Books | bekahcubed

Nightstand (January 2011)

January 25, 2011 14 Comments by bekahcubed

Crate of library books Do you remember the library book reading plan I unveiled last month?

150 items checked out for six weeks?

I’ve had to lower my expectations–which means that this box of books is being returned to the library today…

unread.

I still did get a bit of reading done though:

The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
I’ve never reviewed anything by Wodehouse for bekahcubed–mostly because I’ve been inclined to believe that everyone already knows about him and about Jeeves and Wooster and that I was the last person on the planet to discover just how delightful this author and his characters are. But perhaps there is someone like me a year ago, who had never been introduced. Wodehouse is a fantastic comedic writer, with tales of hilarious capers that have the advantage of being CLEAN.

Munich Signature and Danzig Passage by Bodie Thoene
My sister LOVED the Zion Chronicles when we were teenagers. I’m not sure if I ever even tried to read one–but I was sure I wouldn’t be interested. They were too full of history, too wrapped up with music, too…too…Anna. My sister clearly had better taste in books than I did. I started reading the first in this series when I was restlessly looking for something to read at my folks’ house in between grading endless finals at the end of the last semester–and have been hopelessly hooked. These are some of the most engaging novels I have ever read. Set on the cusp of the second World War, they follow a small group of Jewish musicians from country to country as the nations of the world fall to Hitler’s insanity.

Much Ado about Anne by Heather Vogel Frederick
I read this one as part of Carrie’s L.M. Montgomery Reading Challenge–and thoroughly enjoyed reading about a book club reading Anne of Green Gables (how’s that for a mouthful?) Check out my review for further details.

The Science of Sexy by Bradley Bayou
Um, yeah. Don’t really know how much more I can say about this book than what I already wrote here. Follow the link if you want to hear about how my family (Mom, sister, brothers, and Dad) reviewed this book on fashion/style together.

28 Children’s Picture Books author name BARANSKI-BARKLEM
Picture books are always a mix of delights and duds. I sorta reviewed Lynne Barasch’s A Country Schoolhouse, which I enjoyed quite a deal. But my absolute favorite find in this batch is the group I haven’t reviewed yet–a collection of books by Jill Barklem about the animals that inhabit “Brambly Hedge”. The stories–and the art–remind me of Beatrix Potter with a little bit of The Hobbit thrown in. Absolutely delightful (but I’m sure I’ll be writing about these more in depth later!)

4 children’s nonfiction books about Massachusetts
And I still don’t know how to spell it. Someday, I’m going to remember that there’s a double s, then a single s, then a double t, then a single s. Only ONE set of double s’s, bekahcubed! Get it? (Can anybody guess how often I’ve given myself that speech?)

Ask me Anything a Dorling-Kindersley book
One of my favorites of the whole bunch–I’ve checked it out something like five times already and still haven’t gotten all the way through it. It’s 300 BIG pages filled with interesting factoids about absolutely everything. Info-holic that I am, I can’t abide to just skim it–I wanted to read the whole thing. (I read to page 240 and skimmed the rest.) Most of the sections are absolutely amazing–but readers must be forewarned that the section on dinosaurs is a load of evolutionary hooey (despite the fact that there’s plenty to be explored about dinosaurs without reference to evolution, this book chose to make the ENTIRE discussion of dinosaurs about evolution). Anyhow, I still enjoyed this book fully, learning about everything from super-fast cars to g-forces to how Venus flytraps catch flies.

Two cookbooks
I’m going to rave about both of these sometime in the next couple of months, but The Pioneer Woman Cooks by Ree Drummond and Quick Cooking for Two by Sunset magazine were both winners by my book. I’ve gotten rave reviews and had more fun cooking from these two books than I have from any in years! Definitely worth picking up.

Course, even after taking back a bunch unread, I still have two weeks with what’s left–and there’s plenty left!

I’m gonna focus first, though, on finishing up what’s currently in progress:

On my nightstand

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Bright-sided : how the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich
Composting by Liz Ball
Confessions by St. Augustine
The Liturgical Year by Joan Chittister and Phyllis Tickle
The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges
The woman’s fix-it car care book by Karen Valenti

Don’t forget to drop by 5 Minutes 4 Books to see what others are reading this month!

Book Notes, The Week in Words

WiW: Great Expectations

January 24, 2011 6 Comments by bekahcubed

“You have such expectations,” my Dad tells me again–the third or fourth time. “and it sets you up for great disappointments. You see, I never really expected much from myself or from life. And so when I turned out to have a wonderful life, I was pleasantly surprised. You have great expectations, so when things don’t turn out the way you expected, you’re disappointed–even if your life is still objectively quite good.”

It’s an observation, not a statement that his way is better or worse than mine.

But I think of it when I read these words in Anne of Green Gables:

“You set your heart too much on things, Anne,” said Marilla with a sigh. “I’m afraid there’ll be a great many disappointments in store for you through life.”

“Oh, Marilla, looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them,” exclaimed Anne. “you mayn’t get the things themselves; but nothing can prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them. Mrs. Lynde says, ‘Blessed are they who expect nothing for they shall not be disappointed.‘ But I think it would be worse to expect nothing than to be disappointed.“

I’m glad my Dad doesn’t make light of my aspirations, like Mrs. Lynde and Marilla seem to of Anne’s. But his observations–and those of Marilla, Anne, and Mrs. Lynde–do make me think.

I do expect a lot from life. I expect a lot from myself.

I want to do, I want to be, I want to see, I want to hear, I want to write. I want to live an extraordinary life. I want to do extraordinary things. I want to be an extraordinary person.

I have great expectations.

But, as my dad and Marilla and Mrs. Lynde observe, it does set me up for more disappointments than if I hadn’t such expectations.

I end up with less time and energy than I thought I’d have even after moving permanently to Columbus–and I’m disappointed not to be able to accomplish the grandiose expectations that I’d had for how my first few months in Columbus might look.

I find myself in a corner of dietetics I didn’t expect to find myself in, in a corner of the state I didn’t expect to find myself in, with…

I find that life is very different than what I expected.

On the other hand, like Anne, I love the expectation itself–the dreaming, the planning, the process of trying to make the dreams become reality. I still haven’t taken that bike ride across Nebraska, but I’ve loved what training I’ve done (I’ve trained gung ho three springs in a row, only to find busyness and/or medical issues stymie the actual completion), I’ve loved the planning, I’ve loved the bike rides taken with friends in the meantime.

And, as my Dad points out, my high expectations, while not always achievable, have enabled me to achieve a great deal more than someone who just floats through life with no goals or expectations.

My dad makes it clear that my driven personality is not a fault but a blessing. But he is also quick to caution that it can become a fault. When I become so focused on results that I ignore people. When I become so focused on unmet expectations that I fail to be thankful for unexpected blessings. When I set my heart on things instead of Christ.

And ultimately, that is what it comes down to.

“You set your heart too much on things,” Marilla says.

She’s right. I do.

Not that there’s anything wrong with doing things, having things. Neither the doing of things nor the desire to do things is wrong. It’s the setting of my heart on things that is wrong.

“Do not trust in extortion
or take pride in stolen goods;
though your riches increase,
do not set your heart on them.”
~Psalm 62:10, NIV (c)1984

I was made to do great things.

It is right that I desire to do great things.

But my heart was made to be set on Christ.

“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”
~Colossians 3:1-4, NIV (c)1984

Be sure to follow through with Barbara H’s meme “The Week in Words”, where bloggers collect quotes they’ve read throughout the week.

I’m reading Anne of Green Gables as a part of Carrie’s L.M. Montgomery Reading Challenge. Check out the link to see what others are saying about (or reading of) L.M. Montgomery this month

Book Reviews

Book Review: “Much Ado About Anne” by Heather Vogel Frederick

January 18, 2011 4 Comments by bekahcubed

In my experience, lit about lit or books based on books tend to follow a fairly typical pattern.

You know, high school students perform “Romeo and Juliet” only to find that their own lives parallel the play in ways they never imagined (and generally don’t get until the end of the story.)

So I was expecting some orphans or a precocious redhead or at very least someone in need of a bosom friend when I picked up Much Ado About Anne.

When I got a couple chapters into the book and still hadn’t started to see parallels, I got a bit nervous.

It wasn’t what I expected at all.

And that’s a good thing.

Heather Vogel Frederick’s Much Ado About Anne doesn’t try to recreate Anne of Green Gables (as though another author could do it better than L.M. Montgomery!) Instead, Much Ado About Anne finds the mother-daughter book club experiencing their own story while reading through Anne’s story in book club.

Two great conflicts rise in the lives of the book club girls: first, their mothers invite the oh-so-stuck-up Becca Chadwick to join their club–and then Jess discovers that her family may be forced off their ancestral farm.

The girls (and therefore their readers) learn interesting factoids about L.M. Montgomery thanks to one girl’s librarian mother. And, just like good bibliophiles, they find ways of relating what they’re reading to their own lives.

And so, they realize that Becca is a Pye, and must be tolerated as a Pye. They relate to the utter mortification Anne felt when she dyed her hair green–although, of course, their mortification is over something entirely different. And they emulate their new heroine by naming the lands around them with fanciful names.

I enjoyed this book a great deal. It has just enough Anne to make it worth its title–but not so much Anne that it’s lacking any substance of its own.

I’m glad I took the opportunity to take a glimpse at Anne through the eyes of four fictional middle-school girls. As a long-standing Anne-fan, I found myself thrilled with these girls’ glimpses of Anne–and I’m willing to bet that this book would be a great way to introduce a young reader who’s reluctant to read “old” books into the great story that is Anne. Once she’s read this, I can almost guarantee she’ll want to read the “back-story”–the novels the mother-daughter book club read and discussed and applied to their own lives.

Rating: 4 stars
Category:Middle grade fiction (female)
Synopsis:The mother-daughter book club gets busy reading Anne of Green Gables, dealing with their very own Josie Pye, and racking their brains to save Half Moon Farm.
Recommendation: Great for lovers of Anne, or lovers of YA fiction/young chick lit, or anyone who wants to introduce a younger girl to the joys of Green Gables.

I read this as a part of Carrie’s L.M. Montgomery Reading Challenge. Check out the link for more people’s comments on L.M. Montgomery. Visit my books page for more book reviews and notes by me.

Reading My Library

A Country Schoolhouse

January 13, 2011 4 Comments by bekahcubed

My grandparents attended a one room schoolhouse in northeastern Nebraska. My mother attended the same country school for her elementary schooling. My brother’s mother-in-law met her husband while she was teaching in a one room country schoolhouse in western Nebraska. A dear friend of the family who I’ve known for all my life sat on the school board for a country schoolhouse just outside of Lincoln–the school he’d attended as a child, the school he’d sent his own children too, the school that now served some of the children in my church congregation.

I attended one of their school programs held in one of the three rooms within the little schoolhouse. Desks, tables, shelves, and learning materials were pushed aside to make room for guests and for a makeshift stage. It was an ordinary sort of program, with each of the thirty or so students performing multiple parts.

I was reminded of this school, of these schools, as I read Lynne Barasch’s A Country Schoolhouse.

A Country Schoolhouse book A little girl asks her Grandpa, the professor, to tell her the story of how he became so smart. The grandpa narrates the rest of the story, telling of the three room country school house he attended. He tells how their school was a working class school–how all the kids had to help their parents with the family work after they got done with school. He tells how they had spelling bees and geography bees and history bees. He tells of the games that they played in an open field. He tells of how they used an outhouse and had to be taught how to flush a toilet when the school got indoor plumbing.

And he talks about how they learned. How they memorized and recited all sorts of facts. How they learned new information from what the other grades ahead of you in the room were learning–or reviewed what you’d already learned while the younger grades were learning it for the first time.

Then he describes how his family moved to the city and he started going to a city school with only one grade in each room. The school was huge and overwhelming–“But the biggest surprise of all was what those kids didn’t know.”

The grandpa in the story was the smartest kid in the new city school. As we learned at the beginning of the story, he went on to be professor–a professor who attributed his smarts to the learning he received in a country school.

Less than a year after I’d attended the Christmas program at the country school outside of Lincoln, the state board of education removed the school boards of all the “Class I” schools in Nebraska–all the small public country schools–forcing the schools to close.

They did it because they figured it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Nebraska’s primarily-white rural students should receive an education so superior to the rest of the state’s students. It wasn’t fair that some schools could be run by boards from their immediate community–by average Joes who care about kids–when the rest of the state had to have schools run by board members most of the students and parents had never met. It wasn’t fair that some of Nebraska–the part with the country schools–was spending less money to give their children an elementary education.

It clearly had to be stopped.

Despite petitions to the contrary and the best efforts of small school advocates, the forced closure of Class I schools proceeded.

Today the empty country schoolhouses dot Nebraska’s landscape, boarded up reminders of a closed chapter in Nebraska history.

Books like Barasch’s A Country Schoolhouse remind Nebraska’s readers of just what they’ve lost.

For more comments on children’s books, see the rest of my Reading My Library posts or check out Carrie’s blog Reading My Library, which chronicles her and her children’s trip through the children’s section of their local library.

Book Reviews

Book Review: “The Science of Sexy” by Bradley Bayou

January 6, 2011 Leave a comment by bekahcubed

I’ve always considered science a pretty sexy thing.

Then again, I’m a bit of a nerd.

Lab coat and glasses and all that.

But that’s not what Bradley Bayou’s talking about in his The Science of Sexy. No, Bayou is interested in teaching YOU (and ME?) how to dress “sexy”.

**Interjection: Just thought of President Obama’s claim last year that insulation is sexy–and am envisioning someone dressed in insulation. Yeah, not quite.**

Bayou suggests that “sexy” is really all about symmetry and giving the illusion of an hourglass figure. His “science” is simply a collection of tips to help you dress YOUR body (or MINE?) to make it appear “hourglass-like”.

For an (admittedly soft) scientist like myself, I find Bayou’s “science” a bit mushy. The “science” in this book consists of measuring your shoulders, bust, waist, and hips and using those measurements to match you into one of four basic body shapes. Then, using a chart reminiscent of the size charts for pantyhose, you determine which “color” you are (12 different height/weight combinations). Having done this, you can now go to your “fitting room”, one of 12 chapters, which will give you hints and tips for dressing your unique figure.

The basic premise of the book isn’t bad. I agree with the whole symmetry and balance thing. I understand the hourglass illusion thing.

But is it really worth a whole book?

I’m not sure.

Since I’m only one woman, it just so happens that exactly four pages of this book directly applied to me–pages 246-249 for the “tall, medium hourglass.” These pages told me pretty much what I’ve already learned. I have a pretty decent body and my trick is to not cover up or de-emphasize my waist (and to not overemphasize my boobs, but that’s another story altogether). One new piece of information I learned from this book? I learned that apparently Bayou “thinks of [me] as a tall Play.boy bunny.” Marvelous. I’m ecstatic. (He did, thankfully, qualify that that doesn’t mean I have to or should dress like one. Whew–that’s a real load off my shoulders!)

Anyway, in order to more accurately assess the value of this book for those who may not be blessed (or cursed) with the body of a bunny, I took some measurements from willing guinea pigs (my mother, my sister, two brothers, and a slightly less willing father) and took a look at how they should dress in order to be “sexy.”

My little sister pretty much disagreed with everything Bayou said about her figure–but I couldn’t decide whether that’s because his recommendations were bad or because Grace is a teenager who’s into the “counter-cultural” thing (by which I mean into fitting in with her group of friends who refuse to let anyone but one another define them.)

Mom felt that the recommendations given for her body shape were just flat out wrong. They didn’t correspond with what she had experimentally found to be flattering in the past. So she started leafing through the book until she found some recommendations that were similar to what she finds flattering to her body type. She explained her problem to me and asked that I re-measure her. I did–and lo and behold, we’d classified her wrong!

The tricky thing about Bayou’s classification system is that the difference between a triangle shape and an hourglass shape or an inverted triangle and an hourglass is a 5% difference. Which for Menter women, at any rate is a difference of less than 2 inches. So if you get measured incorrectly, it can really throw off your readings.

Once we got Mom classified properly (as an average height, medium build, inverted triangle), the recommendations were spot on.

My brothers and Dad all ended up as “Tall Plus Inverted Triangles” (imagine that!) They were quite disappointed t not have breasts, since Bayou counseled those with their body shape that “Another blessing is that if you have breasts to play up, you can create cleavage to help create a sexy look.” Which began an interesting discussion of who had the bigger man-boobs. But I (and they) digress.

From my family’s perusal of this book, it seems a fairly sound system–as long as you do your measurements and calculations right. (For those of you who don’t remember percentages, to determine whether something is within 5% of your waist measurement, multiply your waist measurement by .95 to get the lower limit and by 1.05 to get the upper limit. If your waist is 40 inches, this’ll be 40x.95=38 and 40×1.05=42.)

Of course, even at the fairly low Amazon price of $11.90, I think this book’s a bit pricey considering that you’ll get about 60 pages of reading (20 pages at the beginning which basically say “I know what I’m talking about, I dress famous people” and 40 more that give general fashion strategies). Only four pages will directly apply to you.

So while this might be a worthwhile book to check out of the library and spend a max hour perusing, it’s probably not worth buying.

Rating: 2 stars
Category:Fashion
Synopsis:Figure out your custom “shape” and read recommendations for making you look sexy (in other words, hourglass-like)
Recommendation: The recommendations aren’t bad, but I certainly wouldn’t buy a book for 4 measly pages of pointers.

Visit my books page for more reviews and notes.

Book Reviews

Book Review: “Radical” by David Platt

January 5, 2011 5 Comments by bekahcubed

If the chapter titles of David Platt’s Radical were written to describe the contents of said chapters, they might read as follows:
Chapter 1: A challenge to comfortable Christianity
Chapter 2: A radical gospel which requires a radical response
Chapter 3: The American way of self-reliance vs. God’s way of Christ dependence
Chapter 4: God’s purposes in the world aren’t just for YOU, they’re for the WHOLE WORLD
Chapter 5: God’s goal is reproducing disciples, not isolating followers
Chapter 6: Following Christ means selling all we have and giving to the poor
Chapter 7: If we don’t share the gospel with the world, the world is damned.
Chapter 8: As radical followers of Christ, we have a guarantee of risk and a guarantee of reward
Chapter 9: A challenge for believers to become radicals by 1) praying for the entire world, 2) reading through the entire Word, 3) sacrificing money for a specific purpose, 4) spending at least one week in another context, and 5) committing their lives to a multiplying community

All in all, it’s a decent book. It is effective at promoting its main point, that is, to issue a wake up call to comfortable American Christians. It’s highly readable, with lots of stories to make the page-turning even easier.

On the down side, Radical has the potential of de-emphasizing the gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Platt’s emphasis on the radical response of a true believer through actions such as selling possessions and giving to the poor, taking the gospel to the whole world, and taking risks for the sake of Christ may cause some readers to miss that this is only the RESPONSE to the FREE gift of God in Christ Jesus. One is not saved BECAUSE one sells all of his possessions—he sells all his possessions BECAUSE he has been saved freely.

Furthermore, Platt’s emphasis on “exciting” radicality through social justice activism may cause believers to undervalue and therefore ignore the less-exciting but no less radical actions that Christ calls His followers to. Christ has not only called his followers to give to the poor. He has also called them to live lives of radical forgiveness, of radical dependence, of radical trust. These things are just as radical as the showy actions of social justice—perhaps even more radical because they’re silent, they’re unlikely to result in the world’s (or the church’s) acclaim. They’re what Kevin DeYoung might call “faithful plodding.”

Overall, Platt’s Radical is a good book, but believers should be careful to not consider it the be-all, end-all of the radical Christian life. Read this book. Let it issue a challenge to your comfortable Christianity. But then turn your eyes towards the word of God and see what radical acts God might be calling you to through the pages of Scripture.

Rating: 3 stars
Category:Christian Living
Synopsis:Platt issues a challenge to comfortable Christianity–and the illusion that the Christian life equals the American dream.
Recommendation: Worth reading, but ultimately, take your view of what “radical” Christianity looks like from the pages of Scripture rather than simply taking Platt’s angle on it.

Visit my books page for more reviews and notes.

Book Reviews

Book Review: “Justice that Restores” by Chuck Colson

January 4, 2011 Leave a comment by bekahcubed

I think most Americans would agree that our American system of justice is less than stellar. We spend massive amounts of money incarcerating criminals—yet we seem unable to avoid the problem of repeat offenses.

Conservatives insist that the answer to this dilemma is harsher sentences from the beginning. Liberals insist that the answer is to work harder to rehabilitate offenders. In Justice that Restores, Chuck Colson argues that neither of those work. He argues that the rehabilitative approach, because it fails to underscore the reality of moral offenses against others, ultimately fails to change behavior. At the same time, he says that the harsh sentence approach serves to enrage criminals without changing their behavior, while simultaneously costing Americans significant amounts of money.

Colson argues instead for a “Restorational” approach to justice. At the center of this approach is the idea that criminals should seek to make right what they have done wrong—becoming aware of the impact that their transgressions have had on others and taking action to correct what they have done. He argues that incarceration should be reserved only for violent criminals who are a risk to others—and that non-custodial forms of punishment should be designed to deal with nonviolent offenses (One shocking statistic Colson shares is that in 1995, 71% of all incarcerated criminals were guilty of nonviolent crimes.)

I found Colson’s book to be a well-written description of today’s justice dilemma—and a well-thought-out suggestion for how to solve today’s justice dilemma.

Colson has a unique viewpoint on justice as a former offender who served seven months in a Federal prison following his conviction as a participant in the Watergate scandal. He came to know Christ during his incarceration and has since founded Prison Fellowship, a ministry to incarcerated prisoners and their families.

Justice that Restores gives plenty of statistical descriptions of the justice problem—but it goes beyond to give personal examples both from Colson’s own incarceration and from his conversations with prisoners over the years.

This is an excellent book for all those interested in seeing justice prevail in the American court system. I feel that this book should have great cross-sectional appeal as this issue affects the political and the apolitical, the friend of offenders and the friend of victims. We are all affected, whether we recognize it or not, by the failings of our justice system—and we ultimately can all play a role in helping to establish a justice that restores.

Rating: 5 stars
Category:Criminal Justice
Synopsis:Using the Christian worldview as a starting place, Colson offers an alternative model to the current American justice system.
Recommendation: This short, easy-to-read volume engages thought regarding and offers innovative solutions to America’s current criminal justice problem.

Visit my books page for more reviews and notes.

Books

ANNE through another pair of eyes

January 3, 2011 3 Comments by bekahcubed

Man, I’d completely forgotten that TODAY was the day for beginning Carrie’s L.M. Montgomery Reading Challenge.

But today it is, and I’m gonna participate.

Having already read and re-read the “Anne” series by L.M. Montgomery a bazillion times and having read each title by L.M. Montgomery that my library owns at least once, I have decided to do something a bit different for this year’s L.M. Montgomery Reading Challenge.

This year, I’m going to re-read Anne of Green Gables in conjunction with Heather Vogel Frederick’s Much Ado About Anne, a middle grade (?) novel about a mother-daughter book club that reads through the Anne books (See Jennifer’s 5M4B Review).

I’m excited to take a look at Anne through another pair of eyes this year!

Check out some of the other Montgomery-readers at Carrie’s L.M. Montgomery Reading Challenge page

Book Notes, The Week in Words

WiW: A Poor Counterfeit

January 3, 2011 5 Comments by bekahcubed

“Thus doth the soul commit fornication, when she turns from Thee, seeking without Thee, what she findeth not pure and untainted until she returns to Thee. Thus all pervertedly imitate Thee who remove far from Thee, and lift themselves up against Thee. But even by thus imitating Thee, they imply Thee to be the Creator of all nature…”

~St. Augustine from his Confessions

What is sin, Augustine asks, but the fading shadow, the poor imitation of that which can be found in Christ alone? Is it not the attempt to wrest from God the attributes that are His alone?

Our pride but a poor imitation of His exaltedness; our ambition but a poor striving for the honour and glory that belongs to Him alone. Our immorality a poor counterfeit of His genuine love.

Augustine goes on–Our curiosity a pretense of His omniscience. Our sloth an attempt at rest apart from Him. Our gluttony mimicking the satisfaction that can only be found in Him.

Sin is me trying to live life on my own, not acknowledging that Christ is the only source of true life. Sin is me trying to exalt myself, not acknowledging that Christ is the only one truly worthy of exaltation. Sin is me trying to become wise, not acknowledging that Christ is the only source of wisdom.

Looking at sin through Augustine’s eyes, I see the sins I so regularly excuse.

Self-improvement. The sin of trying to be sanctified without God’s Spirit.

Goal-orientedness. The sin of fixing my eyes on outcomes rather than Christ.

All of it Pride. Pretending I can live, can survive, can thrive with me at the center rather than Christ.

But I am a poor counterfeit, a tainted instrument. What I find in myself is only a warped copy of what can be found only in Christ.

Oh, Lord, forgive me for my sin of spiritual fornication, for seeking in myself what can only be found in You. Turn my eyes, my heart from these fleshly things that I might better see and savor You.

“Oh! that Thou wouldst enter into my heart, and inebriate it, that I may forget my ills, and embrace Thee, my sole good?”

~St. Augustine from his Confessions

Collect more quotes from throughout the week with Barbara H’s meme “The Week in Words”.

Book Reviews

Book Review: “Boiling Mad” by Kate Zernike

December 30, 2010 1 Comment by bekahcubed

You’d have to have been sticking your head in the political sand to have not heard about the American Tea Party.

Furthermore, you’d have to be pretty apolitical to have not developed an opinion regarding said Tea Party.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you really have any idea of what the Tea Party is all about.

For my own part, I am a Tea Party participant. I’m not a hard core mover and shaker, but I’m also not merely a passive spectator or silent “supporter”. I silently supported the movement, sorrowed to have missed a Lincoln event, and finally rejoiced to have heard of an event in time to participate. I gathered together a group of friends, bought poster board with which said friends could make posters, and took the group with me to a Fourth of July protest.

My participation had to do with protesting an out-of-control government seeking to federalize, regulate, and tax every element of life. I protested because I wanted (want) a limited government, a government that pays attention to the people it supposedly represents, a government that sticks to its job without sticking its nose in everything else. That’s what the tea party meant to me.

But ask the Tea Party protestor next to me what the Tea Party is all about and you might get a completely different answer. Ask the silent supporter whose only connection to the movement is watching and agreeing with Glenn Beck on FoxNews and you might get still another answer.

The Tea Party movement is diverse ethnically, regionally, and ideologically. It’s not easy to define.

Kate Zernkike does her best to delve into this hard-to-pin-down movement in Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America. To a Tea Partier such as myself, Zernike’s inability to empathize with the Tea Party movement is apparent. It’s obvious that she has no love for this movement and cannot comprehend the feelings behind it. Nevertheless, she tries admirably to maintain objectivity.

Boiling Mad describes some of the major organizations involved in the Tea Party movement, shares vignettes about dozens of different Tea Party activists, and details a few of the elections in which Tea Party activism played an essential role. It does a good job of describing the popular-level diversity of the Tea Party movement—and the grassroots organization that made the Tea Party movement effective.

I can’t say that Boiling Mad was my favorite book. Zernike’s forced objectivity quickly became tiresome—and her insistence on speaking of the Tea Party in the past tense was beyond frustrating. Nevertheless, Boiling Mad did a decent job of covering the Tea Party phenomenon without making ideological statements regarding it.

Rating: 2 stars
Category: Current Events
Synopsis:Zernike attempts to describe who the Tea Party is and what makes it tick.
Recommendation: It might be the best book of it’s kind, but only because objective reports of the Tea Party movement are hard to come by. Apart from the author’s frustrating inability to empathize with Tea Partiers and the persistent use of the past tense in referring to the Tea Party movement, this isn’t a bad intro to the Tea Party phenomenon.

Visit my books page for more reviews and notes.