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Hot Books for Summer Reading
This
year we enjoyed the privilege of taking a long slow week
at our friend’s the Carter’s gorgeous Horsehoe Bay lake
house. I finally got my reading vacation. Just long days
and stacks of books. Ah….Whether you’re lakeside,
looking for airplane fiction or sweltering during swim
practice, here are some of my favorite recent reads:
On
the serious side:
As
Afghanistan and Iraq keep heating up, Meic Pearse’s
Why the Rest Hate the West offers one
of the most profound yet accessible critiques of why we
find ourselves under attack. When Nancy Pearcy said this
was the best book explaining the causes for our current
clash of civilizations I scooped it up. As the author
affirms, It’s not about money. It’s not “the economy,
stupid.” It’s a cultural conflict with people who value
tradition, community, and a form of external morality
more than progress, autonomy, self-expression, and
individual human rights. Pearse exposes the hypocrisy of
multiculturalists who preach respect for all cultures
and then attack any culture that doesn’t prize their
Western anti-values of “dogmatic agnosticism about all
truth claims and moral questions.” Very insightful.
Besides, you have to like a guy described this way in
his cover bio: “In his spare time, he enjoys not
watching television.”
On
the more humorous serious side:
In his
newest book , On Paradise Road: How we live and
always have in the future tense,
self-described “comic sociologist” David Brooks
chronicles our relentless pursuit of the American dream
in Technicolor Patio-Man and Realtor-Mom detail. He
probes the motivations of why we move more than any
other people in the world, and why we work so feverishly
and cram our lives so full once we get there. He
examines our collective imagination -- our American
idealism that inspires not only millions of votes for
the next American Idol but also launches the carriers
and antes up billions of taxpayer dollars to export
freedom to an oppressed people on the other side of the
planet. While he never quite puts his finger on the
reason for this idealism, Brooks’s book gave me great
insight and vocabulary to discuss the role that
imagination plays in our spiritual formation in my new
book, Godsight. As always, the text is sprinkled
with funny yet profound observations like this one:
“Patio Man notes somewhat uncomfortably that in America
today the average square yardage of boyswear grows and
grows, while the square inches in the girls’ outfits
shrinks and shrinks. The boys carry so much fabric they
look like skateboarding Bedouins, and the girls look
like preppy prostitutes.”
On
the very humorous side:
Anita
Renfroe has taken it to Rick Warren in The
Purse-Driven Life. Beside the retro glamour
girl with her pink leopard purse and matching chiffon
headscarf on the cover, it reads, “It really is all
about me.” With deep apologies to her friends, the
Warrens, Anita mines her early fatherless day’s growing
up on her grandparents farm, her twenty-two year
marriage as well as motherhood and menopause for insight
and advice for her readers. In just 140 pages you’ll
learn how to implement “Great White Whale” communication
skills in your marriage and “embrace your inner
weirdness.”
On
the very serious side:
Christian author and speaker Carol Kent awoke one night
to a telephone call that is beyond every parent’s worst
nightmare. On the other end her daughter-in-law April’s
voice shook with emotion. Carol’s son, a graduate of the
U. S. Naval Academy and a lieutenant in the navy, was in
the Orlando county jail charged with the first-degree
murder of April’s first husband. The award-winning
When I Lay My Isaac Down: Unshakable Faith in
Unthinkable Circumstances chronicles Carol
and her husband’s journey through shock, grief, guilt,
and fear of a loving God who would allow such a tragedy
to vaporize their hopes and dreams for the lives they
expected to live. In a downward spiral of depositions,
trial postponements and soaring legal bills they land on
bedrock--a God who is more sovereign and gracious than
they ever imagined. Woven in with Carol and Gene’s story
are the stories of others who have walked through
devastation and a deep biblical look at God’s purposes
and even blessings in very dark places. Carol’s book is
an excellent resource for anyone who seeks to know the
depths and riches of God, especially in the midst of
suffering. As I prayed for my dear friend Carol and her
precious but guilty son, God taught me so much about
justice and mercy—a story included in Godsight.
Another inspiration for Godsight:
Cheri
Fuller is one of those people who stands on top of the
sand dunes and celebrates what Lewis calls the “holiday
at the sea” with God. Her book, A Fresh Vision
of Jesus: Timeless Ways to Experience Christ,
shows how God grows our vision for him by telling
stories of how we see Jesus through the Word, through
service, through trials, through mountaintop experiences
and through his whispers to our hearts. In each section
of the book she shares a story from her own life as well
as a story from the life of a modern believer, a
historical figure like Hannah Whitall Smith, and a
biblical character like Mary Magdalene. Cheri’s
confident vision of Jesus enlarges my own and lifts my
prayers in expectancy to see what he will do.
A
book to make you wiser:
What We’ve Learned So Far: Thoughts on Turning 50
from Today’s Favorite Christian Leaders
edited by my friend, Lucinda Secrest McDowell, shares
all the reasons why getting older is getting better.
What nicer way to encourage someone who is ambivalent
about cresting the top of the hill than with these
buoyant, confident reflections and stories of those
traipsing down the other side? One of the benefits of
knowing the author of a book like this is you get to
contribute a story.
A
book to make you more intelligent:
I first
heard Daniel Goleman discuss his book,
Emotional Intelligence, at a Willow Creek
Leadership Summit. This well researched book begins with
huge assumptions: assume that our fearfully and
wonderfully made mental and emotional processes evolved
from an amoeba. If you skip the evolutionary hyperbole
you can find some real insight into our affective
ability to live well in relationship with others—the
aptitude that Goleman says truly determines success and
happiness. For example, here was my great take away: If
you look up my personality in the DISC profiles, it will
tell you that my profile has far more empathy then an
amoeba, but is still short in that skill that Goleman
says is the most foundational skill for emotional
intelligence. Over the years God has grown my capacity
for empathy, but I sometimes find that I don’t clearly
communicate that empathy to other people. However those
skills, many of them small, nonverbal ways of
communicating, can easily be learned, and, thanks to
Goleman’s book and God’s grace, I’m learning.
Best airplane fiction:
Michael
Crighton’s State of Fear is a
techno-thriller with a twist. Here’s a mainstream
secular author who lines his sites on…environmentalists
and pulls the trigger, not with just superb Jurassic
Park-like storytelling skills, but research and plenty
of it. This is a blockbuster with
footnotes—Footnotes!--that will blow what most people
think about global warming out of the actually cooling
water. As with too many of today’s bestsellers, you must
navigate some sex and language but none of it gratuitous
to the plot.
On
the road:
On
vacations and speaking trips I’m discovering audio
books, both from my local library and the store.
Into Thin
Air…Jon
Krakauer’s first-person account of the disastrous 1996
expedition up Mt Everest makes the miles fly by. Plus,
if you’re traveling through hot, parched scenery it has
the added benefit of transporting you 29,000 feet above
sea level and cooling things way down. It does however
make it harder to breathe.
On
Writing…Don’t
know if I’d ever recommend a Stephen King book, but his
advice on writing rocks.
Confident
Ministry Amidst Cultural Chaos…
For the serious student of worldview Talbot philosophy
prof J. P. Moreland makes a strong case for not hitching
our ministry wagon to the postmodern movement. An
excellent critique of postmodern thought and a lot for
Brian McLaren and the emergent church to respond to. Not
a book , but a 5 CD set available from Kylie Moore (KMoore@dts.edu),
Center for Christian Leadership, Dallas Theological
Seminary, 214-841-3779.
Women Who Read
Would
you like to read more and enjoy books with new friends
in your community? May I suggest you start a book group.
We call ours, “Women Who Read.” I wanted to get to know
other women in my community outside my church who shared
something in common, so I selected two books, Maria
Shriver’s Ten Things I Wish I’d Known Before I
Went Out into the Read World, and Anne
LaMott’s, Traveling Mercies. I
snapped a picture of me holding the books and submitted
it to the local paper inviting women to join me every
other week at the library conference room of our local
college.
Our
group has been meeting for four years now reading titles
that range from fiction to biography, current issues to
classics. Now that the group is going, we all share in
the book selection. At semester’s end we bring reviews
and recommendations from trusted friends to Barnes and
Noble so we can choose books no one has read and explore
them together. If you would like to build bridges in
your community and read those books you’ve always
wanted, I encourage you to start your own “Women Who
Read.” You can even use our title and write and tell us
all about it.
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