Summer Reading Club Update

My week has been busy and I haven't finished any books since last week. But I have started two and come close to finishing a third. The one I am almost finished with is Worlds of Honor. This is five short stories based around David Weber's Honor Harrington stories. There were four different authors and the stories were fairly different. Four of the five stories were about treecats. Treecats are a sentient species in the series. The treecat stories were the ones that really brought you in and made you intersted in the universe that David Weber has created.

The first book I started this week is the last of a trilogy. The Sharing Knife is a fantasy book. It is about two characters who met and were married in the first two books. One is a Lakewalker, historical protectors of humanity, that are often misunderstood and marginalized because of the work that they do, and the secrecy that they hold around their society. The other is a Farmer, the term for everyone that is not a Lakewalker (from the Lakewalker's perspective). Once they were married they were pretty much rejected by both of their families. This book is about their struggle to find a new way, a way to introduce their world to one another and help each of their societies to honor and trust them for what they do.

The second book isn't really a book, it is a journal put out by ACT3 (Advancing the Christian Tradition into the Third Millinium). They don't put out the journals anymore, but I have a couple of old ones that I am working through. I read one on prayer a month or two ago and this one is based on the work of NT Wright. I talked about NT Wright in my last summer reading club entry so I won't revisit him here. But I may do more once I finish the journal.

Summer Reading Club

Mark Lee of Third Day fame has started his summer reading club on his blog. Instructions are that we are supposed to talk about the last two books we read. I have a bad habit of usually reading at least three books at any one time. I listen to one from Audible.com, read one on my phone (my preferred reading device) and read on paper book because I need something to do while I am taking off and landing while I fly. I haven't been flying that much lately so I haven't finished a paperbook recently. But I am in process of reading two books. Jesus Creed by Scot McKnight and Surprised By Hope by NT Wright. Jesus Creed is a good book but I think he gets across pretty much everything that is important in the first third of the book. So I have only gotten about half way through and am kind of bogged down. Surprised by Hope is a bit heavy for occational reading. I really need to sit down and read it through. So I will probably wait until my beach trip before I really get back into that one.

I got into NT Wright after hearing a lot about him but never actually reading anything. So I listened to several lectures, then I listened to Simply Christian. I have heard it called Mere Chrisitianity for the postmodern world. I imagine that is a fairly good description, but I have never been able to get through Mere Christianity, so I can't say for sure. What I do know is that it is a Thick Book, not in pages, but in content. I am glad I listened. I seem to be able to process better when I listen. But after having listened to Simply Christian and started reading Suprised by Hope, I think that NT Wright is a better speaker than writer. Not to say he is a bad writer, but to say he is a great speaker. Very rarely do I hear a pastor that both has real content and a real pastoral concern for the audience to "get" the content. NT Wright exudes pastoral concern. I go to Andy Stanley's Church. And I think he is a great speaker, but he is giving life application to scripture. NT Wright is explaining scripture. There is a subtle but profound distinction.

Just so you don't think that I only read theology. The last book that I listened to was Seeress of Kell by David Eddings. It was the last of a 10 part fantasy series. I had read it as a teenager and decided to go back and read them all again. I read the first nine on my phone, but then listened to the last one. I should have just read them all on my phone. After reading that long I had the voices set in my head and the narator had a different conception of several of the characters and really detracted from the book.

On my phone the last book that I have read was Changer of Worlds. It is a miliary Science Fiction book. It is actually a group of short stories that are based in the world of Honor Harrington, a character from a series of books by David Weber. There is a book publisher, Baen, that has a library of free books. They ask their authors to contribute books, often the first book or two in a series. So I end up reading the first couple and then buying a bunch more. I probably would not otherwise have chosen to read so much military oriented Science Fiction. But I like supporting a book publisher that believes in both putting out material free so people can get an idea of what they like but also rejects all DRM. No books sold by Baen have any DRM on them!