Twelve Books I Keep Talking About

One measure of how much I like a book is by how much I keep talking about it. In one way or another it has captured me, provoked me, stayed with me.

Here are twelve, in no particular order, that I’ve read in the last two years which I keep thinking about. As they range from fiction to nonfiction and from academic to popular, I think you can find one in the list below that you’ll really love too.

Factfulness by Hans Rosling
A mindblowing book that shows with solid data (1) that the world is much better economically, politically, educationally, medically than we ever thought, (2) why we are ignorant of these facts, and (3) why this gives us hope to keep working on what needs fixing.

Recursion by Blake Crouch
Believable, well-rounded characters that we care about and a sci-fi page turner all in one.

Dreyer’s English by Benjamin Dreyer
Stephen Colbert meets Strunk & White in this informative and cheerfully acerbic guide to grammar, style, and punctuation

The Road to Character by David Brooks
A much-needed book about the importance of eulogy virtues (the impact we have on others) over resumé virtues (our achievements) which reveres the “crooked timber” school of humanity; that is, people who are very aware of their flaws and who, as a result, push against their bent selves to achieve strength.

Them by Ben Sasse
A U.S. senator says America isn’t polarized for the reasons we think but because we are lonely people who have lost connection to our communities.

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff
This fun supernatural novel is an homage to H. P. Lovecraft and his spooky, weird pulp fiction of the last century while also serving as an incisive critique of Lovecraft’s bigotry.

The Crucifixion by Fleming Rutledge
A substantive and pastoral celebration of Christ’s crucifixion as God’s victory over Sin, Death, and the Devil, while seeing his substitutionary work (in our place and on our behalf) as the necessary partner to this cosmic triumph.

12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson
Peterson is the crusty, old coach who does not tolerate excuses, lack of effort, or stupid choices. He expects the best from you and won’t settle for anything less—not because he needs another victory but because he wants the best for you.

Originals by Adam Grant
From what makes a great base stealer to how to parent for moral development to why you should get rid of the suggestion box to how to write a great headline to creating change as a minority in a majority culture, the book offers wide ranging, stimulating ideas we can put into practice.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
Great fun all the way through, at the intersection of books and technology, old knowledge and new.

The Myth of Equality by Ken Wytsma
This important and eye-opening book reveals how state-sponsored racist policies did not end with the abolishment of slavery, what biblical justice calls us to, and how we can move ahead individually and corporately in concrete ways.

The Theological Intentions of Mark’s Literary Devices by Dean B. Deppe
A tour de force; a systematic unpacking of the structural and other devices Mark uses to highlight four themes: the Messiah is a suffering, crucified servant; discipleship will also be met with suffering, confusion, and failure; the Gentiles are welcomed into the new community in Christ; many Jewish regulations are fulfilled in Jesus and are no longer in effect.

What are the books you keep talking about?

Everyone Gets Writer’s Block

One way or another we all fall victim to writer’s block. But it can come in many forms. It is not just a blank screen that sits forever mocking our lack of output. Sometimes it means we just move at a very slow pace. Our perfectionism kicks in so we fuss over every sentence before moving on. Or we fear someone will think we are shallow or just borderline literate.

If that’s you, you are in good company. The good news is there are very practical things we can do to get us moving. Let me just reiterate a few ideas that might help.

1. Get The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and practice Morning Pages as she describes them. Writing thirty minutes a day without self-editing or correction about anything at all can help us form new habits that can get us writing more on a regular basis. If you think thirty minutes a day is a lot to commit to, think of how much time you’ve wasted staring at a screen getting nowhere. Highly recommended.

2. Read Betty Flowers whom I reference in Write Better. In just a page she gives us a great image. We all need our Judge and need to assure ourselves that the Judge will indeed have her say. But not till the end of the process—not at the beginning and not in the middle.

3. Do some writing exercises regularly. You can find sentence completion and other options on websites such as these:

Writing Exercises

Creative Writing Exercises

10 Best Creative Writing Exercises

Doing these show us and remind us that we can indeed write on demand.

4. Play Balderdash. This box game in which we create phony definitions is great fun in a group, especially when you let your imagination run wild and other people can spur you on. Getting a group together will be easier, we trust, in the near future. The fun in this game is the spoonful of sugar to help the medicine of writing without overthinking go down easily.

Finally, Paul Silvia in How to Write A Lot tells us that people who were required to write daily wrote 3.5 time more pages and had twice as many creative ideas as those who waited for inspiration.* Being productive (such as with Morning Pages), can—even if our writing is flawed, wordy, or logically suspect—get us into a rhythm of writing which allows an opportunity for creativity.

Remember: We always can (and should) fix it later.

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*Thanks, Marcia Bosscher, for highlighting this for me.

America’s Most Polarized Election?

They say, America’s polarized in unprecedented ways.

Is that true? Consider the election held in 1800 too.

Just twelve years after ratifying the Constitution, President John Adams ran for re-election against his own vice president, Thomas Jefferson. The rhetoric was superheated by hyperpartisan media, making it one of the country’s most acrimonious episodes.

Jon Meacham’s outstanding volume, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, and David McCullough’s excellent biography, John Adams, reveal the apocalyptic language that was common on both sides of the aisle. Federalist papers supporting Adams and Republican papers behind Jefferson were the equivalent of FOX News and MSNBC.

“Hyperbole was the order of the day,” Meacham writes. “For Republicans, Adams was an aspiring monarch. Americans, one Republican wrote, ‘will never permit the chief magistrate of the union to become a king instead of a president.’ For Federalists, Jefferson was a dangerous infidel. The Gazette of the United States told voters to choose ‘GOD—AND A RELIGIOUS PRESIDENT or impiously declare for JEFFERSON__AND NO GOD.’ ” (Meacham, 322)

McCullough tells us, “In almost daily attacks in the Aurora, Adams was belittled as ‘The President by Three Votes,’ mocked again as ‘His Rotundity,’ excoriated as a base hypocrite, a tool of the British, ‘a man divested of his senses,’ . . . a man ‘unhinged’ by the ‘delirium of vanity.’ ” (McCullough, 485, 498)

Adams ended up third behind Jefferson and Burr who were tied in electoral votes. Yes, this was the election in which for Jefferson, “It might be nice. It might be nice to get Hamilton on your side.” Hamilton’s tilt toward Jefferson helped break the deadlock in the House between the two Republicans.

One irony is that Jefferson and his Republican friends feared that Adams wanted a stronger executive leaning toward that of a monarch. Yet it was Jefferson who expanded the power of the presidency far more than Adams ever contemplated. Not the least example of this was doubling the size of the country through the Louisiana Purchase, though the Constitution was very unclear (silent?) about such a transaction. (Meacham, 389-391)

Extreme political language is not an invention of the last twenty years. And if we are looking for the period when the country was most at odds with itself, we dare not forget a Civil War costing the lives of six hundred thousand. That level of violence seems to be more polarized than anything we are experiencing today.

Am I saying the issues we face now are unimportant and not worth vigorous debate? Not at all. Rather, we should put today’s conflicts in perspective. The end of the world is not at hand pending the outcome of the next election. Nonetheless, we should always work for the common good, to support those who are in need, to ensure justice and fair play for all.

Do you want more insight on how to think, to act, and to understand our current situation? Then read a good history book or two and stay away from Twitter.

Lovecraft Country

Matt Ruff’s fun supernatural novel, Lovecraft Country, is an homage to H. P. Lovecraft and his spooky, weird pulp fiction of the last century. Yet it is also an incisive critique of Lovecraft’s bigotry.

Set in Chicago in 1954, the novel follows a series of exploits of an extended family and their friends as they encounter mid-century racism while traveling, while trying to buy a house, and while trying to get jobs. These characters are very aware of the power dynamics at work around them, but they nonetheless act with resolve and creativity to achieve their ends. In ways these are classic underdogs—unlikely and under-resourced people who somehow manage to succeed.

The encounters with the police, with realtors, with employers are vivid and real even as the paranormal and extraterrestrial weave in and out of the narratives. At the beginning of the second episode, for example, we get one of the best, briefest explanations of redlining in Chicago in the 1950s to be found. And then there is the fun—the tributes to Lovecraft’s genre, to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, to fifties-era space comics, and more.

Ruff is a master of comic irony, of flipping the script, of teaching us our own history without our even knowing he has done so.

Remembering J. I. Packer

Over my forty years at InterVarsity Press I crossed paths with J. I. Packer a number of times. This soft-spoken and steady British theologian, who died this past week, became something of an accidental celebrity when his substantive book Knowing God suddenly became a best seller. When, as a newly minted InterVarsity campus staff member in 1973, I learned that IVP sometimes gave free books to staff, I made sure they knew that’s the book I wanted. I drank it in.

Once I recall him talking about his concise writing style. “Packer by name; packer by trade,” he responded. I could tell he enjoyed saying that, and I got the impression he used the line often.

On another occasion Jim reprimanded me and IVP for dropping the dedication to his wife in our latest printing of Knowing God. I assured him that wasn’t possible. He assured me it was. He was right. I checked, and somehow it had been dropped. We fixed it next printing.

I introduced him two times when he was a speaker, and once ran him on an errand for cookies for the group of Regent students he was hosting. I was impressed by how he took personal responsibility to make sure his students were treated with genuine hospitality.

Once several of us took him to lunch, and as we ate IVP publisher Bob Fryling posed the question, “How would you describe IVP among the many Christian publishers that are around?”

Immediately Jim responded, “Some publishers tell you what you should believe. Other publishers tell you what you already believe. But IVP helps you to believe.” We were amazed at the instantaneous response, but he took it as par for the course that he could spout off such aphorisms on demand, and gladly gave us permission to use the line publicly.

Perhaps my most memorable encounter was when I got a glimpse into his humanity. At a conference I was assigned the task of chauffeuring him and another famous author. As these two good friends talked in the back seat, they began sharing intimate updates on their similar experiences of grief and difficulty—all as if I were not there. I never forgot that no matter how elevated we might be, we are not immune to life.

And I never forgot the joy and good humor Jim always exhibited in every circumstance.

A Story of Art, Addiction, and Renewal

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is famous for its albatross and for “Water, water, every where,/Nor any drop to drink.” In Mariner, Malcolm Guite gives us so much more in this first-rate biography of Coleridge combined with a masterful analysis of the work’s compelling story, vivid images, and powerful poetry. In doing so Guite unveils the remarkable parallels between the two. Even more remarkable, Coleridge’s life seemed to follow the pattern of the ancient mariner after he had written the poem, not before.

Coleridge is also known for his addiction to opium which took him to his own “Night-mare Life-in-Death.” It began when a doctor prescribed it for his various aliments (something doctors of the day commonly did not knowing its powerful addictive effects). Intertwined with his years-long struggle for physical well-being was one for spiritual renewal. Coleridge never rejected his faith but went through struggles to a deeper more profound personal, intellectual and theological commitment.

We also see his early friendship with Wordsworth which was crucial as the two launched the Romantic movement in reaction to the dry rationality of the Enlightenment. Yet even this relationship went through its stormy patches, much of it due to Coleridge’s own troubles.

Such was the power of Coleridge’s personality and intellect that even in the midst of his deep struggles he reshaped the way the world saw Shakespeare in a series of landmark lectures. Previously the Bard was viewed as a second-tier talent of popular leanings. After Coleridge we know him to be the premier wielder of not only the English language but of art and life.

As a priest, poet and songwriter, Guite is perfectly suited for the task of bringing this life and this work home to us. He does not disappoint.

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Disclosure: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

The Reason Is Not Because

The great pianist Vladimir Horowitz practiced the scales every day, even in his eighties. He wanted to continually master his craft so that he would be “be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come.”

The same is true for us. Here are two skills you can master. Don’t worry about them as you write. Go back and look for them later.

First, we all know passive voice is usually a no-no. But recognizing it can be a trick. Here’s one easy way to catch a bunch. After you’ve drafted something, search for these:

There is
It is
There are

You can probably rewrite 90% of these sentences in active voice. For example,

Weak: There is much to learn about the theology of dancing porpoises.
Better: We still have much to learn about the theology of dancing porpoises.

Weak: There are other people who are as good looking as I am.
Better: No one is as good looking as I am.

Weak: It is well known that a supernova of the sun would eliminate male pattern baldness.
Better: As we all know, a supernova of the sun would eliminate male pattern baldness.

Here’s another one you can easily search for and fix. Sentences using the pattern of “The reason is because . . .” are redundant, and redundancy drives me nuts and crazy. This is like saying, “The cause is the cause that . . .” We can do better. Consider these:

Weak: The reason is because Facebook is trying to suck all the DNA out of my body.
Better: The reason is that Facebook is sucking all the DNA out of my body.

Weak: The reason is because the dog ate my homework.
Better: That’s because I had to burn my homework to stay alive when I was stranded in the middle of a blizzard.

Weak: The reason is because Al Gore is so boring his code name as Vice President was “Al Gore.”
Better: You can identify Al Gore when he is in a room full of secret service agents because he’s the stiff one.*

Be like Vladimir. Practicing scales can seem tedious and below you. But it can be the gateway to art.

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* Thanks to Al Gore and “Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!” for these two. www.npr.org/2013/02/16/172030420/al-gore-plays-not-my-job

Credits: Cianna Pixabay (porpoise); desimaxwell Pixabay (rock face)

Finding Good Books

I am always on the lookout for something good to read. By that I mostly mean books.

I love browsing books at a library or at a bookstore or online, but that can be hit and miss. Sometimes the title or cover or back cover pulls me in, and then I am disappointed when I do read it. Also at the back of my mind is this nagging fear that in just browsing I may have missed something better.

I also get recommendations from friends, read books by authors I’ve already read and enjoyed, and look at bestseller lists. I can usually get higher quality, more focused suggestions in those ways.

Another avenue I’ve found helpful in recent years is Goodreads. This social networking site is just about books. Friends post what they want to read, what they have read, give books a rating, and sometimes offer a review. Every day I get an email listing about two dozen books my Goodreads friends have read or want to read. (You can change the frequency of these email alerts too.)

Unlike other social networking sites, the goal is not necessarily to gather as many friends as you can—at least that’s not the way I use it. Rather, I try to find people whose tastes and interests overlap with mine.

When I see a book given good ratings and good reviews by several different people, I pay attention. That’s how Where the Crawdads Sing and Educated have made it on my “Want to Read” list. And that’s why I read The Lager Queen of Minnesota which proved to be just right for me.

Since I tend to like history, science fiction, biblical studies, and literary fiction, I try to get people on my friends list who do too. At the same time, I don’t want my list of friends to be too narrow. I want to be stretched to read in areas I might not ordinarily think of. Sometimes I just want beach reading. So I have friends who read a lot of those. Sometimes I want to read something from a different political or theological perspective. I have friends who point me to those as well.

Goodreads has lots of other features for those who like to track the books they are reading or who want to comment on a friend’s review. You can also suggest something to a friend.

Aggregate ratings and all the reviews for a particular book are available from the whole Goodreads community—not just those from your friends. I find that reading the most positive and the most negative reviews helps me get a handle on whether a certain book could be for me.

Goodreads is an excellent tool. But however you pick books, by all means, read books.

An American Ideal, An American Myth

Books are better sources of information and insight than tweets or headlines. Two years ago I reviewed here The Myth of Equality, a book that gives more help and understanding than anything you will hear or read in the news today.

Ken Wytsma was talking with a young man running his own landscaping firm who was proud of how he’d started from zero and succeeded by virtue of hard work, with no benefit from privilege. So Ken asked where he got most of his business (the suburbs) and where they worked on jobs (in backyards) and when (during the day) and how he got business (putting flyers on doors and knocking at houses).

Then Ken asked, “If you were a young black man proposing to work in the backyards of those suburbanites during the day when they’re not home, is it possible some of your clients might show a degree of suspicion or bias? If you were Hispanic, talked with an accent, or looked like you were from a culture unfamiliar to the suburban communities where people can afford backyard ponds and fountains, do you think it might–even if ever so slightly–affect how successful you are when you knock on doors?” The white friend understood.


While equality is an American ideal, Ken Wytsma tells us, it is also an American myth. State-sponsored racist policies did not end with the abolishment of slavery. They have continued in various forms ever since.

As Wytsma recounts in The Myth of Equality, voting restrictions in the post-Reconstruction era reduced Alabama’s black voter turnout from 180,000 to 3,000. It fell to zero in Virginia and North Carolina. Today efforts continue to hinder voter registration.

Astonishingly, forced labor was widely reinstituted around the turn of the twentieth century with thousands of blacks arrested on minor charges and then leased back by the state to business owners. In fact, in Mississippi, “25 percent of convicts leased out for forced labor were children.”

Regarding housing, redlining in the North during most of the twentieth century reduced the value of minority real estate holdings, with contractual options to take their property away from them for missing one payment–something white buyers did not have to endure. The effects of this systematic impoverishment are with us still.

In the last fifty years, the war on drugs has targeted minority populations creating an incarceration-industrial complex. Things are beginning to change, but Wytsma finds it ironic that in Oregon, where marijuana is now legal, “white corporate businessmen now stand to make millions of dollars by selling a product that millions of men, predominantly of color, are currently incarcerated for possessing in miniscule amounts.”

Does all this have anything to do with the gospel? Wytsma quotes Timothy Keller: “Any neglect shown to the needs of the members of the vulnerable is not called merely a lack of mercy or charity, but a violation of justice.” Biblical justice is not just punishing evil doers but restoring what was bent or broken. The cross doesn’t just allow sins to be forgiven but restores relationships. It reconciles us to God and us to each other.

Compassion for individuals is good and right, but it is only a component of justice which also looks to remedy underlying causes for such needs. Compassion, contends Wytsma, can also feed our hero complex. We encourage a more holistic justice when we use our influence and authority to give our responsibilities, opportunities, and power to those who have not had it equally.

Through a clear retelling of American history, a well-rounded discussion of biblical justice, and concrete ways we can move ahead individually and corporately, Wytsma provides an important book on an important topic.

Disclosure: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Reading Romans with Eastern Eyes

For those like me who are steeped in Western individualism, the honor-shame dynamics of the Bible are hiding in plain sight.

Honor abounds in the Bible as seen in words like glory, name, blessing, praise, clean, renown, glorify, beloved. Shame words are equally plentiful—ashamed, accursed, humiliation, wretched, forgotten, reproach, despised, mocking, crushed, reviled, cursed.

The dynamic of corporate identity comes to the fore in Scripture far more than many of us imagine. Jackson W.’s Reading Romans with Eastern Eyes (a series of essays that move through the letter chapter by chapter rather than a verse-by-verse commentary) does not seek to undo centuries of analysis in the Western tradition that emphasizes sin and guilt. Rather it seeks to place alongside that viewpoint another dimension that deepens our understanding of Paul’s most theological letter.

The author defines honor as “one’s perceived worth according to the agreed standards of a particular social context” (14) As such, honor can be achieved or ascribed. In the West we lay greater emphasis on the first. The East emphasizes the second. But we still see a number of honor/shame-oriented subgroups still thriving in Western culture—the military, street gangs, teenagers, sports teams, and rural communities. The fear of shame can effectively control the behavior of these members.

God’s glory gets particular emphasis in this book. As the author says in his discussion of Romans 4:20-21, “Genuine faith in God magnifies his worth. By faith, we honor him” (48). In this vein Romans often focuses on how God deals with Jews and non-Jews, bringing them both into his family, to glorify him. A Jewish sense of superiority relegates God to a tribal deity. Therefore, “Romans contradicts the idea that ethnic conflict is a second-tier concern for the church” (65).

Just a couple other highlights. The author’s analysis of Romans 7 (famous for Paul’s use of first person—“What I want to do I do not do,” etc.) is of particular interest. He makes a strong case that this seemingly quintessential discussion of the individual instead “refers collectively to Israel during the exodus” (132).

Later the author critiques ancestor worship but also helps us sympathize with it by quoting Chesterton: “Tradition means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who happen to be walking around.” Tradition can be good, but it does not eclipse God. He is the “Lord both of the living and the dead” (Rom 14:9).

This book does not dismantle everything we ever thought we knew about Romans. Rather it enriches our understanding of the letter by getting behind the honor-shame culture that infused the Bible’s world.

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photo: Pixabay zgmorris13