My Review of "So, Anyway ..."

John Cleese's So Anyway ... is meant to be a memoir of Cleese's life.  But there's only one problem.  The 375 pages barely make it past Cleese's time as a student at Cambridge.  There's no Monty Python.  No Fish Called Wanda.  None of his later comic genius.  No, So Anyway ... is a brief look at Cleese's life, served up short.  While that might not be a problem for most entertainers' memoirs -- it's not unheard of to have several installments for a full story -- we have no hint of that here.  Instead, So Anyway ... claims to be something it isn't.  It claims to be the story of Cleese's life, when in reality it's the story of part of Cleese's life.

I was particularly saddened to find that Fawlty Towers -- perhaps the second-greatest Britcom ever produced -- fails to make an appearance.  Though we do find hints of that time in pictures. 

But nothing about his four wives.  Nothing about Fawlty Towers.  Nothing about Monty Python.

Only his mother, Muriel Cleese, makes an appearance -- and then she reads more like Kathy Bates' character from Misery than a genuine maternal figure in someone's life.

What's more, while Cleese is one of the 20th century's comedic geniuses, there's almost no humor here.  Cleese himself comes across as an ornery old man who never made it in showbusiness, rather than one of the great minds behind Monty Python and the Holy Grail or Life of Brian.

This book, sadly, left me wanting so much more.  I hardly doubt I'll bother keeping it to read again.  It was too great a disappointment the first time around.

I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.

My Review of "Through a Man's Eyes"

Shaunti Feldhahn's Through a Man's Eyes:  Helping Women Understand the Visual Nature of Men builds on her earlier work in For Women Only:  What You Need to Know about the Inner Lives of Men.  It highlights the ways in which women might understand the simple (but complicated) truth that men and women are different -- particularly, in this case, in how they understand and process visual stimuli.  Along with her coauthor, Craig Gross, they illuminate a significant difference between men and women:  The visual nature of many men.

While the idea of that visual nature in men is contestable in certain circles, Through a Man's Eyes is a book not designed to give women ammunition against the men in their lives.  Instead, it is designed so women can understand and help equip themselves (and their men) for the sometimes overwhelming battle of living in a visually saturated age.

The most glaring weakness of the book is its failure to focus on the scientific research that exists in support of their central thesis.  While the authors cite "studies", there's no engagement (or even significant reference) to what those studies actually say.  The book as a whole has only a scant 28 footnotes.  More attention should have been paid to those facts; they would go a long way in helping women "understand" what that visual nature of men is and why it is.

That's not to undermine the gentle way in which Through a Man's Eyes is written with genuine compassion and understanding.  Men won't find an excuse for their sinful behavior here.  Nor will women find themselves scapegoated.  Their approach and suggestions for women are not only reasonable, but actually responsible and real.

Because they keep women coming back to a central question:  "Am I focusing on what God would have me do?"

It's easy to take a quick way out by providing a list of rules -- simple "dos" and "donts".  Through a Man's Eyes refuses to take that way, and instead engages in genuine spiritual discernment.  And just the FAQ at the end of the book is worth the price of the book.

This is a great book that Christian women will find a resource again and again.

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I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.

My Review of "Out on the Wire"

Jessica Abel's Out on the Wire is an amazing graphic novel that explore the nature of radio -- particularly of the storytelling art of the "New Masters of Radio".  Focusing on such radio shows as "This American Life" (one of my personal favorites), "Radiolab", and "Snap Judgment", Abel goes behind the mike and offers reflections on how these "new masters" employ an old medium to accomplish new feats of storytelling.

Out on the Wire is a terrific read for guys like me -- amateur storytellers who would love to explore the craft through our own podcasts.

Abel, well-known for her comic textbooks and graphic novels, brings an edge to this old medium and how we understand it.  She brings together metaphorical storylines with real-life events, and offers us some lessons on important topics:  Character and Voice, Storyline and Editing among them. 

This is nothing short of a genuine homage to radio, and in another old medium like comic, there's an air of lovingkindness that brngs the best to both media.

I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.

My Review of "The Theft of Memory"

Jonathan Kozol's The Theft of Memory:  Losing My Father One Day at a Time is a poignant story of loss, told from the perspective of a son.  It highlights the descent into murkiness that is Alzheimer's, described by a man who watches his father slowly slip away from him.  But it also describes those tiny moments of joy -- the smallest gifts that an Alzheimer's patient can give to a loved one -- that demonstrate they're not completely gone, all-at-once.

Kozol's father, Harry, a respected neurologist and psychiatrist, knew sooner than anyone else what was happening to his brain, and the implications.  And he told no one else, except his son.

As the old man grew increasingly unpredictable and disoriented, and it became clear his elderly wife was incapable of caring for him, the decision was made to place him in a facility.  He emerged often enough from his misty passivity to ask to go home that his son concluded -- years later, after the couple's retirement funds were depleted -- that he must acquiesce, and hired helpers so it could happen.

With his father's permission, Jonathan Kozol spent hours pouring over his father's old files -- taking notes about details from his father's famous patients.  Pieces of his father's history began to slide into place; some took on new meaning.

This literary approach, though interesting, isn't seamlessly constructed.  The first half of The Theft of Memory deals primarily with the pain, struggles and accommodations made in the months and years after Alzheimer's exacted its pernicious toll.  And in the latter half, we only have hints about the nature of Harry's life and work.  The lack of specifics leaves me with this sense that Harry is "Everyman".

But he isn't.  He was one man.  A unique man, whose unique relationship to his son isn't as clearly reflected in the warmth and connection that one expects out of memoirs of this sort.

There are moments, mind you, when the reader is left with poetic descriptions of what that relationship was -- moments like this:  "in his long and brave and dignified resistance to the darkness that progressively encircled him, there was, for me, no diminution -- not in the essence of the person he had been, not in the admiration that I felt for him.  This is why it was so hard to let him go".

But those are few and far between for a book like The Theft of Memory.

I enjoyed this little book.  But I hardly think I'll come to again.

I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.

My Review of "Crash the Chatterbox"

Steven Furtick's Crash the Chatterbox:  Hearing God's Voice above All Others helps Christians navigate all the different voices that come at us on a daily basis to determine which ones are truth (God's voice), and which ones are based on lies and half truths that bring only discouragement and disappointment.  The "chatterbox" covers all those "lies we believe that keep us from accurately and actively hearing God's voice" (page 8).

Crash the Chatterbox covers four particular areas:  "God Says I Am", "God Says He Will", "God Says He Has", and "God Says I Can".  Every day, we Christians need to decide what dialogue we are going to listen to, ruminate on, and respond to in each of these areas.  The dialogue we choose to invest ourselves in will shape how we experience life and our relationship with God.  I was challenged immediately from the very beginning of the book -- when Furtick asked a few reflection questions concerning the voices we listen to and the impact it has not only on ourselves, but the very plans God has for us.

Furtick has given us a challenging and accessible reminder of Whose and who we are as followers of Jesus Christ.  Crash the Chatterbox is a reminder of just how many voices are willing to tell us both of those -- and of how the truth is only to be found in listening to God.

I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here. 

My Review of "Encountering Truth"

Pope Francis' Encountering Truth:  Meeting God in the Everyday -- the Morning Homilies from St. Martha's Chapel is an amazing collection of the Holy Father's morning homilies.

Early every morning, Pope Francis celebrates a Mass in the small Saint Martha chapel at the Vatican.  The audience is made up of gardeners, nuns, cooks, office workers, and always changes.  What doesn't change is that the pope gives his homilies without notes just as he did when he was a parish priest.  This book features highlights from almost 200 daily homilies covering a year from March 2013 to May 2014.

I was especially drawn into Antonio Spadaro's introduction which has an in-depth look at how Pope Francis prepares, including what the pope thinks is important in contemplating and conveying the Word of God to the faithful.  Spadaro also gives a survey of the way Francis circles round various topics, engaging them from different angles as the liturgical readings progress day to day.  That was a new idea for me, that to get a full sense of his teachings one must patiently look at them from day to day.

These homilies make excellent devotional readings.  Each of those readings contain surprising inspirational points, and make me look afresh at the biblical text and at spiritual wisdom.  Each homily is brief -- usually only just a couple of pages -- but there's enough in this book to engage readers for a long time to come.

Encountering Truth is a book I definitely recommend.

I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here. 

My Review of "Stand Strong"

Nick Vujicic's Stand Strong:  You Can Overcome Bullying (and Other Stuff That Keeps You Down) offers advice and wisdom about the bullying epidemic affecting 1 in 6 American children.  He's more familiar than most with the nightmares, stomach aches and sense of hopelessness bullies cause when a child is "different".  Since Nick is the post-child for difference, there's no better spokesperson to write a book like Stand Strong.

Born without arms and legs "for reasons never determined", Nick hop-walks with one small fin-like flipper. However, when he was a child confined to a wheelchair, he felt intimidated, insecure and depressed because he was a "bully magnet and a "bully's dream".

Born into a supporting, Christian family, Vijicic never fell for self-pity.  Instead, even at a young age, he learned responsibility.  In spite of disabilities his parents gave him assigned chores and encouraged him "to do it for himself" if possible. "They didn't cut me any slack because I lacked limbs", he writes.  Instead he was taught to clean his room, brush his teeth, dress himself and even vacuum his room.

However, once he left the shelter of his loving and supportive family for the "hallways and playgrounds of elementary school", he felt he had "a target on his chest that said, 'Bullies, aim here'".  Even though he tried to fit in the hurtful taunts, jokes and ridicule made him question God and why He created him with "so many imperfections".  By age ten, Nick saw no future for himself and attempted suicide in a bathtub full of water.  He flipped over, face down in the water, until visions of the pain he would cause his family rolled him over, spitting and sputtering.  "That's when he knew suicide wasn't an option", he writes.

Today, Nick is married to a beautiful woman and father to a strong and healthy son and he's no longer a "bully's dream".  Instead he's learned "to handle bullies by controlling how he responds to them", one he adopted as his "personal mission" in life.

So Nick kicked off his anti-bullying campaign in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2013, with a message of hope about attitude, "if you don't get a miracle, you can still be a miracle".  That sense of hope is contained in the pages of Stand Strong that teaches how to build a "bully defense system" from the inside out.

That's what makes Stand Strong essential reading.  If you feel like a bully's target, lonely, defenseless and without hope, learn from one who's been there.  Who developed "anti-bully antibodies" with an encouraging, doable, "bully defense system" he teaches to others and writes about in this book.  Because, "No bully can define who you are" if you do that for yourself.

I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.