2009 Interactive Book Journal

Ongoing Book Journal ( Semi-Complete List):

January

John Grisham. The Innocent Man. Non-fiction account of life (and death) on Oklahoma’s Death Row.

Calvin Miller. Life is Mostly Edges.First-rate memoir from one of my favorite professors.

Micheal Stackpole. I, Jedi. The hero’s journey of my favorite Corellian (sorry Han), and jedi (sorry Luke).

N.T. Wright. The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who He Was and Is.

Anne Rice. Christ the Lord: Out of Cana. Fictionalized account of the pre-ministry adulthood of Cjrist.

Martin Marty. Martin Luther. Small bio of a big man.

Dallas Williard. The Divine Conspiracy. Look at the Christian life.

Craig Shaw Gardner. Battlestar Galatica Trilogy: The Cyclon’s Secret.  Somewhat disappointing novelization of BSG.

February

William Young. The Shack. Theological fiction. Discuss.

Stephen King. Stephen King Goes to the Movies. Short story collection.

John McFetridge. Everyone Knows This Is Nowhere. Second-rate fiction noir with some interesting discussion of place and time.

Rosalind Baker. Brillance. Fictional account of love, romance, and the beginning years of cinema.

Alan Moore and David Gibbons. The Watchmen. Such a work needs more words than this to describe. It needs a book, or ten.

Barney Stinson with Matt Kuhn. The Bro Code. Humorous tweaking of American machismo.

March

Cara Lockwood. Moby Clique. Fiction about scholl populated by ghosts of famous writers working off their sins. HS as purgatory, excellant.

Walter McDougall. Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History, 1585- 1828. Excellent  material-political overview of American history with minimal attempts at history from below mixed in.

Sebastian Faulks (writing as Ian Fleming). Devil May Care. The newest Bond novel losing nothing in the  transltion to another writer (unlike the Bourne series has).

N.T. Wright. Evil and the Justice of God. Discussion of the place and meaning of the cross within theodicy.

M. Gigi Durham. The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It. Sociological critique of the hyper-sexualization of the American media.

Richard Yates. Revolutionary Road. Fictional account of a dying relationship in burbs of Connecticut.

Debating Race with Micheal Eric Dyson. Disquieting and unsettling discussion of race and America from an intellectual giant.

Anthology. An Emergent Manifesto of Hope. An interesting series of articles and essays from the kind folks of Emergent Village.

April

Flannery O’Connor. Everything that Rises Must Converge. A Surprising and Disturbing short story collection. Not a big fan of certain conventions of her storytelling.

David Wells. God in the Wasteland. A critique of modern evangelical theology.

Jaroslav Pelikan. Jesus through the Centuries. Excellent overview of the histeriography of Christ. Great Holy Week reading.

John Jackson, Jr. Racial Paranoia. Good discussion of the unintended consequences of ridding the world of de cardio racism. Welcome to the world of de cardio racism.

Various Authors. Four Views: The Nature of the Atonement. I hate myself for thinking Greg Boyd actually came across the best in this debate. I mean I sided with Greg Boyd. I sided with Greg Boyd. I honestly do not know myself sometimes.

Stephanie Kuehnert. I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone. Really good tale of struggling musician terying to make it in life, love, and rock-n-roll.

May

Micheal Reaves. Star Wars: Street of Shadows. Part two of the Coruscant Nights. So-So tale of a crappy Jedi. Wasted use of a good idea award goes to the Paladins.

Sergei Lukyanenko. Nightwatch. Russian sci-fi classic which received a horrible film version (surprisingly screenwritten by author). Any of the three stories here would have been a great movie or I would have loved seeing a combo of the three; yet somehow they went with a muddled plot that was completely inintelligable (at least in subtitles). Read the translation.

James McBride. Miracle at St Anna.  An endearingly and unflinching account of the struggles and glories of 4 Buffalo Soldiers involved in a strange campaign in St Anna Italy during the great war.

Walter McDougall. Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era, 1829-1877: Volume 2 of the New American History Series. Big book packed with information but readable. Ending a little abrupt but fascinating argument.

June

Michael Reaves. Death Star.  Does for SW4: A New Hope what Stoppard‘s Rosencrantz and Guildenstein did for Hamlet.

Timothy Zahn. Terminator Salvation: From the Ashes. One of my favorite sci-fi guys does a prequel to this summer’s Terminator movie. Sets the action up nicely, maybe better than the movie.

Brad Gooch. Flannery: A Life. A decent stab at telling an untold story.

Amy Spencer. DIY: The Rise of Lo-fi Culture. A breathless and encyclopedic discussion of DIY culture. A good resource if not read.

Sergei Lukyanenko. Daywatch. Second volume of the sci-fi series. Not as good as the first, but still a fascinating discussion of the many faces of good and evil. Still better than the eponymous movie.

Kathleen Norris. Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life.A well written book that is heart warming and wrenching all at the same time. This study on depression and doubt is by far one of the best looks and the life lived in faith in a long time.

July

Eric Michael Dyson. You Know What I Mean: Reflections on Hip-Hop. Not my favorite of his works, though revealing of one of the problems with cultural reflection. You get the feeling that the author has not even tried to interact with the source material at a deep, conceptual level.  I think that may be because the book is pieced together from “conversations” in public settings, and for some reason Dyson had not had his usual amount of pre-talk caffeine or something. I expected more from someone Bar-baara Waallteers has called a racist on-air.

Carrie Fisher. Wishful Drinking. An interesting look at addiction and mental illness. I can only wish that I could look at my imperfections with such humor, humility,  and transparency (not too many people could with such wit discuss their frustrations with self, spouse, and spawn). Not too bad from a person whose likeness has been transformed into a shampoo bottle, action-figure, and sex toy.

Sergei Lukyanenko. Twilight Watch. Best so far (in series).

Aaron Allston. Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Outcast. Opening book in the new series set 40 some odd years after ROTJ. Great opening, looser and sloppier in the ending. All in all a promising start (all starts with a great premise- returning Luke and the gang to their rebellious roots, and having a new Imperial government and Sith menace looming- no new stupid alien challenge or in-fighting).

Paula Huston. Forgiveness: Following Jesus Into Radical Loving. Absolutely the best book I’ve read to date (this year anyway). Her mush needed discussion of a topic on which I thought I had a good handle. This brave work should be read by anyone desiring to be reformed in God’s image.

Christine Golden. Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Omen. Serviceable first run by this author who previously wrote in the Star Trek universe. I was worried because I did not want to read a Trek novel set in the SWG, but it was well done. The new Sith make me happy.

August

Sergei Lukyanenko. Last Watch. Another best in series.

Slavoj Zizek. Violence. Big Ideas / Small Books Series. Excellant review of violence and what it means from a somewhat obscure, challenging, and admittedly inconsistent thinker. A book designed to make you think about the obscurity and banality of evil.

Heiko Oberman. Luther: Man Between God and the Devil. First-rate scholarship on display in this fascinating and academia changing discussion of the man and legend that was Luther.

John Grisham. The Appeal.First-rate political thriller which was strangely prescient of the many issues of the past year. I found myself gaining insight into all manner of things: how big business manipulates the religious right, how the Sotomayor hearing happened, and how bad things do not always teach good lessons.

Derek Morphew. Different but Equal: Going Beyond the Complimentarian / Egalitarian Debate. Excellent discussion of the biblical data on male-female relationships. Morphew reveals how the Kingdom hermeneutic can apply to this current debate, and how it provides a viable middle ground in this fierce debate over gender and relationships.

September

Troy Denning. The Dark Nest I: The Joiner King. Interesting first book in a somewhat underrated trilogy.

Rowan Williams. Tokens of Trust. A good primer on Christianity from the Anglican Church’s top scholar and bishop. This mediation on the Apostles’ Creed is a good place to start a discussion of what Christianity is and is not.

Troy Denning. The Dark Nest II: The Unseen Queen. See above.

Flannery O Connor. Wise Blood. Parts of this strange book are good, and parts, not so much.

Dave Cullen. Columbine. First-rate reporting on this senseless tragedy. A must read. The images presented in this account have stayed with me and haunted me as much or more than any of the rolls of film shot and aired at the time. This book proves truly that “fair and balanced” reporting can outshine any of the myths and simple bowdlerized stories the media routinely favors. If Cullen was truly seeking to atone for his share of those bowdlerisms, he has done so in spades. I can only hope to write books half as good and well researched.

October

Troy Denning. Fate of the Jedi III: Abyss.

Teri Thompson, et al. American Icon: The Rise and Fall of Roger Clemens. More good reporting on a sensitive story. If I had not already fallen under the Sports Guy’s spell and hated Clemens because of it, this book would have done the same trick. The book stands as a fitting riposte on a egomanical “winner.”

Andrew Marin. Love is an Orientation: Elevating the Conversation with the Gay Community. While Marin and I may disagree on some manners of biblical hermeneutics, I wholeheartedly commend his ministry and his ministry instincts.

Donald Miller. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned from Editing My Life. This book will stay with me for the rest of my life. I have already begun asking how I might edit my own story and create better stories for myself and those around me.

Brad Meltzer. Book of Fate. Good, solid political thriller from the new John Grisham.

November

Monica Seles. Getting a Grip: On My Body, My Mind, Myself. Seles shows that her on-court courage translates itself off-court in this courageous and charming (if at times poorly written, or better yet edited– maybe she should have used Palin’s “ghost-writer”) work. She was one of my heroes growing up and her courageous “retirement” means that I can continue to consider her a true American Icon.

Richard Mattheson. I Am Legend and Other Stories. Great stories full of pathos. Buy it for the much better title story, and keep it for the superb Poe-like grotesqueries Mad House, and The Funeral or the Stephen King had to have read this and been inspired by it apocalyptic Dance of the Dead .  Though you may want to chuck the P. Dick-lite prose such as  Witch War, Buried Treasure, and From Shadowed Places.

Currently Reading:

N.T. Wright. Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense.

 

Skimmed for research / need (or read in part):

Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur by Michael Eric Dyson.

Four Desert Fathers: Pambo, Evagrius Pontus, Macarius of Egypt, and Macarius of Alexandria. Coptic Texts Relating to the Lausiac History of Palladius. Translated and Introduced by Tim Vivian.

Evagrius Pontus by AP Casiday.

Green: The Beginning of the End by Ted Dekker.

If God is Good by Randy Alcorn.

In Praise of Virtue: An Exploration of the Biblical Virtues in a Christian Context. Benjamin Farley.

The Seven Habits of the Good Life: How the Biblical Virtues Free Us  from the Seven Deadly Sins. Kalman Kaplan and Matthew Schwartz.

African Friends and Money Matters. David Marantz.

Money Matters in Church. Aubrey Malphours  and Steve Stroope.