What I read this month and what stayed with me.
***SOME OF THESE REVEIWS MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS***
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese was our book club selection for March. I never would have read this book were it not for that. And I don’t see myself reading anything else by this author although my book club friends think I should, especially his later and apparently better novel, COVENANT OF WATER. We did have a lively discussion about it and the reviews were mixed.
My problem with the book was the slow, sometimes excruciatingly slow, messy, strange novel about messy and strange characters with a neat, tidy and contrived ending. He gave us 600 pages of story and then wrapped it all up in 63 pages at the end that made me roll my eyes because it was so different from the rest of the story he was telling.
Verghese did a wonderful job with some of the characters. They were rich and developed and felt so very real. I was also drawn to a lot of the religious imagery and how he depicted medicine as an idol. I was disgusted with the sexual scenes of the book, which I believe was the author’s point. They were sad and a bit repulsive. There were parts that were laugh out loud funny and there were parts that were so sad it made your heart ache.
But the ending really does ruin it for me and I can’t seem to get past that. The author made so many promises and he made us suffer through so much only to let us all down in the end. I don’t think I am willing to make my way through hundreds of pages more in a different book to give him another chance.
Unless my book club friends make me, of course.
Thirsting by Strahan Coleman is a book I am glad I read, but I don’t think I would recommend to anyone. For the most part I found it a blessing but it also feels forgettable. There are some beautiful passages in this book about how our thirst for God comes from His thirst for us. The author writes about how it is God Who pursues us and that God has created a thirst for Him in our souls because of His thirst to love us. That’s Biblical and I appreciate the way Coleman describes it. But perhaps his style of writing is just not for me.
I am not a big fan of heavy autobiography in spiritual formation books and there is a lot of that here. Also, some of the metaphors feel a bit heavy handed. But, like I said, there are some beautiful passages here that blessed me and I think any “issues” I have with this book are personal and should not be used to discourage anyone else from reading it.
Pursuing God’s Will Together by Ruth Haley Barton casts a vision for discernment in decision-making for Christian leaders and provides expert practical advice birthed and formed in study and practice that hits home for me in a powerful way. This book is not just theory, it is also practice. It is not a business book with a Christian theme. It is a truly spiritual book for Christian leaders of churches and ministries.
There are times when it is dense and you’ll need to slow down and give your mind and your soul time to digest it. That’s not a criticism. That’s just friendly advice on how to get the most out of your first reading. I stress FIRST reading because this is a book that needs to be revisited, practiced, then re-read again and probably again.
Spiritual discernment is not skill we can acquire by reading a book. This book is a guide to the life long pursuit of spiritual discernment. And it is that: lifelong and a pursuit.
If you serve in a leadership capacity in any Christian organization, I recommend this one for you.
The Way of Excellence by Brad Stulberg is a book that models it’s subject matter. In short, it is excellent. My copy is loaded with highlights, underlining, and post-it flags for sections I want to re-read and journal about later.
Stulberg’s premise is that excellence, and life really, is not about the destination, it’s about who we become along the way. So his book is not so much a catalogue of tactics and techniques, although there is some of that, it’s more about character and personal formation, two topics I am passionate about.
The author has interviewed top performers in a variety of fields. He has studied the science and psychology behind his claims. He has lived the ideas himself. And so he brings something to his readers that is tried, tested, and proved and therefore genuinely helpful. I didn’t find any stereotypical self-help fluff in these pages. More than once Stulberg debunks popular self-help standards, which I respect and appreciate. What I found here was inspiration grounded in reality and practices formed in experimentation and exploration.
Joseph McBee 