kw217 started reading Even the Sparrow by Jill Weber
Reading this with Carolyn
Reviews and Comments
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kw217 finished reading Friday by Robert A. Heinlein
Engineered from the finest genes, and trained to be a secret courier in a future …
Not very PC for 2024 but definitely something for 1983. A fascinating novel and not quite what I was expecting, with lots of infodump and rugged survival tips. Definitely felt I was getting to know RAH.
kw217 started reading In heaven as on earth by M. Scott Peck
Read this decades ago and recently have wanted to re-read. I remember its bold claim that heaven is full of committees!
kw217 reviewed Pillars by Abdi Nor Iftin
Journey
5 stars
This is really an internal story of a spiritual journey. Fascinating and very open and a bit challenging. Note to some reviewers: the author says on p48 that they didn't claim the label of "missionary", just a Christian in a Muslim country.
kw217 finished reading The art of neighboring by Jayshree Pathak
This is pretty good actually, quite thorough but not too heavy, and plenty of practical guidance and advice. Be aware that it's very American middle class centric so will need some surface adaptation for other contexts.
kw217 rated The art of neighboring: 4 stars
kw217 reviewed Paul and the faithfulness of God by N. T. Wright (Christian origins and the question of God -- volume 4)
Mammoth!
4 stars
Finally finished this! It's excellent, so many amazing ideas, and I'm sure I will be inspired by this for a long time. I do worry if I'll remember it though - 1519 pages in quite dense print is a lot!
kw217 finished reading Virtue Reborn by Tom Wright
Really quite radical - we don't just sit back and wait for the Holy Spirit to transform us, we work at it (with the Holy Spirit) until it becomes second nature. Great stuff, though naturally a bit dense and long in places. They just two chapters were very practical and a welcome application.
kw217 rated And How Does That Make You Feel?: 5 stars
kw217 finished reading Red Side Story: Shades of Grey 2 by Jasper Fforde
A worthy successor - brilliant, loved all the very contemporary-issue touches
kw217 started reading Shades of grey by Jasper Fforde (The Road to High Saffron, Part 1)
An astonishing, hotly anticipated new novel from the great literary fantasist and creator of Thursday …
Rereading in preparation for reading Red Side Story.
kw217 rated Matter (Culture, #8): 4 stars
Matter (Culture, #8) by Iain M. Banks
Matter is a science fiction novel from Iain M. Banks set in his Culture universe. It was published on 25 …
kw217 finished reading Matter (Culture, #8) by Iain M. Banks
Matter is a science fiction novel from Iain M. Banks set in his Culture universe. …
Enjoyed this, but a bit disappointed with the brief and deus ex machina ending. Plenty of philosophy to ponder though.
kw217 finished reading Search for the Earth's Twin by Stuart Clark
Enjoyed this - not the best written (I lost track of how many disasters struck, and there were a few technical errors, like the explanation of sigma is wrong) but a gripping true story about a really interesting topic.
kw217 reviewed Autism and the Church by Grant Macaskill
Valuable and timely
4 stars
This is a great attempt at a complex and under-discussed subject. So many good ideas and thoughts, and parts of this will be directly useful in our church. Commendably, Macaskill starts with the intention to write for ordinary readers in the main text, reserving academic discussions for the endnotes. He achieves this in the intro and chapter 1, which are excellent and deserve to be a separate book in themselves. Sadly chapter 2 regularly slips from this, and by chapter 3 it's quite academic. Chapter 5 mostly returns to accessibility for ordinary readers, with an odd slip around the word "comorbidity". This is a great pity, because the content is amazing and deserves a wider audience. In my view someone should co-author a popular book with Macaskill based on this material. Really valuable and timely book. The sections in ch1 on autism characteristics and an autistic experience of church alone …
This is a great attempt at a complex and under-discussed subject. So many good ideas and thoughts, and parts of this will be directly useful in our church. Commendably, Macaskill starts with the intention to write for ordinary readers in the main text, reserving academic discussions for the endnotes. He achieves this in the intro and chapter 1, which are excellent and deserve to be a separate book in themselves. Sadly chapter 2 regularly slips from this, and by chapter 3 it's quite academic. Chapter 5 mostly returns to accessibility for ordinary readers, with an odd slip around the word "comorbidity". This is a great pity, because the content is amazing and deserves a wider audience. In my view someone should co-author a popular book with Macaskill based on this material. Really valuable and timely book. The sections in ch1 on autism characteristics and an autistic experience of church alone are worth the price of admission, and the theological and biblical content is eye-opening. I just wish it was a book I could recommend to non-academic readers.