Book Notes: "One Beautiful Dream," by Jennifer Fulwiler

So, this is a book I gulped down. Jennifer Fulwiler’s writing voice is so good—if this was fiction, you’d call her a compelling protagonist, one you’re rooting for, and one who makes you want to know what’s going to happen next.

(On that note, may I just say, Wow, I miss Jen’s blog! I was a fan of it over a decade ago, and I’m sure she’s doing wonderful things on her radio show now, and she’s clearly still writing glorious books, but…I miss her blog. It just has to be said.)

So, what is One Beautiful Dream about? It’s about fulfilling a creative vocation while mothering a whole passel of kids. Which totally makes it what you'd call “relevant to my interests.”

In it, Jennifer tells the story of writing her first book, while not just mothering the kids she had, but gestating and giving birth to a few more. It’s about how she learned to stop treating her vocation as a mother as if it were an enemy of her vocation as a writer—as if in order to make room for her writing, her mothering vocation had to be the lion she held back with a whip and a chair.

I really love this bit, which I think sums up a lot of what the book’s about:

There is a tendency with anyone who loves any kind of work to fantasize that if you just had endless time for it, you’d be able to achieve perfection in this field. Yet what I’d discovered is that when you put love first, not only does your life improve, but your work improves…In my case, I faced interruption after interruption in my house full of babies. And, in the process, I finally learned how to write a book.

It is, like all good memoirs, a story that spends time on details that support the theme, and elides past those that don’t. For instance, from my experience as a NICU mom, I’m sure that a whole book could have been written about Jennifer’s experience of having a baby in the NICU, yet she only spends a short span of pages there.

And that’s okay, because that’s not what this particular book is about…but little spaces like that make me realize how much I’d like, someday, to read about the bits that happened in the spaces.

If she ever feels like writing those books, that is. Jennifer’s an author I’d trust to decide when and where to tell which stories--no author should feel pressure to write the things she doesn't want to write.

But all I have to say is: at this point, I’m here to read whatever books she feels like writing. I definitely recommend this book.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell


This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. I will probably use it to buy more books. (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Book Notes: "Quintessence," by David Walton

"Quintessence," by David Walton, is, as the back-cover copy says, set in "an alternate Age of Exploration" where "alchemy is a true science."

And that, right there, was just about all it took to sell me on this book. I'm fascinated by the Elizabethan age, and the metaphysical poets, and Shakespeare, and...and, and, and. In that time period, alchemy and science were sometimes pursued by very similar means, and the only difference between the two is that science ended up working and alchemy didn't.

So positing a world where that turned out differently is interesting from the start. And Walton followed it up with a nicely-paced plot and great description.

This is definitely a book where the setting is the strongest part of the story (and there were a couple of nice shout-outs to Lewis' Dawn Treader, if you keep your eyes open for them), but the characters worked, too. I especially liked that he had religious characters whose beliefs felt real, and integral to their personalities. They didn't all agree--you had Protestants, Catholics, and atheists, just for a start--but it felt like the author was determined to give them each their own best arguments, and not just throw up straw men for his heroes to knock back down.

(One possible exception is the Inquisitor character--but, granted, it's hard to make someone from the Spanish Inquisition sympathetic.)


I enjoyed this one. Walton gave me a new world, with fascinating new creatures, and a plot that kept me wondering what was going to happen next. Recommended if you enjoy the time period, or just like well-written speculative fiction.



Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell


This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. I will probably use it to buy more books. (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Book Notes: "A Share in Death," by Deborah Crombie

I picked this up as vacation reading and it was such a pleasant surprise! The best mystery novels are, at their hearts, sympathetic paintings of a variety of human characters, and "A Share in Death" nailed both the accurate, pleasing brush-strokes and the kind-but-clear-eyed view of human foibles.

I can't remember where I heard about Crombie, but when I checked out the first page of the book, I found this lovely little bit of prose:

Duncan Kincaid's holiday began well. As he turned the car into the lane, a shaft of sun broke through the clouds and lit a patch of rolling Yorkshire moor as if someone had thrown the switch on a celestial spotlight. 

Drystone walls ran like pale runes across the brilliant green of pasture, where luminous sheep nibbled, unconcerned with their importance in the composition. The scene seemed set off in time as well as space, and gave him the sensation of viewing a living tapestry, a world remote and utterly unattainable. The clouds shifted again, the vision fading as swiftly as it had come, and he felt an odd shiver of loss at its passing. 

That was enough to convince me that the author was going to take me on a journey that I would enjoy, and I was happy to be proved right.

Our hero, Duncan Kincaid, is an inspector for Scotland Yard, off on holiday to a borrowed timeshare in an old and sprawling mansion. Of course, it turns into a working holiday when someone is murdered. All of the suspects are Kincaid's fellow vacationers there in the mansion, closing off the murderer and his potential victims in a neatly contained setting, the better for us to get to know them and try to figure out whodunnit.

It's odd, I suppose, that murder mysteries should be such delightful reads, full of sympathetic characters and interesting conversations and beautifully-rendered visions of pretty countryside locations, when they always have such  horrible crimes at their hearts.

But, the best of them are that way, and this was, if not one of the best, one of the very, very good.




Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Mini Reviews: The Books I Read in March 2017

--I'm catching up on my book notes, taking them a month at a time. Since I'm behind, I'm only allowing myself a line or two on each book. I hope they still give you an idea of whether or not these would be books you'd enjoy picking up yourself!--



-"What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast: And Two Other Short Guides to Achieving More at Work and at Home," by Laura Vanderkam. This is a compilation of three short e-books. I don't share Vanderkam's optimism about how many things can be accomplished in one short weekend or morning, but I still appreciate her novel and hopeful way of looking at the number of hours we are all given in our days and weeks.



-"Eleanor and Park," by Rainbow Rowell. I listened to this one on audiobook. Beautifully and compellingly written, as Rowell's work always is. But I didn't enjoy it, mostly because the heroine's home life is so (legitimately, realistically) bleak and depressing. I also wouldn't pass it on to a teenager, b/c of the level of (probably also legitimate and realistic) sensuality. But beautifully done, all the same.



-"The Masqueraders," by Georgette Heyer. This was my favorite Heyer for a long, long time. ("Sylvester, Or, The Wicked Uncle" has since supplanted it from the top spot, but just barely.)

This romance, full of adventure and derring-do, disguise and weariness of disguise, a slow-burning friendship turned into passion, and one of the happiest and most harmonious sibling relationships I've ever seen in fiction, remains one of my very favorite stories. Prudence and her "mountain" win me over every time.



-"How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets," by Dana K. White. Lots of housekeeping books say they're for people who aren't naturally good at housekeeping.

This one actually is.




-"The Hobbit," by J. R. R. Tolkien. Just finished listening through this with Adam and the kids. Delightful, as always.



-"Busman's Honeymoon," by Dorothy L. Sayers. It was my first time making it through this--which is shocking, given my love for "Gaudy Night"!  But l always stalled after the delightful exchange of letters at the beginning of the book. Still, I'm glad I've read it now, and next time I can revisit it with pleasure, knowing that while it might be a bit uneven, it has all the charm and interest and deep feeling I've come to expect from Sayers' accounts of Lord Peter and Harriet.

(Also





--SPOILER ALERT--




the ghosts! Why did I never know about the ghosts???)




Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell





This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Mini Reviews: The Books I Read in February 2017

--I'm catching up on my book notes, taking them a month at a time. Since I'm behind, I'm only allowing myself a line or two on each book. I hope they still give you an idea of whether or not these would be books you'd enjoy picking up yourself!--



-"The Zoo Job (Leverage #2)," by Keith R. A. Candido. I didn't enjoy this as much as the first Leverage novel, but it was still a fun read. No need for any explicit content warnings that I recall, but just the kind of normal language and such you might expect on a network drama.



-"Unf*ck Your Habitat: You're Better Than Your Mess," by Rachel Hoffman. This one clearly deserves a language warning! If that doesn't bug you, though, there's some good stuff here, especially for people dealing with mental or physical disabilities, who still want to live in a decent home. The author clearly comes from a different philosophical/political/theological viewpoint that I do, but her practical suggestions are brilliantly helpful, and I love her down-to-earth version of advice-giving.



-"The Corinthian," by Georgette Heyer. This was such a fun reread, because I was a lot younger last time I read this. When I read it through this time, I picked up on so much subtle humor that totally went over my head before. Heyer has so much fun in this one. She never tells you what the hero is thinking, not explicitly, but she doesn't have to, because it's all there in the action and dialogue.

Heyer is just so good.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell



This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Mini Reviews: The Books I Read in January 2017

--I'm catching up on my book notes, taking them a month at a time. Since I'm behind, I'm only allowing myself a line or two on each book. I hope they still give you an idea of whether or not these would be books you'd enjoy picking up yourself!--



-"Have His Carcase," by Dorothy L. Sayers. In which our hero and heroine alternately romance each other and get cranky at each other. Featuring a lovely coastline walk I'd love to take, minus the murder. Delightful, as always. (Lord Peter and Harriet Vane 4Ever.)



-"Murder Must Advertise," by Dorothy L. Sayers. Of the Lord Peter Wimsey books which do NOT feature Harriet Vane, I'd put this or "The Nine Tailors" at the top of the heap. Seeing Lord Peter go undercover in not just one, but two! roles...it's a thing of beauty. Please read this. It's marvelous.




-"The Con Job (Leverage #1)," by Matt Forbeck. Great fun if you're a fan of the show. The "Con" of the title is Comic Con in San Diego, making this a con pulled at a con--a happy thought that justifies the book's entire existence. The author has so much fun with the combination of these characters in that setting, and I had a great time reading it. Cautions for the sort of language and situations you'd expect to find on a network television drama.



-"Gaudy Night," by Dorothy L. Sayers. The best of novels. What else can I say?  Well, this, I guess: after reading it through this time around, I found myself telling my sister-in-law, "Every time I read this, I copy out more quotations from it. Eventually I'm going to have retyped this book word-for-word onto a document on my computer."



-"Christmas at Thompson Hall and Other Christmas Stories," by Anthony Trollope. Not my favorite of Trollope's work, but I enjoyed dipping into this bit of Victorian fiction over the holidays. The story set in the United States during the Civil War was especially interesting. (It's always interesting to read treatments of America by foreign visitors.)


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell


This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Weekly Links!

~ LINKS TO SOME INTERESTING READING, FOR WHAT'S LEFT OF YOUR WEEKEND ~


-I have loved Linda Holmes' thoughts on reality TV since the days she was covering Survivor for the now-defunct site Television Without Pity. Here she is, talking about the ethics of a recent episode of Top Chef for NPR.



-A review of "Nailed It" from Aimee Byrd over at The Housewife Theologian. A snippet:

This is a devotional for those who don't fit into the happy-little-Christian box. And it's also for those who think it's okay to have a little humor in their reading reflections. Kennedy doesn't pick all the easy verses either. She pulls devotion to God out of what may have seemed random acts in history. Our days are kind of like that, aren't they? Circumstances often seem arbitrary and we sometimes question if it really matters how we get through them. That is what I especially appreciated about the book---Anne weaves all the tapestry together and helps the reader see the significance of God's holiness, mercy, and love in Christ working in our own lives now.

-And while I'm on the topic of my favorite devotional, here's a lovely podcast: "Persuasion: How Sarcasm is Good for the Soul." 



-And speaking of good podcasts, I liked this one: "Mere Fidelity: Humble Roots, with Hannah Anderson."



-And here's another good thing by Hannah Anderson, this time an essay: "You Can't Do It All: Rex Tillerson and the Limits of Vocation."



-"Minimalism Gets It Wrong."



-Also, "The Minimalism Trap."



-And, on our current season of the church year, here's "How To Throw an Epiphany Party In Four Easy Steps." 



-"How 'Sherlock of the Library' Cracked the Case of Shakespeare's Identity"



-These short filmed scenes of King Lear are amazing.



-And, finally, sailing the solar system with solar sailing ships.



I hope you have a lovely Sunday, full of worship and rest!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Book Notes: "The Lifegiving Home," by Sally & Sarah Clarkson

"The Lifegiving Home" is a book about homemaking, written by mother-daughter writing pair Sally and Sarah Clarkson. After a fairly short introductory section, the rest of the book is divided up into twelve chapters, one for each month of the year, wherein the Clarksons discuss things like "Days to Commemorate: Marking Growth with Celebration" and "Creating a Framework for Home: Rhythms, Routines, and Rituals."

When I first picked it up, I assumed that this book was primarily written for wives and mothers, but it turns out that one of the authors is a single woman, and it became clear as I read on that "The Lifegiving Home" is aimed at all Christian women, which was a really nice surprise.

(The other surprise was that I ended up liking the chapters written by Sarah--the daughter of the team--better than those written by Sally. I was surprised by this because Sally is the writer I'd heard of--and read--before. But having read her, I'm pretty sure she's the sort of mom who's delighted by the fact that her daughter is starting to lap her.)

The main thrust of this book is that our homes are a tool and a staging area for loving the Lord by loving other people. It's absolutely a theme I resonate with. Here's a quotation that sums up the best of the book, for me:

When you understand the reality of incarnation, the way that the physical trappings of our lives and our use of time and space are places where God either comes in His creative presence or remains at bay, you understand that nothing is neutral. Nothing. You can't just waste an hour on the Internet. You can't just miss one sunrise in its beauty. No room is just space. No hour is meaningless. No meal is mere sustenance. Every rhythm and atom of existence are spaces in which the Kingdom can come, in which the story of God's love can be told anew, in which the stuff of life can be marvelously turned into love.

What I liked best about the book was also, weirdly, what I also liked the least: the authors did a beautiful job of describing what a "lifegiving home" might look like. The most inspiring part of the book was simply being reminded that our everyday work in our homes is important, and then being shown, in concrete examples from the authors' own lives, what that might look like. But those same reminders and examples eventually, for me, grew a bit weary-making. For example, the idea of playing "lilting Celtic music" to promote a beautiful atmosphere was lovely the first time I heard it ... but by the end of a long book, I never wanted to hear about "lilting Celtic music" ever again.

To be fair, I think that kind of repetition is hard to avoid in a book like this, and I appreciate the authors' willing vulnerability in using their own lives as examples of the principles they were talking about. Most of their examples were beautiful, encouraging, and refreshing. But I think the book probably could have been a bit shorter, had a few fewer lists of ideas, a little less repetition, and not really suffered for the loss.  (Note: if you read a chapter each month, instead of reading the whole book at once, the repetition probably wouldn't be much of an issue.)

But, I'd be remiss not to also talk about why the concrete reminders were the best part of the book, too. The pictures Sarah and Sally painted of ordinary, good family life were inspiring, and they were inspiring because they were reminders both that all of this quotidian labor matters, and also that all of this quotidian labor really can be done well. It's not an impossible task. It's a good thing, it matters, and it can be done well.

That's a reminder I can stand to hear most days.

And, finally, because I am a Christian-church-year nerd, I have to say how much I enjoyed Sarah's December chapter, where she geeked out about the glories of Advent and all twelve days of Christmas.  I loved it.  The whole thing was awesome, and if I tried to copy out all of my favorite quotations from that chapter, this review would probably be twice as long as it already is. So, let it suffice for me to type out my favorite sentence, which comes in the context of Sarah explaining that the feasting part of the Christian cycle of feasts-and-fasts isn't about hedonistic over-indulgence, but, rather:

The point is to put flesh and expression to joy.

Yes. Exactly this.

In fact, I think you could safely say that the point of this entire book is that homemaking can be one way to put flesh and expression to love.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Book Notes: TERMS OF ENLISTMENT, by Marko Kloos

TERMS OF ENLISTMENT, by Marko Kloos, is a military sci-fi novel that follows the adventures of one Andrew Grayson, a young man from an impoverished welfare city, who signs up with the armed forces in hopes of escaping his dreary, dead-end surroundings.

The military has offered hope of social and economic advancement time out of mind. It still does today, even though we Americans all like to think of ourselves as middle class. But the military offers its rewards along with a clearly delineated set of risks, and it's that tension of risk-and-reward that carries along the plot of most of this novel (though there's a sharp left turn in the tension at the end, but not an inappropriate or unwelcome one).

I gulped down this novel in just a few days and it's only now, as I sit down to write this review, that I'm forced to ask, Why? I know that I liked it and found it completely absorbing, but now I'm trying to analyze, What was it that engrossed me so thoroughly?

I have a few answers:

1. Voice. Kloos gives his hero, Grayson, an engaging voice. Grayson's not a deep philosophical kind of guy (for instance, after he kills his first opponents in combat, Grayson spends some time thinking about how that makes him feel, and how he might have easily been in their shoes--but he doesn't spend a LOT of time thinking about it), but Grayson IS an intelligent guy. He's a good observer of his circumstances and of the people around him. Which leads me to,

2. World. At least half of the fun of sci-fi is the world-building, and Kloos knocks it out of the park there. His futuristic military is similar enough to the militaries of our world to feel believable, but the differences are different enough to be fascinating.

I also liked how the dreary welfare cities were an important enough part of the plot to drive our hero's action, but also normal enough to the hero (and despised enough by the hero) that he didn't spend a long, long time talking about them. I have the feeling that the political and social structure of the government will be an issue in the rest of the series (I don't see how it couldn't be--by the end of the novel it's clear that there's a serious war coming, and how a country is run has a huge impact on how it fights its wars), but the ways in which Grayson did--and didn't--care about where he came from added to the realism of the story for me.

3. Journey. Lastly, MOST of the book is spent watching Grayson learn how to be a soldier. It's clear that there's going to be more to his story than this, but this first book was all about that personal journey. Once I realized that's what we were doing, I settled in for the ride. Watching a likeable, smart Everyman character explore a new-to-him world, and grow and change in the process, is one of my favorite story structures to experience.


I do hope that at some point in the series, Grayson does become a little more philosophical. I hope the plot brings him to the place where  he's forced to think more about his world, how it's structured, and what his role in bettering it might be. But this book was about him escaping far enough away from the trap he was born into for there to be a hope for him ever doing something about the trap itself, and I found the ride from Here to There very satisfying.



Normal content warning cautions apply: this is a military sci-fi with a fair amount of violence and language and sex (though that last is implied, and not so much described). Reader discretion is, as always, advised.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Book Notes: "Mysterion"

It’s always at least a little hard to review an anthology, because it’s the work of so many different people, and you can love some of the stories and really hate others. But despite that, every anthology has its own flavor, thanks to the hand of the editor(s), and Mysterion, edited by Donald S. Crankshaw and Kristin Janz, is no different.

So, I’m going to start this review with my impressions of Mysterion as a whole, and then go on to talk a bit about the stories I really disliked, the ones that intrigued me but maybe didn’t quite work for me, and then the ones I really enjoyed (happily, the last two categories are MUCH larger than the first).

General Impressions
Like many anthologies, Mysterion is centered around a theme. Like very few other anthologies, Mysterion’s theme is “speculative fiction that interacts somehow with Christianity”. What makes Mysterion even more unique is that the authors of its stories were not forced to make any concession to the usual CBA content guidelines that limit profanity, sexual content, theological orthodoxy, etc.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I just love that this anthology exists. I’m not a reader who goes for extreme content for the sake of extreme content (as you'll see in my review), but I do think that when you’re a Christian author writing about a fallen world, artificial limitations about content can really  make your story ring false. And so I deeply appreciate the editors’ aims here.

But did it work for me? The answer is…mostly. It was more heterodox than I would have liked, and there was at least one story I regret reading because of the extreme ugliness of its images. But I also found, in this anthology's pages, Christian science fiction that actually felt like legitimate science fiction—there were worlds in this book that were as fascinating and enthralling as the worlds I’ve found in books edited by the best secular presses. I loved that.

The Stories That Didn’t Work for Me
While there were several stories that just weren’t my thing, or that I had trifling disagreements with, there were only two I heartily disliked.

Let me stop here and say: I know that sounds harsh. But two important points:

1. That’s a MUCH smaller percentage than I usually find in sci-fi anthologies.

2. I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review, and so honest is what I’m going to be!

Well, and—okay, I guess I have one more point:

3. Since I’m a writer myself, I always want to cringe away from negative reviews. In fact, I rarely post them—I don’t lie, but I just avoid reviewing the book if I didn’t like it. But since I can’t do that in this case, I do want to say that my criticism is criticism of the stories, and not of the authors as people. Also, I want to say: I could be wrong. I could be totally missing the value of these stories. So please, dear authors of the stories I didn’t like, feel free to ignore my review. Don’t hate me. Thanks.

Right, the two stories I really disliked were “A Lack of Charity” and “Golgotha”. The first was simply ugly. It was horror that was very, very horrific. It gave me images in my head that I sincerely don’t want there. However, if the author wanted to give a great picture of total depravity, I congratulate him, because it worked as that.

“Golgotha”, on the other hand, was horrific in a much less visceral way (though it had a bit of that, too). Instead, what I disliked here was…well, the conclusion felt like blasphemy, to be frank. HOWEVER (see, I’m really terrible at negative reviews), that conclusion came in the mouth of a character who you might have reason to disbelieve. So…again, this might be one that was just not for me. If it meant what I think it did, I hate it. If I missed the point completely…well, I still don’t like it, but it might be a much better story than I realized.

The Stories that Really Worked for Me
Yes, I’m skipping all the stories that were somewhere in the middle. There were many (the majority!) that I enjoyed while I was reading them, but that weren’t (for me!) those unique jewels that you read anthologies to find. But there were a few that were just joys.

Here are the ones that really stuck with me:

-"The Monastic”, by Daniel Southwell. This one had something to its atmosphere that reminded me, in a good way, of Lars Walker’s writing. And this exchange, where our priest protagonist is trying much too hard to be culturally sensitive to the Ojibwe man who is helping him, made me laugh out loud:

Father Kyle looked the little stone hermitage up and down, looked the ragged hillside up and down, and suddenly decided that he was happy. He liked this silent, ludicrous little church house. 

“It’s beautiful,” he said. But he didn’t want to offend his only human contact, so he added, “I’m sure your places of worship are beautiful, too.” 

John shrugged. “I’m a Methodist.”

Gotta watch those assumptions!

-"A Good Hoard”, by Pauline J. Alama. Very much a fairy-tale sort of a story. Predictable, yes, but that’s fine, because it was told well and that’s really the important part. It did strike me as more of a children’s story than anything else, but it seemed like a children’s story I’d enjoy reading to my own kids, and so that’s a plus in my book.

-"Cutio”, by F. R. Michaels. This was another predictable one, but again, it was well-told. It was a creepy story, but creepy in a really fun way, if that makes sense. A professor discovers an ancient automaton, but doesn’t pay enough attention to the signs that it might be a bad idea to make it functional again…this one was also told entirely through emails and text messages, and that structure really worked well with this particular plot.

-"This Far Gethsemane”, by G. Scott Huggins. This story was the one in the anthology that most made me think, This is just good sci-fi, period. I’ll be honest: I’m still not sure you can extrapolate Christianity out onto alien worlds and alien races with any kind of theological integrity. But if you can, then it’s going to look like this. Also? Just a good setting, a compelling narrative driven by interpersonal conflict, and aliens that felt really, truly alien. I liked it.

-"Ascension”, by Laurel Amberdine. This one had just a slim, slightly-supernatural thread (both literally and figuratively, actually). I really liked Amberdine’s light touch in this story. She doesn’t have her main character go overboard on speculation, but instead keeps the whole miraculous element subtle and unexplained…and interesting. A lovely little story.


In all, I recommend picking up a copy of Mysterion (but, honestly, skipping “A Lack of Charity”, because you truly don’t want those pictures in your head).  Some of the stories have questionable theology, some are better than others, but the mix on the whole is quite good, and it has that sharp, strange, interesting energy that, real life has, and I really appreciate finding Christian fiction where that is true. It's good stuff.

And that’s my review! I want to thank the publisher of Mysterion for providing me with a review copy. All opinions here are my own. And I’ll be watching with interest to see what Enigmatic Mirror Press does next!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell









This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Weekly Links: Wodehouse, Tolkien, and more!

Guarding the good reading...

SOME GOOD READING FOR YOUR SUNDAY AFTERNOON, SET OUT IN MY USUAL CATEGORIES OF FAITH, AND FAMILY, AND FICTION...

(I should note: I've skipped posting this for a few weeks, but I was still collecting links, so this week's version is super-long. Sorry!)

(Note the second: if you want some good fictional reading, please take a look at my short story "An Anonymous Source" in Havok's Heroes vs. Villains edition. Hope you enjoy it!)

 

Faith 

-"Association Between Religious Service Attendance and Lower Suicide Rates Among US Women".

-"The Evangelical Gender Crack-Up" - There's so much good stuff here.

-"Individuality: a fresh concept":

You see what’s going on here? The prophet’s audience, the Jews of the Babylonian exile, find it hard to understand how anyone – let alone God – would not want to punish a son for his father’s wrongdoing. And vice versa. Acting in any other way seems to them not only stupid, but positively unjust. What we see happening here is a major cultural shift. A brand new idea in human history, imported from outside our world.

-"The Distressing Disguise of the Slut".

-"'We Know that We Are Going To Be Killed': An Interview with an Iraqi Priest".

-"Donald Trump, Man of Faith" - particularly this bit:

...the gloomy aspect of traditional Christian practice is also the wellspring of Christian compassion. At the moment a Christian asks for forgiveness, he must acknowledge his own weakness and look mercifully on the weakness of others. In the Our Father, the Christian asks that he be forgiven, just as he in turn forgives. From the holy terror that Peale called “fear thoughts” comes the light of Christian love.

Family 

-An older article that might be good to revisit this week: "How silence can breed prejudice: A child development professor explains how and why to talk to kids about race".

-"I'm Good With Whatever: The High Price of People Pleasing".

-"Because Life Doesn't Give Do-Overs".

Fiction

- "On Writing Negative Reviews" - I have to agree: negative reviews can be incredibly useful to the reader. And, I'd argue, to the author as well. I know I've read negative book reviews and thought, "The reviewer might not like that, but I'd love it," and gone ahead and picked up the book.

-"All In": On giving it everything, every time you write.

-"Interviews: P.G. Wodehouse" - just delightful.

-"Why You Should Aim for 100 Rejections a Year": I'm going to try. I truly am. Only 83 to go...

-"The Magic of the Lord of the Rings Books":

My favorite book began with a disappointment: The hero disappeared at the end of its first chapter...

-"Belle's Fairy Tale Education: Learning Virtue in Disney's Beauty and the Beast": a lovely meditation on the value of fairy tales, as seen in my favorite Disney movie ever.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

This post contains an Amazon affiliate link; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Weekend Links: Lethal Friendship, Active Shooter Situations, and more

SOME GOOD READING FOR YOUR SUNDAY AFTERNOON, SET OUT IN MY USUAL CATEGORIES OF FAITH, FAMILY, AND FICTION ...

Faith 

- "Amorites and Exile":

This ... has always helped me grasp why God displaced the Amorites: they weren’t just collateral damage cluttering up the land he’d promised to his chosen people. No, they had their own independent account to keep with God. 

- "Reviewing 'You Are What You Love', by James K.A. Smith": Doesn't this sound like a good book?

Family

- "Tired, in the pool":

Over a bottle of wine at dinner I told the story to Mark.  "I had a lot of time in the pool to contemplate why the man's behavior, even though objectively it doesn't seem like much, was so threatening," I said.   

"It's because he communicated, in several ways, 'I am not going to abide by the normal limits of behavior,'" Mark suggested. 

"Yes, I think that's it," I mused.  "You're forced to wonder, 'What other rules of appropriate behavior are you going to ignore?'"

- "Run, Hide, Fight: OC Sheriff's Dept. officials detail what to do in an active shooter situation": I know this is a scary topic, but it's a lot better to be educated on the topic than not. (And to know that your kids know, too.)

Fiction

- "Captain America, Aaron Burr, and the Politics of Killing Your Friends": This is just a fantastic essay. Here's an excerpt:

While the political question ofCivil War as a comic series was whether the grave risks of registration outweighed the potential benefits, the political question of Civil War the movie is how to stop even profound disagreements from souring into enmity. Into hurled insults. Into trolling. Into being forced to unfollow people on Facebook. 

Too specific?

- "Neil deGrasse Tyson Is a Black Hole, Sucking the Fun Out of the Universe": Cautions for language on this one -- but on the other hand, that's kind of the point of this one: language (and everything else) gets really, really boring when you are only allowed to talk like a pedant.

- "Sleepwalker": a short sci-fi story with a clever twist.



Have a great weekend!
-Jessica Snell

some things we share, and some we don't...

So, after sharing that book post about how sharing bits of your day is such a good way to blog ... I got horribly sick.

I decided everyone would be okay if I didn't share tales of the flu every day. :)  You're welcome.


But something nice did happen online this week, and that's that the lovely Anne Kennedy reviewed "Not Alone". Here's a bit of what she had to say:

...I was constantly surprised by hope as I turned over the pages. God cares for the child, we all know that. But we don’t give much thought for the gracious consolations of the mother by God, nor for the heartbroken father. For the Christian, suffering isn’t random, isn’t cruel, however sharp and unbearable. These writers lay bear the internal, private, outpouring of God’s mercy in their grief. What did he say? What didn’t he? How did they go on? What did they learn? It’s all there.

Head on over to Anne's place to read the rest.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Book Notes: "The Winner's Curse", by Marie Rutkoski

"The Winner's Curse", by Marie Rutkoski is a YA fantasy: the story of  Kestrel, the daughter of an important general, and Arin, a slave who becomes a revolutionary.  The setting reminded me a bit of Sparta, with all the young people expected to either marry and produce children for the empire, or to sign up and become soldiers in order to spread the empire across yet more territories.

The title refers to the idea that winning can come at a steep - and unexpected - cost. Which is what Kestrel discovers when she wins Arin at a slave auction. That inadvertent victory changes her life and is the engine that starts the plot running through its paces.

I enjoyed this one. (I know: shocker! I pretty much only review books I enjoy - Twilight, you, as always, are the great exception.)

Kestrel made sense as a 17-year-old who is smart, but in over her head. I figured things out ahead of her, but that weirdly didn't bother me. Usually, running too far ahead of the main character is annoying in a book, but here, somehow, it just made Kestrel feel more real. I mean, how many times in real life have you looked back and thought, How in the world didn't I realize that sooner? In this book, the author was able to make Kestrel's slow realizations sympathetic, not annoying.

My favorite part was probably the setting: Kestrel's city used to belong to the people her general-father had a hand in conquering and the layering of the two cultures - conquered/rebelling and conquerer/defending - made for a fascinating world.

I appreciated that Rutkoski didn't gloss over the violence of the war as much as YA sometimes does. It's a sparkling, dream-like world, yes, but her characters' decisions have costs, and that makes for a good story.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell


This post contains an Amazon affiliate link; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Book Notes: The Big Picture Interactive Bible Storybook

"The Big Picture Interactive Bible Storybook" (phew! what a title!) is the book we've been using for evening devotions with our kids for the past several months.

And I can't comment on the "interactive" part of the title, because we haven't used it. (Apparently you can blink at it with your smartphone and see moving versions of the illustrations? I don't know, I don't have a smartphone.)

But the content - the content is so, so good. Why? Because it very much echoes the Biblical text. If you're someone who's familiar with the text of the Bible itself, you'll hear the real words echoed here in this storybook. They seem to keep the original phrasing as often as possible - it's just edited a bit for length and clarity.

I really like that.

The other thing I really like is that at the end of each story, they take a paragraph or two to explain what each story teaches us about Christ. Really, it's just basic theology - Christ-centered theology. It's great stuff. Much like my experience in reading the "Jesus Storybook Bible", I think I ended up receiving as many insights from the clear retelling of these stories of our faith as my children did.


One caveat: I am reviewing this before I've finished the whole thing. But the reason I'm reviewing now is that we just finished reading through the whole New Testament section, one story a night, so we have completed a good chunk of it. I trust the Old Testament section (which we're going back to now) will be just as good. I wish I could remember who recommended it to me. But here I am, all the same, recommending it to you.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Book Notes: "Survive the Unthinkable", by Tim Larkin

Several years ago, I had a chance to attend a weekend seminar teaching Target Focused Training, which is the self-protection plan the author of the book I'm reviewing today designed.

My response to a lot of the content of this book, Survive the Unthinkable, can be found in my review of that seminar, but almost five years out, I appreciated having the chance to review the material I studied that weekend by reading this short volume.

Larkin's theory of violence is simple: violence is rarely the answer; but when it is, it's the only answer.

I can't say he's wrong.

Thinking about violence is unpleasant, and the author, Larkin, agrees that it should be unpleasant.  Finding violence unpleasant means that we're normal, well-socialized people. Prevention, walking away . . . that's always the best idea, the best choice.

When it's an available choice.

But when someone who is asocial is perfectly willing to use violence against you, you don't want your socialization to prevent you from fighting back.

Here's a piece of his argument:

If someone is determined to kill you, you must place injury to ensure he can no longer hurt you . . . Violence has no place in everyday life . . . This book is not about becoming a violent person; it is about placing injury on a person who is trying to attack you so that you may survive . . . [violence is] a very narrow tool good for only one thing, and that's shutting down a human being who intends to attack you. But if you are going to place an injury, then you must be prepared to employ it full force . . ."

A lot of this book is dedicated to convincing you that fighting back (even going on the offense!) is good, and required, and not sociopathic. But only when absolutely necessary.  I appreciate both his insistence on violence being a useful tool and also his insistence that it's rarely the right tool. That balance there is important, I think.

The last bit of the book is dedicated to telling you how to be effective in your application of violence. I wish this section was a bit more expansive, but if you pay attention, you'll get a lot of good information. Effective violence doesn't require you to be big and strong. It requires you to have intent and information.

Not a fun topic at all. But a very necessary one.  I've found that since having this training, I've been much less anxious about the possibility of being attacked, simply because it helped me decide how I'd respond. Having already made the decision of what you'd do if takes away uncertainty, and taking away uncertainty really lowers anxiety.

Recommended - not for fun, but for the good information.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

This post contains Amazon affiliate links. (If you purchase something through the links on this post, I'll receive a very small percentage of the purchase price. See full disclosure in the sidebar of my blog.)