Shepherding a Child’s Heart is one of the single strangest books I’ve read in quite some time. The good parts are fantastic, some of the best material I’ve ever encountered on child-rearing. The rest of it left me scratching my head, or wanting to bang it on a table. I rarely have so bipolar a reaction to a book; but then, books are rarely so apt to be described as having multiple personality disorder. Read on, intrepid explorer →
Robert K. Massie’s massive one-volume life of the greatest empress of Russia took me the better part of a month to work my way through, coming at it as I did: in small chunks each evening. I came at it nearly every evening, though, because the story and the characters in it were fascinating – often larger than life in their dramas and dalliances and decisions. Read on, intrepid explorer →
Barnabas Mam knows the love of God. That’s it, plain and simple.
Of course, there is more to it: the story of the Cambodian church in the years of the Killing Fields and the refugee era that followed is complex and sometimes horrifying. Nonetheless, that single theme comes through: Barnabas Mam knew the love of God in the most frightening, dangerous situations imaginable. That love in turn empowered him to pour out his life for his fellow Cambodians, that they, too, might know the power of the gospel. Read on, intrepid explorer →
A few weeks ago, I finished up Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, Vol. VI, which includes The Club of Queer Trades, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, an early and unfinished manuscript of The Ball and the Cross, and The Man Who Was Thursday.
The four novels could hardly be more different in terms of content, but they each bear the distinctly Chestertonian stamps of wit, social commentary, and religious reflection. But more on that after an overview of the wild variations this collection contains. Read on, intrepid explorer →
From time to time I’ll be writing book responses, like this one – shorter than my formal reviews, and more a quick snapshot of my thoughts in response to the book than a careful dissection of the work.
Tullian Tchividjian’s1 Jesus + Nothing = Everything was, in one sense, a great book. In another, it was just okay. Read on, intrepid explorer →
Good and evil, long at war; the feeble things of this world chosen to confound the great and the foolish to confound the wise; God in his heaven and the great enemy coming against his creatures; the horrid lure of sin and the beautiful agony of faithfulness; the sorrow of loneliness and the sweet ache of love; the agonizing distance of God in trouble and his provision of bewildering aid – these all writ large in the lives of simple animals. This is The Book of the Dun Cow. Read on, intrepid explorer →
If your computer crashes today, and you pick up your phone to call tech support, the chances are good you’ll hear an Indian voice on the other end. The computer was likely designed by a team of engineers in America, perhaps with collaboration in Europe, Japan, or Korea. The majority of its parts were probably manufactured in factories in China, Taiwan. It may have been assembled anywhere from Brazil to Biloxi.
The world is flat. Read on, intrepid explorer →