Practicing the Way - John Mark Comer Comer is a pastor in Portland, OR who has written a few best sellers, including The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. In this book he borrows from quite a few sources outside of his own Protestant tradition to explore the more contemplative and even mystical elements of the idea of Christian discipleship. He digs into the idea of discipleship being something you do, not something that's done to you (never once used as a verb in the NT), referring to it as more like apprenticeship in the modern understanding and how that applies to Jesus as rabbit and his followers. He then borrows from ancient and modern examples from Orthodox, Anglican, Catholic, Pentecostal and other sources to draw a through line of a more contemplative approach to faith than is the norm today. The other major emphasis is bringing back the idea of a personal and communal Rule of Life which he presents much like the spiritual equivalent to what Cal Newport suggests in his writing about living the deep life. The nine practices he suggests basing your Rule of Life around are: sabbath, solitude, prayer, fasting, scripture, community, generosity, service, and witness.
Etienne Gilson: An Intellectual and Political Biography which tells the tale of a French professor and philosopher who is not read very widely these days for a variety of reasons, but who in his day, in addition to being an authority in Medieval philosophy, would also be consulted by political leaders (Charles de Gaulle would consult with him on matters pertaining to french foreign and domestic policy as well as arcane matters of philosophy. Author Florian Michel tracked down material from archives in six different countries on two continents to produce a biography that, while detailed, can get lost in some really deep weeds (reconstructions of faculty meetings from the Sorbonne in the 1930s probably aren't worth the effort, for example). Still not bad. The translator was a guy who works at a college where my wife interviewed for a job a decade back. He wanted to hire her but alas, was outvoted.
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. This is a fierce antiwar novel. Trumbo was one of the Hollywood Ten. It's a tale of a young soldier who gets badly wounded in WWI. It's not a typical December read, but I'll read it anyway!
Just about to finish The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American A systematic takedown of the myth that the US was founded as a Christian nation. It is a bit overdone and, after establishing his thesis, the dead horse is beaten beyond recognition. Overall, it well well-researched, well-stated and destroys the idiocy of the Constitution. Seidel's destruction of the 10 Commandments is terrific, if a bit overdrawn. Seidel's breakdown of the Declaration of Independence (and the invocation of "Their Creator" and "Nature's God" is particularly good. This Fall, I read the first half of Seidel's: But, I set it aside. It was getting a bit too depressing. I will finish it over the winter.
I meant "destroys the idiocy of the Constitution as a Christian document." The last for words were sliced off of my post.
I read today The Pueblo Revolt by David Roberts. I read this book in the library. I have several books by Roberts on my Amazon Wishlist. It was interested, though much information was still out there in 2004 when the book was published. Good read.
Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris This was a women’s fiction finalist for 2024, and my wife randomly brought it home from the library. About a 3-4hr read. It is a fictional tale, based off of many true life accounts, of the initial bombardment and siege of Sarajevo in 1992 told through the eyes of a well-known (not real) mid-50s female landscape artist. The book is well-written with some beautiful instances of descriptive language that create some poignant images. The narrative largely remains on the individual and doesn’t branch out often to discuss the larger issues other than what happens directly in the lives of the characters in the immediate orbit of the protagonist. Especially given the time investment, I’d highly recommend the read.
Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health, a book by Casey Means, an M.D. who no longer practices medicine because she became disillusioned with the disease management system that passes for "health" "care" in this country. She's convinced that most of our chronic health problems can be solved with nutritional interventions and exercise (basically, no hyper-processed food, doesn't matter if you go vegan or if you go keto, just so long as the food is real). Alas, not likely to happen. I'd trust her a little more if her co-author and brother Calley Means wasn't all in on RFK Jr. and if she wasn't one of those "no one should eat grains" people (whole grains are fine if you can digest them, and I can.
A Spy in Plain Sight - Lis Wiehl The Inside Story of the FBI and Robert Hanssen―America's Most Damaging Russian Spy The author interviewed many FBI and CIA agents involved in the case, so this had lots of good info.
What Happened to our Wrestling? - Charlie "From Starkville" Dimino A regular in getting questions asked on Jim Cornette's wrestling podcasts, for a long time Charlie was thought of as a fake name made up by co-host Brian Last. It turns out he's a real guy with a real interest in the secret sauce that made pro wrestling so popular from the territory days up through the Attitude Era of Stone Cold and The Rock. This is a fairly quick read where he interviews 30 people about their history as fans, their impressions of the modern product, and what they think about the future of the business. There's a wide variety of respondents but my favorite may have been the first one, Karl Afflis from Indianapolis, who is the grandson of the legendary William Afflis a.k.a. Dick The Bruiser.
One of the stars of All Star Wrestling, as it was called in my market. Saw him and tag-team partner Crusher when I was six. Can’t remember who they were taking on, but Mad Dog Vachon was on the card
Dick da Bruiser and The Crusher (Reggie Lisowski) were my absolute favorites when I was a kid. I was privileged to see them live a few times when I was a teenager and they were in their late 50's and could barely move. Wait a damned minute! That's my age now! I can barely move and haven't had 'privilege' of 40+ years of being body slammed or "staying out all night polka-ing with bar maids" as the Crusher would proudly declare. I feel cheated.
There used to be a pro wrestling training facility here. If this had been our first job (back in the 80s) rather than (I hope) our last, I would’ve signed up. Not because I had aspirations of pro wrestling stardom: nope. Rather, because that is ONE HELL OF A WORKOUT. In HS, our wrestling coach would let us get to the mat early for “all star wrestling time.” We would be pretty pumped by the time the actual practice started. Unfortunately, he put a stop to it when the AD came up and saw us practicing our pile drivers and flying dropkicks. He decided nothing good could come from that. Asshole. Like any of us had rich enough parents to even think about suing.
I read the book The Gringa by Andrew Altschul in the library today. This novel is a veiled retelling of the Lori Berenson saga in Peru, with the protagonist Leonora Gelb standing in for Berenson. Berenson had a good appearance on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! The novel was okay.
I know the guys who ran the wrestling training school just outside Manassas, VA that trained Mickie James when she first broke into the business. If I hadn't screwed my back up I would definitely have given wrestling a shot.
I am way, way behind in here. I'll start the catch-up process with a couple of my Thanksgiving impulse borrows from the public library: First up is Donovan Hohn's Moby-Duck. While I wish it was half as long, I enjoyed the musings on beachcombing, on seaside cleanup, on ocean currents and shipping and the like. Hohn really went all in on the project, to the point I questioned some of his choices vis-a-vis his family. It does veer quickly (but not usually jarringly) between humorous observations about his surroundings to facts about whatever he's considering at the time. I'd recommend skimming it (which is what I started doing by the third journey of discovery he made). But what a great title and cover; I had to get it. And I could hear the title of Melissa Mogollon's debut novel Oye. It's such a great word in Spanish, very evocative of a certain personality. The framing is unique to me: about 90% of it is one side of a series of phone conversations between two Colombian-American sisters, one an 18 year old queer high school senior in Miami and the other in her second year at GWU in DC doing many stereotypical sorority things, much to the derision of the younger. The other 10% is embedded in those - unattributed (but easily attributable) conversations between our narrator and one of her family members to give some small context to the sister's convo. I wondered at times whether I could weather the vernacular and style of the protagonist, or the regular selfishness, but Mogollon kept me engaged. It is primarily about the importance of family, and that comes across well. As a side note, a couple of things mentioned in passing in a page or so - such as a great grandmother growing up in an orphanage in Colombia where a delivery of basketballs inadvertently arrives on the doorstep - well I hope there's a short story out there that expands on it, because I sure want to read it!
Homicide : A Year on the Killing Streets - David Simon Baltimore Sun reporter spends a year (1988) embedded with Baltimore PD homicide squad. Excellent account that was basis for NBC tv drama “Homicide: Life on the Street.”
For a long time, I could not get into any of my reading. So I decided to re-read a book i read in 7th-grade. I couldn't recall my thoughts on it from back in 1982 or 1983.