I’ve again been neglecting this blog and brief reviews of my reading. I’ve decided to push out at least one month worth of reviewlets in anticipation of tomorrow’s publication on SharperIron of my review of Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson’s Comeback Churches. Not that I expect a flood of visits, but I’d like to set out something new for the trickle.
Hebrews: Reformed Expository Commentary by Richard Phillips – A thoroughly Christ-centered set of expositional sermons on Hebrews. Phillips is one of the series co-editors of the Reformed Expository Commentary series, and I can now appreciate his authorship as much as his editorship (at this writing, I’ve nearly finished four of the volumes in this series). I read this book as I read Hebrews in my devotions and found it to be a profitable aid – particularly in application. I highly recommend this book.
The Sovereignty of God by A.W. Pink – An astounding work on the doctrines of grace. Pink works carefully from Scripture to display God’s sovereignty in all of its majesty. Having read the edition pictured at left (published by the Banner of Truth Trust) which omits Pink’s chapter on double predestination or reprobation, I am inclined to seek out an unedited version. Surely reviewing the chapters with which I agree would be beneficial to my soul. And giving a fair reading to the chapter with which I may disagree seems only fair. Recommended for believers – particularly those who believe in free will, but have not studied the issue.
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons – A delightful comdey of manners that parodies the melodramatic rural fiction of Gibbons’s near-contemporaries. I can’t recall a book that has generated more spontaneous out-loud laughter from me. I apologize here to my fellow Metro commuters for those disturbances. But, try it and you’ll understand!
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams – One of several business/technology/sociology books I read this spring. These books led to some ideas that led to a new job. That job (which I am learning on the fly) is one of the reasons I’ve been neglecting this site. Back to the book. The subtitle really tells you everything you need to know to determine whether you want to read Wikinomics. Tapscott gives mass collaboration a fairly superficial treatment, but it is a valuable introductory look at some fundamental shifts in the way we work.
BUtterfield 8 by John O’Hara – As with other O’Hara, stay away if you’re looking for a feel good story. This tale of an uninhibited young woman headed for certain destruction will make your heart ache – all the more for O’Hara’s brusque portrayal of some of the central (and vile) events. Class, gender, and power issues pervade this novel, and I recommend it to mature readers who enjoy Scott Fitzgerald, and are willing to look at the same period and issues through a less rose-colored lense.
