Sorry Dad, I don't get it

On the short list of people I would consider personal heroes of my father the following four I can assure would make the cut; Jesus, Abraham Lincoln, FDR, and Ernest Hemingway. So, I thought I would give a Hemingway classic a reading. I went into this with some pretty high expectations, but I have to be honest and admit that I didn't see what the big deal was. Hear me out, I am in no way saying that this book isn't a classic, or even a masterfully written piece of American literature, but nothing in the story resonated with me. I can't explain why it was so detached from anything I identify with but I had a very hard time engaging in the story. I suppose there is a generational gap, but it was more than that. I wouldn't say that I liked, or identified with any of the characters, I even disliked most of them. I felt pity for most of them, not sympathy, but genuine "I wish there was more substance to their lives than drinking and bullfights." To me this was a dismal tale of a few overly privileged, disenfranchised, American and British ex-patriots complaining about life, but doing nothing to change it. I'm sure it was me, I don't claim to be a literary expert, and I often struggle with fiction, so if anyone has something to share please do. I want to understand. I feel like a bad American.

One last thing, as you can see on the cover image there is a picture of a bullfight. So I was under the impression that the book was centered around bullfighting. It takes almost half of the book before you meet a bull, and I wouldn't consider the story a bullfighting tale. I don't know why this matters but I felt a little deceived. The cover should have been a picture of people drinking a lot.

Book 14 makes me feel stupid!

I would review this book of 4 essays by Henry David Thoreau but I seriously can only sound stupid so I will just list some of the things that stood out to me.

1) I have never used a dictionary this much in my life.

2) This book was 90 pages long and in the time I read it I read 5 other books.

3) Civil Disobedience is a lot of commitment.

4) I should use my middle name if I ever publish something.

5) Dover thrift editions are the best thing about historically based vacations.

6) I have a Dover thrift edition of "The Souls of Black Folk" by W.E.B. DuBois and it is almost 200 pages so I will be done reading that this November.

Slow Down it's Good for You!

In Praise of Slowness is one of the most thought provoking books I have read in quite a while. Carl Honoré begins as an optimistic skeptic to the slow movement and takes you on his journey to mild believer in the core tenets of slow living. I was first introduced to the ideas of slow living by a friend of mine that at that time was an amazing cook as a hobby. He is now the owner/manager/lead chef at one of the hippest and most influential restaurants in Lincoln, Nebraska. His restaurant, Bread&Cup, is founded on many of the ideas of the slow food movement as well as slow living. Kevin himself is a slow paced, thought-filled, always contemplating larger issues kind of man, and I always admired that about him. To give you a glimpse of his life in the time I spent with him he; made his own cheese from bacterial cultures he ordered online, taught me to make bread, recorded his own album in a basement studio he built, grew an amazing garden from started plants he grew in his basement during the Lincoln winters, read non-stop, composed original electronic music (down-tempo of course) and managed to always have a new recipe in the works. You may be thinking that doesn't sound like slow living but it was. That was the beauty of Kevin and the ultimate goal of the slow movement. Slow living is not about being boring or resting all the time, or about having a low stress job. It is about taking time to enjoy life. This means savoring your meals, meals you made at home, with friends, and enjoyed for hours over conversation. It means never rushing in love, taking time to enjoy your spouse. It means listening to Beethoven's 7th Symphony 75 times and on the 75th time hearing that small viola part you never noticed that changes everything you thought about the piece before that moment. It means reading slower, and discussing what you read with people. It means riding your bike, or riding the bus, or God-forbid walking somewhere.
I can't say I am the new leader of the slow movement in Tucson, but I can say I am making strides to live at my pace, to say no to things I don't want to be doing and to spend long amounts of time in the things I do want to be doing. Nothing that Carl Honoré says is ridiculous but our American mind wants to think it is. Slowing down and enjoying life almost seems unpatriotic, but no one has ever accused me of being a patriot.

10, 11, and 12

So, I got a little behind on my updates so her is the latest news. I am pretty much right on pace with 12 books read in 3 months so I am feeling good about this. I usually read a lot more in the summers because it is pretty much too hot to do anything outside. The three books I knocked off were All Quiet on the Western Front which I will sum up this way; I don't like war, I don't plan on liking war, this did not help the situation any. I think if we forced people to read books like this they would be a lot less eager to fight over fossil fuels and imaginary lines in the middle of nowhere. So pretty much if WWI had actually been the war to end all wars that would have been nice. Next I read The Truth About You It may very well be bull, I'm not sure so someone else read it and let me know what you think. Lastly I just finished another look on poverty. This time I read Out of Poverty by Paul Polak. I read this because I knew the other was a little more radical than some of the other authors I have read who discuss ending poverty. Polak was much more extreme in his stance than I would ever be. He is very against foreign aid. I understand where he is coming from, many nations are dependent on aid and never fix there problems they just wait for the next boat full of money to show up. But there must be a give and take, and anyway generally speaking the wealthy have too much money anyway so we should give aid to impoverished nations just to force the world's wealthy to quit hogging all the cash. It was, however, interesting to read something by someone that I would consider extremely liberal in his solutions to poverty, I was raised by socialists, I don't come across that every day.

La Frontera es Grande

So I am pretty passionate about border issues so when I saw this book I figured I needed to check it out. You don't see a lot written about Christians and there response to immigration, so I was interested to see what the author had to say. We agreed for the most part, I might be a tad bit more liberal than the author, but I just might be a bit more dramatic as well, and I kind of have a chip on my shoulder about this topic too. So maybe a little more centrist of a viewpoint wouldn't hurt me. I don't want to get into a huge political discussion, not because I am afraid to say what I think, but because I feel like this is an issue people should struggle through, not something you can poll a panel over and come to a clean and tidy conclusion. It isn't nice, it is far from tidy. The border is a mess, there is nothing easy about the problems. I do want to be clear about one thing before I go on. When I say problems, I don't want anyone to hear me saying "Mexicans". If you know me at all, you know I don't think they are the problem. The problem is humanity and the depravity that we impose on each other, and it just gets easier the more levels of separation we put between our selves and "them" whoever "they" are. People are people, and Jesus loves people. There are no stipulations on real love. So in the long run I feel like we are only exacerbating the problems at the border. No matter the height of a wall, or the persistence of the border patrol we will not stop the flow of immigrants, because ultimately immigrants are human beings and the human spirit can not be stopped. And no matter the height of the wall nor the economic divide put between us I have only one choice and that is to love "them" wherever they come from because I am an alien in this land as well, I don't belong here and ultimately I will see my real place of citizenship, so I can not be a patriot over a follower of Jesus, I can not place a flag in the way of my values, so I must love. It is the way of Jesus, and it should be the way of anyone who has chosen to be a wanderer on this planet as we wait for our true home to be revealed. A home that will be full of lovers of Jesus...most of whom won't be white.

Vintage Jesus has a Glittery Gold Lining and Vellum Dust Jacket

Vintage Jesus, by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears is pretty much exactly what you would expect from a book about Jesus that is in any way associated with Mark Driscoll. It is honest, upfront, thought-provoking and sometimes a little bit much, but in the end It is a great read. I think we lose sight of who Jesus was as American's. Not what he did, not why he came, not how he died and saved us from sin...but WHO HE WAS and IS. I am not going to repeat everything that the book said, and when you think about it it was certainly nothing earth shattering, it wasn't even anything that Jesus himself didn't say about himself. And I think that is where the humbling part of the equation comes in. Jesus told us exactly who he was and we still get it all screwy. I'll let you read the book and make your own judgments and be convicted in your own way, but I will some up my experience with Vintage Jesus this way; as I was reading I can't say I had a new outlook on Jesus revealed to me, I wouldn't say my theological understandings were blown away and replaced with new more exciting paradigms, I wouldn't even say that I was convicted that I was ignorant about Jesus and what he meant to me but I can say this. As I read, and got deeper into the book there is one feeling that grew until the moment I closed the book. I realized that I love Jesus for a very long list of reasons and I can not wait for him to come back.

My biggest book to date

So I got a little behind this month but the adoption is a tiny bit more important. than some books. But do not fear I am still on a good pace for the year. For the first half of February I read Factory Girls: from Village to City in a Changing China by Leslie T. Chang. It was a great read, the book follows rural teenage girls as they enter the factory life in Southeastern China and experience the city, boys, money, success, corruption and greed all in one chaotic burst. The impressive thing about these girls is how adaptable they are. It is at once impressive and saddening. They are so able to roll with the punches, but at the same time you realize that they are just becoming whatever they need to be to survive. At just 16, 18, or 20 years old these girls are not even able to be themselves, they may not even know who they really are yet. I am a sucker for tales of survival, however, so I obviously found myself pulling for the girls to both succeed and find themselves, and ultimately find truth and happiness, not in wealth but in something greater than themselves. If you have a heart for anything Chinese and enjoy a story from the point of view of real imperfect people looking to improve their lives then this is a book for you. It isn't full of riveting plot lines and contrived emotional jabs at your heart, it is just real human emotion played out in the factories that build our phones and coach bags, and knowing the struggles of people who build our phones can't hurt us in the long run.