Recap (August 1-7)

Book Reviews:

• The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke
  

  Rating: ****
  Category: Children’s Fantasy
  Synopsis: Two runaway orphans get taken in by Venice’s young “Thief Lord”–but when their aunt enlists a private detective to find the two, it might mean trouble for the whole crew.
  Recommendation: If you like juvenile fiction and/or fantasy, you’ll like this. Otherwise, there’s nothing particularly spectacular about it.

  Read the rest of my review

Books for the TBR list:

• Dreaming of Dior by Charlotte Smith
  From Bermuda Onion’s review:

  “Charlotte Smith inherited a collection of beautiful vintage clothing from her godmother, Doris Darnell. Her godmother collected not only the clothing but the stories of the people who wore them. At first, Charlotte was overwhelmed and didn’t know what to do with all of the clothing (over 3,000 pieces), but once she read the stories, she knew she had to share the collection somehow. She couldn’t bear the thought of it being broken up, so she didn’t want to donate it to museums. Luckily for us, she has created a beautiful book.”

• Stat Spotting by Joel Best
  Kevin DeYoung says “In a world full of dubious data, this book is a must read.” I respect DeYoung quite a bit and think I’ll take his advice :-)
• To Change the World by James D. Hunter
  I’d read some responses to this book at Christianity Today, but hadn’t really thought of reading it myself until I read this Coram Deo review. The summary, also posted by Coram Deo, left me fascinated. Apparently, Hunter argues that the entire model for world change (that change is accomplished via ideas and individuals–a “bottom up” model) is wrong. I think this book may challenge a lot of my assumptions–which is what makes it so very interesting (especially in light of how my assumptions have already been challenged while reading The Myth of a Christian Nation by Greg Boyd.)

News to take note of:

• Experts proposing new recommendations for Alzheimer’s diagnosis, including a “pre-clinical” diagnosis.
  I was initially pretty concerned about this idea, because the pre-clinical biomarkers are found using cerebro-spinal fluid and imaging techniques that I don’t feel should be routinely conducted on asymptomatic individuals. However, when I read a little deeper and discovered that this classification was intended for research purposes (identifying individuals at higher risk in order to study disease progression, prevention, etc.), I relaxed a bit. It’ll be interesting to see how Alzheimer’s research progresses in the next few years.

Projects to try:

• The Spurgeon Blank Bible
  
  Photo found at spurgeon.wordpress.com

Thought-provoking posts:

• Has our conversation gone downhill?
  

  “Americans have become notably loose in conversation. Emoticons and abbreviations (I recently heard a dignified woman in her 70s use “omg” in an otherwise important discussion) replace thoughtfulness and articulation. Our attention spans are shorter; we want our colleagues to get to the point and our focus wanders until they do. For decades, the “express yourself” mantra has so overpowered what used to be called civilized discourse that our generation excels most at the one-way conversation—typified on what are called (without irony) social networking sites.“

  Very interesting thoughts–read more here.