#BookReview: Hearing God by Nathan Finochio

Awesome Premise. Flawed Execution. In this book, Finochio makes several excellent points, and it is a book genuinely worthy of reading. But yet again we get a book from a Christian pastor that decries the practice of “proof texting” – citing an out of context verse from the Bible in support of whatever claim the person is making at the time – … while doing it in seemingly nearly every paragraph of the 200 pages of text of this book. We see, yet again, the modern Christian phenomenon of worshiping the Bible as God’s Word, despite the very book itself (in John 1:1) declaring that *Jesus Christ* is God’s Word. And indeed, Finochio uses some genuinely impressive mental gymnastics somewhat frequently to claim that both the Bible and Jesus Christ are God’s Word at the same time. For the Christian mainstream in America, this book will probably go over quite well and hell, he does make good points throughout the book even in his flawed execution, so I’ll recommend it to that crowd at least. It simply could have been so much more and so much stronger, and is disappointing in not being so.

This review of Hearing God by Nathan Finochio was originally published on June 11, 2019.

Featured New Release of the Week: The Road She Left Behind by Christine Nolfi

This week we look at a tale of a prodigal child running from the guilt of what she did years ago = and having to come home and confront it once and for all. This week we are looking at The Road She Left Behind by Christine Nolfi.

I do confessionals here, right? Kinda in the very tagline I use on this place? Here’s one: This book hit home because yet again I find an author writing a book that has main elements that speak directly to my life. In this particular case, Darcy has never been home since one fateful day 8 yrs ago and the guilt she has over it. In my own case, I’ve never lived within 100 miles of my home town as an adult, and while my own tale isn’t as tragic as Darcy’s, there was enough similarity there to be very thought provoking. (To be clear, the dynamics of Darcy’s family are nothing at all like my own.)

Overall an objectively excellent book, full of drama and just enough humor to lighten the mood a bit at key times. Very much a recommended read.

And as always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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#BookReview: On the Clock by Emily Guendelsberger

Intriguing Premise Hurt By Lack of Evidence. This is one of those books that has an intriguing premise and brings some often overlooked aspects to the table and is thus worthy of and even needed in the national conversation, but that is ultimately tainted by the author’s own biases and lack of empirical evidence and lack of extensive bibliography. The author does a phenomenal job of showing what it is like to work in the environments she chose to work in – an Amazon Fulfillment Center, a call center, and a franchise McDonald’s – and the people who work there. But as she admits repeatedly, she could always leave at any time she wanted – while she rarely if ever mentions what her husband does for work, she does mention during one ordeal at the call center that her father in law is a doctor – and the entire point of getting these jobs was to “test the waters” to see what people who worked them were really like and what their concerns really were. Very well written, just with significant flaws in reasoning due to her own biases, particularly in her ultimate conclusions. Could have been far stronger, but still a recommended read.

This review of On the Clock by Emily Guendelsberger was originally published on June 9, 2019.

#BookReview: Healthcare Is Killing Us by Aaron Fausz and W. Terry Howell

A Solid Plan. In this book, Fausz and Howell dare to imagine what *can* be re: healthcare in the US. They open it up with a chapter called “Imagine” where they detail their ideal vision for what healthcare can be, and the following chapters are tightly structured around different groupings of the ideals they lay out in the opening chapter. One of the best jobs I’ve ever seen of the old school X-N-X structure of essays that was once taught in American schools (back in ye olden times 30 yrs ago when I was in school anyway), the authors explain the general problem of a chapter, refer back to the subset of the “Imagine” objectives, discuss where we currently are and how the objectives can be obtained, and conclude each chapter with a “key takeaways” that refers back to the “Imagine” objective. In one chapter, they discuss the pharmaceuticals issue and largely discuss (much more generally) the same things Robin Feldmann goes into much more detail on in her recent book Drugs, Money, and Secret Handshakes.

How you think of their ideals and proposed solutions is probably going to be tainted by your own personal politics, but they seem to have an even head on their shoulders. They are upfront and repeated in their claim to be driven by free market capitalism, and they show how this very system – so often derided as impossible in healthcare – can in fact be used to achieve the best results for the most people, both in ideals and in actual implementations that are already existing in the real world.

Overall a very well done book that allows and encourages the reader to follow up with their own thinking on the issue and looking into the various technologies and companies discussed throughout. Very much recommended.

This review of Healthcare Is Killing Us by Aaron Fausz and W. Terry Howell was originally published on June 8, 2019.

#BookReview: Conviction by Denise Mina

One Of The Best Final Lines I’ve Ever Read! The book itself started a bit slow, but by around 15-20% in or so builds to where you just want to finish the book in one sitting. Which is nearly what I did, having started the day at 12% into the book, fought through continually trying to fall asleep from sheer exhaustion, and now sitting here writing this review having finished the tale a couple hours later. Great tale with many lies buried within lies buried within lies, and does a good job of holding off a final reveal until the last few pages. Very much recommended.

This review of Conviction by Denise Mina was originally published on June 6, 2019.

#BookReview: Across the Dark Horizon by Tagan Shepard

Strong Story, Abrupt Ending. This was a strong story of two women brought together by circumstances largely out of their direct control… wherein such circumstances happen to be a prison riot on the moon. Excellent tale from both the military and business sides, and without too much “science fiction” other than the setting itself (and *some* of the tech, but that level of tech is rarely mentioned in the story). Other than the very abrupt ending that feels like the author wanted to end the book with the final words of the last chapter and only tacked on an epilogue after an unknown third party insisted on it, the story was amazing. The ending was *almost* enough to drop it a star, it was that jarring. Still, a very much recommended book.

This review of Across the Dark Horizon by Tagan Shepard was originally published on June 4, 2018.

Featured New Release of the Week: Summer Hours by Amy Mason Doan

This week we look at an excellent tale of a pair of disillusioned 30 somethings who had gone to school together and are reuniting for the remaining member of their trio’s wedding. This week we are looking at Summer Hours by Amy Mason Doan.

This was a solid story told in both the past and the present, with the past storyline taking us through the best friend trio’s high school and college years and the present taking place around 2008 when the trio was now in their early 30s. The pacing is well done, with the story lines hinting at just enough of what is to come in each other to keep the reader diving back into the next chapter to see what comes next.

As a bit of a disillusioned 30 something myself right now, the book hit home quite a bit, particularly in its back half when the present storyline begins picking up and dominating. Indeed, there were five quotes in particular that stood out:

  • “We say ‘we’ll never be like them’, but it happens. It happens gradually. We give in a little here, put off the hard decision there, say we’re paying our dues. We forget to swim against the current.”
  • “[The quest] has given me a taste of something I haven’t had in a long time. The thrill of the chase. Entering other people’s worlds, so different from your own. One fact leading to another, feeling your way in the dark, sometimes crawling and sometimes backing up and sometimes running. The certainty that [the goal] is important, that you have to keep going because no one else will. Until you’re out of the maze, holding a fragment of the truth up to the light.”
  • “We pick this industry we’re passionate about, and then if we’re *really* *really* good at it and *really* *really* lucky, we get to watch the job become a total perversion of what we once loved. Maybe we’re better off keeping the passions to the side. Separate from the paycheck.”
  • “I’m thirty-two, and yet I feel so locked into my life. And I’m scared I’m running out of time to change it.”
  • “They thought they knew exactly who I was, because I’d done such a good job of pretending *I* knew. When I didnt have a clue.”

Indeed, this book resonated so much that it seems to have contributed to the slump I noted in last week’s Featured New Release of the Week entry, as this was the book I read immediately prior to starting that one. Very good book, highly recommended.

As always, the Amazon/ Goodreads review:
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#BookReview: Faith Unraveled by Rachel Held Evans

I’m going to treat this #BookReview entry more like a Featured New Release of the Week column just because of what it is and why I’m reading it and when.

In reading Faith Unraveled by Rachel Held Evans today, I knew that today was the day of her funeral – announcements had been made a few days ago. And despite one final book coming from Rachel, likely this fall (she had finished writing it before the illness that ultimately took her life struck, from what I am told), I knew that this was effectively my way of saying goodbye to Rachel.

I never actually met Rachel, to my knowledge we were never so much as in the same city at the same time. But, as I do with Jonathan Merritt, I considered her a contemporary as we were all within a couple of years or so of the same age and were all raised in similar conservative evangelical environments in the same general region of planet earth. And like Merritt’s books, Evans’ spoke to my own journey even while actually speaking about hers, because we were all so similar. When I found Evans’ book Searching for Sunday a few years ago, I wanted to have Thor’s reaction to seeing Hulk in Thor: Ragnarok with virtually every sentence. It was simply transcendant, and I had finally found a contemporary who could speak that which even I found difficult to put into words at times. It was on the strength of that book that I jumped at the chance to help launch her next book, Inspired, last year. While that book hewed closer to Rachel’s beliefs that I didn’t share, I continued to hope that she would come back to the transcendence of Searching for Sunday, and particularly now that this followup to Inspired will be her last.

As I say in the Goodreads/ Amazon review below, this book shows several glimpses of being as amazing as Searching for Sunday was. In speaking of her early life and through college and into meeting Dan, her husband, she speaks to a lot of the same things that many young Christians were going through at those same points in those heady days of the 80s and 90s and early 2000s as the oldest of the Millenials grew up and came of age.

I never actually met Rachel, but I do know that the world is now just a little more dim without her in it – and I know that she will live on as long as her books do, if only in her writing and the memories of those she knew and who knew her.

And now, the Amazon/ Goodreads review:
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Featured New Release Of The Weekend: I’ll Never Tell by Catherine McKenzie

This week we’re looking at a book about summer camps, just as summer camp season starts up! This week, we’re looking at I’ll Never Tell by Catherine McKenzie.

This is the story of a family that each experienced the same tragic event years ago – and has been keeping secrets from each other about their own involvement in that event ever since. The story is intriguing and well paced, with a convenient in-story and in-book chart that helps drive the plot along nicely. With the explosive mandate set by their father, will the children be able to come together and finally spill the secrets each keeps? Or will these secrets tear this family asunder?

Structurally, the story is told from the perspective of very nearly everyone involved as each struggles to piece together what really happened that night all those years ago. Because someone truly has secrets that they never intend to tell. This is an excellent technique for telling this story, as it reveals many things to the reader before the characters reveal it to each other, and yet at the same time this very mechanism increases the mystery for the reader.

Overall an excellent book that had this reader hooked from the get-go. Very highly recommended.

And as always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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