Category Archives: Book

The Shack, by William Paul Young

The Shack by William Paul Young

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Look, you should read The Shack. I can’t say anymore, well that’s not true, there are a ton of things I can say about The Shack, but the main thing I’m going to say about it is that you should read it. It is not the best narrative I’ve ever seen in the world, but it depicts sort of the three faces of God, the Holy Trinity if you will, in such an interesting manner that it’s worth taking a look at. If you are kind of an armchair Christian who has never contemplated what it means for Jesus to absolve us of our sin beyond a simple understanding, and you’re still sitting around thinking that we are all doomed to hell and that our spiritual rebirth is not assured then you need to read The Shack, and you need to hear how they treat Mac as he suffers while coming to terms with the murder of his young child. He’s going through some serious grief, and it is not completely unlike some of the torture that we put ourselves through in general when terrible things happen. You can see his relationship develop with God in the form of Jesus and the Holy Spirit in addition to “Papa” which is an interesting way to to talk about the third aspect of the Holy Trinity.

The first I would say 20%, is rough and by the time you are getting to the shack and aspects of God are beginning to appear, it’s still rough and bleak. He’s going through his child being killed by a serial murderer and then coming to terms with his own belief in God while he’s there. In the early stages, you want to throw the book away. But if you can get through that, especially on audio, then you will take away a great perspective on perhaps how Jesus God, and the Holy Spirit may think of us.

If a book, especially one written as fiction can make you feel the love of God, this might be it.



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The Screaming Staircase (Lockwood & Co. #1), by Jonathan Stroud

The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The Netflix series impressed me based on a series of books by Jonathan Stroud called Lockwood and Co. about a group of teenagers who fight ghosts in England. I thought it was incredibly inventive. I think possibly the only problem with the series is that it seems to be limited to southern England. I was even more delighted after watching the series, which I meant to watch one at a time, but ended up binge-watching because it was that good. It was then that I found out it was based on a series of books, and I knew that had to be the next book series that I got into.

Thanks, Netflix, I suppose for going ahead and canceling this beautiful series before it had a chance. I like the soundtrack; I like the series; I think the casting was beautiful, and the books are great. I read the first book, The Screaming Staircase, and I liked it so much that I went and bought the rest of them and I’ve got them sitting on my virtual bedside table ready to go. I committed to reading the entire series, hoping that the show would include them, but then they canceled it. Way to go Netflix. I do not understand your current plans, because you seem to cancel all the good things that you brought so far. I don’t have any confidence anymore in a Netflix-produced show, because I don’t believe you’ll ever get to a 5th season or the ending of a character arc or pretty much anything.

So aside from the fact that I’m fairly disappointed that the Netflix show ended and interested because The Screaming Staircase took up the first half of the first season of the show, I like this book. When I got the rest of the books, it took me a little while and I came back and reread this one before I started in on any of the rest of them; I found it to be just as engaging as the first time I read it.

It’s got a great first-person voice in the form of Lucy, who keeps us interested in what’s going on. We get to join her as she grows up learning how to fight ghosts and knowing that all the kids have kind of potential end date to their usefulness as ghost hunters. Stroud has set us up with a situation, where people get older. They are less and less attuned to the supernatural, so their ability to deal with what the story calls the problem becomes diminished.

It’s a great read, and I am looking forward to the rest of the series of books that come behind it.



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Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning by Liz Cheney

Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning by Liz Cheney

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


On the day Donald J. Trump was supposed to hand the keys over to incoming President Biden peacefully, something horrible happened. I watched the horror play out from start to finish, live on television. I haven’t been this horrified since I watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center on a live feed from inside CNN Center in Atlanta.

He’s currently facing 91 counts over four criminal indictments, which he’s successfully prolonging court dates for, and he still seems like he’s about to clinch the Republican nomination. I think it’s so sad.

Cheney led US Representatives in an investigation. They presented the results in public hearings. I watched these as well. The book essentially runs through the committee findings chapter by hearing. It’s a straightforward, sober, mostly Republican-led effort, and yet he’s still their front-runner. I just don’t understand.

Linked below are video recordings of the hearings if you’d rather bypass the book and just see it for yourself.

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January 6th Committee Public Hearings Playlist on YouTube

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Hexagonal Phase: And Another Thing… The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Quintessential Phase by Eoin Colfer

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Hexagonal Phase: And Another Thing… The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Quintessential Phase by Eoin Colfer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Dirk Maggs beautifully adapted this dramatized “radio show” from Colfer’s novel And Another Thing… as the 6th installment in Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series.

This is a finishing piece to cap off the Hitchhiker’s Guide series after Mostly Harmless, Douglas Adam’s last entry in the story, which left us on a dark note. In Adam’s original end, we are left with the conviction that everyone is dead. I saw an interview with Adams where he expressed regret that the series ended so darkly and that he intended to add a better ending eventually, which unfortunately he wasn’t able to provide.

It also reunites many of the original cast members from both the radio shows and a short-run television series from 1981, including two different Trillians, and workable reasons for that. It’s a beautifully blended cast of old and new.

This brings together just about everything you want to know about what happens to each character. Does Trillian run off with the best and sulking in the universe? Does Arthur ever find Fenchurch again? Whatever happened to Zaphod Beeblebrox’s other head? What will be Random’s legacy as former President of the Galactic government? These are only a few of the great mysteries you will uncover in this edition of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

An important note to anyone reading my thoughts on books or dramatic audio like this is that I make zero distinctions between paper, ebook, or audiobook. The media used does not matter because the process the brain goes through to interpret the information is the same.



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The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The movies, at least the ones that I saw, were good. Not great, but good. The kids were too old. The Disney+ series, I quite liked a lot, and it made me interested in reading the book again. I’ve had the book in and out of my reading list for quite a long time. I want to like this story. I think the idea is solid, and I think that the concepts and situations are all good.

My major problem with it is that to me, it’s a snooze fest, but also exactly the kind of book I’m supposed to love. Moderately disconcerting.

I don’t like my opinion, but I am determined to give it the benefit of the doubt. I’ve already got book two set aside, but I don’t know if I feel the need to read it before the second season of the Disney+ series (which I hear is already moving forward) comes up. I think that somehow seeing that, might be what inspires me to want to read the second book. I just don’t feel any urgency to get into the next one, and that’s kind of bugging me. Part of my issue is the first-person point-of-view. Not that it’s Percy, but I’m banking on his voice, sounding better as he grows older. Despite all the god-like powers he has, his voice is that of a whiny kid.

I also resent (lightly) the crack in chapter 10 about the furies having Southern accents from “somewhere farther south than Georgia.” I’m from Georgia, from Atlanta. We from that region have an incredibly distinctive, yet neutral accent. It’s a strange bubble to come from. I felt it was a slightly New Yorker elitist line, and it made me feel like the writer thinks people from the South are monsters. Probably unintentional, but it made me less inclined to root for Percy if this is his real opinion. He also seems inclined to dismiss overweight people. I imagine I will write and put into a book something that unintentionally makes someone else feel the same way. I hope not, but it’s probably an eventual truth, that I’d like to avoid.

Is it bad that I think Hades should have killed Percy and the other kids, then appointed his skeleton to lead his army and taken the bolt for himself?

My books are still nothing compared to the success of this one, but it still seems like this is a lesson in how I should strengthen my characters.



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It, by Stephen King

It by Stephen King

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


It, a third-person singular pronoun, takes a lot of responsibility as the entire title of Stephen King’s 1985 doorstop novel. These days, it’s a story that is widely known. Kids in the 1950s in the book it’s 1958, fight a shape-shifting monster that reverts to the shape of a clown when it can’t scare the kids. And then in 1985, all the kids return to their hometown to fight the monster again, this time as adults. When the way you beat the monster in the first place, is essentially an extension of a child’s imagination and play, the very idea that they can come back at all to find it again is almost out of the question. Mike Hanlon knows this, and even though he knows he will probably get some of his friends killed, he calls them all back.

It is a story of intense friendship and the bonds that kids can make and honor as adults. I was going to say I don’t know about friends from when I was 12 or 13 as the kids are in the book, but that is not true. Online, I still have friends from that age who, if I had a strange contract with, to come back and try to kill a monster that was haunting Doraville, GA, I probably would return to help them.

I read the book for the first time when I was the age of the kids. And I’ve read it several times since then, including when I was the age of the adults in the book. Now that I’m 50 I have another perspective on it. Each time I read this book something new pops out. Details emerge, parts of the story get clearer and clearer, and overall I think I enjoy it more each time I go back to dip into it again.

There are a certain number of aspects of the book that would not fly today. And that’s true but overall, if you’re interested in seeing a story where good friends connect in a very meaningful way, It is your book.



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