Terrific Book Week!

    The three authors I read this week took me into places I would never see: an imaginary kingdom. Daevbad, the life of a classical violinist and a Chinese immigrant. Every book this week was superb.

 

    The greatest trilogy of all time, really no debate, is The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. However, I would put S. A. Chakraborty's The Daevabad Trilogy in the top five and maybe, number two. It's so very good. The final book was everything I'd hoped--thrilling, true to the characters, and satisfying--a balanced ending. It didn't tip over into sentimentality or betray the story. Instead, it had a good sense of an authentic finish.

   I found Chakraborty's ability to describe action--fight scenes, chases, banquets--easy to track and vivid. With many characters and locations, it could have been easy to lose track.  Chakraborty's willingness to sacrifice her darlings gave the book gravitas and tension. I didn't know if all the main characters would survive. 

    I have wondered about Chakraborty's heritage. From her trilogy, it is clear she is knowledgeable about Islam and Muslim lands and respects their many cultures, myths, and fables. I assumed she was an American Muslim woman, and she is, but it's complicated. Here is a link to an interview with her: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/s-chakraborty/ and here is an excellent article discussing her being touted as an Arab writer, which she is not, and doesn't claim to be: https://www.themarysue.com/the-significance-of-s-a-chakrabortys-name-adjustment-in-upcoming-book/. 

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    The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb is an intense mystery. It vividly describes racial abuse. At times it was difficult to read because I liked the main character. Ray McMillan's love for his grandmother, perseverance in his art, and his striving to be respectful and kind to others in the face of mistreatment made me root for him. Ray has the talent to become a world-class violinist and an exceedingly valuable violin. Right before the most significant opportunity of his life, his violin is stolen. There are many viable suspects, and Slocumb keeps them all plausible and me guessing till the end. The book has a good-hearted center that makes it hopeful. 

“We’re here for a reason. I believe a bit of the reason is to throw little torches out to lead people through the dark.” 
― Brendan Slocumb, The Violin Conspiracy

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    When I worked in a bookstore, I thought Lisa See's covers were eye-catching, with dazzling colors and beautiful women. I finally read one, Shanghai Girls, this week. It is historical fiction about two sisters living in Shanghai in 1937. Pearl and May are glamourous models depicted in ads for everything from baby food to champagne. Disaster after disaster leads them from China to Los Angeles, CA, and from carefree young women to becoming wives in arranged marriages with strangers. As a historical novel, I learned about the Angel Island detention center, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the dissolution of the USA's partnership with China after World War II by seeing it through the eyes of those experiencing it. My favorite way to learn history is wrapped in an absorbing story. Lisa See's ancestors immigrated from China to the USA. This book had depth and vibrancy springing from careful research and from participants' accounts.

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Big Week for Reading 📚🚀❣️⛪️🕵️‍♀️

 

    I like Becky Chambers' writing. It is thought-provoking and hopeful. To Be Taught if Fortunate is a stand-alone novella that addresses the question of space exploration. Why do it? The title is a quote by Kurt Waldheim, former UN Secretary-General, to extraterrestrials. 

"We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship – to teach, if we are called upon; to be taught, if we are fortunate."

    Four astronauts are on a scientific mission of exploration beyond our solar system to planets calculated to have life. Their struggles and triumphs are told from the perspective of crew member Ariadne. She is the ship's engineer giving her a pragmatic, problem-solving bent, but because she's not the captain, she has to be persuasive. They all understand that studying alien life disturbs and endangers, but may also preserve and protect it. When you lift a rock to look at worms, they are forced out of their chosen dark habitat into the damaging sunlight. 

    I'm making this book sound pedantic, but it is like a good Star Trek episode with Captain Piccard and Riker wrestling with the Prime Directive to help, but maybe harm. Differing opinions are honored, but the well-drawn characters give the story spark and interest. Chambers is good at the big picture of space exploration and the intimate portrayal of human costs. 

    Here is a review of another book by Chambers from an earlier post: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/2022/01/excellent-app-for-book-people-is-where.html.

    I found I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (who also wrote 101 Dalmations) predictable and somewhat sexist. It may be because it was written and set in the 1930s. It is short and sweet, but irritating. I found the main character too helpless. Cassandra Mortmain is a lively, beautiful young woman with an even more beautiful older sister. They live in a castle with a younger brother, a famous, inept father, and a dotty stepmother in amusing poverty. So droll. The older daughter is contemplating marriage with a handsome, wealthy American suitor that she doesn't love to save her family.

    Hello, Jane Austen calling.

    It didn't work for me, but if you love JA, it is whimsically diverting.

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   At my daughter's church is a lovely book table with well-curated and thought-provoking books like The Gospel Comes with a House Key: Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in Our Post-Christian World, by Rosaria Butterfield (aliens-tennis-and-hospitality.html). It is one of the many perks of visiting them. On my latest visit, I picked up Another Gospel? A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity by Alisa Childers. Childers grew up in a loving Christian family, sang in the Christian band ZOEgirl, and mostly interacted with people who affirmed her beliefs. Then she encountered a pastor who called himself a hopeful agnostic and challenged her fundamental understanding of her faith: like the deity of Christ and the trustworthiness of the Scriptures. This book arises from Childers wrestling with her doubts. She is a dedicated researcher reading many books and even auditing seminary classes to understand what was accurate and true. 

      Here are some of my takeaways:

• Attacks on the essentials of the faith are not new. New challenges to belief are old heresies redressed: Manichaeism, Gnosticism, and Pelagianism, to name a few.
• Christianity has its defenders. They may not be the loudest voice, but they are out there.
• When facing doubts, reach out instead of pulling in. 

    I appreciated Childers book, which made me consider my essentials and how I define them. If Christianity is authentic (and I believe and trust it is), it will withstand doubts and questions, emerging more robustly than before.

    Many years ago, I heard Tim Keller speak about his book, The Reason for God. In his talk, he mentioned going under for thyroid surgery and having a fleeting moment of doubt about whether Jesus was real. While recovering, he read N. T. Wrights's book The Resurrection of the Son of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol. 3). Keller said it moved his doubts from 15% to 8-9%. My doubts will exist, but instead of being ashamed and suppressing them, I want to drag them out and contend with them. Alisa Childers does this and does it well. 

    On a side note, Timothy Keller passed away this week from pancreatic cancer. His life and teachings have informed and strengthened my faith. I am sad to lose a stalwart Christian man, but I am grateful for his ministry.

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    The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware is the June pick for my murder mystery book club. I wasn't excited to read it. I assumed the main character, Lo Blacklock, a travel journalist, would be an unreliable narrator. Unfortunately, I misjudged this book on many levels. One: the cabin is not in the woods, but on a boat (ship?). Two: Lo Blacklock has her issues--it adds tension and complexity-- but she is fierce and dogged in defending the weak. As I read, the book only improved from my original assumptions. 

    My false ideas were based on the excellent books Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins and the myriad of books that came out in the early 2000s with "girl" or "woman" in the title. Here is a list: https://www.listchallenges.com/books-with-girl-or-woman-in-the-title

    Anyways, I recommend this suspenseful, twisty story. It's a good one.

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Space ships 🛸 and Time Travel 🕰️

 

    Another trilogy week. I might need an intervention. I have pivoted this week from fantasy to sci-fi; however, I'm still reading giant bricks of books with another 600+ pages. Adrian Tchaikovsky is excellent at science fiction. He is inventive, vivid, and knowledgeable enough to create worlds with credible technical details that give them life. I have read his Children of Time and Children of Ruin--both excellent books. Now I'm caught in his trilogy, The Final Architect series. 

Here is my review of Shards of the Earth:  its-beginning-to-look-lot-like-book-time.html

Tchaikovsky's story works well and keeps me invested because of his characters. There are the tropes of space warriors, madmen (women? people? space creatures?), politicians, and idealists, but Tchaikovsky gives them life through their mixed motives and desires, but facing a common threat. Will they set aside their differences and pull together to save, well, everything? The stakes couldn't be more significant--the survival of sentient life--resting on the shoulders of an odd band of misfits. It could be stale, but the story is fresh, with relatable characters. I have the third book, The Lords of Uncreation, and will read it soon, but first, some shorter stand-alone to cleanse the palate.

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Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi is a lovely book, and I liked it a great deal. It is a sci-fi/fantasy book about time travel. In an underground coffee cafe in Tokoyo, the possibility of time travel exists. However, there are limitations. You can only travel back to that cafe. You must sit in a particular chair, but only when vacated by its ghost for a bathroom break. No matter what you do, you can't change the present. You can't leave the chair. And you can only stay until your coffee gets cold. When the rules were laid out initially, I doubted it would be much of a story. I was wrong. Kawaguchi deftly creates a series of interrelated stories using those parameters. The book is brief, but explores the idea of why time travel if nothing changes? I would do it even though I'm not a fan of coffee. 

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Good Week for Trilogies!

 

    Here is my review of the first book in the trilogy, A City of Brass.

 https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/2023/04/i-start-another-good-trilogy-mistake.html

    The middle is the most challenging book to pull off in a trilogy. The author has to move the plot forward, solve enough of the conflict to feel satisfying, but keep enough mystery to bring people back for the final book. The characters created in the first book must retain their essence, but also evolve. The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty is fairly successful. My biggest disappointment is how it ends on a cliffhanger, and I still have ten weeks until the final book is available to borrow! But at least it's out there, and I may get it sooner. 

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    Chakraborty made the bold choice to move five years into the future, and I liked it. The characters had gained experience and skills. It made sense. Chakraborty uses Middle Eastern folktales and myths as the scaffolding for her tale. This gives her book a blended feel of mystique and reality. The engine driving the plot is a love triangle between Nahri, Prince Ali, and a Djinn named Dara. Chakraborty continues the tension skillfully, and even though the book is long--532 pages--it goes quickly. 

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Here are my reviews of the first two The Cursebreakers series books:

A Curse So Dark and Lonely beauty-and-beast-retold-and-ancient.html

 A Heart So Fierce and Broken  lots-of-villainy-villains.html

    The second hardest book of a trilogy is the final one. I have invested hours, literally, into the characters and story, and I want a rewarding ending! A Vow So Bold and Deadly by Brigid Kemmerer mostly delivers. I perused some reviews, and not everyone agrees with me. Kemmerer is excellent at plotting and unanticipated twists. She explores the psychology behind her main characters, Rhen, Harper, Grey, and Lia Mara deeply, but doesn't sacrifice action. Harper questions staying with a man who can have a friend whipped for information. Rhen feels like a poster child for the aphorism, hurt people, hurt people. Lia Mara wants to not be like her mother, but doesn't know how to be strong and kind. Grey lacks flaws other than he needs to trust himself. I wonder if Kemmerer has a therapist in her life that she bounces ideas off of. It makes sense that Harper is examining things through the lens of 21st-century sensibilities, but the others have grown up with different influences. I like that the ending wasn't everything solved, and they all lived happily ever after. It felt genuine to the characters.

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Not Sure How to Classify this Book: Not Biography, Not Theology, but Contains Both

 

    I don't think of myself as a fangirl for anyone in pop culture, but when I play the icebreaker game, what three people living or dead, would like to have dinner with, I always choose Tim Keller (Malcolm Gladwell and Ruth Bader Ginsberg). He is a former minister of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, author of many books, and an Evangelical icon. I have a bachelor's degree in Bible. I didn't learn Greek or Hebrew; I focused on theology--the study of God and beliefs. At the bachelor's level, the goal is to systematically study significant doctrines (Christology, the Bible, Trinity, etc.) and how they came to be codified historically. The goals are exposure, research, clarification, and communication. My theological education has taught me that there's a lot I don't know. So many have thought and written about theology for centuries. Deciding what voices to invest time and effort into can be difficult. I appreciate Tim Keller's thoughtfulness, kindness, and ability to make esoteric topics approachable. I have read many of his books --I highly recommend The Reason for God--and listened to his sermons. 

    In conversations about spiritual things, I often start, "Well, Tim Keller says . . ." 

    So much so that one of my daughters replies, "All hail, Pope Keller!"

    Having consumed much theology through the lens of Tim Keller, I was eager to read Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation by Collin Hansen. I enjoyed a peek under the hood of his life and who influenced his beliefs. Things I learned: he is super intelligent and well-read, his wife, Kathy, is wicked smart and fierce, he favors Puritan writers, he is widely read concerning culture, and he respects others' beliefs and treats them--people and their beliefs--with honor, he has a heart for helping others understand culture and Christianity. Hansen also lightly traces a history of Evangelicalism. The book is well-organized and engaging. I listened to the audio version read by the author, and that format would have benefitted from a more experienced narrator. 

    I don't know if this book would appeal to anyone unfamiliar with Tim Keller, but I found it worthwhile--instructive, inspiring, and encouraging.

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