Category Archives: Book Reviews

Review of Ubik by Philip K. Dick

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Time Magazine Top 100 Novels

Book 94: Ubik by Philip K. Dick (1969)

This is a series of reflections reading through Time Magazine’s top 100 novels as selected by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo published since 1923 (when Time magazine was founded). For me this is an attempt to broaden my exposure to authors I may not encounter otherwise, especially as a person who was not a liberal arts major in college. Time’s list is alphabetical, so I decided to read through in a random order, and I plan to write a short reflection on each novel.

Ubik is a strange novel which combines a science fiction future (as projected in the late 1960s) with a noir aesthetic in a world which combines time travel, space travel, a heavily commercialized future, psionic powers, and half-life (a way of preserving mental life by putting the person into a cryogenic state). The primary protagonist, Joe Chip, is a down on his luck tester of psionic abilities for the powerful Runciter corporation and a friend of the company’s owner Glen Runciter when a mysterious woman, Pat Conley, is brought to his residence by a talent recruiter to be tested. Joe quickly discovers that Pat Conley’s powers, her ability to manipulate time, would be an incredible asset for the Runciter corporation but would also pose an extreme threat to them as well. When presenting Pat Conley to Glen Runciter for potential employment the company is offered a job to deal with a psionic threat to a corporation at a moon base and Glen Runciter, Joe Chip, Pat Conley and nine ‘inertials’ (individuals with powers that can thwart the psionic powers of companies that the Runciter organization provides protection against). The mission leads to a disaster for all involved as the present and reality seem to unravel and the team begins to individually age rapidly while their world regresses to the late 1930s.

Reading science fiction from an earlier time period is a little disorienting, especially when the projected future is now thirty years in the past. The world of Ubik is a strange imagining of what the 1990s would be by a person in the 1960s complete with all manner of talking appliances and doors that are coin operated. The reality of rapid space travel, cryogenic half-life, psionic powers, and radically different geopolitics never occurred as the novel projected, but the reality twisting plot of the second half of the novel is interesting. The book gets its name from a substance called Ubik which is advertised at the beginning of each chapter and becomes a key need for the protagonists as they try to navigate a reality which is being pulled by opposing forces of degradation and preservation. It is a strange but imaginative plot with a mysterious ending.

Review of I, Claudius by Robert Graves

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Time Magazine Top 100 Novels

Book 46: I, Claudius by Robert Graves

This is a series of reflections reading through Time Magazine’s top 100 novels as selected by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo published since 1923 (when Time magazine was founded). For me this is an attempt to broaden my exposure to authors I may not encounter otherwise, especially as a person who was not a liberal arts major in college. Time’s list is alphabetical, so I decided to read through in a random order, and I plan to write a short reflection on each novel.

I, Claudius is a fascinating first-person narration of the life of Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (or Claudius) who would become the fourth emperor of Rome. The novel takes the historical backdrop of Rome under emperors Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula and portrays the world of the elites of the Roman empire. Claudius is often overlooked because of his lameness and his stuttering, but he learns to use his sharp mind as a historian. He is despised initially by Augustus and his wife Livia but late in his life Augustus realizes that his evaluation of Claudius has been mistaken. The novel portrays Claudius, presumably late in his reign as emperor, setting down an honest history of the Roman empire complete with assassinations, the debauchery of those in power, and the dangerous world that those in proximity to the Caesars must navigate.

As a person with some familiarity of the early Roman empire the book was a fascinating interweaving of fact and conjecture. Robert Graves gives a personality to these figures so often portrayed in statues and shows the humanity and sometimes the depravity of these men who will be viewed as deities throughout the empire. Livia occupies a major place in the narrative and is portrayed as a ruthless manipulator of Augustus and Tiberius. Yet, after her death it also becomes clear how she has kept the worst tendencies of Tiberius under control. Claudius is presented as a character who it is easy to empathize with, who endures the loss of his brothers, his first love, and is constantly at risk of being eliminated by Livia, Tiberius, and eventually Caligula. Yet, he survives all of them and to his dismay is eventually named the emperor of Rome.

This is a great example of early twentieth century historical fiction. Graves does a masterful job of inviting the reader into the time of Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula without expecting the reader to be well versed in the history of the first century, but remains believable by a reader who is familiar with it. I look forward to reading more from Robert Graves and will probably read Claudius the God the sequel next.

 

Review of Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most by Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz

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Miroslav Volf has been an influential theological voice for me since his publication of Exclusion and Embrace and I have learned a great deal from his writing over the past two decades. Volf has been wrestling with the question of what makes a life worth living in his publications for the last eight years and this book feels like the successful culmination of years of writing, teaching, and seeking wise partners from his position at the Yale Divinity School and the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. His previous books on this topic (Flourishing: Why we Need Religion in a Globalized World and For the Life of the World: Theology that Makes a Difference) have helped frame the questions that now A Life Worth Living provides a guide for working through. A Life Worth Living models the class that Volf, Croasmun, and McAnnally-Linz teach at Yale, as well as at Danbury Federal Correctional Institute where they invite their seekers to consider several faith and wisdom traditions as they pose several key questions that are a part of seeking an authentic life. These questions include: What is worth wanting? What is the place of happiness in an authentic life? What is the authority are we responsible and what traditions form our vision of truth? How does a good life feel and what role do negative emotions/suffering have in the good life? What is worth hoping for? How should we live and what provides for a meaningful life? How do the various answers come together to form a life worth living? How does our good life fit within our bigger picture of the world? What do we do when we fall short of our visions of what life should be? How do we react to the suffering we experience and the suffering we encounter in the world around us?

One of the gifts of this book is it invites the reader into an encounter with a diverse set of wise voices who provide very different answers to each of the questions the book poses and provides a spectrum of possible answers for one willing to engage the questions. It is not a difficult book to read and it does not expect any previous engagement with philosophy or theology, instead coming out of the experience of teaching both undergraduates and inmates it simplifies the voices which come from across the religious and non-religious spectrum into an approachable set of stories. But the simplicity of the presentation does not take away from the deep nature of the reflection prompted by the questions that the book presents. This is an invaluable resource for those seeking to live a life that authentically reflects the values of the person trying to construct a life worth living.

Review of Babel: An Archane History by R.F.Kuang

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R. F. Kuang, Babel: An Archane History

For me a five-star book is something that either I want to read again or something that is so profound it makes an immediate impact. There are lots of ways that books can be compelling: a unique idea, an interesting set of characters, a complex plot, an artistic use of the English language and more. Reading is also a subjective experience, so what appeals to me as a reader may be very different for you. I read a lot for both pleasure and work but these short reviews are a way for me to show my appreciation for the work and the craft of the author of the reviewed work.

Babel is a book that is going to evoke a strong reaction from its reader. I love languages and have done a lot of work in translating and so a magical system which is built upon the distortion in meaning between languages when they are engraved on a silver bar was a fascinating concept. The attention to translation and understanding languages as systems of value and meaning may be boring to some readers, but for me this discussion resonated strongly. It is a story which can celebrate both the magic of the university but also the dark side of academia when it becomes tangled with the goals of the empire. The book deals with the difficult reality of colonialism and the difficult choice that the non-white students at Babel must make as they discover the ways in which their work is being used to exploit the countries of their birth. This is a smart, well written story set in a nineteenth century world modified by the advantages of enchanted silver working.

Robin Swift loses his family to sickness in China and is given a chance to come to England to be prepared for Babel, the Royal Institute of Translation at Oxford University. Robin Swift and his classmates Ramy, Victoire, and Letty become incredibly close as students at Babel, and as either non-white students or women they must navigate the wealthy, white, and male world of Oxford. They live a privileged life as Babel students who receive a full scholarship and a generous stipend, but they are also asked to commit themselves wholeheartedly to their studies. All of them are gifted students who have been trained for much of their life for this course of study. When Robin meets a person who looks like an older version of himself, he finds himself entangled with a secret society called Hermes. The Hermes society opposes the work Babel does to further the colonialism of the British Empire. Robin later sees the impact of the Royal Institute of Translation on his motherland of China and how it is allied with the trading companies who want to export opium to his home. This experience initiates a chain of events that sets Robin and some of his friends in opposition to the work of not only Babel but the empire itself.

R. F. Kuang does an excellent job of helping the reader see the world through the eyes of Robin, and to a lesser extent Victoire and Letty. It portrays the world of a brilliant young man who is often viewed as both important to the work of the Institute and by extension the empire, but who also is never fully accepted as a person who belongs at Oxford or in England. The characters are caught in the tension between the magic of the place and the devilish manipulation of the world using language. It is a sharp book both in its intelligence and its cutting and sometimes painful perspective on the abuse of both knowledge and people.

Review of Uprooted by Naomi Novik

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Naomi Novik, Uprooted

For me a five-star book is something that either I want to read again or something that is so profound it makes an immediate impact. There are lots of ways that books can be compelling: a unique idea, an interesting set of characters, a complex plot, an artistic use of the English language and more. Reading is also a subjective experience, so what appeals to me as a reader may be very different for you. I read a lot for both pleasure and work but these short reviews are a way for me to show my appreciation for the work and the craft of the author of the reviewed work.

I read Uprooted when it came out in 2015 and loved it, and a part of my reading habit is including books that I enjoyed previously and rereading them. I’ve read most of what Naomi Novik has written and this is my favorite of her books. Uprooted is set within a fantasy kingdom where a corrupted and malicious forest yearns to destroy the people who find themselves planted near its boundaries. The region is protected by a wizard named Sarkan, but who is commonly known as the Dragon. Every ten years the dragon selects a seventeen-year-old woman to come to his tower for the next ten years. Agnieszka is the protagonist of the story who is the surprise choice of this immortal wizard to spend the next ten years of her life in the Dragon’s tower. Agnieszka soon proves to be a difficult student but a gifted witch with her own relationship to magic which is more intuitive than Sarkan’s more precise and rigid approach. Despite their different gifts and approaches to magic their gifts weave together to allow them to do magic neither would be able to do alone.

The malicious wood plants devious seeds to attempt to entrap Sarkan and Agnieszka and to provoke confusion and conflict in the surrounding kingdoms. The wood makes an intriguing antagonist with its inhuman and corrupted drive to consume, and its ability to corrupt animals, humans, and objects. The story maintains an air of continual tension where the stakes are the destruction of the two kingdoms surrounding the wood. The wood’s manipulation of the vain Prince Marek springs a devilish trap which threatens to destroy Sarkan and Agnieszka as well as the kingdom. Naomi Novik does an impressive job of articulating a beautiful vision of magic within her world that can move between the elitist and rigid abilities of Sarkan and the folkish and musical abilities of Agnieszka.

Uprooted is both a fantasy story but also a coming-of-age story. Agnieszka as a young woman discovers her talents as a magic wielder and her voice within the political struggles of the kingdom but she is also a young woman discovering attraction. The intertwining of Sarkan’s and Agnieszka’s magical abilities unlocks feelings for both but there is also a vast gap between them to be overcome. It is a dangerous but beautiful world with well written characters, a constant threat of destruction by the environment which seeks revenge on all humanity, and a compelling vision of magic. The book invites you to walk barefoot into these dark woods and stay rooted in the magic of the place.

Review of the Melody of Trees: 10 Tales from the Forest by Helen Whistberry

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Helen Whistberry, The Melody of Trees: 10 Tales from the Forest

For me a five-star book is something that either I want to read again or something that is so profound it makes an immediate impact. There are lots of ways that books can be compelling: a unique idea, an interesting set of characters, a complex plot, an artistic use of the English language and more. Reading is also a subjective experience, so what appeals to me as a reader may be very different for you. I read a lot for both pleasure and work but these short reviews are a way for me to show my appreciation for the work and the craft of the author of the reviewed work.

The Melody of Trees is a collection of diverse short stories where trees or forests play some role in the story. Each story is short enough to be read in one setting but unique and complex enough to be intriguing. The stories span from mythological to science fiction, some are delightful fairy tales while others are dark stories of ash, death, and darkness. ‘Forest’ is told from the perspective of Forest as an ancient god observing the life and death occurring within its boundaries. ‘Girl of Glass’ is the story of a witch’s daughter who makes a desperate magical bargain to escape her unloving home that requires a heavy sacrifice. ‘Revenant of High Lonesome’ is an interesting combining of fantasy and western themes as a gun for hire determines that a promise made is worth taking on the authorities of a faithless town. ‘The Melody of Trees’ is a story of two people who find themselves in an odd sort of futuristic prison where they must use their skills as an artist and programmer to find an escape. It is a story of the beginning of relationships and learning to trust, but also creativity and intuition. ‘An Invitation of Shadows’ is the story of a young boy who escapes a murderous father leaving behind his loving mother, but learns he has a special power and a difficult choice to make: to heed his mother’s last wish and flee or to return to attempt to save her and his siblings. ‘The Watcher’ follows a cranky elderly man who is living in a retirement home and finds his only solace in watching the field and the forest near the home, but when his environment begins to change in nightmarish ways, he finds that he is also being watched. ‘Written in Ashes’ is a story of doors that should not be opened, of warnings unheeded, and of a darkly magical curse that lies just beyond the normal world for those whose curiosity gets the better of them. ‘Flora and Milo’ is another magical story of a missing mother, an absent father, and two children who follow the animals into the forest learning who is friend and who is foe and the magic the daughter possess. ‘Bad Day on the Job’ is a delightfully absurd story of two hit men in a supernatural world of werewolves, monsters under the bed, summoned demons, ghosts, and a mob boss who crossed the wrong woman. ‘A Gnashing of Teeth’ is another story in a science fiction world where humanity is at risk of being consumed by an invading race of strange beings that resemble the ancient pictures of Seraphim, and a ‘wise one’ who provides hope for a group of survivors.

I found each of the tales engaging and the overall book a delight. I intentionally attempted not to give away too many secrets in my brief summaries of each tale so new readers can discover the strange twists that the stories include. The stories are just long enough to introduce you to a new world and an interesting set of characters, but each story still manages to be complete.

Review of Sunyi Dean The Book Eaters

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Sunyi Dean. The Book Eaters

For me a five star book is something that either I want to read again or something that is so profound it makes an immediate impact. There are lots of ways that books can be compelling: a unique idea, an interesting set of characters, a complex plot, an artistic use of the English language and more. Reading is also a subjective experience, so what appeals to me as a reader may be very different for you. I read a lot for both pleasure and work but these short reviews are a way for me to show my appreciation for the work and the craft of the author of the reviewed work.

The Book Eaters is a work of dark fantasy set in contemporary England. The first time I saw the title and read the synopsis I was intrigued by the idea of a people who ate books instead of food and I was curious to see how this idea played out in the story. The story alternates between the present-day struggle of Devon and her son Cai and the traumatic story that places this mother and son on the run from the families of book eaters. Devon grows up in a world where she is isolated from the rest of the world by her family and grows up on fairy tales of princesses. These carefully curated stories are fed to her (literally since she is a book eater) and form her world and imagination, but she is also curious for the other stories that she is not supposed to read or eat. She begins to see signs that life is not the fairy tales she has been fed as a child, but as an adult she discovers that her role in the families is to be essentially breeding stock and she will be unable to raise the children she bears. Devon is permanently scared when the connection with her daughter is severed suddenly and she is sent to another marriage to bear her second child.

Devon’s second child, Cai, is a mind eater. Among the book eaters there are children born who consume human minds instead of paper and although there is a drug that allows them to consume books instead of minds they are always looked upon as a danger. Most of these children will become ‘dragons’ who are kept by the ‘knights’ in the story but as the time near for Cai to be taken by the knights and Devon to be removed from his life the family who produces the drug to treat the mind eaters disappears. In the present day the story follows Devon and Cai as they attempt to find the Ravenscar family who manufactures this drug which will allow five-year-old Cai to no longer eat human minds. In the meantime Devon must find a human for her son to feed on every two weeks as she attempts to avoid the families and the knights who want her and her son dead.

What makes The Book Eaters a compelling read is the realistic character development of both Devon and Cai who are looked upon as monsters but are bound together by the love of a mother and son. It is a book full of betrayals and broken people, of fairy tales that hide the darker side of reality, of the difficult choices love can cause us to make, and princesses who find a way to save themselves. The isolation of the families reminded me a little of the Ravenwood/Duchennes family in the Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl series Beautiful Creatures although that is set in a Southern U.S. gothic world rather than an English one. A compelling plot which realistically develops a group of characters who are shaped by the curated narratives they have been fed and the trauma inflicted upon them as they attempt to survive in a world that views them as monsters.

Review of The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood

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Time Magazine Top 100 Novels

Book 12: The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood

This is a series of reflections reading through Time Magazine’s top 100 novels as selected by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo published since 1923 (when Time magazine was founded). For me this is an attempt to broaden my exposure to authors I may not encounter otherwise, especially as a person who was not a liberal arts major in college. Time’s list is alphabetical, so I decided to read through in a random order, and I plan to write a short reflection on each novel.

The Berlin Stories is actually two books written based on the author’s time in Berlin from 1929-1933. The Last of Mr. Norris narrates Christopher Isherwood’s relationship with Arthur Norris and several other figures from his circle of acquaintances. Arthur Norris as a character is both charming and paranoid and is a complex collection of contradictory eccentricities and collaborations. Arthur can rally a communist rally or manipulate Arthur into entrapping a fellow friend Kuno (Baron von Pregnitz) in  a trip to Switzerland. The character of Arthur with his unappealing assistant Schmidt is always one step away from disaster and early 1930s Berlin is a dangerous place for a trickster like Arthur. The Berlin Diaries is a collection of shorter encounters with characters set in the same time period. The character of Sally Bowles, who would later be adopted to the stage in “I Am Camera” and the movies in “Cabaret” is the shining star among this collection as this young woman navigates the nightlife of Berlin as an aspiring actor and dancer in a cabaret. Peter and Otto, an older man and a younger man in an arranged relationship, form the second group of characters with Peter jealous of Otto’s other attractions. In a time when his finances are challenging Christopher Isherwood moves into the slums with Otto’s family in Berlin, the Nowaks with their sick mother, alcoholic father, two sons and one daughter. Moving in opposite directions Christopher also shows us into his connections with the wealthy Jewish family, the Landauers, where he has an initially friendly if formal relationship with the Natalia Landauer and is taken into the confidence of Bernard who runs the family business. Connecting the two stories is the landlady Fraulein Schroeder in whose house Christopher lives through much of this time.

The environment of early 1930s Berlin also plays a crucial role in these two books and it gives a window into this desperate time. Berlin is a place of conflict and danger where communists and fascists are vying for power, where poverty and depression are constantly present, where anything is available for sale and where people will do anything to survive. It does illuminate both the violence of the emerging Nazi movement but also gives a perspective why hopeless people would be drawn to it or its communist alternative. It is a dark environment to write a story within and none of the characters would be considered heroic, but they are survivors. Seeing the environment of pre-Nazi Berlin through the characters eyes helps make the time more vivid, but the understanding of the environment also helps the characters more understandable.

Review of the Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

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Time Magazine Top 100 Novels

Book 13: The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

This is a series of reflections reading through Time Magazine’s top 100 novels as selected by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo published since 1923 (when Time magazine was founded). For me this is an attempt to broaden my exposure to authors I may not encounter otherwise, especially as a person who was not a liberal arts major in college. Time’s list is alphabetical, so I decided to read through in a random order, and I plan to write a short reflection on each novel.

The Big Sleep is the first novel featuring the iconic private eye, Philip Marlowe. This is one of the books that would be instrumental in the evolution of the private eye character in the noir films with dark characters. Chandler’s writing style immediately evokes the feeling of watching a classical private eye or crime movie and he takes us to the darker side of Hollywood in the 1930s. Philip Marlowe is the intelligent but hardnosed investigator asked to investigate an attempt to extort the elderly patriarch of the family. The investigation quickly walks into the murky world of pornography, gambling and drinking (in the immediate aftermath of prohibition), and murder.

The book’s style seems tailor made to become the movie it would be made into multiple times. Raymond Chandler does a good job of balancing giving enough information to show the reader the scene in their mind without becoming bogged down. It is a quick paced read but the characters seem somewhat two dimensional. Philip Marlowe is the tough guy investigator who is intelligent but has no emotional depth, and the other characters are given just enough story to fit their place in the plot. It is very different from many of the other books in the Time Magazine top 100 list, but it probably finds its place here to represent the noir investigative genre that has continued to exercise popularity. It is an invitation to the smoke-filled world of tough guys who drink all the time and walk on the dark side of 1930s Hollywood.

Review of The English Koren Tanakh: The Magerman Edition

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The English Koren Tanakh: The Magerman Edition The Hebrew Bible in a New English Translation. Translated by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Rabbi Tzvi Weinreb, et. al. Jerusalem: Koren Publisher, 2021

The Magerman Edition of the English Koren Tanakh is a beautifully put together volume. This translation of the Hebrew Scriptures done by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hirsch Weinreb and several other distinguished Jewish scholars does a good job of capturing both the richness of the Hebrew language in an understandable English syntax. As a Christian reader who has some fluency in the Hebrew language it is a gift to have the loving work of this dedicated group of scholars. This is one of translations I now use when doing a close reading of a text.

One of the gifts of doing work on the scriptures that we share with our Jewish ancestors is being aware of some of the differences in form and structure between how Christian and Jewish interpreters have approached these holy books that we share. The Jewish organization of scripture divides the scripture into three sections: Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy), Prophets (Joshua-Kings, Isaiah-Malachi excluding Daniel), and Writings (Wisdom literature, Ruth, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles, and Daniel).  The introductions also give several insights into how the scriptures are used in both personal devotion and corporate worship by our Jewish counterparts. The translations themselves capture balance the Hebrew syntax with English flow and readability and manage to capture the form of poetry and prose. The casual English reader will quickly realize that the names of individuals and places have been transliterated from the Hebrew rather than using the English traditional renderings of these names and places which date bank to the original English translations and are often significantly different than the Hebrew pronunciation. Even the layout of the text on the page is attractive to the eye and large enough to easily read. The maps, diagrams, and images at the end of the book are also very well done.

I’ve used several resources from Koren Publishers in the past and they have consistently been insightful and readable. I was given a copy of the Magerman Edition of the English Koren Tanakh to share an honest review of the resource and for those who are interested in a readable translation of the Hebrew Scriptures to inform their reading, devotions, and study I highly recommend this work.