glenn's recent reading
and
book commentary

God is Back - John Mickelthwait and Adrian Wooldridge
A remarkable, smart, well-written and encouraging look at the influence of religion throughout the world. The authors, leading journalists at The Economist, explain that the world doesn't look like it is going the way of secular Europe, but the way of faith. Explaining that when people are able to choose, they are increasingly choosing religion and Christianity has a big part of this story. However, they say that one of the factors that helps Christianity spread is its commercial success and its sometimes narrative as a way toward prosperity. It is by far, mostly a very good-news story. Well worth reading carefully

Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor -- Brad Gooch
A brand new and very well researched biography on an amazing American woman writer who possessed an amazingly keen insight into religion and race in the deep South. Flannery is one of my favorite writers and this book is a very useful highlight to her very interesting and otherwise seemingly mundane life.

The Diary of a Country Priest -- Georges Bernanos
After watching a delightful 1950 b/w French film with subtitles, I picked up the book that inspired it. This is a story of a very young and new French priest who is sent to rural parish to begin his vocation. He struggles with his calling and mission, the disruptive politics of the community, his developing stomach cancer and poverty. The novel is his sharing these struggles with his only friend, his diary. He finds at the end what life is made of....a very powerful four-letter word.

The Trinity: Global Perspectives -- Veli-Matti Karkkainen
A serious and very helpful overview of recent developments in Trinitarian theology, one of the most important developments of the past 50 years in Christian theology. Slightly better, in my estimation, than Stantley Grenz's incredibly helpful Rediscovering the Triune God, in that Karkkainen's work explores much of the same ground, but brings in Trinitiarian scholarship from the Asian and African traditions.

As Nature Made Him -- John Colapinto
A journalist tells the very tragic story of David Reimer, who was previously "Brenda Reimer" who was previously "Bruce Reimer." Bruce was one of twin infant boys who had his penis demolished by a new circumcission process. Distraught, his parents consulted doctors on what to do with their young baby boy. Being the late sixties -- with it's goofy ideas galore -- one doctor, John Money, recommended the parents raise their wounded little boy as a girl. Money was drunk on the fashionable idea that gender was all of "nurture" and nearly nothing of "nature." And Bruce was the perfect specimen for this, being a twin. Science could now show how pliable gender really was. The experiment was a disaster as Bruce/Brenda grew and entered adolescents. He never felt like a girl, but rather like an oddity. He felt nothing short of abused and molested. He decided to become David in his mid-teens. His life story is a tragic one, and while not captured in the book, David ended up shooting himself in 2004 in a grocery store parking lot near his home because it was just better to end is very difficult, traumatic life. David's life and story tell us that sex is much deeper than body parts and hormones. His is a very sad repudiation of a very goofy, but still-popular idea.

Everything Conceivable -- Liza Mundy
An exploration of the relatively very recent emergence of artificial reproductive technology, how it is rapidly growing and changing the way we understand the word "parent" and what it means to bring new human beings into the world. An important book for anyone interested in the future of how we reproduce ourselves, parenting, the family and how technology can easily get out in front of our ability to determine its ethics.

The Yellow House - Martin Gayford
A wonderful exploration of the nine weeks that Vincent VanGogh and Paul Gauguin lived togehter in the "yellow house" in their collective effort to establish their Studio of the South. Put to very poor, passionate artists in the same house, one very mentally ill, but deeply kind/the other a world class narcissist, and the results cannot be good. The break-up of this partnership is what caused Van Gogh to initiate one of the most interesting episodes in art history...slicing off a major part of his ear.

Van Gogh's Women - Derek Fell
A creative idea for a way toward greater understanding of a great artist's personality and life. Fell looks at Van Gogh's life through his relationships with women, from his mother who used Vincent as a replacement-child for her first child, who died in infancy, to his first cousin whom he wanted marry and became obsessed with, to a small handful of prostitutes who became is signficant sexual and domestic relationships.

The Art of Loving -- Erich Fromm
Rereading this book to study the difference in mother-love and father love. Fromm has a fascinating explanation of how mother -ove and father-love differ and how this difference and contrast is vital for healthy child development.

The Renovation of the Heart -- Dallas Willard
Willard, a professor of philosophy at USC and one of the best evangelical writers on spirituality and practice, explains in this book how the heart is vital in living in the fullness of our God-given humanity and that renovation of the heart is humanity's greatest need. This book explores how this revovation can happen.

The Future of Marriage -- David Blankenhorn
Blankenhorn, a good friend and a valued colleague, has written a very important book on the issue of same-sex marriage and parenting. I have tried to construct a "human case against ssm" with some success, but David does a masterful job of this, offering the reader a much deeper and more thoughtful exploration of why ssm might not be a good idea for humanity.

Intimate Behavior -- Desmond Morris
Morris, the author of The Human Animal, explores in this book the nature of intimate behavior in living creatures. An interesting observation is that humans universally tend to be shy and private about business surrounding their various orifaces. Just as sexual intimacy is a private behavior in nearly all cultures, so is elimation of bodily waste, but also other lesser activities like blowing one's nose and eating are done with some recognizable social manners and taboo attached.

Wiseblood -- Flannery O'Conner
Rereading O'Conner's first novel with great delight. She is an absolute hoot and writes her characters with such incredible human terrain. This is a book about ythe lengths people will go to fight against call that the Christ makes upon us, at least that is one of the major things I take from her book.

Human Universals -- Donald E. Brown
Brown, an anthropologist, is one who makes the case for transcendent human universals. This book is a useful exploration of these.

Why Love Matters -- Sue Gerhardt
Gerhardt explores how and why love is vital for proper child development.