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.
Showing posts with label Literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Literature. Show all posts
June 17, 2009
May 21, 2009
Book (and movie) of the Week
After my sophomore year in college I interned at a little church in Canton, Texas. I somehow convinced the church that they should send me and a bunch of high school kids mountain climbing in Colorado. So a van-full of us headed to Wilderness Trek. As we made the long journey, somebody popped in a CD they recently purchased. It was not the music you would expect from a teenager. It was the soundtrack to the movie Last of the Mohicans.
This music became our theme music for the week. It felt like "in the woods adventure music" (which is probably what the music was intended to feel like). We latched onto the soundtrack even though most of us had not seen the movie, and I'm pretty sure no one had read the book. So the day after we returned from Colorado, we gathered to watch the movie, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
(you can listen to a song from the soundtrack while you read the rest, go ahead, it's really good)
Hadn't really thought about it since, until a couple of weeks ago when I started reading Last of the Mohicans. The book is a great adventure novel, with wonderful dialogue, and an extremely interesting philosophical perspective. If you love history, or need to learn a little, the book provides a glimpse at a formative time in U.S. development. There is also a priceless exchange about the desirability of christian virtue. The book is almost worth reading simply for that moment.
The most interesting part of reading the book was that I had already seen the movie. This is a rarity for me as I make a point to read a book before catching the film. However, I saw this movie some fifteen years before reading the novel. Yet it still colored my reading of the book.
I expected the book to be somewhat different, but was blown away by how far afield the movie actually went. As I read the book I kept waiting for a particular character to die a heroic death (he never did) and was utterly surprised by the death of another character who survived the movie. The love interests were even different. Reading the book after seeing the movie had no effect. I went in truly knowing nothing. Or even worse, being completely misled.
Now, a movie that I thought I really liked, I am repulsed by. They shouldn't even be allowed to call the movie "Last of the Mohicans." It should be something like "A Movie Using the Character Names from the Novel Last of the Mohicans."
The point being I liked the movie, until I read the real deal. How often does this happen in life? Growing up my family never really ate steak. A couple of times I had some "steak-like" thing at home. Then I went to Perini Ranch. Holy Cow! (No I mean it, I believe the cows they are serving at Perini Ranch are set apart and unique, and the first time I went there was definitely a religious experience.) We think we've had good chocolate cake, and then discover The Great Wall of Chocolate. Or closer to the heart, I thought I was busy with a lot of responsibility in college. Then I had children. I had no idea! Or we date somebody and think they are pretty great. Then we meet the one, and we immediately wonder what we were thinking.
Now, all this can be skewed to mean the grass is always greener, or don't settle, or there is no contentment. But really that's not the truth. The truth is that we often do settle. We become unwilling to try something new, we stick with the same old routine, and we never experience amazing things right around the corner. Now, we all have our comfort zones. But renting the same movie again and again means that we miss the possibility of something great. Sure, we avoid renting a stinker, but is that really worth it?
We have no idea what we can accomplish, if we would just try something new. Why not try the sushi, try a different kind of book than we typically read, go for it at karaoke, attempt the job our self instead of calling in a repair person, rent a movie we never heard of? Or even better, send in the resume for the job we think we can't possibly get, go back to school, give up our job to be a missionary, or open our hearts to an adopted child. If we would give up the fear of failure, how high could we sore?
I remember when I was young my Dad decided to take our family to a movie. This was unprecedented. I can count the number of movies I've been to with my father on one hand. This is one of two I believe he suggested. So we were really excited. But he was taking us to some movie none of us had ever heard of. I know that I griped about this, maybe others did too. But I was overruled. So we went and watched the movie. Turned out, it wasn't bad. Good plot, good acting, good directing. I enjoyed it so much I have probably seen it twenty times since. It was a little movie called "Raiders of the Lost Ark".
This music became our theme music for the week. It felt like "in the woods adventure music" (which is probably what the music was intended to feel like). We latched onto the soundtrack even though most of us had not seen the movie, and I'm pretty sure no one had read the book. So the day after we returned from Colorado, we gathered to watch the movie, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
(you can listen to a song from the soundtrack while you read the rest, go ahead, it's really good)
Hadn't really thought about it since, until a couple of weeks ago when I started reading Last of the Mohicans. The book is a great adventure novel, with wonderful dialogue, and an extremely interesting philosophical perspective. If you love history, or need to learn a little, the book provides a glimpse at a formative time in U.S. development. There is also a priceless exchange about the desirability of christian virtue. The book is almost worth reading simply for that moment.
The most interesting part of reading the book was that I had already seen the movie. This is a rarity for me as I make a point to read a book before catching the film. However, I saw this movie some fifteen years before reading the novel. Yet it still colored my reading of the book.
I expected the book to be somewhat different, but was blown away by how far afield the movie actually went. As I read the book I kept waiting for a particular character to die a heroic death (he never did) and was utterly surprised by the death of another character who survived the movie. The love interests were even different. Reading the book after seeing the movie had no effect. I went in truly knowing nothing. Or even worse, being completely misled.
Now, a movie that I thought I really liked, I am repulsed by. They shouldn't even be allowed to call the movie "Last of the Mohicans." It should be something like "A Movie Using the Character Names from the Novel Last of the Mohicans."
The point being I liked the movie, until I read the real deal. How often does this happen in life? Growing up my family never really ate steak. A couple of times I had some "steak-like" thing at home. Then I went to Perini Ranch. Holy Cow! (No I mean it, I believe the cows they are serving at Perini Ranch are set apart and unique, and the first time I went there was definitely a religious experience.) We think we've had good chocolate cake, and then discover The Great Wall of Chocolate. Or closer to the heart, I thought I was busy with a lot of responsibility in college. Then I had children. I had no idea! Or we date somebody and think they are pretty great. Then we meet the one, and we immediately wonder what we were thinking.
Now, all this can be skewed to mean the grass is always greener, or don't settle, or there is no contentment. But really that's not the truth. The truth is that we often do settle. We become unwilling to try something new, we stick with the same old routine, and we never experience amazing things right around the corner. Now, we all have our comfort zones. But renting the same movie again and again means that we miss the possibility of something great. Sure, we avoid renting a stinker, but is that really worth it?
We have no idea what we can accomplish, if we would just try something new. Why not try the sushi, try a different kind of book than we typically read, go for it at karaoke, attempt the job our self instead of calling in a repair person, rent a movie we never heard of? Or even better, send in the resume for the job we think we can't possibly get, go back to school, give up our job to be a missionary, or open our hearts to an adopted child. If we would give up the fear of failure, how high could we sore?
I remember when I was young my Dad decided to take our family to a movie. This was unprecedented. I can count the number of movies I've been to with my father on one hand. This is one of two I believe he suggested. So we were really excited. But he was taking us to some movie none of us had ever heard of. I know that I griped about this, maybe others did too. But I was overruled. So we went and watched the movie. Turned out, it wasn't bad. Good plot, good acting, good directing. I enjoyed it so much I have probably seen it twenty times since. It was a little movie called "Raiders of the Lost Ark".
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