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All Is Grace: A Ragamuffin Memoir © 2011 David C. Cook 240 pages At the end of Kubric’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Commander David Bowman left the ship to explore a massive black monolith stationed between Jupiter and Io. This monolith represented mystery and higher intelligence in the universe. As he stared full into [...]

The Pastor: A Memoir © 2011 HarperOne 317 pages In my personal hierarchy of “Most Important Books I’ve Ever Read”, two always rise to the top: Mere Christianity (C. S. Lewis), and A Celebration of Discipline (Richard Foster). Everything else suffers by comparison . . . until now. Meet the most important book I’ve read [...]

The Confessions ©2001 (originally AD 397) Translation by Philip Burton Introduction by Robin Lane Fox Alfred A. Knopf li+370=421 pages The peril with reading classics is my insufficiency to write a proper review. As with The Imitation and Revelations of Divine Love, you’ll have to be content with my amateurish reflections instead. When I first [...]

J.R.R. Tolkien (Christian Encounters Series) © 2011 Thomas Nelson 144 pages J. R. R. Tolkien’s fame seems strangely limitless. His limited published output of only one children’s book, one three-part adult book, and a few scholarly works during his lifetime only add to the curiosity of his world-wide appeal. That is, at least, until you [...]

Time Lord: Sir Sandford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time ©2000 Alfred A. Knopf Canada 256 pages Have you ever imagined what life was like before time zones? Every village had their own time. Noon was when the sun stood directly overhead. New Year’s Eve was a wave of celebration that spread town-by-town across [...]

Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions © 2010 Zondervan 232 pages What happened to the millions of Holocaust victims immediately after their death? Did God consign them to eternal torture for not believing in his Son? If that question doesn’t bother you, then don’t [...]

So Great a Cloud of Witnesses: Profiles of 25 Christian “Greats” © 1993 Light and Life Press Canada 88 pages This slim volume (which I can’t find an Amazon link for) collects 25 small biographic sketches Shepherd wrote for Fellowship Magazine. Here are some of the people you’ll encounter: Francis of Assisi John Bunyan Charles [...]

Saint Francis (Christian Encounters Series) © 2010 Thomas Nelson 233 In Saint Francis, West successfully made life and times of a thirteenth-century saint come alive. I chose to review this book because I didn’t know much about Francis other than a few folktales and the hymn, “All Creatures of Our God and King”. It turns [...]

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: Travels Through My Childhood © 2006 Black Swan © 2007 403 pages This book chronicles the early years of The Thunderbolt Kid: Bryson’s childhood alter-ego who terrorized anyone who annoyed him. It’s Bryson at his absolute finest. Even though his childhood happened in the 50s, I had [...]

J.S. Bach –2 vols– © 1905 (French), 1908 (German), 1911 (English) Adam & Charles Black 428+498 = 926 pages If you have some classical music training and a serious love for Bach, then this book’s for you. I was surprised by this work. Before spotting it on the shelf of a second hand bookstore in [...]