We Should See Other Blogs

I’ve been doing a slow-and-steady re-read of Adam McHugh’s Introverts in the Church, and words don’t well express how much I resonate with what he is saying. Just as I read Dilbert and think that Scott Adams must’ve worked where I work to get it that right, I read McHugh and think he must’ve served in the same churches I’ve served in. Amazing.

Last night I got to chapter 5, “Introverted Community and Relationships”, and found a few paragraphs that were so apt that I couldn’t resist sharing them.

As introverts seek to enter into and participate in particular communities, their trajectory of commitment may take a different shape than that of their extroverted counterparts. extroverts, who want to increase their level of involvement, may proceed roughly in a straight line as they move from the periphery into the nucleus of the community.
…
The journey of introverts into a community, however, is better conceptualized as a spiral. They take steps into a community, but then spiral out of it in order to regain energy, to reflect on their experiences and to determine if they are comfortable in that community. They move between entry, retreat and reentry, gradually moving deeper into the community on each loop.

The introverted path into community, much to the confusion of many extroverts, never reaches a point in which the spiraling form is shed.

You know how it feels when someone puts words to something that you’ve always felt and experienced but haven’t been able to describe? That’s how I feel when reading that passage. That’s what my pattern has been, or has needed to be, for the past 10 years.

Some more:

An introverted college student I worked with…encountered several reactions when he chose to step outside of his community after two years of consistent participation. Extroverted leaders chided him for his lack of commitment and were convinced that his pulling back was indicative of a larger spiritual problem infecting his heart. The pastor of the community arranged meetings with him to understand what was happening and what was the source of his dissatisfaction with the group. These efforts, as well intentioned as they were, only pushed him further away instead of drawing him back into his previous level of commitment.

And yes, I’ve been there. And I’m thankful to be in a place now where that isn’t happening.

If the “get rich” book you’re reading doesn’t first and foremost recommend that in order to get rich you should write a book on how to get rich and sell it to dullards like yourself, it’s all lies.

Sometimes a tv show, a book, or a film comes out, and the pedigree of those involved is so strong that it must be good. You feel compelled to love this product. But you don’t. And maybe you feel guilty about that, or disloyal for not loving their creation.

It happens to everyone. It happens to me regularly. So I’ve decided to put together a list of things I should have liked, but didn’t.

Steven Erikson’s “Dust of Dreams”

“Gardens of the Moon” is such a wonderful book, as are most of the rest of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, up until “Reaper’s Gale”, which is good but muddled and very, very slow. “Dust of Dreams” is muddled writ large: The book slogs its way through 800 unnecessary pages before anything actually happens. I like a good character study as much as anyone, but like the TV show “House”, a large part of the book seems to be people’s and creatures’ mumbled introspection. Most of this introspection reads like they just got their character description and used a thesaurus.

I’m reading through “Dust of Dreams” a second time; hopefully this second reading will help change my mind about the book (which I desperately want to like), but so far it seems to be clarifying why I didn’t.

Snow Patrol’s “A Hundred Million Suns”

“Eyes Open” was a fantastic album. It wasn’t an ambitious technical and artistic masterpiece, but it was full of great riffs, great tunes, and get-to-the-point lyrics. Even “Final Straw”, with it’s many missteps, can be forgiven its weaknesses in light of its strengths. But “A Hundred Million Suns” was utterly forgettable. I listened to it once and forgot about it… until I was unfortunately reminded of it again today.

When “A Hundred Million Suns” first came out, I was excited to hear it. I love Snow Patrol, in spite of myself. I wanted it to be another permanent-repeat record like “Eyes Open”. But it wasn’t. It’s alright, I suppose, but a thousand other bands are doing more exiting things.

The Good Guys

Let’s be clear here: I love Matt Nix. Burn Notice is a fantastic television series (and USA is a fantastic network for a particular type of tv show). I love Bradley Whitford. If he wasn’t part of the cast of The West Wing, I don’t think I could watch the show. I love Colin Hanks. He has a sort of baby-faced good-boy charm, which explains his casting. His appearances on Numb3rs were some of that show’s highlights for me.

But The Good Guys? Meh. Blah. Feh. It should work. It’s got that impressive pedigree. It’s got the low-key humour, the action, all that stuff, but it doesn’t have the edge that Burn Notice has. It’s lacking a certain je ne sais quoi. Hard to put into words, but I get fidgety when I watch The Good Guys. I want to do something else. And so it is that I’ve stopped watching.

Finding Nemo, A Bug’s Life, Cars

Ah, Pixar. So very many fabulous films have flown from your beautiful nest. Toy Story was (literally) a revolutionary film, but also a film full of wonder and adventure. Toy Story 2 was even better than Toy Story in almost every way. Monsters Inc (still the best Pixar film in my opinion) was stunningly original. The Incredibles is probably the best superhero film ever made, bar none. Wall-E was minimalistic, retro-futuristic, delightful, and showed that even without much dialogue and exposition, a film can be moving and pointed. Up was almost indescribable; it had at its core a love story, but a love story wrapped in action and adventure. It was delightfully different from any other animated film I’ve ever seen, not simply in content, but in theme (who else could build an animated film on nostalgia alone?).

And then there are the other. Finding Nemo. A Bug’s Life. And especially, Cars. I didn’t connect with these films or enjoy watching them. I wanted to like them. I really did. I want to think the whole Pixar canon magical. But I can’t. Because of these three films.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

I’m starting to think Aaron Sorkin is a one-hit-wonder. He probably shouldn’t exist in television, instead sticking to plays and films. But there he was, first with Sports Night, an utterly baffling sitcom/not-sitcom. Not surprisingly, Sorkin was writing about writing. Then came the West Wing, where once again, Sorkin was writing about writing but managed to find a way to wrap the writing about writing in something a bit more exciting. The West Wing was a fantastic show for 4 seasons, and a middling show for 3 more, but it deserved the praise and the viewership it got. I especially enjoyed Matthew Perry’s bit part, as I quite like a lot of Perry’s work.

So let it be said that I adore Mr Sorkin’s writing (about writing or about anything, really; he could write about a toaster and toast and I would watch it), I like Mr Perry and wish him every possible success, and I think Mr Whitford is among the best television actors of our times.

How did Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip manage to stink so much? I’m not exactly sure. But its cancellation was a mercy killing. While writing about writing (again!), Mr Sorkin displayed a stunning lack of the funny that he somehow managed to bring to The West Wing, which was truly charming at its most jovial, and bitingly awesome at its most pointed. Something that Studio 60 lacked. Completely. For a show about comedy… it was too serious.

I’m not sure what Mr Sorkin has in store for the rest of his career (though I can image we’re going to have a show where Mr Sorking writes about writing something), but I think there’s a lesson to be learned here.

That’s All, Folks

I’m out of time here… but I’d love to hear some feedback on this. Anything you were supposed to love but didn’t? Hit me up in the comments.

Supposed Rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, etc, etc.

1. The Horse and His Boy (C.S. Lewis)
2. Velvet Elvis (Rob Bell)
3. Surprised By Hope (N.T. Wright)
4. Women, Slaves and Homosexuals (William J. Webb)
5. Gardens of the Moon (Steven Erikson)
6. The Darkness the Comes Before (R. Scott Bakker)
7. A Short History of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson)
8. The Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell)
9. Salt (Adam Roberts)
10. Blindsight (Peter Watts)
11. Dune (Frank Herbert)
12. Endless Love (Scott Spencer)
13. Collected Poems (Paul Auster)
14. New Collected Poems (Mark Strand)
15. Swiss Family Robinson (Johann David Wyss)

HT to Chris Hubbs on this one. I tag no-one.

Mississauga Library just emailed me that Anathem is ready to pick up.

I’ll be unreachable tonight. Awesome!

Holy crap… Vernor Vinge has posted the entirety of his book, Rainbow’s End, online. So you can read it for free. And you should, because it will expand your mind. Despite its many, many flaws, Rainbow’s End is one of those books (along with Snow Crash, Accelerando, and another book I can’t remember right now) whose enormous breadth of vision can take your breath away. Thanks to Boing Boing for the link.

Attribution and License for the above photo.

I’ve been visiting the Library lately, catching up on my reading before the holiday seasons hits as it inevitably will with titanic force (and by titanic, I refer to the original Titans, not the ill-fated ship). Even though it takes longer, sometimes a lot longer, to get the books I want, it’s free, and Mississauga has a nicely-implemented online catalogue; right now I have

• Away: A Novel
• Gomorrah
• I Am America (And So Can You!)
• The Kite Runner
• Love in the Time of Cholera
• A Thousand Splendid Suns
• Water For Elephants
• The World Without Us

on hold. Most of which I should have my hands on relatively soon. In the meantime, I’ve read a few books I’d like to tell you about.

The Book of Illusions, by Paul Auster, is an exploration of what happens when extreme grief strikes and an accidental obsession spills out. Like most Auster, it’s an odd combination of interesting observation and illusive characterisation. Which, I imagine, sounds a bit like I’m just making things up. If you read Paul Auster, though, I think you’ll know what I mean. And if you read Paul Auster, you’ll know this isn’t one of his strongest outings. It’s worth reading, yes; but it’s not a must-read.

The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova, is a vampire story. When you think of vampire stories, stately is not the first thing that comes to mind. The Historian is just that, though: at one stately, reserved, and really, really interesting. You should read this one.

Primary Inversion, by Catheriner Asaro, is probably one of the worst sci-fi debacles I have ever stopped reading after 20 pages. It had a cool cover, and the jacket implied it had some cool ideas, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say both were dreadful lies. The writing is so pedestrian you can almost imagine how many editors blanched whilst reading the manuscript; on one page I noticed eleven (eleven!) references to people laughing, grinning, and smiling. All this in on extended dialogue. I imagine the people talking must have been grotesque in their never-ending jocularity, their lips forever stretching in a simulacrum of a smile, never able to achieve any other expression in the readers’ minds. Don’t read this book, whatever you do. Please. Think of the children.

Rule the Web, by Mark Frauenfelder, co-founder of Boing Boing, is a well-written introduction to the internet, or at least the most-visited subsection of the internet, the web. This book will be outdated in two years, so read it fast. If you consider yourself familiar with how the internet works, and what you can do with it, don’t bother. If you are reading this in 2009 and you’re pretty good at this interweb stuff, don’t bother. I’m sure O’Reilly has come out with a Web 4.0 Croudsynergy guide you’re like better.

Sound Designs: A Handbook of Musical Instrument Building, by Reinhold Banek, is just what it sounds like. Light on theory, heavy on implementation, this book isn’t really what I was looking for. But if you’re into building stuff, you might want to give this puppy a spin. If you’re into any other kind of sound design, this is not the book for you.

Travels in the Scriptorium, by Paul Auster, happens to come in at half the length of The Book of Illusions. It manages to be, in those few pages, much, much more rewarding. Paul Auster has always struck me as a sort of Lynchian literary figure, and Travels is where his weirdness shines, where the creepiness he can induce ebbs and flows. Beware, if you like books with resolution, this is not for you.

Vacuum Diagrams, by Stephen Baxter, proves relentlessly depressing. Baxter, while a good writer, pens a future history of the human race that becomes more bleak as the book goes one. The book, by the way, is essentially a bunch of short stories and vignettes tied together with baler twine Baxter calls “Eve”. I want to like this volume, but I really don’t. I read the whole thing cover to cover, and though I appreciate the scope of his vision (and appreciate that a lot of writers like Kevin J. Anderson, in the Saga of Seven Suns, have cribbed ideas from this book), I pretty much hate his vision and hate his implementation. That’s not to say you won’t find value in this book. I did and didn’t. You may or may not. That said, I’ve never read a future history of the human race that did a good job; I’m not sure it can be done. Either the separate stories become fragmented and your investment in the characters wanes, or the author’s vision overwhelms him and he ends the book with some contrived crap ex machina. For an example of the latter, read Charles Stross’s Accelerando, otherwise a wonderful book.

I constantly marvel at the unbroken stream of offal emanating from Christian bookstores. Constantly. Now, I don’t like to be sexist, but it seems, from my experience at least, so take this with a grain of salt, that most of these books are bought by well-meaning but gullible women.

In church this Sunday I saw one of these woman with a book by Bruce Wilkinson, something to do with unlocking the secrets of abundance of some such. If sounding curiously like prosperity gospel isn’t bad enough, the cover of the book had three — THREE — trademark symbols on it, as if they meant to be remarkably clear that the secrets of abundance somehow involve having your own brand name and an enterprise whose mission is essentially to hoodwink people who have stopped using whatever critical skills they may have ever possessed.

All this is a preface to a little passage I read this morning, when I picked up a book called “Getting Anger Under Control”. Which, I might add, is a pretty noble sentiment and a good idea, etc etc. The only problem being I never actually got to read the book because the dedication in the front — the first few sentences — actually blew my mind. I mean, I’ve got a gasket loose in here now. I’m dazed and confused.

So, I’ve reproduced the passage verbatim, as is my fair use right:

The terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, occurred as we were doing the final editing of this book … Americans responded in disbelief and wondered how this could happen to us, a peace-loving nation. But what was intended to dishearten and destroy us took a different turn. It brought out a heroic spirit of brotherhood and revealed that the church is still the soul of America … These deplorable acts of violence brought about a righteous indignation that caused our country to unite against godless terrorism.

There’s so much wrong with that little paragraph that I won’t even address the things I bolded up there (yes, that was me), except to ask this: Is that really what Americans think of themselves? Really?

I assure you not a single other nation on the face of the earth, including their beloved allies to the north, and their “special relationship” allies over the pond, thinks of America a peace-loving nation. Nor do they think that the church is the nation’s soul, or if they do, it scares the living daylights out of them.

And, in the last analysis, it would be hard to explain why America declaring war on “godless” terrorism is anything more than rank hypocrisy.

I’ve been reading some fiction, but more than that a couple nonfic theological books I checked out of the church library (which is a really funny library, by the way). They are: What Is Reformed Theology, and a book explaining the theology of a Christian Sabbath. I don’t remember the name of the latter.

In any case, I really appreciate WiRT, as I do most books by RC Sproul; especially when he explains the difference between the study of religion and the study of theology, not to mention the distinctive Reformed theological trait he develops, that Reformed theology is primarily concerned with the God. Every other point flows from that viewpoint, and as a staunchly Reformed young man myself, I cannot but agree.

The second book isn’t as well-written; it still puzzles me how so many books about the Christian Sabbath can start off as a polemic, when they really should start as a celebration. One of the best things going for Sabbath theology as exposited today, a rather recent innovation in Reformed and Presbyterian circles from what I can ascertain, is its focus on and celebration of a coming and extant kingdom represented in a future and present day of rest. But as you move past the “greedy people who want to turn Sabbath into every other day” bits, it’s a really rewarding book. Even if you don’t agree with the idea of a Christian Sabbath or a day of rest as a creation ordinance (Luther certainly didn’t, and Calvin did or didn’t depending on whether you read his exposition of Exodus or his Institutes), it’s a good introduction to why people make such a big deal out of things like the “Lord of the Sabbath” quote.

Whilst reading Paulo Coelo’s novel “The Pilgrimage”, I am struck by the many pithy, insightful, and plain resonant things he touches on. The problem is his approach, so very different from my own, from the one I consider to be right.

Ironically, this is a question the book deals with, among others. How is it that two people traveling radically different paths can arrive at the same destination? And how is it that a man walking down the wrong road can get to some place of truth before the man taking the right one?