Adam Shields

Book Review: The Death Cure by James Dashner (Maze Runner #3) - a series worth reading if you like young adult dystopian trilogies

click through for the full review on my blog http://bookwi.se/the-death-cure/

Short Review: This is a book about how to BE rich, not how to GET rich. It is based on an annual sermon series and giving campaign that has been going on since 2007. (Disclosure, I am a member at Andy's church.) The whole idea of the giving campaign and sermon series is the verse ‘Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.' —1 Timothy 6:18

This is not revolutionary or unique book. It is a short book, well written and designed to go with a DVD and/or study guide for use in small groups. The point is that we are all rich ($37,000 a year puts us in the top 4% of earners in the world). And the key to being rich is to learn to be generous as a ‘vaccine' against the dangers of being controlled by our riches.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/be-rich/

Book Review: Volcanoes by Nicole Hamlett - this is the third in a series (starts with Huntress) about a single mom that finds out she is the daughter of Diana, one of the ‘greek gods'. With her parentage comes a lot of powers she has to learn to control and use and even more enemies. The series has some light romance elements but is mostly an action series.

Click through for the full review on my blog at http://bookwi.se/volcanoes/

Full review: http://bookwi.se/radical-taking-back-your-faith-from-the-american-dream-by-david-platt/

Short review: I think this is one of those books that lots of people will read and many people will not do anything about. That is unfortunate, this is a call to live a life like what Christ has called us to. There are five specific suggestions that are in the last chapter and most people will not do one or two let alone all five.

I say this fully aware that I might be in the same boat. I may not really do what I should be doing either. But reading books like this can inspire us to really seek God and do what he is asking us to do to reach the world. We are God's plan.

Short review: this is a short Catholic to Evangelical back to Catholic conversion story. I think it is useful to read books like this to both humanize the religious struggles that real people have and to understand what actually motivates people's religious thoughts. One of the most interesting parts of this was that Beckwith (a philosopher) said that he was not concerned with many of them traditional evangelical concerns about Catholicism (apocrypha, role of pope, purgatory, etc) because either the Catholic church had authority to make those decisions (and he would just accept them) or they didn't (and he wouldn't move back to Rome). This is a level of trust that is nearly unheard of in the Protestant world and makes a lot of sense. At the same time I would like to have heard more details.

I did find his discussion at the end about the problems of evangelical ‘sola scriptura' theology very good. And I pretty much agree (as a Protestant) that sola scriptura as currently popularly understood is broken. prima scriptura is a better model and much closer to the actual reformer's positions.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/return/

Short Review: This is a good follow up to Noll's earlier The Civil War as Theological Crisis. Noll takes a step back and looks at US politics from a wide angle lens and in a surprisingly short book discusses the continued role and both Religion and Race in US politics. As always Noll is subtle with his arguments. He does not suggest that there is always an overlap with religion and racial issues, but that religion and racial issues have a continuing influence that does not always play in the same direction at the same time.

So pre-civil war, the much of the discussion around slavery and race was an explicitly religious case that the simple reading of scripture allowed for slavery. Post civil war, Noll suggests that white support of segregation used revivalist tactics and language but almost completely dropped explicit scriptural support, while the rise of the independent African American church started explicitly finding support for racial equality within scripture.

Noll finds that post civil rights era, race and religion still have a very clear relationship but again it is not single directional and continues to play out in ways that might not be predicted.

I am working through Paul Krugman's book The Conscience of a Liberal and it is interesting to see that especially in the post civil war era, Noll and Krugman's different theses, have a lot of overlapping details where they agree.

Noll ends with a theological reflection. He is clearly a small government conservative and Evangelical, but he is uncomfortable with the direction that race plays in negatively motivating the small government conservative Evangelicals in the US.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/god-race-politics/

Short Review: NT Wright turns his attention to the Psalms. This is more a pastoral call to keep the Psalms as a part of our regular worship than an academic treatise. The Psalms are not a primary research area for Wright, although the Psalms are very important to the theology of the New Testament that is Wright's area of expertise. This was originally a lectures given at Calvin College that he turned into a full length book.

In some ways this is an update to CS Lewis' book on the Psalms that I read earlier this year. Both were not academic looks at the psalms, not commentaries. Instead they were both stressing the importance of the Psalms.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/psalms/

Short review: good, wide ranging introduction to early evangelicalism. Several things are striking. One, how young Whitfield, Wesleys and Edwards were when they all started (around 25-26 for all except John Wesley and he was just over 30). Second, most of the issues then, are still issues now. The role of scripture and authority, tradition vs innovation, leading of the Holy Spirit vs cultural understanding of scripture, pragmatism, etc.

Just another book that really emphasizes the need for Evangelicals to know Christian history well.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/the-rise-of-evangelicalism/

Short Review: a classic biography of Francis and how he changed the church. This is more than just a biography (in fact the main complaint is that Chesterton probably does not spend enough time on biographical details). It is an assessment of the Catholic church (and to some extent the state of the world) during Francis' lifetime. This is in the public domain so free ebook copies are available.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/saint-francis/

Short review: This was a very good introduction to the basic concepts in statistics. Statistics really are becoming important for everyone to understand and this is designed for the person that wants an introduction, but not all the math behind statistics. Wheelan says he wants people to develop ‘an intuition' for how statistics works and so he gives lots of illustrations and examples to show the proper and improper use of statistics. There is also a lot of humor mixed into the narrative, which helps.

I listened to this on audiobook, which did not have easy access to some of the charts and tables. But most of the time that was not a problem. I do have experience with statistics and use them pretty frequently. So I am not the direct intended audience. But I like to listen to books like this to remind myself of big concepts and make sure I don't slip into bad habits.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/naked-statistics/

Short Review: I originally did not pick this up because it was so short. I found it on sale and picked up the audiobook. It is ridiculously short, and way over-priced.

But at the sale price I found it, it was good and worth reading. Lamott is a good author, comes at religious themes from a different viewpoint and is down to earth. Still unless you find it very cheap I am opposed to it on principle. It was less than 2 hours on audiobook. No way you should pay full price for that.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/help-thanks-wow/

Book Review: Whose Body? by Dorothy Sayers (Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries #1) - a young British Lord assists a Scotland Yard Detective in solving a murder (Dorothy Sayers was a well know Christian author, crime novelist and playwright that was from the same era, and friends with CS Lewis). This novel is in the public domain and so free or very cheap for ebooks (several copies are $0.99 in the kindle store.)

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/whose-body/

Book Review: The Conscience of a Liberal by Paul Krugman - a liberal unapologetically charts an agenda, but he loses authority when he deals with strawmen. I intentionally try to read books that I will disagree with and keep an open mind. I am a relatively liberal person politically so I should have been in Krugman's target audience. But there were more than a few times when it was clear that Krugman was more interested in making the cheap point than actually communicating to those that would disagree with him.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/liberal/

Short review: A very good book about finding who you were created to be and doing that. Short enough to be quickly read, but long enough to have real content. I have not read anything by Palmer Parker previously, but looking around this seems to be a pretty classic book. It was suggested to me by my spiritual director as different way of looking at spiritual growth and development, and it was just what I needed.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/let-your-life-speak/

Short Review: I continue to be impressed with Bertrand's writing and how good (and how different) this is in comparison to standard Christian fiction books. I don't read a lot of Christian fiction because much of what I have read in the past is not that great. But this is far better than average. (And unfortunately, Bertrand has left his Christian fiction publisher because they don't know how to market a police procedural book that has a non-Christian protagonist. I have not heard that he has found another publisher since announcing that he was leaving.)

If you like mysteries and police procedurals you need to at least try the first book in the series which is free on kindle. You can click through to my blog for a full review of this book and the rest of the series and links to the free first book. http://bookwi.se/nothing-to-hide/

Short Review: This is the first 12 short stories that GK Chesterton originally published as serials. Father Brown is a priest and wise observer of human behavior. Unlike Sherlock Holmes (who was only about 2 decades before these), Father Brown primarily solves mysteries (almost always murders) by understanding how the nature of sin works in humans. He is still observant and sees what others don't see. But this isn't the same type of scientific observation and deduction that Holmes does. In many ways I like these much more than Sherlock Holmes stories. Father Brown also is focused on saving souls, so there are times when he lets the perpetrator get away in order to see them repent and change their ways. There are several times when he has long conversations with the offender that are not in the books, usually right before the person steps forward and repents. These are set (and written) at the same time as Downton Abbey, so for fans it is an interesting counterpoint. Father Brown is not primarily working with the rich, but the poor and middle class.

My full review is at my blog at http://bookwi.se/the-innocence-of-father-brown-by-gk-chesterton/

Book Review: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer - well deserving of its Pulitzer Prize. Long but worth it. Mukherjee did a very good job of balancing the recitation of facts with the telling of stories. The stories were used to keep interest, give a human face and provide illustration without taking over the book. There are some long passages where the science is pretty deep. But it is all well written and interesting.


You can read the full review on my blog at http://bookwi.se/cancer/

I listened to two thirds of this. It was abridged and a radio drama version. It feels like the abridgment took all of the action and left out all of the character development and ideas. I want to read something by le Carré because I have heard so many good things, but between the lack of availability of his books on kindle and the fact that those that are available are in the middle of series and very high priced, it is going to be a while before I try him again.

Short Review: This is the second time I have read this book. I read it it first a bit over a year ago accidentally. I borrowed it because it was by Noll, not because I actually knew anything about it. But it has been one of the books I frequently have recommended since then. Since it dropped down into reasonable price range for kindle I picked it up and read it again.

The main takeaway is still the same, that we read scripture through cultural lenses. And too often we do not even know that the lenses exist, let along how they influence our reading. So the most important part of this book I think is the chapters on how other Christians outside of the US understood the role of slavery, racism and the civil war and how that was different from those inside of the US. Of course, it was a different age and we cannot forget that. But the differences between US and non-US understandings is in large part the differences in culture, more than the differences in scripture.

The other thing that this book really forces me to think though is the role of sin as a Christian. I have to view slaveholding as a sinful action. And the actual act of holding a slave, not just how the particular slaveholder treated their slaves. It was an institutional sin as well as an individual sin. And that institutional sin was more than just those that held the slaves. Many Northerners depended on the slave economy as much as the actual slave holders.

So what sins do we as 21st century Christians have that we are culturally ignorant of? And how does that sinfulness keep us from God in ways that we just don't see? And that also needs to inform our own grace toward sinners. Sin does keep us distant from God. But sin does not keep God from us. We can be and are still sinners inspite of our salvation.

This is history written at its best and most helpful.

My full review of the second reading is at my blog at http://bookwi.se/civil-war/

Good intro to the concept of spiritual direction. It is particularly oriented toward Catholic readers, so others will have to read it through that lens. I have read several books on spiritual direction as I have sought out and met with a spiritual director over the past six months or so. And this was helpful to give me a new perspective on spiritual direction (as happens anytime you read a book through a different theological lens.) It is definitely an introduction. So those that are more familiar, may want to skip it.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/navigating/

Short Review: I have previously read Card's commentary on Luke. And on the basis of that reading, I recommended this commentary on Mark as a book for my small group to read together. It is not designed for small group reading, but it worked well for that. We went through two or three chapters of Mark a week and found plenty to discuss.

This is a book that also would make good devotional reading. It is based on the scripture with several paragraphs (or occasionally a couple pages) of discussion about each subsection of the chapter. Most chapters of Mark have 4 or 5 subsections that are discussed. It is not an academic commentary but written for the lay reader. I have a few quibbles with some of his interpretations, but that is true of every commentary.


My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/mark/

Short Review: Book Review: Pattern of Wounds by J Mark Bertrand (Roland March #2) - police procedural. If all Christian fiction were this good, I would read more of it. Second in a trilogy. Well worth reading (especially if you have a kindle, first book in the series is free).

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/pattern/

Short Review: A teen decides to commit a murder/suicide on his 18th birthday. The subject matter seems (and is) serious. But Matthew Quick does a great job of helping the reader understand mental illness (this book and Silver Linings Playbook are both entirely first person narratives).

But Quick is hopeful in the books. It is clear people really do care about Leonard Peacock, even if his life is not the greatest and he doesn't have a lot of friends. And Leonard does not really want to kill his best friend or himself, even if he feels like that is the best way for things to go.

This is another older young adult book. The content is really not for under 16. But handled properly (with discussion and adult interaction) I think a lot of teens would enjoy the book.

As an adult I really recommend the book. My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/forgive/

I read about 40 percent of this and just couldn't get through it. I can see glimpses of Hitchens' brilliant writing. But I listened to the audiobook and it was Hitchens narrating. He is not a good narrator, although occasionally he actually got into it and did a good job. But much of the time he was dull and mumbled. I check this out of the library so after 3 weeks I just didn't have enough interest to finish.

I reviewed on my blog at http://bookwi.se/hitch-22/

Book Review: A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards by George Marsden - a good popular level biography of Jonathan Edwards. This is not an abridgement of Marsden's longer Jonathan Edwards: A Life, but rather a new, shorter and more popular level biography. If you are really interested in Edwards and/or like detailed biographies, I would suggest the longer book. But if you are just casually interested and/or want a brief introduction, this is a good option.


Click through for full review on my blog at http://bookwi.se/edwards/