Posts about books that I’ve read.
The author is a transplanted Scot, now a seminary professor and pastor in Grand Rapids, and the book’s secondary title is, “Ten Ways To Be a Joyful Believer in a Gloomy World.” The book’s ten chapters address how to achieve greater happiness as a Christian in different contexts, namely: facts, media, salvation, church, future, world, … [Read more…]
The author of this book also wrote a recent (and excellent) biography of C.S. Lewis, which I note briefly on this blogsite here. (It’s of interest that in this later book’s suggested further reading, he lists — as the three “best biographies” of Lewis — his own and those by Alan Jacobs and George Sayer.) … [Read more…]
I deliberately sought out a book in this series on one of the gospels because I enjoyed its volume on Acts (by a different author) so much. And I’m glad I did: Professor Jeffrey is unfailingly insightful and judicious. I enjoyed, for example, his periodic observations on Luke’s likely source for this or that passage; recall … [Read more…]
This book collects the Christian conversion stories of sixty people, most of them famous and all in his or her own words (with a short introduction to each by the editor). They are fairly short accounts: The book is about 400 pages long, so that’s less than seven pages apiece, minus the intro and page … [Read more…]
The author is himself a rabbi, and a young one, being only 37 when the book was published. He feels passionately that both Christians and Jews need to pay greater attention to Jesus’ Jewishness. The final paragraph of the book (184) reads: “Victor Hugo once said, ‘All the forces in the world are not as … [Read more…]
This is a book about a book. It recounts how C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity came to be written and its remarkable longevity and influence over the past 75 years or so. Professor Marsden of Notre Dame does a splendid job, and anyone who is a fan of C.S. Lewis’s book — and of course, as you … [Read more…]
This is a collection of a hundred or so pages’ worth of the comic strip of that name, which is a mashup of sixties advertising clip art with Jesus setting straight various average Joe and Jo Anne types. It’s okay: The first time you read the strip, it’s novel and funny, and some of the … [Read more…]
Let’s cut to the chase: In this collection of hundreds of mostly short, fairly pithy sayings, there is no doubt about the best one. It’s number 43 in book XIV: “Yuan Jang sat waiting with his legs spread wide. The Master said, ‘To be neither modest nor deferential when young, to have passed on nothing … [Read more…]
This book is short (132 pages plus notes); the author says that it is drawn from a longer, earlier work by him, Money, Possessions, and Eternity. It is also straightforward and unabashed in its message: While faith is what gets us into Heaven, it’s works that determine how and to what extent we will be … [Read more…]
I got this book after reading a glowing recommendation for it by Eric Metaxas, who has written a foreword for it in a new edition just published (I wasn’t able to get that version on interlibrary loan, alas). Metaxas compares the book to C.S. Lewis’s work, and author Thomas Howard himself most graciously includes Lewis … [Read more…]