Sean

The only Stephen King I have read before (and the only books by him I have ever wanted to read) are the Dark Tower books, which I absolutely love. Elevation was quite a different experience for me. It is an interesting story and I enjoyed it, but Man! it feels just like a cozy mystery.

Well worth reading. I will definitely want to return later and re-read the passages I highlighted.

I think I don't have much real wisdom to contribute in a review, and I know I have a cat in the way of the keyboard, so I don't feel like typing much, so I will simply content myself with a few scattered thoughts.

Full disclosure: I know that Mclaren's thesis is correct because he agrees pretty much exactly with what I have been preaching for many years.

McLaren says (I paraphrase), “We should read what Jesus actually is recorded to have said, and take that seriously.” I do not understand how that can cause any distress or disagreement. But somehow it does. Reading reviews of this book here and in other places causes me to shake my head in confusion. I even read one reviewer who said, “It does not matter what Jesus said, what matters is that he saves us from God's wrath.”

Jesus preached, “Change the way you think; change your priorities. The Kingdom of God is right around the corner.” His message could be severely paraphrased thus: “Everything that comes automatically and naturally to you, every priority you have, is at best inadequate and at worst the opposite of God-values.” We have created a religion which preaches something different–not necessarily bad or wrong, but different. The occasional corrective of being called back to the actual teachings of Jesus and being urged to take those teachings seriously is a good thing.

– Enough for now. The old sick cat needs his evening food and medicine, so I will leave this book here for now. I like it very much and recommend it highly to any person, Christian or otherwise, who would like to take Jesus seriously as a teacher.

Beautiful, thought-provoking, and evocative.

I know there are those who say I should not like this book because of the author's backward views of some matters, but it is one of the best books I have ever read. I love it.

I got about a third of the way in and realized I was still waiting to find out why I would care about any of it, or even whether anything was happening.

I want to be Delilah Dirk when I grow up. And Mr. Selim, too. I love these books more than I can say: the stories are rousing and fun; the art is beautiful; the writing is clear; the characters ... I'm in love with the both of them.

Poetic enough for an adult, direct enough for a child. And I shed maybe one tear.

I appreciate Dowd's attitude. He does not look at the problem of “homelessness,” but rather he looks at individual human persons whom he loves. Without using the word, he encourages the reader to love, and that is a good thing. I am grateful that this book was written by a man whose personal belief system allows him and requires him to see and love humans, rather than by an administrator who just has a job to do.

Everybody hates the ending? Why? It is a perfectly cromulent ending.

Very good, but, since it was not what I was expecting or hoping for, a bit of a disappointment.

I have become very interested lately in listening to what Jesus actually has to say, as if his words mattered. Sadly, the downside of the beautiful and wise theology which the Church has come to understand is that we sometimes overlook Jesus' actual teachings. I was hoping for an exploration of his words, considered philosophically. But Kreeft, being Kreeft, gave me something different, though certainly very good. He presents Jesus himself as the answer to four primary philosophical questions. Theologically quite profound, and I enjoyed his presentation–maybe I even learned something lasting from it, let's hope. But since it was not what I am most interested in at the moment, it was a bit of a let down.

A person expecting a “philosophical” book, will, perhaps, be disappointed. He might throw up his hands and declare, “Why, this is just theology after all!” But Kreeft makes the case well, that Jesus, considered as Christians believe him to be (fully God and fully human), is philosophically pertinent. Jesus, the author claims, makes his philosophical claims simply by being, not by teaching. I would hope that the reader would allow the argument some respect and weight.

The book, like everything I have seen by Dahm, captivated me with its art even when the story telling us not quite my style. Well worth enjoying for the visual beauty and the odd story.

[review later]

I might write more later, but for now I will be content with this: I wish I had written this book myself.

I tried really hard to like this, but it just seemed odd for the sake of being odd and I could never get into it.

Gorgeous art and a rivetting story, but somehow not as gripping as the novels. The GN versions become a bit of a slog for me to get through, and I think I shan't read any more of them. Maybe too much gore for my taste. But, for a person who might like the style, I highly recommend them.

I liked it. The verse is doggerel, but really all the complaints about it are excessive. It's cute and fun, and that's all it is supposed to be. The art is kind of adorable, and the knight is gorgeous. I wish I had read this book when I was young enough to be the intended audience.

The most important bit of writing the human race has ever produced. Especially if you omit the introduction and ending which were added on later.

This book has made it onto my Favorites shelf, even though the first time I tried reading it I had to stop because it exacerbated my incipient depression too badly. The second attempt, several years later, went better, and although it does not have a “happy ending” at all, there is enough hope to see one through.

I spent much of the book wanting to yell at Fr. Emilio for his lousy, Dollar Store theology and puerile theodicy. I was happy to see his growth (and glad to find out that the author knew what she was talking about after all!). Even though this was one of the most painful books I've been able to read, with its merciless exploration of pain in all its forms, I recommend it to anyone who is trying to figure out how to make sense of it all.

Although Shaggy is visually not the crush-inducing cutie he was when I watched the cartoons, this story is a lot of fun, the art is really good, and I absolutely love Scooby Doo. He's adorable, and fierce OMG!

I never really know what to say about graphic-intensive books, especially books without words. I love them, even though I am borderline illiterate when it comes to pictures. The art is great; what I could follow of the story was interesting; but my own deficiencies (I believe it to be my problem, not the author-artist's) left large gaps in the plot. So take a look at it for some cool art, and if you are better at pictures than I, you will probably enjoy a cool story, too.

I really appreciate Jason's sparse account of his shy and introverted pilgrimage. He gets criticized for not talking to more people, but from me he gets my thanks for telling a story I can identify with.

I would have loved it, but it was too gorey for me.

I highly recommend this book to people like me: curious and interested, intelligent (somewhat) and reasonably well-educated, but not an astrophysicist or anything like one. My only gripe is that other reviews had me expecting something more marvelous; this is good but not marvelous.

Also, I find Tyson's philosophy to be sweet but naïve. The whole, “The universe is so big, we must be nice to each other,” as much as I agree with it, is unmoving. Since according to the materialist philosophy the author and non-theists in general espouse, there is no ultimate meaning to existence itself, no purpose to life, the universe, or anything, there is no authority or reason for choosing a way of going through life (being nice or nasty, for instance) other than what one happens to prefer. So Tyson prefers a nice approach. I am very glad he does. But I don't know why, if he is right about the meaninglessness of everything, anybody else should care.

Anyway, I'm being a philosophical grouch. Don't let my grouchiness spoil a good book for you. Read it. Enjoy it. Learn from it. See the world with bigger eyes, or see a bigger world with the same old eyes.

Why did I take so long to get around to reading this? Now I need to buy a copy of my own so I can re-read it, mark it, inwardly digest it.

Boethius has so much to say through the person of Lady Philosophy. I will comment on two of his points.

1. Philosophy urges the reader to let go of fear and hope. Fear is fairly obvious, but hope? It might even seem to be a contradiction, since in the last paragraph of the work she says that “hope is not placed in God in vain.” Having spent several years of my life struggling with the word “hope,” trying to figure out just what it means–it is, after all, a virtue, so it must mean more than just an expectation of a desired outcome–her injunction to dispense with it was a call to meditation. It seems obvious to me that the “hope” to let go of is the aforementioned anticipation of a desired outcome. Hope defined as confidence in God or–and here is the definition which really changed my views when I ran across it–the firm conviction that there is meaning underneath all that happens, is the hope which is not in vain, if it is placed in God.

2. Boethius asks Philosophy about God's foreknowledge of the future, and whether that destroys free will. She gives a good explanation of the difference between eternity and perpetuity. A living being is of necessity only in the present moment. It's future has not arrived; it's past is gone. Only the moment is present to it. But for an eternal being, there is no past or future in the sense of time gone past or time not yet arrived. Everywhen is fully realized as NOW. And so there is no “seeing into the future,” or predicting (even with an absolute degree of certainty) what will happen next. Everything to God is Now. So God sees all the times which to us are “future.” It's just that for him they are not future, but Now. So what he sees is the working out of our free will, not constrained by his “already having witnessed it,” but simply events working themselves out in God's eternal Now moment.