God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life by Gene Edward Veith Jr. My rating: 5 of 5 stars "Luther said that faith serves God, but works serve our neighbor." That's an early sentence out of Gene Veith's short book, which resurrects Martin Luther's teachings on the workaday world for the 21st-century audience (who, like me, has probably never read a word that Luther actually wrote, besides the hymn "A Mighty Fortress" anyway). And with it, Veith launches into a clear outline of what Luther and others taught about the holy pursuit of... plumbing. Veith covers the vocations of work, citizenship, family and church membership, often using regular-Joe examples related to plumbing or farming or a host of other occupations. The writing isn't as exciting as, say, an adventure novel, but it's sufficiently on layman's turf that you don't have to have studied Biblical languages or church history to follow...

Beowulf by Unknown My rating: 5 of 5 stars I was not one of those who "suffered" through Beowulf in high school. I enjoyed it, perhaps thanks to a modern translation by Burton Raffel that I found at the local library. And, if I hadn't gone for a different career, I could see myself having pursued an English major in college... for the fun of it. So take the following as you will. Also, if you're reading this, you're probably at least vaguely familiar with Beowulf's storyline, so I'll just skip that and get straight to what sets this volume apart. The thickness of this volume's spine is deceiving: The Beowulf saga itself spans only pages 13 to 105 out of its 425 pages (not even counting the preface). But that's because there's a lot more gold for the willing book nerd to unearth. To wit: J.R.R. Tolkien is most known for his trilogy "The Lord of the Rings," which I enjoyed as a teen, but in fact he was a dedicated scholar o...

Getting Naked Later: A Guide for the Fully Clothed by Kate Hurley My rating: 4 of 5 stars As a regular reader of Kate Hurley's blog thesexycelibate.com , I knew before this book was even published that I'd want to read it. Her writing on the blog is poetic, piercing, sometimes filled with raw emotion but pretty much shot through with the desire to glorify God and love others despite -- or sometimes by way of -- her singleness. Hurley is around 36 years old at the time of writing, a Christian songwriter who's slowly letting go of the fierce desire she feels for a husband and family. She becomes very vulnerable in sharing some of her stories, both in her book and on her blog, but those stories are often the very ones that single women (and men, in some cases) can identify with. Stories like how she's been in 33 weddings (take that, 27 Dresses !) or how she suffered from Lyme disease for several years, or how she got into ministry to urban ho...

Jesus the King by Timothy Keller My rating: 5 of 5 stars If you're looking to study the life of Jesus as told in the Gospel of Mark -- maybe you're Christian, maybe you're interested in biblical studies, maybe your name is Mark -- this is a great place to start, because of the author's clear and methodical exposition and attention to the text and its ramifications. Tim Keller, pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, is well known in Reformed Christian circles; he's a founding member and vice president of The Gospel Coalition, among other ties, and sometimes called the next C.S. Lewis after the publication of his earlier work "The Reason for God." Lewis he is not -- he's not Anglican, and holds to more evangelical Christian theology than Lewis did, not to mention his style is not as clear-cut as Lewis's -- but his writing is certainly worth the read. Keller does his homework, quoting from theologians, phil...

AMONG CERTAIN CHRISTIANS it has become quite the fashion to cry down creed and cry up experience as the only true test of Christianity. The expression “Not creed, but Christ” (taken, I believe, from a poem by John Oxenham) has been widely accepted as the very voice of truth and given a place alongside of the writings of prophets and apostles. When I first heard the words they sounded good. One got from them the idea that the advocates of the no-creed creed had found a precious secret that the rest of us had missed; that they had managed to cut right through the verbiage of historic Christianity and come direct to Christ without bothering about doctrine. And the words appeared to honor our Lord more perfectly by focusing attention upon Him alone and not upon mere words. But is this true? I think not. ... While we may worship (and thousands of Christians do) without the use of any formal creed, it is impossible to worship acceptably without some knowledge of the One we seek to worsh...

Real Men Don't Text: A New Approach to Dating by Ruthie Dean My rating: 4 of 5 stars I'm not part of the notorious "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" camp of Christian non-daters. But I'll admit, it's hard to find solid ground where I can date with a clean conscience, given my understanding of being called to Christlikeness, but without the legalism. And how in the world do you find a guy willing to do the same? A friend put me onto this book on the day the Kindle version was free. I figured, why not? I was pleasantly surprised to read some advice from a woman who didn't pretend she'd done it all right. In fact, a lot of the advice comes from having first done everything wrong -- and the bits her husband adds provide valuable clarity from the male perspective. Drawing on those experiences, sociological research and biblical morals (it's written primarily for women who are Christian or Jewish), she distills her advice into conc...

While playing Catchphrase* last night at a staff party, I had to try to get the others to come up with the name of one of Shakespeare's plays. I told them as fast as I could, it's the Shakespeare play where somebody wants to cut somebody's heart out, and Shylock is in it. I thought, the courtroom scene is one of the most famous in "The Merchant of Venice." Surely somebody will make the connection, though somewhat poorly expressed on my part. But they looked at me with blank stares. "We went to public school. We don't know this," one of them said. Given that they've all earned bachelor's degrees and are in no wise idiots, I thought the whole scene was a rather sad anecdote illustrating the state of literary awareness in modern America. Or am I just being elitist in expecting college-educated people to remember the title and principal characters of one of the most popular plays (in contemporary times) produced by a playwright whose body...

Yes.... I lost myself in Half Price Books again.  :-) And two of them were on the dollar shelf!

If you’re ever wondering what in the world Jesus was talking about in the Beatitudes… or you’re simply recovering from a failed senior capstone course in Christian ethics based on the Sermon on the Mount… pick up Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ book of sermons expounding on that Sermon. Reason #1: The introduction really does introduce the Sermon on the Mount – it gives a general overview of when it was given, by whom and for whom, and why it should be studied (“The Lord Jesus Christ died to enable us to live the Sermon on the Mount” and it leads to sanctification and blessing). Reason #2: Lloyd-Jones is committed to the proper reverence for the Sermon on the Mount as part of the Word of God, not something that can be reduced to a formula or exists merely to be studied. Reason #3: He can explain a multileveled, but clear, logical sequence to the Sermon. The. Entire. Sermon. This includes showing how the Beatitudes build upon each other and also reflect a sort of mirror-image quality, conside...

A while ago I got the writing bug and had all sorts of grand plans for reinventing this blog. One of them was to write more about the books I read. The writing bug has since been funneled into my work, but I’m still reading – and I still like the idea. Late last week, I finished the book Quiet Strength by Susan Cain, a self-identified introvert who began her career as a lawyer and has since switched to leadership consulting. The book’s subtitled “The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking,” a fitting summary of the book’s contents. I appreciated Cain’s recognition of how introversion’s unique characteristics are intrinsically worth exercising – such as introverted people’s tendency to resist getting caught up in positive emotion and hesitancy to go forward with a project without having gathered and processed all the relevant information. One chapter, “Why did Wall Street crash and Warren Buffet prosper?,” goes into that aspect in detail. Overall the book’s written wi...

I’m re-reading Neil Postman’s classic jeremiad Amusing Ourselves to Death , subtitled Print discourse in the age of show business , in which this fantastic writer and philosopher explains why he thinks television, as an entertainment-oriented medium, is unfit for conveying serious thought (like political discourse, for example). In the second chapter he gets into how different cultures’ concepts of truth are influenced by the media that predominates, and through the course of the exploration he makes the following observations on what really is required of a reader: You are required, first of all, to remain more or less immobile for a fairly long time. [RS: Of which I’m incapable. Thus fidgeting.] If you cannot do this (with this or any other book), our culture may label you as anything from hyperkinetic to undisciplined [i.e. ADHD] ; in any case, as suffering from some sort of intellectual deficiency. The printing press makes rather stringent demands on our bodies as well as our mi...

And here they are: It was a mix of the library booksale and a Half Price Books store where I met an old college buddy; and it was a mix of books I’ve read and books I haven’t but am curious about. I spent about $16 all told, I think. I just have to finish the books I’m currently reading now… but I do so want to start some of these today ! (I suppose I should also go through my existing shelves of books and find about eight other books to get rid of. Easier said than done.)

I sat down tonight to update my reading list. I haven’t written down the books I’ve been reading since… JULY?? How can that be? Noticeably, several of the books I’ve read in recent months (well, within the last year, I guess) have had to do with being single. Blame it on the local Goodwill, maybe, where suddenly a slew of books showed up having to do with being single and being Christian. Oh, and being a girl. My guess is somebody got married and thought, “hey! These have absolutely no use for me anymore, so I can make some room on my bookshelf!” That’s on top of the book I already owned (well, two now) and the ones I’d found via handy local libraries. So, for your edification, a rundown of the books I’ve read and what I thought about them. (They’re in no particular order and their inclusion doesn’t necessarily mean I recommend them, as you’ll see.) What is He Thinking? , Rebecca St. James “What guys want us to know about dating, love, and marriage.” What gal wouldn’t be interest...

Random updates on my life: I’ve finally gotten back into reading. I think I finished no fewer than three books in the last week and have started a fourth. Aren’t you proud of me? The books I’ve finished are Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (as you already knew), Revelations of a Single Woman by Connally Gilliam, and Unfashionable by Tullian Tchividjian. I would recommend them all to different audiences. P&P&Z needs to be read by fun-loving P&P philes. Revelations is a great read for post-college, pre-dating gals like me. And Unfashionable ? Cool for young thinking Christians. The fourth book I’m reading is Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church by D. A. Carson. It’s one of the few books I actually bought without having read it beforehand, and I’m already glad I did. There are so many things I can identify with in the emergent movement, yet I know that I’m not satisfied with their solutions, so I’m anxious to finish it. I’ll probably be reading that later on ton...

If you haven’t already guessed by the post title, I finished reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies this morning. Wow, that made me laugh so much. And I took probably half a dozen double takes when a well-loved (and well-remembered) quote got changed up to fit with the zombie gag: “A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages; she must be well trained in the fighting styles of the Kyoto masters and the modern tactics and weaponry of Europe. And besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions…” See? Spliced in there, brazenly, without the second author batting an eye. I picture him sitting there at his laptop keyboard, gleefully thinking up how many silly zombie references he can cram into the narrative without obliterating the original story entirely. All in all, it was a hilarious book. I did not read it as serious literature, and I ...

I'm taking my sister's advice to tell about what I've just been doing the past several days. Not particularly enthralling, I warn you, but here goes. I learned today that it takes precisely 8 seconds to cross a two-lane, one-way street downtown, walking at a rate of two steps per second. That is, one complete set of steps per second, one right-footed and one left-footed. If that makes sense. And yesterday, I checked five books out from the library. Three of them were related to journalism: "Letters to a Young Journalist," Sam Freedman "Newsonomics: 12 new trends that will shape the news you get" "The Best Business Stories of the Year: 2004" "Studies in Words," C.S. Lewis "Spanglish: The making of a new American language" I've already read bits out of "Letters" and the business stories compilation. Quite interesting. Once I get my laptop back up and running, I'll write a little more about the bo...

I finished the first book in The Hunger Games trilogy about a week ago. A couple friends have been on me to read the books for several months, so I finally started. I rather like dystopian novels, after all. My favorite was Fahrenheit 451 (possibly ‘cause I’m such a book nerd). And 1984 (and its little-known predecessor, The Napoleon of Notting Hill ) and Brave New World were both fascinating. Unfortunately I haven’t read Animal Farm , but never fear, I’ll get to it someday. What fascinates me so much is how each dystopian novel unnerves you by tugging at one seemingly innocuous tendency in modern society (or, at least, modern Western society) and stretching it to its logical conclusion. In Brave New World , for example (since that’s what I read most recently), the pursuit of happiness becomes elevated above all else. These novels explore how the world might end up if such-and-such a tendency were to persist and become the world’s defining characteristic over against contradictor...

I actually own a few books that I’ve never read in my life. Amazing, huh? Or maybe just another fact in the life of a voracious reader. It happens. And I’ve even borrowed some that I’ve been meaning to read and haven’t yet. What a thing to do! So these are six books that either I’ve borrowed, from family or the church library, or that I own. All of them are what I’ve been meaning to read, for one reason or another, but haven’t yet gotten around to. Which should I start first and why?

Lest my dear readers think I’m going off the deep end in my consideration of introversion and church-going , I present one final quote from Introverts in the Church : I do not intend to create yet another target audience for a church culture that is already marinating in consumerism. We should not cater our worship services to introverts any more than we should to extroverts. There are times when introverts should feel uncomfortable in worship, though we should be cautions as to the degree of discomfort. But if we are always comfortable, our faith goes stagnant. Introverts need to be challenged to experience God in ways that stretch us, and we need to be in situations that help us grow in love for others. Introverts may need to keep struggling through greeting times in church, because we need the constant reminder that the Christian life is never lived in isolation… Because introverts understand what it’s like to be on the outside of a community looking in, we can relate to people...

Want to know what I do during the linguistics class in which I could almost see myself falling asleep? Well… This past summer I linked to an article helping introverts find their place in church. Guess what? There’s a whole book about introversion and church-going, called Introverts in the Church by Adam S. McHugh ( Evangelical Outpost review here ). It was on the new-books display case at my college library so I picked it up. The paperback isn’t too big so it fits right on top of my linguistics notebook, and I read it for, oh, the first forty or so minutes of class, while the monotone professor goes over the homework. I got through over a hundred pages that way (while still participating in some of the class homework discussions). However, it’s now spring break and I can read it in more extended segments. I’ll likely finish the book tonight. But before I forget (or get sidetracked by other parts of the book), I wanted to comment on what I just read a few minutes ago: Some int...