and friend who is a retired professor of philosophy. He gave me this book. My opinions are my own.

Book Club Options

It’s my turn to choose the next book for our book club. Here are the options I came up with. What suggestions do you have?

Fiction
Watership Down by Richard Adams. A classic adventure tale of friendship, loyalty, perseverance, and courage. So compelling you’ll forget that it is a 300-page book about rabbits!

I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Engers. Perhaps the most endearing post-apocalyptic novel you will ever read, set on the shores and the waters of Lake Superior.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (the author of The Martian). Interstellar kidnapping, crossing alien cultures, a protagonist with attitude, saving the galaxy. What more could you want?

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. A very human sci-fi thriller set in Chicago that makes you care about the characters.

History
Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand (author of Unbroken). A broken horse, a broken jockey, a broken owner, a broken trainer—who somehow all heal each other in the underdog story of the century.

April 1865 by Jay Winik. An historian and diplomat who saw first-hand how civil wars around the world often ended badly—either in the genocide of the losing side or in an interminable guerrilla insurgency—tells why neither happened in the United States.

Shantung Compound by Langdon Gilkey. In this minor classic, Gilkey offers remarkably astute observations about human nature under pressure as he and hundreds of Westerners endured a Japanese prisoner of war camp in China during World War II—a camp that included my 96-year-old friend Ruth!

Symphony for the City of the Dead by M. T. Anderson. The dramatic story of how Shostakovich wrote a symphony during the siege of Leningrad and smuggled it out to be played around the world when the Nazi’s seemed invincible. Even more amazingly, the symphony was performed in Leningrad itself in August 1942, with the city surrounded.

Non-Fiction
How to Know a Person by David Brooks. In a day of hyper reactions and extreme tribalism, a book of stories and practical wisdom on reviving the lost art of conversation and making friends.

Educated by Tara Westover. The astounding memoir of how the daughter of a mega-dysfunctional, survivalist family in Idaho, lacking any formal education, ended up at Cambridge.

Factfulness by Hans Rosling. The subtitle says it all—Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, from a Swedish researcher and advisor to the UN. Mind blown.

Mastering with Grace, Sacrifice, and Generosity

When I first read Amor Towles marvelous novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, I was immediately struck by this:

“A man must master his circumstances or otherwise be mastered by them.”

I don’t think Towles means men and women should exert power over our environment and relationships, forcing them to conform to our will. After all, the hero of his novel, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, is forcibly under house arrest in the hotel he is staying at. He cannot leave without threat of death.

Rather I think Towles is focused on the attitude, the mindset we have when we face challenges, disappointments, tragedy, or injustice. But it’s an attitude that shapes our actions and ultimately our character. We can become victims of our circumstances, letting them force us into their mold, or we can rise above them.

That is exactly what Alexander does. Instead of falling into despair, he makes the most of his new situation. Rather than seeking revenge, he looks for how he can contribute to the life and people of the hotel—both guests and staff. He takes a job in the hotel restaurant. He becomes guardian of an abandoned girl, and then the girl’s daughter. He falls in love. Over the course of decades, he makes a profound and lasting impact on the lives of many people—even though he is imprisoned!

Anthony Ray Hinton is a true-life example of this. Wrongfully imprisoned and placed on death row for decades, he transformed from a cauldron of anger to a beacon of light for those around him. As chronicled in his astounding book, The Sun Does Shine, he mastered his circumstances long before he was finally exonerated and released.

The examples Towles and Hinton give are ones of shaping our circumstances not with force but with goodness, sacrifice, and generosity. Thus Towles memorable line about circumstances may need a slight alteration. The point is not to control our situation or ourselves in any way we wish. Rather it is a choice between two masters:

“We must allow grace to master us or we will be mastered by our circumstances.”

A Cautionary Tale

In many ways, Fierce Attachments, a memoir of a daughter’s relationship with her mother, is a sad tale. After the sudden and early death of the Vivian’s father, her mother is consumed by her grief, using it to shield herself from others. Though Vivian wants to connect with her mother, she has difficulty. Her mother—a strong, intelligent, capable, and opinionated (!) woman—cannot see her daughter or the world through any other lens than herself.

But we should not judge her mother too harshly. Even many of us who have not experienced a sudden, traumatic loss, still live like this. We are simply focused on ourselves and have difficulty getting out of that frame to see people from their own viewpoint.

Vivian and her mother can’t connect and can’t separate. What makes this raw book even more tragic is that while Vivian criticizes the narrow path her mother has taken, almost inevitably it seems, Vivian ends up doing the same. She has relationships with men, but she can never really attach in a deep and lasting way. She even wonders if she intentionally picks men who are incapable of that kind of connection.

In How to Know a Person, David Brooks mentions Gornick’s memoir as a cautionary tale. While there are practical ways to know a person better, he says, we also need to be alert to the many paths which can prevent that from happening.

This memoir, however, is a cautionary tale in another sense. It highlights that while grief can be healthy, it can aslo bind us if it becomes the consuming fact of our life. Grief is a dreadful and necessary journey through the valley of the shadow of death, but the valley is not the destination.

The Crux of Faith

For Christians, the cross may be so familiar that we cease to see it and be shocked by it.

To help us, Bran Zahnd offers an untypical theology of the cross. As the author suggests, The Wood Between the Worlds is an exercise in theopoetics—akin to meditations on nineteen aspects or implications of the death of Christ. Since other excellent volumes cover the standard topics of atonement, substitution, forgiveness, and salvation, Zahnd turns his attention elsewhere.

We read, for example, that while humanity was exiled from Eden and the Tree of Life, now all are welcome at the cross, the true Tree of Life. We also find a profound chapter on Pontius Pilate, and how we are all at some level stained by skepticism and dirty hands. In addition, Zahnd offers a wonderfully clear explanation of Rene Girard’s important work on the social dynamics of scapegoating today and throughout history.

Insights and icons from Eastern Orthodox Christianity weave in and out of these and his other uncommon subjects such as Ellie Wiesel’s doubts, the harrowing of hell, and Mary’s ponderings.

Much of the book considers power and weakness. In this light Zahnd takes up uncomfortable topics such as capital punishment, pacifism, and James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree.

While today’s church often focuses on power, the gospel writers emphasize suffering, loss, and weakness. When Paul says, “God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Cor 1:25), he “doesn’t mean that when God is weak, God is still stronger than human might. That wouldn’t be scandalous. It would be just a typical boast about power as conventionally understood. Rather Paul is taking us into the deep mystery of the cross, saying that God’s power is precisely located in the weakness” of the cross. [p. 29].

Power corrupts as the Ring of Power in Tolkien’s trilogy twists those who seek it. All our attempts to use power are likewise subject to corruption. Christianity is tainted when it aligns itself with government-sponsored violence as all sides did in World War I and as we still see today. We cannot justify such actions by misunderstanding the imagery of armies and destruction in the book of Revelation. For it is the slain lamb who is the central victor of the book.

Through mystery and metaphor, in this mind-provoking and soul-provoking book, Zahnd explores the literal crux of the Christian story.