Becoming a Parish of Intentional Disciples

edited by Sherry A. Weddell

Why You Will Like This Book:

• Following up on her excellent and important book Forming Intentional Disciples, Weddell gathers a few people with real world experience in implementing these new ideas on evangelization, and gets them to discuss their thoughts and practical methods. 
• Seriously, I really think these ideas are important and vitally necessary for the Church in the West. If you're at all involved in the life of your parish, you really should read this book. (Although you should probably read Forming Intentional Disciples first. Especially if you're not involved in your parish life.)

And Why You Might Not:

• Obviously if you aren't Catholic, or at least Christian, this book won't mean much to you.
• It's too short. There was some good stuff in there, for sure, but it's such a slim book. I wanted more perspectives. More ideas. More things people have tried that did or didn't work. More stories.

Disorientation

ed. by John Zmirak

Why You'll Like This Book:

• This book can help save you from intellectual destruction. The series of essays ranges from "Sentamentalism" to "Utilitarianism", taking on Hedonists, Relativists, Cynics, and more.
• There is a great recommended reading list at the end of each essay. More books to read! (In fact, I think this is my favourite aspect of this whole book.)

And Why You Might Not:

• A bunch of the essays are a bit simplistic and not as nuanced as they could be. The necessary shortness is part of it, of course. But still, many just go over the basics of an opposing point of view, without trying to either add more depth to make it interesting or add other points of view to make it balanced and accurate.

Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories

by C. S. Lewis

Grade: 4 1/2 stars

Thoughts: It's C. S. Lewis. It's obviously going to be fabulous. The first section of this book is a collection of essays about writing, with an emphasis on speculative fiction. In the second section, there are four short stories, again with a SciFi/Fantasy bent.

The first part was especially good. These essays, among many other important things, defended views I've held for a long time, but never been able to defend very well. Such as: children's books can be as good and well worth reading as adult books, it is not lame to re-read books many times, speculative fiction is not worthless escapism, and SciFi is awesome. I could fill this review with quotes discussion, but that would deprive you of the pleasure of finding things out for yourself. (Plus it would be way too much work.) So here goes a much smaller selection (but still very long, compared to the rest of my reviews).

"No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often more) worth reading at the age of fifty--except, of course, books of information."
"On Stories", pg. 15
Hah! Take that, people who think people who read children's books as adults are weird and immature!
There's also some interesting discussion in this essay about film vs. "popular" fiction (in other words, the pretty badly written stuff). There's a section early on that is talking about excitement, and how the film of King Solomon's Mines lost what made the original book special by (among other things) exchanging the particular  and atmospheric fear of being shut in the dark cave, with general "excitement" and violent danger. I thought it very applicable to most modern action movies (although I do actually enjoy many modern action movies).
Also:
"If you find that the reader of popular romance--however uneducated a reader, however bad the romances--goes back to his old favourite again and again, then you have pretty good evidence that they are to him a sort of poetry."
"On Stories", pg. 15

"I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children's story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children's story."
"On Three Ways of Writing for Children", pg. 24
In this essay, he also has a whole defence of fairy tales being read to children, even though they can be terribly frightening. (Have you read the original fairy tales? They are dark.) "Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage." (pg. 31) It also reminded me of Doctor Who (the awesomest), and how people remember hiding behind the sofa whilst watching it, but loving it all the same.
Another fascinating discussion was concerning the idea that kids who read fantasy will lose themselves in escapism. I strongly disagree with this, and thankfully, so does C. S. Lewis. In fact, he basically argues the reverse, that love of fantasy makes people less inclined to escapism, especially compared to real-world stories.  "[A child] does not despise the real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted." ("On Three Ways of Writing for Children", pg. 29-30) He talks more about escapism, but from an adult perspective, in the essay "On Science Fiction".

I could quote so much more, sigh... But this is getting too long already, so I'll leave the essays and go on to the stories.

Somewhat unexpectedly for me, I didn't enjoy these as much as the essays. My favourite was actually the unfinished story, "After Ten Years". It had enormous potential to be the kind of story I would treasure for my whole life. And strangely enough, it was the least scifi of the lot, being about the aftermath of the Trojan war. The more actual scifi stories almost seemed a little dated, especially "Ministering Angels" and "Forms of Things Unknown". I liked "The Shoddy Lands" a bit more, but seemed to fit more with The Great Divorce (splendid book), and more interesting when you came at it from that point of view than expecting cool scifi stuff.

Travel Reading Part 1

For the last two months, I've been gone on a backpacking trip to Europe. My cell phone was the only internet access I had, and the reception was often spotty. Plus I was just super busy. So TONS of reading, but no posts. There were too many books, and I read them too long ago to make individual posts for each one. So I'm dividing them up into a couple posts, and just writing a couple sentences for each.
Here goes:

"Burning Blue" by Paul Griffin
Grade: 3 stars
Girl gets her face burned by acid and she and this hacker guy try to find out who did it. Kind of cool. I like the romance and the plot line. But my expectations were a bit too high going into this one. (It's about a hacker. It could have been really cool and computery.)





"Guy Langman: Crime Scene Procrastinator" by Josh Berk
Grade: 3 stars
Again, I liked this one less than the expectations I had. Maybe it was something to do with starting off a huge trip as opposed the actual books I was reading? (Mr. Was below had the same issue, and even Ender's World was a little less interesting than I expected.) This one is mostly recommended because it's quite funny--I can't actually remember the mystery story line anymore.




"The Spark" by Susan J. Bigelow
Grade: 3 stars
Good sequel to Broken and Fly into Fire, with Deirdre as the main character this time. The plot and the world were as detailed and interesting as the first two books. Bigelow's characters often don't appeal to me a lot, and this one was slightly less good in that regard than even the first two. But there is also a level of realism,  I think, in both the characters and the world-building, that makes this series decidedly worth reading.



"Mr. Was" by Pete Hautman
Grade: 1 star
I suspect the right person would really love it, and I don't think it was badly written, but I didn't like it at all. Partly, like Burning Blue and Guy Langman, it was my previous expectations. I heard it was a weird time travel story--which it was... But it was also mostly the story of a boy whose father beat his mother, and then eventually killed her.




"Ender's World: Fresh Perspectives on the SF Classic Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card
Grade: 4 stars
Really interesting collection of essays all about Ender's Game. One of my favourite essays was "Ender Wiggin, USMC" by an actual marine named John F. Schmitt. Quite fascinating look at how Ender's Game was used and loved by group of US Marines. Lots of other cool essays too.

Reflections on the Magic of Writing

by Diana Wynne Jones

Grade: 5 stars

Thoughts: This is a collection of essays, transcripts of talks, and interviews by and about the fabulous, amazing children's author Diana Wynne Jones. She was one of the few people that I could always count on to write a book that I would greatly enjoy, and her books were unique and funny and full of awesome characters. When she passed away recently, I was sad and mopey for an entire week. She and this book deserve a much more brilliant review, but I can at least point you towards Neil Gaiman's introduction at the beginning of this book. (I mean, Neil Gaiman writing about Diana Wynne Jones. You practically can't get cooler than that.)

DWJ had a fascinating life. She went to lectures by both J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis in university. ("Lewis booming to crowded halls and Tolkien mumbling to me and three others." (pg. 290)) She once lived in the house that the kids from Arthur Ransome's book lived in, and Arthur Ransome himself lived in a houseboat nearby. (He would complain about all the noise DWJ and the other children would make. (pg. 135)) Beatrix Potter also lived near this house, and once slapped Diana's sister and her friend for playing on BP's front gate. (pg. 135) It's so strange to think of all these writers as real, actual people (with faults and everything!). Her parents were neglectful and her life was full of strange people and events. But perhaps the most insightful essays were the two by her sons at the very end of the book. After all the descriptions of the nastiness of her parents and the strangeness of her life, her sons' perspectives gave a sudden twist on all of that, and gave a whole new view on who DWJ was. It was the perfect end to this collection.

But my favourite thing about this book wasn't the biographical details of a strange and interesting life, but her ideas on writing for children vs. writing for adults, and her thoughts on fantasy. "Two Kinds of Writing" (pg. 33), about children's vs. adults books, was one of my favourites. "[S]everal grown men confessed to me that, although they were quite shameless when it came to hunting through the juvenile sections of libraries and bookshops, they still felt incredibly sheepish on a train reading something that was labeled Tenn Fiction. Why? I wondered. The assumption underlying their sheepishness seemed to be that teenage fiction counts as just close enough to adult fiction to be seen as regressive, whereas if they are seen reading a children's book, that counts as research. In neither case are they assumed to be enjoying the book for its own sake." (pg. 33) She talks a lot in this essay about how in writing for adults, you often end up having to explain more, not less, which I've always thought, but I doubt many people would believe me. To quote DWJ again, "Here we have books for children, which a host of adults dismiss as puerile, overeasy, and are no such thing; and there we have books for adults, who might be supposed to need something more advanced and difficult, which we have to write as if the readers were simpleminded." (pg. 35) I could talk forever on this topic and elucidate a lot more, but this is already the longest review I've ever written, so I should go on to the next part of this topic.
I also especially loved "A Talk About Rules" (pg. 99), which talked about all the pre-conceptions about fantasy, and what people considered (wrongly) the absolute necessities of the genre. She talks about a man who could manage to read  The Fellowship of the Ring because he pretended it was all an allegory, but then once he came to the Ents, he completely gave up, because walking trees could only possibly be for children. (Man, it bugs me when The Lord of the Rings is listed as a children's book. IT'S NOT. Yes, children can read it (I did), but it is NOT A CHILDREN'S BOOK.) She talks about how people often insist fantasy (and children's books in general) must "teach" something (about divorce, bullying, etc. etc.), or  that any fantastic lands children travel to should be shown to be in their heads. Oh, there is so much here--I really can't get into it properly.

Couple other random notes:

• It was nice that although DWJ was not Christian, she could still enjoy C.S. Lewis a lot. I find it quite a annoying how many people nowadays seem to a) misunderstand a lot of the points Lewis was trying to make, and b) think he's not worth reading because he often writes Christian allegory (while often simultaneously lauding Philip Pullman for writing what's basically the atheistic equivalent).
• "Less than five years ago it was a truth generally acknowledged that anyone who could follow the plot of Doctor Who could follow anything. Maybe that was going a bit far the other way, but.. anyway, most adults professed to like their books simpler than children did." (pg. 112) YAY, Doctor Who!!! Nice to see its genius recognized. And see, I KNEW children's books (or in this case, TV) could often be far more complex and subtle than many things written for adults!
• "Most recently, I have had a whole crop of letters from guilt-ridden students. These are mostly in their first year university and not altogether happy in it, and they are afraid that there is something wrong with them because they're still rereading and enjoying my books at the advanced age of eighteen or nineteen." (pg. 177) Hah! Silly people. This whole book makes me feel very vindicated for being a university student who still revels in the joys of children's books. (Also see pg. 179 for more on university students' somewhat erroneous view on children's books.)
• The Tolkien essay, "The Shape of the Narrative in The Lord of the Rings", was rather magnificent. As much as I adore Peter Jackson's movies (and always will), I think this essay would have been good for him.
• "The Heroic Ideal: A Personal Odyssey" (pg. 79) was another one of my favourites. Fire and Hemlock is one of my favourites of all her marvellous books, and it was amazing how much structure and shape and thought went into this book. As Neil Gaiman said in his introduction, "It [is] easy [...] to forget what an astonishing intellect Diana Wynne Jones had, or how deeply and how well she understood her craft." (pg. xi) Man, though, she made writing seem like a lot of work in this essay.

NB: All the quotes and references are taken from the hardcover edition, from Greenwillow Books.