Three Books for Summer

Saw a report the other day about "beach books." Apparently beach books are books you take with you to read at the beach. This must be a northern thing. The people they showed were at the beach, but pretty covered up. They looked almost cold. But there they sat with the wind whipping around them trying to read a novel.

I am not a big beach person, but the beaches I have been to are hot. You spend your time doing things like getting in the ocean. Because it's hot. Never seemed like much of a time to read a book to me. All that grit. Plus, it's hot.

Anyway, I recently read these three books. If you are looking for some summer reading (beach or no), here are my thoughts.

Meltdown-Thomas E. Woods Jr. This was a simple and straight-forward look at the causes of the boom-bust cycle in our national economy. If you do not give much thought as to how economies work, you will be blown away by this book. Woods uses the Austrian economic theory (of which I am a big believer) to illuminate our current "recession." The point of the book is that the problem isn't the bust, it is the ways the government interferes with the economy to artificially maintain the boom. Of course since the boom is artificial, there must be an inevitable bust. If you are worried you won't understand the book let me assure you; the book is written in a very accessible manner. I recommend this book highly. (Make sure you get the book by Woods as there are several current books with this title.)

The Blue Parakeet-Scot McKnight. This book attempts to tackle the question of how do we read the Bible. It asks a lot of really good questions, questions we should be asking. Like why do I selectively apply rules in the Bible? Why are some things for then, and some things for all time? His goal is to get us to see that there is method to our madness (and sometimes madness to our method) of looking for answers in the Bible. Yes we all have a method. Anyone who says "I just read the Bible and do what it says" is either naive or lying. In spite of this good premise I found the book lacking. It never went as deep as I wanted. Some of that may be that a lot of this I studied in grad school. But even so, I wished for more. This is a good book, and if you are wanting to gain some new found awareness about how we study the Bible and what we bring to the table when we do, you should read this book. If you are looking for more than that, keep looking.

Twilight-Stephenie Meyer. Yes, I read Twilight. But I have not been assimilated. I do, however, get the appeal. This book (or set of books) should sell like hotcakes with teenagers, especially teenage girls. Not because it is a romance (although it is) but because of how the romance is portrayed. (Warning spoiler alert). The main character, Bella, perceives herself to be an average, if clumsy, teenager. She spends her time reading and taking care of her mother who is somewhat immature. However, her world changes when the most handsome boy in the history of the world falls for her. Doesn't matter that he is a vampire who is at first attracted to her because of her floral smell which makes him want to consume her. So now this remarkable love affair whisks her into the heights of teenage angst and romance. I won't give away any more, but let me just say I tired of the gushing (oh I will never get used to looking at him, my heart skipped a beat), and the uneven writing. However, the moral dilemmas presented are pretty good, and the story is interesting enough to pull you along. If you are looking for great writing, this is not it. But if you need to get your teenager to actually read something this summer, give it a whirl.