Book review: The Buried Book by D. M. Pulley

The fifty-first book I read in 2018 was The Buried Book, D. M. Pulley's sophomore effort following up on The Dead Key.  This book is set in 1952 in Detroit and deals with a nine-year-old boy whose mother goes missing under suspicious circumstances. 

Pulley does a decent job telling the story in the voice of a rather naive and inexperienced boy.  Unfortunately, the book of the title purports to be a diary Jasper's mother kept at the age of fourteen and is utterly unbelievable.  Does even a talented author with an eye to a contract for a memoir write her diary in the voice of a first-person narrator, complete with dialogue and eloquent descriptions of the smallest minutiae of her day?  For instance, would she, when describing arriving somewhere to make a delivery to a particular person, deliver verbatim the exact words spoken by the woman who tells her the man she's looking for is around back rather than just elide the scene with "He wasn't inside, but I found him around back?"  When does the youngest of four children on a working farm with no electricity who constantly complains about how many chores she has to do in how little time find the time to write a secret diary in such painstaking detail? 

Many of Pulley's set-pieces are evocative, particularly the brief sanctuary Jasper finds with a peep-show dancer and the school he attends while living on his uncle's farm, but the overarching mystery isn't terribly compelling.  The writing is more impressive than the plotting in this book.

Book review: Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl by N. D. Wilson

The fiftieth book I read in 2018 was Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God's Spoken World by N. D. Wilson.  Wilson is best known for his children's books, particularly the 100 Cupboards trilogy, but this is non-fiction, a book-length essay describing his worldview.

What this book most approximates is God's monologue in Job, when challenged on the matter of his justice: an overwhelming catalog of things humans can't comprehend whose ultimate end is to emphasize the smallness of man and the brevity of life over and against the infinity of God and of, well, infinity.

Wilson gets it, in a way I have criticized other Christian books for settling for smaller ends, like racial reconciliation, nuclear disarmament, or girls' education.  In the long run, all of us are mayflies: if one is crushed against a windshield rather than dying of natural causes at the end of its allotted lifespan ten minutes later, does it really matter?  Which is better: to enter Hell with an advanced degree, or to enter Heaven illiterate?  Which is not to say that the conditions experienced by most on earth are utterly irrelevant, but that people who profess to believe that everyone is stepping through a door either to eternal beatitude or eternal damnation ought, if they really examine themselves and their priorities, not to major on whether the waiting room everyone is in for a brief time has new carpeting and fresh paint.

Book review: A Stranger in Mayfair by Charles Finch

The forty-ninth book I read in 2018 was A Stranger in Mayfair, the fourth book in Charles Finch's Charles Lenox mystery series.  Lenox is newly married to Lady Jane Grey and newly elected to Parliament, but despite the wishes of his new wife and new companions, he can't quit his hobby of amateur detecting.  The mystery this time is the case of a murdered footman in the household of a fellow MP.

The mystery isn't quite up to snuff.  As soon as the victim's room was searched in chapter nine, I knew who had done it and why, though it took Lenox all the way to the end of chapter forty-six to reach the same conclusion.  Still, Lenox and his faithful servant/private secretary Graham are pleasant companions to spend the length of a book with, enough that I'm going to forgive the infelicities about to be discussed and snatch up installment five as soon as I can find it in the used book store:

Firstly, that Finch straight-facedly makes the ridiculous claim that whist was invented in London in the early 1860s, when anyone who has ever read Jane Austen knows that it was widely played everywhere in England by the turn of the nineteenth century.  Wikipedia tells me that a book on the rules of whist was published at the club in question in 1862, but the game clearly existed prior to that.

Secondly, Lady Jane Pepper-Pottses it up out of the blue, whining about Lenox's detecting and the risks he runs while indulging the habit.  Turning the new bride into a wet blanket about the very thing that makes the protagonist interesting to the reader is a misogynist stereotype.

Thirdly, Finch tries to be a little too coy and cutesy when Lenox buys a painting in Paris during his honeymoon.

"May I ask who painted it?" Graham asked.
"A chap called Monet," said Lenox.  "Rhymes with bonnet, I think.  I never heard of him myself."

Oh, ha ha, he's a famous painter to the reader but the characters haven't heard of him yet!  Except that A) if you're speaking aloud rather than writing, you don't have to tell the person you're talking to how to pronounce the name you just pronounced;  and, B) Charles Lenox is supposedly well-read, well-educated, and widely traveled so there's no way he wouldn't know how to pronounce a French name.

And, finally, the B-plot in the novel centers around Lenox and Lady Jane's emotional decision whether or not to have children.  As badly as writers of historical fiction want to believe it, people from different eras did not, in fact, under the funny clothes, behave just like modern Westerners.  In the 1860s, conceiving a child was not a decision made by the couple, like buying a house or going on holiday; the only way to ensure that a married couple did not have children was abstinence or, alternatively, some not-terribly-reliable stabs at primitive birth control.  Unless we are to believe that Lenox and Lady Jane have, during their honeymoon and upon their return to their joined homes, newly renovated to share a bedroom, not consummated their marriage, discussion after the fact is rather pointless.  When Lady Jane (*dumb spoiler alert*) gifts Lenox a pair of puppies for them "to practice on" before deciding whether to have a child, it's the most Millennial thing she could possibly have done.

Book review: Moneyball by Michael Lewis

The forty-eighth book I read in 2018 was Moneyball by Michael Lewis.  I was fifteen years late to this best-seller, but that fact only made it clear how very wrong Lewis (and by extension, Billy Beane) was about pretty much everything.  At the time, moneyball was supposed to be the future of baseball, as the Oakland As were supposedly right at the threshold of postseason success.  Only, of course, the As have just kind of hung around at stasis since then.  They do well for a low-budget team, but, as Beane himself is purported to assert in the book, no one is going to take him and his ideas seriously until he wins the World Series.

The success of the As alone might not have mattered so much as, when the book ends, the Red Sox are portrayed as converts to the moneyball cause and Beane acolytes J. P. Ricciardi has taken over as general manager for the Toronto Blue Jays.  While the Red Sox have certainly enjoyed great success in the last fifteen years, they haven't done it by eschewing superstars and lowering the budget but rather by using sabermetrics to help them decide whom to give their huge contracts, and the Blue Jays haven't made a big smash and have since fired Ricciardi.  What seemed like it was going to be a Big Deal in 2003 has, in fact, barely made a ripple in the business.

Reading with the benefit of hindsight really points out the limitations of Beane's approach, as he emphatically doesn't want Jeremy Bonderman (pitched in the World Series) or Scott Kazmir (three-time all-star and AL strikeouts leader in 2007),  giving instead a list of his dream pitchers available in the 2002 draft which includes only Joe Blanton as a recognizable name.  The overwhelming majority of the players which he believe sabermetrics had revealed to him as sure things never made it as far as Triple-A ball.  Which just goes to show that maybe the numbers guy isn't actually that much more reliable than the old-school scouts whom Lewis's book denigrates.

Book review: Goblins! by Richard Pett

The forty-seventh book I read in 2018 was Goblins!: The Adventure of the Wise Wench by Richard Pett.  Pett is largely known as a creator of adventures and campaign settings for roleplaying games, and he is clearly influenced here by the goblins of Golarion, the setting of the Pathfinder RPG.  Pett, in fact, wrote We Be Goblins!, a justly-famous adventure created for Free RPG Day in 2011, in which the players get to play, well, goblins (which usually play the role of easy-to-kill speedbumps in the way of player characters).  Goblins! is basically We Be Goblins!: The Novel, which means it is a great deal of fun.

Goblins are violent, lazy, stupid, comically-incompetent creatures, with the possible exceptions of their females, some gifted specimens of which gain the role of Wise Wench, and Urgh Tricksy, sometimes known as Upside Down Face because his head is on the wrong way, with the mouth at the top and eyes at the bottom.  Urgh is informed by the Wise Wench, who traffics with such gods as Lord Noc, Demigod of All Wind, and the dreaded Queen Quench, the Moist One, Queen of Boring, the Extinguisher of Bonfires, Bringer of Black, Lady Funless, Madam Dull-and-Damp, Mistress Tedium, the Insipid Crown Princess of Dreary, the Bore, and thus knows everything that is going to happen, that he is destined to become the village hero.

Along with his companion Sorry and Moaris the Minor Apocalypse, son of BigBad Chief Runty Miffed, a sort of goblin Lord Flashheart, Urgh sets forth on a quest to save the goblins of the forest from the invading giants, a species which has all the vices of goblins but is bigger -- and we all want to root for the underdog.  While the heroes are off on their quest, the giants must be held off by the vain King Stormgrunties, his adviser Looti Lovelilips, Head Thug Durth Dimbits, and Master Whippet by such means as an iron hamster, a giant nose, and -- worst all all -- the king's own clever ideas.

Pett leaves the door wide open for a sequel -- indeed, the Wise Wench at one point confuses this quest with one that she and Urgh will be on in the future -- and if it comes to be, I will be first in line to read it.

Book review: The Warner Boys by Curt and Ana Warner

The forty-sixth book I read in 2018 was The Warner Boys: Our Family's Story of Autism and Hope by Curt and Ana Warner.  It was an Amazon First Reads book for the month of November, and when I saw it was by former NFL player Curt Warner, I thought of the Rams quarterback.  That was Kurt Warner, however; Curt was from back in the '80's, before I had any interest in football.

Curt Warner was raised by his grandparents in West Virginia and took football as an opportunity not to become a coal miner.  He went to Penn State and then was drafted, behind John Elway and Eric Dickerson, by the Seahawks.  His life in football is covered in a few chapters, as the focus of this book is on his family, particularly on twin boys with autism.

Curt and his wife Ana alternate first-person accounts, with an interlude by their older son giving his perspective, detailing their family life.  Despite the twins Austin and Christian's symptoms reading as textbook autism today, in the late 1990s, they boys went undiagnosed until they were five.  Even after diagnosis, nothing about the situation got any easier; there was only a sense of relief that they could give the problem a name.

I'm sure it is not the Warner's intention, but this book left me horrified and exhausted.  The twins were aggressive and destructive, harmful both to themselves and to others.  They required constant supervision for years.  They did structural damage to the family's home; then, when it had just been freshly remodeled to be more resilient, they started a fire which burned it down.  While the narrative elicits greater sympathy for families dealing with autism, the relentless intensity of that life rendered me numb, not inspired to dive in and get involved but wanting to withdraw and hide from the gritty details revealed.

One thing that impressed me: Ana tells of desperate days as a stay-at-home mother, when she regularly called the prayer line of a local Christian radio station.  When they hadn't heard from her in a couple of days, the people at the station actually called her to make sure she was all right.  I have to admit, I've rolled my eyes at the "let us pray for your request" options I've heard on Christian radio, but may God bless those people for actually caring.

Book review: Killing Kryptonite by John Bevere

The forty-fifth book I read in 2018 was Killing Kryptonite: Destroy What Steals Your Strength by John Bevere.  The first thing I'll point out is that Bever changes verb tenses between the title and subtitle, going from present participle to present imperative.  The second thing I'll point out is that "killing kryptonite" is weird metaphor, since kryptonite is a mineral and can't be "killed."  And if I'm getting this pedantic this early, you know this can't be a rave review.

I picked up this book because Bevere wrote one of my favorite Christian living book(let)s of all time, How to Respond When You Feel Mistreated.  On that basis, when I saw this new release for $5 at the Mardel checkout, I was eager to give it a chance.

Unfortunately, the first part of this book is very weak, in my opinion.  It is the author's assertion that the cessation of miracles in the church is due to sin in the body, that the acts of the apostles were meant to be the pattern of the church for the last two thousand years, and that the only reason that the shadow of a passing Christian falling on a sick person isn't instantly healing them is because the local church tolerates members who are unrepentant.  His basis for this reasoning is 1 Corinthians 11:30, Paul's blaming physical illness on improper administration of the Lord's Supper.  I find this a utopian argument, difficult to square with a more holistic view of the New Testament which emphasizes that believers should not be surprised by suffering.  While Bevere disavows the prosperity gospel, his teaching, taken to its logical end, is little different.

Bevere's ultimate argument, that the church is weakened by the tolerance of sin in its membership, is convincing, and his concomitant condemnation of a cheap-grace gospel which depends on persuading people to "ask Jesus in their hearts" without an accompanying emphasis on repentance and a changed life, is worth pondering.  A personal anecdote about the Dallas Cowboys is convicting.  However, in my opinion, Bevere's argument is weakened by an overstatement of the potential consequences of following his advice.