Paul

What a remarkable book. A beautiful exercise in narrative theology, weaving moving memoir with substantive theological reflection about how the landscape of women's bodies and motherhood nights reflect and point us to the divine.

I admit, though. I myself have both a strong post-enlightenment rigid intellectual side and an equally strong creative, intuitive, artistic side reading within me. Well there were moments of robust academic theology woven throughout this book, much of the book peels more towards one's poetic, artistic, and more flexible impulses. I've described this book to friends as being more than a little “woo woo” at parts; meaning, there are times when a very flexible approach to certain texts is taken to interpret scripture, or things are said that are more often associated with the hippie, crunchy all natural vibes you find along your “weird” friends in Instagram. You know the type.

I have seen this tension in other Goodreads reviews of this book. A lot of people criticize it for being advertised as “theology” but (in their view), it is “just” a memoir. With all due respect, this is incorrect. Each chapter begins with a memoir-ish entry into a topic, but then real theology is done around that topic. If you can allow yourself to be more flexible with scripture, interpretation, and a more intuitive and larger view of theology, then this book will move you and teach you profoundly.

If you hear me write that sentence, and your brain immediately starts wanting to plant flags in the ground about strict narrow techniques of hermeneutics and interpretation, then you will have a hard time with this book. And that's okay. The world needs people of that wiring as well.

Lastly, as one source of critique, I've got to say: this book REALLY needed a more aggressive editing process. Individual lines, stories, and conclusions are repeated at different times in the book, as if Bauman had forgotten she had already mentioned these things. People who she's been quoting throughout the book suddenly get a fuller introduction to who they are halfway through, as if they are being introduced for the first time. It felt like the original draft of this book had the chapters in a different order, maybe. The pacing and the flow of the book can be inconsistent, and the clarity with which she makes her point could have been tighter. This is only a little distracting, and does not take away from the overall force in beauty of the book, though.

However, I will say that the audiobook version has a wonderful narrator and listening to it as opposed to reading it might more effectively smooth out some of the rough edges of the pros.

Man, do I love Emily Oster books. Your first book in this series, expecting better, was incredibly formative for how we are experiencing our first pregnancy. It was so helpful to get clarity on the multitude of opinions that exist around pregnancy and childbirth.

However (as she herself says in this book) after delivery, there's a lot less absolutism we can glean from data around raising kids. There are often multiple approaches that work better depending on who the kid ends up being, which you will never know before you actually have the kid. And for that reason this lost a star. Admittedly, these are for reasons beyond Oster's control, and where she is able to deconstruct and correct the predominant narrative, she happily does so; but it feels like the main point of this book is more to help parents trust themselves and trust their guts that there are multiple healthy routes to guide your kids down, and so as long as you have good intentions and due diligence, you will be fine.

I appreciate this message, and I find it really helpful. If anything, the data deconstructs the idea that there is one right way to raise a kid. But I feel like these books are sold under idea that they will help parents make data-driven decisions about their kids. But for nearly every topic she covers, the data are conflicting, lacking, inconsistent, or have some flaws. Again, this is helpful to know. But it's not why someone would open this book. She does give more information to help with the decision-making process, but in an individualized way, and not in an objective way.

So in the end, I leave this book feeling more at ease with entering parenthood, even if I don't necessarily feel more equipped to do so. Because no one can actually be fully prepped before hand. And that lesson made this book absolutely worth reading.

It's tough to know what to say of this book. It is beautiful, passionate, and absolutely convincing in its argument that America cannot be some “Christian Nation”; that it is closer to a New Babylon than New Jerusalem; that the marriage church and state is an idolatry for which we need to repent. And so for that, it is a five star book. It is effective and I believe its argument is unassailable.

Where it loses a star is what happens in the reader as they muse on the book further when they put it down. People (as well as opponents) will inevitably have “well what about...” questions which are never answered in the book. They are not questions which prove the core argument wrong, no matter how hard the critics wave their hands while asking them. But they are still questions worth pondering and exploring, which Zahnd does not do here.

Things like: Where does police action end and military action begin? Can smaller, non-imperial states be “Christian nations”? Can Christians serve in politics? If so, how do they apply these principles in their realpolitik engagements? If lethal police action is okay for the common good, is individual lethal action by private citizens allowed? Why or why not? Etc. Etc.

Granted, Zahnd could say these are beyond the beyond the scope of this book, or (more likely) the questions themselves are unanswerable in generalities and have to be on a case by case basis–that it takes discernment in the course of following Jesus and we need faith in his Spirit to guide us. Those would be valid responses, but they are not offered here.

Instead you get some of the clearest, most robust arguments in favor of drawing a bright line between one's allegiance to Christ and allegiance to a country–and not compromising an inch. I love this book and want you all to read it. It will not answer all your questions, but it will give you a framework from which to ask them.

Not quite the awe and wonder that the first book was, but a basically necessary reckoning with what occurs in the book. It's a little messy, but the prose is still beautiful and the characters compelling. He introduces a few too many new aspects to this world that don't make sense not to have been mentioned in the first book, but still, the essential exploration of human nature and complex political statecraft is just as strong here. Herbert is still a master.

This is a fantastic commentary on James. I almost regret that it's branded as a “youth worker's commentary”, as there's very little that would only be of interest to youth workers. This is a popular level commentary, but Nystrom and Christie have REALLY done their homework in the academic literature and really do share high level academic insights in an accessible way. The application and discussion questions are also really substantive and robust — unlike many books with accompanying discussion questions. In short - if you want one proper, robust commentary that will effectively summarize and synthesize a broad sweep of literature on James without dumbing it down, this really is the best one I've encountered.

What a remarkable book. Avoids so many clothes of similar Christian books, written with warmth and winsomeness. But more, it is immensely helpful and potentially life-changing in very tangible, real ways. It is a beautiful invitation which I pray my family has the courage to really follow through on and respond to. Comer is undoubtedly right in his diagnosis of our culture and our souls, and is truly recapturing ancient biblical wisdom in his prescription. Though many may quibble with some of the specific lengths he goes to in some of his recommendations, he is not so much of a radical that the book is inaccessible. We always need prophetic voices who will carry the message to lengths we never will in order to model for us what life could be and where we want to go. And for that, I am so grateful for the life change that led Comer to inhabit the life that led to this book. I pray we all may do the same.

When you imagine a book on Pilgrimage as a Christian practice, I imagine many of us would anticipate a romantic, beautiful, sweeping celebration of the pilgrimage of all things–how we are all pilgrims and how we might our lives as they are with pilgrim eyes. The book would be sweet and inspiring and encourage us to take the stairs instead of drive, be mindful as you walk to the bathroom each morning, or maybe commute with others to form a sort of pilgrim band.

This is not that book.

“The Sacred Journey” by Charles Foster is a provocative, rowdy, and challenging book that is drenched with the sweat, embodiment, and surprise that accompany real, true pilgrimage. It is devoid of sentimentality and sweetness. It refuses to be nice. It revels in smashing your theological assumptions and comforts in your life. This is not your mother's pilgrimage book.

Foster is clear: the whole “metaphorical pilgrimage” thing is BS. He actually wants you to leave your home and job and go “pilgrim” somewhere by foot and he adamantly believes there are depths of human/spiritual/relational life that cannot be reached otherwise.

Unexpectedly this book has a villain: Gnosticism–specifically its dualistic separation of body and spirit, which demeans or neglects our embodied physical lives for the sake of some abstract “spiritual” ideas. The book has no time for this and is on the hunt for every vestige of this in our lives, our churches, and our theology. It proposes that the best medicine for Gnosticism is pilgrimage: going to a place you do not know and walking for enough days that it grinds away all disembodied spiritual ideas. Memorably, Foster writes:

“The physical pilgrim has a number of advantages over the metaphorical pilgrim. He necessarily travels light, unless he is foolish enough to go in a car. He will find that he doesn't need as much as he thought he did. His ties with the tedious fripperies of life will loosen, and he will learn new pleasures—the pleasures of relationship, of rain, of conversation, of silence, of exhaustion. Simple food will have a taste that he could never have dreamed of in his Burger King days. Soon gnosticism will seem ridiculous. It is hard to believe that the only important thing about you is your spirit when you are straining in the bushes with amoebic dysentery, or if you eat the cheese at a farm I know in the antiLebanon range.”

I hope you can see there that Foster's writing is still moving and beautiful, even as he seeks to gut punch you out of your stupor. His approach and tone may alienate a lot of people. He is brash, speaks in absolutes, overstates his case, and (lovingly, but hilariously) mocks people who may disagree with him. But he is also funny, a great storyteller, self-deprecating, and maintains a universal affection for the dignity inherent in every single human person.

I started reading this book as my wife and I were planning our first pilgrimage, walking the Portuguese route of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. I didn't finish it before we left. So I continued reading it on the road, reading it out loud to my wife as we walked the varied terrain. It was a remarkable reading experience, as its claims (even some I was skeptical of) were being verified in real time as the days wore on.

In the book, Foster first deconstructs the Gnostic tendencies in our faith: our hymns, our theology, our tendency to spiritualize deeply embodied biblical realities into mere metaphor. He surveys the pilgrimage ideas and practices of many faiths pointing out that, on one hand, they are remarkably consistent with Christianity in how they speak of pilgrimage and its effects; however, Christianity is unique in its emphasis on how someone is changed by the journey itself, de-emphasizing the destination. Christianity has no Mecca, where people just have to get to in order to meet God. Rather, God himself is a wanderer and is found along the pilgrim way, not in any particular place. But we still have to go. We cannot have the “pilgrim way” in our minds or at our desks.

Foster continues with a survey of the entire Bible to show how God's people–and indeed, God himself, even in Jesus–have always been at their core pilgrims. He argues that bad things happen when people stop moving and they begin to settle. They begin to ignore the people and things on the margins, they collect more things and cling to them ever more tightly, they grow even more scared of death, and they become violent, angry, anxious, and full of prejudice and bias.

With the theology established, Foster acts as our guide for going on pilgrimage. He gives fairly practical steps and guidelines for each stage of going on a pilgrimage, and offers incredibly realistic depictions of what to expect externally and internally as we go. Along the way, he gives accounts from other pilgrims, ancient and modern, and discusses how church history has seen each aspect of pilgrimage, in both healthy and unhealthy ways.

The last three concluding chapters were the only real disappointment for me. They feel a little rushed and left me desiring more. Foster talks about the experience of returning home after pilgrimage–its disappointment, temptations, and possibility–and encourages us to just sort of figure it out on our own. Fair enough, but a little more guidance could have been helpful.

He then ends with two short chapters that seem more like consolations to his editor who felt like they needed to be there: one acknowledges and “responds” (barely) to people that criticize pilgrimage or feel like it's unnecessary; the other goes ahead and acknowledges there are some ways people can experience this pilgrimage mindset without, you know, actually going on pilgrimage. Again, they are brief and feel a little out of place, but they do no detract from the value of this book overall.

I cannot stress how gritty and realistic this book is. He romanticizes and sanitizes nothing, even as he is absolutely clear on the beauty and effects that pilgrimage offers. He wants to shake us out of our addiction to comfort, attachment to things, avoidance of the margins, and anemic theological sentimentalities. And he doesn't care how brash and loud he has to be to do it.

Phyllis Tickle, the editor for this series, writes in the foreword that she knew it was a risk to choose Foster to write this book. She says, “Let there be no mistake, though. Foster pulls no punches. Every one of you who reads this book will find at least one thing you totally disagree with and whole handful of those you want to question. Please do so.”

But she is also unequivocal in her ultimate judgment: “What you are now holding is, I suspect, as near a masterpiece of pilgrimage writing as we have ever seen. It certainly is, hands down and far away, the best book on pilgrimage I have ever seen.”

I couldn't agree more. It is not in any way the book I expected to read when I pulled it off my shelf in anticipation of my own pilgrimage. Masterfully, it embodies its own thesis. The book is a journey through the entire Bible, church history, and global geography. It is dusty, meandering, and often uphill. Foster is an eccentric companion with a lifetime of crazy experiences and stories. I still remain skeptical of a lot of what he has said.

And yet... I still leave this book challenged and changed, with new eyes and new stirrings to get back on the road once more.

As a therapy modality, I love ACT. Though it's a cohesive theory in it's own right, I find it really brings together the best parts of a multitude of therapy modalities. It takes from some therapy techniques I love (motivational interviewing, mindfulness, and even a sort of pastoral approach to values) and even takes the good and disregards the bad of therapies I don't resonate with as much (here's looking at you, CBT and Narrative Therapy). So as a way to grow and treat others, I really like ACT.

However, some of the same caveats to most talk therapies apply here. It's not good with severe mental health disorders, nor with people on the autism spectrum. is very complicated and very big. There's a process based therapy and not a technique. So it's not linear.

But this is a review of the book, not the treatment. And this is maybe the best therapy modality textbook I've ever read. It is clear, winsome, comprehensive, realistic, and even funny. This is surprising, as ACT is a process based therapy modality, and not a technique based one. So it is not linear at all. That makes the task all the more difficult to write a textbook about it, and this is done with amazing clarity and succinctness in this book.

It's a fun read, but it's a lot. Some chapters are only a page or two, as it touches on one topic before changing gears into the next. This shotgun approach, while necessary with such a modality and done very well here, makes information retention near-impossible. The author says as much, saying these things really need to be practiced as you learn it, otherwise it'll never sink in.

The book, therefore, seems to straddle between being a treatment manual, reference work, and general audience nonfiction how-to. It's best to read this once all the way through, accept that you won't remember much, and then use the book as a reference tool moving forward. I also appreciate the copious amount of free online resources available that accompany the content of this book. This is all very, very well done. I encourage every therapist and therapist-to-be to at least check out ACT, and this textbook is the best way I know to do it.

What a fantastic book. With wit, beauty, wisdom, and depth, Francis Spufford here gives an emotional account of what Christianity feels like from the inside–and in so doing helps it make sense to both those on the outside and those of us that feel stuck in between. It accomplishes these goals and more.

Charles Taylor says that we live in a “cross-pressured” age, where people no longer believe instead of doubting but believe while doubting. Our malleable souls are caught–shaped by cultural liturgies that scream God's absence while something, something, keeps us tethered to this faith. It creates an odd inner experience, where you can grant every fact and argument levied by the most ardent atheist and still shrug and know you're still a Christian.

This is because our belief is not fundamentally an intellectual exercise, but an emotional one. Most of life is lived by intuition and instinct based on how various options “feel” affectively. Even our intellectual assent based on empiricism is followed because it “feels” better to be aligned with facts than not.

It is from this understanding that Spufford writes. Through eight chapters, he moves through broad areas of human belief and concern, exploring how Christianity engages them. Yes, he covers the broad historical and doctrinal understandings of these areas, but only as the background to his real project: articulating how this forms the emotional experience of Christians in the world.

The path it takes is circuitous and human in the most delightful of ways. You spend time in little diversions, wondering where he is going, just for him to come at his conclusion through the side door. He is self-consciously not writing an “apologetics” book and yet levies a devastating frontal assault on the competing ways of being in the world, showing how they make no sense based on how humans actually experience and live life.

When you start reading this book, the first thing that jumps out at you is just how well written it is. Spufford is an acclaimed author of many books, mostly fiction and essays. He does not write religious nonfiction. This is a strength, as he is able to look past the noise and detritus of Christianity's history and cultural baggage, and offer it back to us in a way that is both fully orthodox and a little slant.

There is something about books on Christianity written by artists and writers who are mainly novelists, poets, memoirists, etc. Christianity is not their “job” and so they don't feel the need to treat it preciously nor sentimentally. Such writers have such a grasp of–and habitation within–the human condition that they don't have time for all of that. They have wrestled with the shadows of this world and this helps really prioritize those parts of Christianity that are truly universal and give it to us in a way our humanity can connect to more easily. This book curses, has off-color jokes, and is full of seering honesty about the fraught nature of belief (and unbelief).

It is a book written from the depths and not handed down from the heights. He recounts biblical stories and offers his own exegesis in the form of a poet, using different language and framing what we're accustomed to. This makes Scripture and tradition genuinely fresh and new, even to a seminary-trained, life-long Christian like myself.

Spufford is clearly not a “professional Christian”, and that gives him another huge advantage: his lack of sectarian commitments. He will tease and even express offense at many actions and participants in certain parts of the church (especially the American church), but he is at pains to say that we are all still part of the same family, and our differences, as important as they are, are not the substance and core of our faith. In this book, he is committed to explaining the historic, orthodox Christian faith that unites all Christians at all times and places.

For me, at least, that truly makes Unapologetic the Mere Christianity of our generation. And I mean that literally and without irony.

Other books have been declared as such, but those are usually traditional apologetics books–seeking by means of proofs and evidence to “defend” the faith. But that was not what Lewis was doing in Mere Christianity. Instead, he was trying to explain the depth and logic of the faith to laypeople whose cultural Christianity had dulled their senses to it. It was an act of reminder and refreshing, a family conversation knowingly unfolding before the eyes of the public.

This book feels very much the same way. It deftly moves through classical theism, the problem of suffering, how to understand the Bible, politics and power, and the life and impact of Jesus in ways that are completely new and alive but fully historic and rooted. He is not shy to share his personal (strong) opinions on other matters of theology, life, and faith, and you will no doubt find many quibbles with many of his specifics. But it always gets you thinking and he is never far from what is truly essential.

This is such a fun book to read, and even more fun book to listen to. Spufford himself narrates the audiobook and will sing, stutter, scoff, add asides, and “perform” the book as if he simply talking to you in a pub. It is one of my favorite audiobook narrations I've ever encountered. But this voice will come through even in regular reading.

Unapologetic is a new personal classic for me. It is a book I want every person to read, whether you are a Christian or not (or somewhere in between). It is explicitly not an “apologetics” book, but it ends up being one of the most compelling (and raucous) arguments I've ever encountered for belief.

Even if it doesn't change your mind, it will offer you a vision of the Christian faith that is winsome, beautiful, resonant, compelling, and something everyone should wish were true. It'll also make you listen more deeply to those wishes in the first place, and perhaps even take them far more seriously.

This is such an amazing Lenten devotional. This is not your surface level, “thought for the day” sort of devotional, where you spend the vast majority of your time thinking “yeah yeah, I get that, but I guess it's a good reminder. I guess”. This is devotional is full of profound and difficult insights and truths into the human heart, the Scriptures, and the connections (and disconnections) between them. I cannot commend this book any more highly as a daily Lenten devotional.

This is a remarkable little book. I have a few tiny quibbles here and there, but I cannot argue with how forcefully and how well Wright's perspectives are argued. I appreciate how he tries to navigate a middle way between the extremes of right and left. The historical survey of how people have viewed scripture is somehow both robust and succinct, and he makes sure to show how both fundamentalism and deconstruction fall short of their stated aims and actually closer to one another than they think.

I knock a star off the rating for two reasons. First, I still think the book is a little longer than it needs to be. This book is an expansion of an incredible article that Wright wrote in the '80s, I believe. And that article contains most all of the most important points found here. Other than a few historical sections and answering some rebuttals, I don't see how his additions here were worth a whole book's length project.

Secondly, I don't know if Wright really has answered the question of the relationship between God's authority and scripture. He definitely gives a beautiful account for how we can live and treat scripture with the assumption that it is authoritative in some sense. And he effectively shows how other accounts of this relationship are inadequate even as they are full of their own certitude. But still, he doesn't quite nail down how this authority functions through scripture. He makes it a point time and again to say that scripture itself does not have the authority, but God exercises his own authority through it. This is undoubtedly right. But he doesn't get much more specific than that, I feel. Maybe he does, and it is pretty subtle. But the exact theological mechanics are still a mystery, and they may always be.

My one other quibble here is that he makes that same move that a lot of fundamentalists do where they assume that anytime the Bible says the phrase “word of God”, we can automatically apply that to the written Canon of scripture we have with us today. I think that is a huge error that leads to a lot of bad theology around scripture. Sometimes, when scripture says this, it is talking about the law in one sense or another. Sometimes it's referring to a very specific word that God spoke at a specific time. Sometimes it is the word of the prophets. Sometimes it is simply talking about the way that God communicates his presence to us and guides us in a more mystical sense and not in literal written words. But obey and over again, Wright here cites versus to support his claims that I do not think are talking about scripture. Again, this is more of a quibble than a broad criticism, but it's hard for me to know exactly where his tendency to do this may have led to conclusions I otherwise disagree with.

But still, I am so grateful that NT Wright is around and is offering the church books like this. In spite of any of my disagreements, I would not hesitate to put this book in the hand of any Christian or person seeking a framework to understand these questions. He is clear, he is faithful, he is balanced, and he refuses to settle for easy answers to complex questions. If every Christian used this book as their starting point for their theology of scripture, then subsequent adjustments or refinements would be much healthier and much more helpfully done.

This is such a delightful and fun book. It is my first Agatha Christie mystery, and it did not disappoint. It was all the things I imagined such a book would be in its psychology, humor, whimsy, and mid 20th-century sense of propriety and scandal.

This feels like the most direct inspiration for Riann Johnson's original “Knives Out” film. So if you enjoyed the quirky nature of that film–sitting with a mystery that slowly pulls on various threads and clues, and spending time with a properly dysfunctional English family–then this is your book. To wit: the original title was “Murder for Christmas”, so you know Christie had a good time writing this.

This book explores the Lee family, which is full of all the characters you would imagine: the dutiful son, the romantic mother's boy, the prodigal rogue, and their various wives and relations. They've all arrived for Christmas at their family home led by the Scroogely, spiteful, and curmudgeonly family patriarch, Simeon Lee. And it is in this setting that the mystery in question unfolds. It is Agatha Christie's only “locked room” mystery, in which the crime takes place in a room where it does not seem that the culprit could have entered or exited without being noticed.

Nevertheless, Christie's most famous detective character, Hercule Poirot, is there as a consultant for the police and family, and I found him to be a delight.

Poirot seems much more of a quiet observer than a Sherlock Holmes-style show-off who explains his every step and thought process. But still, he is funny and jovial and personable throughout, and the inevitable final gathering of all the suspects where Poirot explains all his reasoning and revelations does not disappoint.

So does Christie stick the landing? Almost entirely yes. A couple of the turns seem a little overly clever, but overall they work; all the pieces stick together, and you see the bread crumbs that led to that end, as in any good mystery. You are left with a smile on your face and an “of course!” on your lips.

I'm genuinely sad to be leaving this family I feel I've gotten to know so well through the course of this book. But the good news is that Poirot has many more pages wherein I can spend with him–and I'm sure I will. And if you've never read a Christie mystery, this us a great place to start. Merry Christmas!

The Takeaway
Smart Brevity is fantastic and game-changing for what it is and what it tries to be, though it's helpfulness is much more limited than its authors seem to realize.

The Big Picture
The authors of this book are the founders of both Politico and Axios. If you've ever been to the Axios website, you know what “smart brevity” is. It is the philosophy they use in their writing and visual design. It's a way to communicate the most things in as brief a way as possible to respect the time and limited attention spans of readers online.

Go Deeper
The book itself unsurprisingly follows these same principles. It is short, but not shallow. It offers sobering statistics about how little time people spend actually reading things online, and gives simple, clear, actionable advice for communicators to implement these principles in a wide range of applications and mediums. It also serves as a mini-advertisement of their AI program they built to help businesses implement this throughout their work.

The Upside
They apply these principles to many, many areas–and I'm convinced! For businesses, newsletter writers, marketing and communications, social media, leaders and supervisors of all kinds, I see how smart brevity is the way the current world needs to function.

It feels like a superpower once you start trying to work with it, but it's a muscle that needs to be exercised. I have been trying to use it in emails, text messages, and conversations with my wife and she has really appreciated it. (I am naturally very wordy).

Yes, But...
Smart brevity's applications are more limited than the authors imply. They offer smart brevity as the greatest way of communicating and transmitting information today. But outside of a brief mention of fiction and poetry in the introduction, they don't talk about where they think smart brevity doesn't work well.

I mainly communicate in academia, religious preaching, and this blog. I am often not just sharing facts, but making an argument–a form of communication which, in a polarized world, is dominating more of our interactions. They never talk about this.

One can no longer just say a perspective and leave it there. They must anticipate rebuttals, demonstrate their knowledge of the subject, show their work logically and intellectually to show how they got somewhere. And this takes words. Not just bolded headings and bullet points.

My Take
So yes, Smart Brevity is already having a hugely positive effect on my life. Even a cursory scan of my writing shows I need to do this more. I write and say way too much.

But words still matter. The beauty of words still matter. I know the authors would say they also love words and think smart brevity can be beautiful. And that is all true. But there are realms and topics of communicating for which “short” really does mean short-changed.

Well, I did it. I finally did it. I finished “Fellowship of the Ring”. I had a few other times in my life and just couldn't do it. But with some Amazon TV-show inspiration, an adult appreciation for slower narratives, and the help of Andy Serkis' incredible narration, I did it!

And I really loved this book, especially once I slowed down and accepted it on its own terms. I still think Tolkien could have tightened this narrative quite a bit (many first-time readers have crashed on the rocks of its long travel sections or Tom Bombadil–still a baffling character to me). But Tolkien makes it all worth it in the end and makes me excited for more..

I came with minimal Tolkien or fantasy experience. I read and enjoyed “The Hobbit” as a middle-schooler, and I watched its creepy 1970s cartoon version a bunch. I've watched the theatrical versions of the movies once or twice, but mostly forgot them. I grew up hearing bad “Lord of the Rings” sermon illustrations. So if you are like me, what should you know about the book?

First, before we really get into it, this truly is a sequel to “The Hobbit”. I had forgotten some of the specifics of that book, but “Fellowship” begins with a prologue that summarizes all of it, spoilers and all; so if you ever plan on reading “The Hobbit”, do that first. This book flows directly from that one.

Second, as you may know from just general cultural osmosis, this is more a travel book than an adventure tale. The characters travel many miles for many days on the journey in these pages, and nearly every day and region is described here. This creates a weird pacing to the book. Lots of slow, meandering days, full of beautiful descriptions of landscapes and geography accompanied by little bits and hints of lore and history. Tolkien really is a beautiful writer–not just a profound thinker.

And then there are the action scenes. Some are striking and suck you in. Others are confusing, leaving with an impression of what happened but not the clearest mental picture (for example, what on earth happens in the barrow-downs?). The action is also spaced out amidst sporadically without much rhyme or reason. At times they make sense; at others they feel a little arbitrary, as if an editor had told Tolkien, “they've been walking and talking too long. Throw in some inconsequential peril to liven things up.”

On one hand, this adds suspense as the stakes rise and you never know what's going to happen and when. On the other, this all deeply challenges us modern readers. We are used to information dumps or action-filled narratives that fit particular rhythms and templates for such things.

But “Fellowship” is different. Even in all its fantasy, it's much closer to real life than modern books. Most of life is boring. It's moving from place to place or having conversations that serve no immediate purpose or “plot”. The most perilous things we encounter are often unpredictable, random, and seemingly disconnected from our “real” life.

For example, if you've seen the movies, you know the whole point of all this travel is to take The Ring to Mount Doom to destroy it. And yet, this entire book goes by without them coming to that conclusion! When they start walking, they just know that some bad people want the ring, so they flee. They are literally aimless. Even by the end, they still have no idea where they should go or what they should do! They get up each morning, ask “okay, what now?”, head in a direction, and respond to things that happen along the way.

It's fascinating to experience a book like this. It forces you to slow down, settle in, and receive the book on its own terms. Even as the mystery deepens and you want answers, you're forced to wait. Apparently, the next two books are much faster-paced, but I wonder if having been made to sit and pace yourself makes those books all the more beautiful and exciting.

But that's all about the plot and pacing. But as someone completely unfamiliar with “high-fantasy”, what did I think about the world-building and lore?

I am in awe of what Tolkien has accomplished here. This is truly a fully-fleshed out alternative world at every level. Its history, cultures, languages, geography, and mythology are completely realized in Tolkien's brain in a way similar to a god creating a world in its totality out of nothing. It's astonishing. This world is not built off of a single clever conceit or proposal or small twist added to our world. It is wholly other and unique.

It does not feel nearly as nerdy or inaccessible as I expected. In the book it all unfolds much like real human conversation. People with their own histories and stories travel together and as different things remind them of songs or tales, they mention it to the rest of the group (and us). Then the narrative moves forward.

There are very few grand speeches or exposition dumps. You can tell there is (literally) a whole world of lore and knowledge behind this story that is only given to us in carefully portioned out doses. It really draws you in and makes you curious for more. “Fellowship” is an excellent fantasy gateway drug.

One key to my reading success was that I listened to the audiobook version narrated by Andy Serkis. And it is amazing. I listened to some of every audio version available–even a well-regarded fan-produced one that incorporates music and sound effects from the movies–and Serkis' was by far the best. It will be the new standard for a very long time.

Serkis, who played Gollum in the movies, provides voices, acting, emotion, and singing (so much singing) that really keeps you enthralled. Save for a few characters, his voices tend follow the movie accents pretty closely. (One funny feature of Fellowship in this regard is that Gollum never has a speaking part, so I haven't yet heard if Serkis does the same voice!)

He is dynamic, and truly performs the book in a way that is moving, but not distracting, and still maintains integrity to the text. He takes you on a ride. His voice can be soft and trembling (like when Frodo realizes he needs to the leave the Shire), and screaming to the point of his voice cracking in others (Gandalf's epic “You shall not pass!” He kills that scene. Dang). I cried multiple times reading the book, was actually scared in others, and deeply shaken elsewhere. It's that good.

This has been a long review. I mean, it's “Lord of the Rings”: there's both so much to say, and also nothing really needs to be said. It saturates our world and culture. But still, reading it for the first time makes you realize just how much you really don't get it if you've only seen the movies.

This is not cheesy, nerdy, socially-awkward (or even escapist) fantasy work. This is truly literature that shows you the best and worst of the world, challenging your intellect and moral reasoning, drawing you into something higher. And it does it all with sophistication, beauty, complexity, and humanity.

As long as you accept the book on its own terms and settle in for a long read, you will get through it. And you will love it. I can't wait to finish the whole series, and then read these books to my kids someday.

As Tolkien's bff once said: “onward and upward!”

This really is a manual for new practitioners, as in people who are entirely new to the profession as a whole. In that sense, this book may be helpful for anyone just starting out in the field regardless of therapy specialty. Most of the guidance here is relevant (and helpful!) to all young and new therapists. It is focused around CBT, but as someone who is really trying to learn CBT, this isn't the book for that. Which makes this frustrating. I'm not sure exactly who this book is for. It doesn't have enough CBT education to be the main book for people trying to learn CBT to a decent level of competence, but it also is geared towards people just starting out in their career. It would be a good supplement to a more robust CBT textbook, where would serve to focus on the nitty gritty of practice. In that case, the tone and way of writing is extremely helpful and engaging. I like it. I really wanted this book to be more helpful. And for some, it could be.

What a terrible novella. It is a caricatured farce, with uninteresting, horrible people doing uninteresting, horrible things with motives that are neither understandable nor clear. I'm fine with antiheroes-but the reader must find them compelling and see their humanity. But these characters are flat, and the reader has no reason to grasp or relate to why any of them are drawn to one another. Carmen herself is just a 19th-centiry manic pixie dream girl and the reader does not find her mysterious, alluring, seductive, or any thing else that the flat syntax tells us over and over again that we are supposed to think about her. Don Jose's character is nonsensical and his transformation from bad to worse person is uneven and unrealistic. In short, this book entirely lacks any sense of humanity and beauty. It is supposedly a story of passion and obsession gone too far, but it is told in such a detached, sterile fashion that we never connect to it.

I mean, it's Paradise Lost. It's maybe the greatest piece of English writing ever written. Boy is it truly epic.

I absolutely loved this book. I'm sure it is going to be a reference for me for the rest of my life. One thing I didn't realize going into it was that it is such a polemical book. I thought it was mainly just educational about trauma; but no, it is a book that wants to argue with the establishment and the ideas we take for granted in mental health. It is a book of deconstruction and, hopefully, reconstruction. Or rather, more accurately, reclamation of older (and at times pre-scientific) ways of thinking about mental health and treatment. Just as one brief example, I've become accustomed to Freud being appreciated for who he was at his time, but that he has little to no bearing on our understanding of humans or treating their difficulties today. But this book gave me renewed respect and insight into Freud and how he thought about things.

It is really hard to distill all of my thoughts from such a big book that goes in so many different directions. I already had a decent understanding of trauma-informed care, adverse childhood experiences, and the role of the body in processing trauma. So, going into this book, I mainly thought I would just enjoy how he goes about explaining it to lay people in a way that captured the mainstream consciousness when it was published. I thought I would hear about some research studies and stories about trauma I had never heard, but I wouldn't necessarily learn much that was revolutionary or earth-shattering to me. Boy was I wrong.

Pretty much no aspect of mental health and treatment today is left untouched by Van der Kolk's analysis. Yet at the same time, he's not just gleefully bashing the establishments and throwing the baby out with the bath water. He really is seeking a comprehensive, nuanced, and balanced approach to treatment that is truly helpful to people, no matter what that means or where it takes him.

Van der Kolk gives voice to a lot of things a lot of us intuitively wonder or question about mental health treatment today but just shrug off because “the experts” say otherwise. Psych meds are amazing, and have changed lives, but have they really changed society? Or made us happier overall? Is it truly the case that all these other holistic, older, bodily, pre-scientific approaches have little to no merit or place in “real” psychotherapy? Does non-medication mental health treatment deserve its status as lesser and less-substantive than psychiatric care? Etc. Etc.

I walked away with a lot of takeaways, thoughts, and experiences—too much to put here in this paper. I really want to get trained in a number of the treatment modalities described, especially Internal Family Systems Therapy and EMDR. I will surely explore referring future clients to yoga and theater/improv activities. I would really love to undergo neurofeedback treatment myself. I like yoga a lot and have gone through fits and starts of doing it occasionally in my life. As I was reading this book, I even tried a long yoga session geared for PTSD. It was interesting. It was slower and gentler but still a pretty standard yoga session. I think the benefit is probably more in regularity and not one-off sessions. I also signed up through PESI for a 9-hour webinar with Van der Kolk with more up-to-date research than in the book, and was focused more on the complexities of this in treatment (i.e. very few people are only struggling with some pure form of PTSD). (By the way, I had it on in the background while at work, and it was mainly going through stuff in the book, so I didn't count more than a few hours of it for these internship hours.)

I also appreciated his critiques of policy through history and today, making it very relevant for social workers in our task of discerning what systems and policies to advocate for change in. The lack of research funding and insurance reimbursement for neurofeedback is a scandal, and just how little attention we give to ACEs in our society is a tragedy. As far as return on investment goes, challenging the systems and structures and social policies that foster ACEs seem to be one of the clearest, most efficient ways we could fundamentally reshape the spirit and health of our country.

I loved this book, but it was still a lot all at once, and I don't know that he really brings it all together at the end in a way I had hoped. I leave the book pretty overwhelmed with all these blind spots in psychotherapy and a huge number of possible, less-mainstream treatments that may be even more effective than current treatments. But once I have a client in front of me, how do I choose between EMDR, Spatial Psychomotor Therapy, Yoga, Theater, or Internal Family Systems Therapy? I was hoping for some final chapter about how we therapists shouldn't stress about all of this too much, and the specific intervention doesn't matter so much as accomplishing such-and-such specific tasks, however that most effectively can be done with a given patient.

But he did not give us that. So I'm left with both too much and not enough information and ideas, which I fear will end up meaning I just default to the way things usually go instead of staying open to the spirit of creativity and tenacity that animates this book. That's why I said in the beginning that I'll likely treat the book more as a very helpful reference or refresher book, even as I try to get more into the nitty-gritty elsewhere.

But still, this book was life-affirming and changing on several levels, and will benefit clients (and myself) for years to come.

This really threw me for a loop. It is a pretty provocative book that challenges a lot of aspects of the social justice orthodoxy of today. It gives language and voice to a lot of the questions, confusions, and difficulties that many feel intuitively about “deference politics”: does focusing on identity markers or trauma histories actually get us closer to reshaping the material reality that created those traumas? Or is it just an easy way for people (or more specifically, elites) to feel like they are “good people” while not actually changing the status quo?

I really appreciate the sense in which Taiwo's goal is to actually radically change the world, and he feels this is done at the institutional and societal level and less at the individual dialogue or small group “spaces”-level. As one review of the book put it, “While deference politics identifies the main problem as a lack of black female CEOs, constructive politics critiques the very existence of a CEO class.” I really resonate with his sense that communal organizing based around the liberative goal at hand ends up producing more results than policing who is in the room and how they exist there.

I always enjoy books that challenge all the usual “sides” of an issue. He's saying a lot of the same things that, for example, a Tucker Carlson might say. From my right-leaning friends, family, and media sources, I have often heard these sorts of sentiments. “Focusing so much on different identity markers gets in the way of seeing us as just human—it just divides, it doesn't unite us into a group that can do things.” “To whatever extent there are still problems among these groups, simply ‘representation' isn't going to fix it.” “Why would we want ourselves or our credentials to be defined by the worst thing that have ever happened to us or people like us?” “Why don't we choose the best person or group to get the job done and less on all the identity markers?” “Can I only talk about an issue I'm concerned about if I am a marginalized member of that minority? I can't have an opinion or say in this?” “The problem is more about class and economics, not race and identity.” Etc. Etc. Etc. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

However, I love that Taiwo can say things along these lines but then says them even as he promotes the black radical tradition, liberation politics, environmentalism, redistribution of material goods, and a Marxist seizing of the means of production by the organized common people.

It also matters that he is the one saying these things. Even if my gut agrees with much of what he is saying, I still don't think it is my place to say it. I still think that my own intuitions are largely shaped by my limited cultural perspectives, so I do have to listen to others' voices (also known as deferring to them) before my own in these matters. So, if there is any truth to these sentiments that roll around inside of me (and other white people) sometimes, that needs to be voiced from within that marginalized community and tradition and not from outside people like me.

I also really like how his account of the “elite” is more dynamic than the usual critique. While some people talk of this “elite” as almost an organized conspiracy trying to keep people down to maintain power, Taiwo talks more about eliteness as such. It almost sounds like the way many people speak of white supremacy and structural racism: you don't have to be a racist to be perpetuating or acting out of racism and doing racist things. Similarly, in Taiwo's account, the identity of the “elite” is slippery and shifting and can change context to context. It's not always the rich white male at the top of an organization. It can be whoever is wielding power in a given space—including the marginalized individual that's been given deference, the group microphone, and the authority to declare who is in and out of the “room”. “Eliteness”—and who benefits from identity and whatever space they're in—shifts and morphs, perhaps even moment-by-moment, based on a lot of different factors. And there are no easy answers.

So Taiwo's book is an excellent critique of the cultural situation as it is and gets us closer to having good guardrails on our justice efforts. Having his thinking in mind might give us at least a little more pause before abandoning a certain legislative effort because it doesn't go far enough, or before declaring someone “lost” to the cause or “canceled”. I know my own privilege makes it too easy for me to say this, but I am all for anything that gets us more coalition building and less bitter division.

However, I've got a good number of questions, confusions, and critiques of this book that keeps me from going all in with Taiwo.

First, I think his account has a lot of internal contradictions. He'll beautifully articulate how even in small groups this sort of eliteness and elite capture happens, but then doesn't seem to recognize how this still exists within the examples he gives. Nearly every example and story of someone's life who embodied these principles is the story of someone who at various times, in various settings, were themselves elites through whom good things were accomplished as a function and direct consequence of them being an elite.

Carter Woodson was able to be published and be in the leadership of numerous entities. The revolutionaries of the various countries he mentions all became the Presidents and leaders of those countries, and they had to force and coerce a lot of their changes onto citizens that may or may not have consented to that rule and those changes. In the Flint water crisis, they still had to form groups with leaders and PR representatives and lawyers—and even then, progress only happened by pressuring the existing power structures to use their power towards better ends, not by tearing down the power structures and creating an entirely different material world. Even the labor unions, which Taiwo speaks of as almost the purest form of coalition building and constructive politics, have many layers of bureaucracy, leadership, committees, and power. You simply cannot escape the existence of elites and the necessity to try and use it to better ends.

And I think this critique flows from maybe the essential, foundational difficulty I have with his entire view: his Anarcho-Marxist commitment to a materialist account and analysis to everything. That philosophical commitment guides the entire book. To him, the unequal material ordering of society is the problem and reordering those material conditions to a greater amount of equality is the solution—no matter how that comes about. In the book, there seems to be no difference in how he tells these “success stories”—whether a group educates kids into liberation or uses guerilla warfare to slaughter thousands of the “oppressors”. What seems to matter is “getting shit done” by whatever means seems most effective in bringing the redistribution of material resources.

I think this is why he almost rolls his eyes at all the “identity politics” and “deference” afforded to marginalized folks—it's not about changing the material reality, but reordering society through changing immaterial structures, cultures, dynamics, and relationships.

And this is where I cannot follow Taiwo. My account of reality is wrapped up in both material and immaterial aspects of the world. In fact, I don't think I can give a coherent account of why I would want to change material realities for others if it weren't for immaterial aspects. And not just religious ones. Even abstract secular ideas of human rights and human dignity don't get a lot of attention in Taiwo's book, which is seeking a purely pragmatic and materialist politics.

He says in passing two times in the book, I believe, that a coalitional politics is inherently a moral politics because it would be about accomplishing moral ends, but he doesn't go further than that. I think he anticipates people being like, “wait, you want me to have a coalition with that person who has done those things to people like me?”, and he seems to just sort of wave off the concern saying, “don't worry—if we're trying to accomplish good things, it'll attract good people.”

But that's not how it works. Human societies are greater than the sum of their materialist conditions. On Taiwo's terms, we've had coalitional politics for most of this country's history and it has not ended up more just or materially equal. That's precisely what has given rise to “deference politics” in the first place. “Justice” is itself an immaterial, undefined value and good which you cannot pursue, give an account of, or fight for on purely materialist, pragmatic grounds. It is wrapped up in ethics and morality—ideas notably absent from Taiwo's writing.

Taiwo's account (and Marxism in general, I believe) has an incredibly deficient view of human psychology. Not only is it almost exclusively limited to material interests of people, but it narrows those interests too much. History has shown us that when you don't give actual attention, focus, and intentionality to the makeup of “the room”, it's almost always going to end up being powerful people that look like one another making decisions on behalf of others without that power who do not look like them. It seems like Taiwo would say this is fine as long as their goal is ultimately material justice and liberation. But humans (and groups) don't have just one interest or goal at a time. That group may have come together to accomplish a good, liberative goal, but their individual beliefs on the why and how will differ greatly based on their interests, experience, and identities.

Within my faith tradition, it matters how and why good things are accomplished. It is simply not worth it to (as one writer once put in) “build God's kingdom using the devil's tools”. No matter the goal, the flow of power, dignity, and voice are foundational to the “goodness” of the good in question. I would love to see Taiwo engage Black liberation theology. There, he would find the idea of the “blackness of God”, where God is found in whatever group is marginalized, powerless, and in need of liberation. Power, then, flows from the bottom-up. On one hand it is, in a sense, uber-deference politics: we not only recognize authority based on identity, but we recognize God based on it. But at the same time, it emphasizes the suffering nature of history that brought us here. Divine deference to “the lowly” is not a gleeful, plundering, victorious process, but one where God has entered suffering to bring good from it, not to make the suffering itself good or a badge of honor. It is a deference borne of compassion, not privilege.

If I were to try and synthesize the good I take from Taiwo's book with other convictions of mine, I would maybe go int his direction. Not a “coalitional politics”, but a “compassional politics”, where no one's hands are clean and everyone requires compassion—even the oppressors (this is also Paulo Freire's belief—an activist whom Taiwo endorses wholeheartedly without engaging the entire moral and ethical structure of this thinking). The “deference” in this case is not artificially lending expertise, power, or privilege to people based on trauma or identity, but is an exercise of love, lament, and recognition. But the slipperiness of this eliteness and privilege from which we need liberation means that this all needs to happen with a profound and difficult ethic of mutuality among us. The compassion has to be tenaciously from all sides, for all sides.

Thinking about this, I'm reminded of the idea of right-of-way in the law. My understanding is that, technically, no road laws say who “has” the right-of-way. No one ever has it; the laws only say who is supposed to yield it. That would be my view here with regard to privilege and power.

Especially in micro (and maybe even mezzo) contexts and interactions, privilege and eliteness are too shifting to say with confidence at any particular moment who has it, who doesn't, and who needs to act differently based on it. Instead, in my view, we need a radical mutual commitment to yielding privilege one to another. I as a white straight cis male yield space and privilege to those marginalized so I can see divinity itself and integrate their experience into mine; but I also do this in hope that they can yield the privilege that affords them so they may also take in my experience and voice.

This mutual self-giving ethos is idealized and difficult, but shooting for it is a much better way, I think, than simply saying our stories and identities and histories just get in the way of making our lives better. Because honestly, my suspicion is that humans crave knowing and being known more than they long for better material circumstances. And frankly, I'm also guessing that sort of ethos would lend itself to even more fruitful coalitions that can change material reality more than Taiwo imagines.

So in the end, like I said, I really appreciate how Taiwo's thinking complexifies these newish social justice norms that we've maybe implemented too simplistically. The world is simply not separated so neatly into good and bad people, or elites and regular people. Marginalization is not itself a privilege or qualification, and some ways of focusing on or emphasizing that can be performative and actually further entrench powerful interests. We definitely should have less policing of ever-more granular aspects of society, speech, intent, and position, and we should seek new kinds of coalitions with tangible goals in mind.

But to neglect these factors altogether is to go too far and to reduce reality even more simplistically than identity politics might. Human interests are far more complicated than arrangements of mere resources and materials. We ought not get inordinately focused or stuck on one side of that reality to the detriment of the other, but we should keep both in mind. We fight for and attend to material realities not as ends in and of themselves, but as ways to support immaterial human dignity and flourishing; and likewise, we attend to “identities” and privilege and oppression in order to see the effects of material reality as it is now and to imagine what it could be and how to get there—together.

I've got to say I'm still pretty torn about the approach represented here. First, I understand the burden it is for oppressed and marginalized peoples to bear the responsibility of educating oppressors in their oppression. But still, there was initial discomfort reading this book written by a white person. Part of the “healthy suspicion” of white people she discusses surely includes a sensitivity to possible performative virtue signaling taken by white people in these discussions.

But I eventually became more comfortable and ultimately appreciated it. Yes, we need inter-racial dialogue and whites listening to and centering the voices of BIPOC individuals, but ultimately white supremacy is a problem for white people to see and change, so in that sense this was a good example of trying to do this well. Whenever she could she brought in voices of color and was truly being led by their wisdom rather than appropriating it. She also seemed to have developed this material under the guidance of black mentors.

In regards to the actual content of the book, I had some strong feelings that have been difficult for me to parse out. On the positive side, I found intriguing the idea of the recovery model as a framework to understand growth in white people, at least if we employ it in broad strokes. I can appreciate the idea that deconstructing one's privilege, racism, and conditioning in a white supremacist culture ought to be a holistic effort and seen as a process and not as a binary “healed vs sick” sort of reality.

I can also understand what the author is doing in applying the 12-Step model of meetings and work in facilitating and sustaining such anti-racist progress. Many of the dimensions she describes have indeed been key markers in my own journey in this area. The embrace of ignorance as a way of knowing was perhaps the first thing that began raising my consciousness in this—the simple admission that my intuitive sense of reality cannot be my most trusted source of understanding in matters of race. In other words, my “gut” isn't the same thing as “truth” or seeing things “more clearly” than others, but is more a result of my own culture, conditioning, and perspective. Therefore, I need to actually defer to the experience, understanding, and perspective of BIPOC individuals. I think this is perhaps the biggest roadblock to my family members and friends who have difficulty with antiracism.

And while I struggled with what I saw as a profound lack of hopefulness in the materials, I did agree with applying the 12-Step ethos that says this is a process from which we never “graduate”. We as white people will always be learning new dimensions in which this white conditioning comes up. I fully agree that a white person's “competence” in this area is more about non-defensively receiving feedback about possible harms and responding in tangible ways to correct the harm. I do think it is unrealistic to expect that white social workers will never be experienced by any BIPOC as having committed a microaggression.

And that's part of the point of these materials: our conditioning runs deep, and competence is about increasing self-awareness, staying in the growth process, and cultivating openness to one's need for growth and receiving feedback, not expectations of perfection or defensiveness, or critiquing or countering BIPOC experiences.

However, I still had some issues with these materials. I am incredibly familiar with 12-Step programming and philosophy, and am a believer in it. I want to say that up front because a lot of my criticisms have to do with how the materials here adapt and use the 12-Steps, and I don't know how much of my negative feelings are unfairly coming from my bias for the 12-Steps as a theoretical model and process. I do not think 12-Step programs are needed or appropriate for everyone, and I do think they can be broadened to apply to dimensions of human life beyond traditional addictions. But still, the framework employed here strips a lot of what makes the 12-Steps what they. This makes me wish she had just come up with her own model rather than trying to build on the 12-Step one.

At its core, my biggest issue here is related to the Higher Power piece, but not because she has removed the concept from the steps as she's re-formulated them. I don't think people have to be religious or believe in the supernatural to work and benefit from the steps. And she's not entirely opposed to it herself. The book speaks to this and fully endorses people engaging a spiritual aspect if it's helpful to them.

But I think she misses the point of a Higher Power in the program and removes a whole dimension that could actually be helpful in the process she's laying out. A Higher Power (as one defines it) is necessary because the program assumes that healing cannot be found just within oneself.

We are the problem. We got ourselves in this situation. We need something outside ourselves that is stronger than us to help bring us back to sanity. In this case, white conditioning has deeply formed our whole society, economy, and culture. We need to form whole counter cultures and greater systems (“Higher Powers”) within which we can be formed and shaped in a different way. Just self-reflection among individuals or small groups of white people is not enough. As it's articulated in this book, it's still very individualistic and intellectual.

To be fair, the writer talks about making authentic relationships with People of Color and finding new influences to counteract our white supremacist conditioning. But these remain at micro levels. In one example, she commends changing your Facebook feed to have more black viewpoints pop up.

It is hard for me to imagine long-term change coming from groups of white people talking about their own racism in isolation from BIPOC people and finding the healing in their own self-reflection. I still think growth in this process needs to be collaborative, synergistic, and embodied between white and black people. No, there should not be an expectation placed on any Person of Color to engage in such a process, but I don't think there can be any expectation of growth in white people without real, difficult, life-giving interactions, discussions, and stories.

Getting beyond the 12-Steps explicitly, I also have issues with how she employs a more general Recovery Model here. The recovery model is ultimately client-centered and client-driven. In this regard, who is the “client” in this Recovery from White Conditioning? If it's the white person, then they are not actually the one who ought to be centered or driving the process. So if that's not there, is the “recovery” framework even helpful at that point?

Lastly, the 12-Steps have a strain of hope and healing within them—the goal and idea of “sobriety”. These 12-Steps for White Conditioning have nothing of the sort. It feels to me there is a deep cynicism underneath it all where there isn't all that much progress beyond going from a lack of racial consciousness to the presence of such consciousness and openness. After that, it's more about just staying there.

In contrast, 12-Step programs aren't ultimately about the substance or issue around which the program is built—it's about becoming a freer, fuller, more generous and loving human in general in all parts of your life. Even after one gets sober, they keep coming back because the sobriety gives more room for people to discover more levels of self-development needed in areas beyond the “thing” itself they are now sober from. These White Conditioning steps don't have that. There's little to no talk of how doing this process will make you a better human overall, not just less racist. That's the real hopefulness and benefit within the traditional 12-Steps and so without them, this program feels too limited in its scope and promise and so the “goal” is still defined in negative terms rather than positive.

Years ago, while in seminary, I did a lot of work and reading around Black Liberation Theology and Feminist Theology, and both of them had the conviction that doing this work and attending to those perspectives is actually the way to bring benefits and redemption to all societies and people, not just women or black people. Paulo Freire says much the same thing (inspired by some of the same sources).

Oppression is not just about harm done to the oppressed but how it holds back the oppressor and the systems that support them. These white conditioning 12-Steps don't have any of that. There is no sense that antiracist work is about a general liberation and healing in all areas of life and the world—even for those who engage in these steps as she lays them out. It is only about white people gathering weekly to talk about ways they think they were racist in the past week and how they might do better. This, by itself, is not “bad”, per se, just incredibly inadequate on its own, I feel.

More to the point, it's such a departure from the philosophical underpinnings of the 12-Steps, it really bothers me that this programming is so explicitly supposedly building on that foundation—especially when many of the aspects she has taken out would actually be helpful in this process of re-conditioning us away from white supremacy and finding new ways of being human in the world.

An astonishing book, and perfect reading for Lent. I cannot recommend this book more highly, and I'm shocked I hadn't heard of it before this year.

It's not everyday you finish a book that you don't really know what to do with. Overall, I enjoyed reading it. I don't regret having done so. But having finished it, do I walk away from it with some lingering feeling or impression? Not really.

This book is about a mother, Frida, who has “one very bad day”, and leaves her infant daughter alone at home for a few hours. Child protective services is called, the child is removed, and Frida is sent to a year-long reeducation pilot program for “bad mothers”. This school has much of the dystopian features that we associate with books like the “Handmaid's Tale” or “1984”, and much of the narrative is getting to know each of the women at this school and how they survive and what they endure, so on and so forth. Many similar books have been written since Atwood's novel–and that's not to diminish the quality of this book, but to lay the scene in order to ask if she really contributes something new.

This is Chan's debut novel. She's been a short story writer for some time, so she knows how to write. The book does not suffer many of the habits that more underdeveloped writers have in their first novels. However, something about it still feels like it is the first book written by the author. It's a little meandering, and its year-long timeline necessitates us being removed from the story for fairly large swaths of time, to be dropped back and zoomed in to a specific period of time with a brief summary of what happened between those moments. This lessens the horror that we are to feel about the nature of this school. Maybe if all of this were compacted within 6 months, it would have a greater sense of dread. But the pacing of the book is kind of odd, with some moments being unnecessarily drawn out and slow and others being so briefly summarized, that we start to feel like we don't in fact know these characters, or their lives, very well.

If there is one new thing that Chan brings to this general genre, it is some of the racial commentary. Chan herself is Asian, as is her protagonist here. I think Western mainstream audiences are still growing in their understanding of Asian Americans within the racial complexities of our society. The book skillfully shows us how the world is much more complex than simply all minorities being in tension with all white people, or Asians being lumped in with whites as “model minorities”. There are fascinating racial calibrations and navigations amongst the women at the school that are interesting to watch, even if nothing much happens or comes out of those tensions.

Additionally, I do appreciate how a lot of these characters are more fleshed out than in most debut novels. I especially appreciate that none of the characters were purely evil or righteous, with attempts at complexity and nuance being brought to different people's mindsets and actions. (But more on this in a minute.)

I do end the book with a sense of frustration, though. As the year progresses in the novel, I grew a growing interest in what was going to happen once her time at the school was over, but purely on an intellectual level. I don't think there was much about the text itself that was effectively ratcheting up the tension. Some of those latter months of the school program are really rushed through, almost as if Chan was on deadline and needed to finish the book and didn't quite know what to do with it.

But then, the ending comes. And it really falls flat. I'd read this whole book wondering if it was building up to something. And rather than ending with a bang, it does so with a whimper. It does attempt to make it interesting at the very end, but I don't think it works.

I am very comfortable with sad or unresolved endings in novels. I really love them, in fact. And I think that's what Chan is trying to do here. I think she's wanting to talk about how the system almost always wins, how there is not really any catharsis against injustice, and how no system and no person is completely good or completely bad.

And this ties back to my earlier statement about the characters being complex. I think Chan wants to stress the messiness of humans and systems. Not everything that this school does is horrifying. And many of the women at the school are women that we would not want to sympathize with or that we may think should be sent to a school like this. I appreciate that no one really has any sort of narrative arc–neither the systems nor the people.

From the beginning of the novel, I really liked Frida as a narrator, because she really was complex and on the spectrum between good and bad, we would probably think she was a little more on the selfish and narcissistic side. We actually do feel like she she is not well equipped or prepared to be a mother. She says thoughts that I'm sure every parent has, but never utters out loud. And yes, by the end, she wants to be a mother whereas there is some ambivalence in the beginning. But I cannot tell you how she got to that place. I don't actually think she has come to terms with any of the weaknesses or dysfunctions inside of her. Honestly, I am not rooting for her at the end.

I think throughout the novel, Frida really is screwed by the system unjustly, but I don't know that she's any different of a human coming out of this year-long hell than she went in. In fact, it seems like she may have collapsed in on herself and her narcissism all the more while there.

Maybe that is Chan's point: unjust systems, even if they are intended to help, will often make people worse than better, perhaps even to justify their own existence. But even if so, the contrast and the arc and the movement to that place is not well executed, in my opinion. This may be one of those books where inconsistency and a lack of vision and clarity is confused for complexity, nuance, and ambiguity. But I think there's a way to clearly demonstrate complexity, even if you want to do it with a “less is more” sensibility. I just don't think it was successful here.

I believe I read somewhere that this book has already been chosen to be made into a TV series. I'll probably watch it, and maybe they can flesh all of this out and create much more tension and depth. And I still am looking forward to Chan's later works. But though I mostly enjoyed the pros in this novel, I feel it was a bit thin and lacking depth which I feel Chan is capable of giving us. And that's a little frustrating. Or perhaps I am a bad reader. But I am learning to be good.

This will, hands down, go down as one of the most impactful and influential books of my entire life. At least this moment, I'm entirely convinced of Hart's arguments in this volume. I will just have to do a deep dive into the counter arguments. But the logic and framework of reality that he's working from here seems to be unassailably correct. But a framework can be logically consistent, whole, beautiful, and make sense of almost all aspects of reality and intuition, and still probably be incorrect. This book is a tour de force onslaught in favor of universalism and against all competing variations of it's rejection. To me, the only sticking point the scripture itself. Hart recasts many of the key texts involved in this debate in such a way where it makes total sense and has changed the way I look at scripture in so many aspects of it. But there is still sections in parts and verses that I can't quite fit into this framework, and that makes me uneasy.

That is where this book loses a star. Hart knows very well what his opponents will say and where they will turn, but from the outset he assumes bad faith from them for a whole host of reasons and literally says that he expects this book to not convince anyone or change anyone's in mind. I think general cynicism is warranted, but to absolutely and completely just give up the entire enterprise of persuasion makes this almost feel like a useless book. Now, maybe that was a rhetorical device in the first place to disarm people were to give himself license to say what he really feels rather than couch it in ways that others could receive more easily. But throughout the book he has no amount of understanding nor ability to empathize with why the majority of the church for the majority of its history has disagreed with him. He does deal with that argument to some extent, but he's so alienates, insults, and belittles anyone that would possibly disagree with him, I don't know what to do with this book. It was hugely impactful for me, but I don't feel comfortable suggesting it to anyone else that may disagree with him. And indeed, the few negative reviews and counterpoints to this book which I have read have all focused on his tone and seeming appeal to emotion as an argument. It allows them to not actually have to deal with his real arguments. And that is a shame.

So this is a five-star book in terms of content and argumentation and accomplishing what he says out to do. It's a three-star book in terms of its place in the broader debates and conversations on these and related issues. It could have been more, and I wish it was. But either way, this book is going to stick with me the rest of my life, and I'm still trying to process its implications for everything else I feel called to do in ministry and the world.

But nevertheless, I am comforted by the central truth of this book, that God truly is good and he will be all in all.

P.S. on a side note, I know this was not his intent or desire at all, but Hart actually strengthened me in my Calvinism with this book. He has just made me a calvinist universalist, and he sounds a lot like one too. His musings on the will, it's bondage, and the myth of its freedom sound like something Luther or Calvin (or even Edwards!) would have written, it is some of the most profound and compelling thoughts on that topic you will find in any book. And frankly, those musings are worth the cost of this book by themselves even without drawing out its implications for eternity.

Pretty good. I admit, it took a few chapters to get into it. The main character, who's perspective we're dropped into, has a certain way of thinking and narrating that feels like a shtick or a type. But once you get used to his cadence and buy into it more, you really do start to connect with and care for him. I'm

The mystery itself is so-so. The book is a lot less concerned with ramping up narrative tension than it is and using that narrative as a space to discuss philosophical and religious ideas and get to know these characters a bit. I really can't say I cared about the victim or the murder mystery at all through the entirety of the book, but I really did start to care for the characters. Judy, the main character's sister who seems to have some sort of spectrum or developmental disorder, is pretty endearing and engaging, even if she's a little flat as a character.

The prose is clear and straightforward, even in it's philosophical or theological musings. And while most of the book is a pretty casual beach read level, man, there really are some profound and stunningly beautiful lines sprinkled throughout the book—”literary”, even. There's even more than a few lines I laughed out loud at.

I like the way the author's brain seems to work. I don't know if this is his first book or not, but I can imagine future novels becoming more refined and sophisticated. So I'm excited to read more of his work.

But overall, I would say this was more of a fun book than a philosophical novel, though at times I think it was trying to be the latter. Unfortunately, it's not; but a good and interesting read nonetheless.

I am genuinely shocked that that is what I just read. If you are going into this book thinking that it will offer any sort of comfort or frameworks to help you understand or explain the phenomenon of the hiddenness of God, let me encourage you to go elsewhere. This here is a book length argument simply for why God's apparent hiddenness does not necessitate God's non-existence.

One of the downsides of listening to an audiobook, especially when each chapter is a separate track, is that you don't really have an ongoing intuitive gauge for how much of the book is left, like you would for a physical book. So I did not know that what I thought was the necessary brush-clearing that these kind of books must do to get some preliminary concerns out of the way, was in fact the entirety of the book.

Fundamentally, I realize how that the book is a polemic–not seeking to advance its own framework or idea, but simply trying to respond to and counter other ideas he disagrees with. On that metric, Rea is largely successful. Not having dived too deeply into the literature around the hiddenness of God, I was not aware that the idea had largely been engaged in terms of God's existence rather than our experience. Now, to be clear, Rea does not offer any sort of argument for the existence of God. He believes it and presumes it. He is simply trying to show the inadequacy of apparently widely known arguments against the existence of God based on his hiddenness.

And while Rea is philosophically successful in showing that there can still be a deity–indeed, even the Christian one–even in light of the phenomenon of God's hiddenness, speak to the emotional or human existential aspects that arise from God's hiddenness. And this was the entire reason I came to this book in the first place.

When it comes to understanding or explaining or offering any sort of positive account of God's hiddenness, Rea's argument is almost literally the following ideas: God is transcendent and we are not, so we are probably defining how “un-hidden” God should be based on wrong human ideas. God probably has other things to think about and do than make himself present to us all the time, because we are not the center of his universe. And either way, there are people out there that experience God pretty regularly, so your mileage may vary and that doesn't speak to God's existence or not. Yet still, God is fine with us lamenting, so that's good.

In short: “God's hiddenness is more your problem, humans. And not god's. And I have no idea why God is so hidden.”

It is so unsatisfactory emotionally, theologically, and existentially. He spends so much time going through the minutiae of points that I feel are oretty insignificant and then kind of shrugs and offers vague statements about more substantive things. At length, he gives an in in-depth treatment of why all humans have the capacity to try and form a relationship with God. Notice that the argument is not that all people can have a relationship with god. Just that they simply can try and have one. He literally says nothing about whether or if those attempts at a relationship would, should, or could be successful. He spends page after page going through this. And yet when it comes to something like his idea of transcendence, or how we should understand the problem of evil and God's invitation to lament, he just says other ideas that other thinkers have had in the past, says he doesn't agree with half of them, and then moves on, not trying to explain or argue for any of them or offer his own.

On one hand, I get what he's doing. The thing I appreciate the most about this book is how ecumenical and measured it is. He is saying that these atheist arguments are wrong and for those that want to believe in God there are a whole range of optional frameworks that can employ to do so. I imagine he feels it is against his intention with the book to argue for specific theological, denominational, or sectarian commitments. And yet he still freely offers what he feels are limitations to those other optional perspectives that he disagrees with.

One maddening example of this is when he outlines several different theological perspectives on how to understand the book of Job. Some of them are astonishingly beautiful when he explains them, only for him to say that he disagrees with them and then sensibly outline why those perspectives are inadequate. Why would he do this? Only offer perspectives you think are valuable options, or just saying what you have found helpful and think is true.

Part of what really frustrates me about this book is that I can almost since what could this book have been. I see that Rea has an incredible pastoral sensitivity, ecumenical sensibility, sharp theological acumen, and a wide breadth of knowledge and sources. I bet he really could give a fuller account of his understanding of why God remains hidden, or at least that we experience God in that way. I understand that's not the purpose of his book here, but I think that it could have been. And it would have been incredibly helpful. He has a deep concern and graciousness to those that have experienced trauma, especially religious trauma, and how that creates a roadblock to people experiencing God. I just wish that heart for other humans and the clear articulation of ideas he can offer would have resulted in a book that spoke more to The human experience rather than just argued with some other academic philosophers.

In the end, I think my biggest frustration is that the book has a midleading title. The hiddenness of God is not, in fact, it's aim, it's topic, nor what it is “about”. It is about one conversation that one smaller group of people have been having about the hidden this of god, and one set of conclusions some people draw from it. That discussion is not really all that interesting or helpful to me. But what I thought the book was, really would have been. And I hope Rea considers offer it to us sometime.