Ron’s #25: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games is a perfect cross between the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, The Running Man. Am I the first to put this together?

I’ve been hearing great things about this book for about a year now. It’s quite popular with the high school crowd. Usually, I ignore all book recommendations from anyone under 25, but the premise of The Hunger Games sounding interesting: 24 teenagers and children fight to the death in a celebrated televised Olympics used to exert power in this dystopian society.  The main character is Katniss Everdeen, a 16-year-old hunter-gatherer who knows her way around a bow. Katniss volunteers to represent her district in the Hunger Games to protect her little sister, Prim.

There are lots of scenes of training, hiding in the bushes, and snapping bowstrings which keep this story moving. The ending has a mild twist, and the story ends to prepare for book two of this trilogy.

I liked reading this during vacation, but I’m not in any hurry to read books two or three. Something tells me that Katniss will survive in the end. My attention span may not.

Ron’s #24: Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl by N. D. Wilson

I had this book for about a year. It looked interesting, especially with the subtitle, “Wide-Eyed Wonder in God’s Spoken World.” It looked like a resulting work from the popularity of Blue Like Jazz by Don Miller. As I read it, I discovered that I was right. This felt like the same tone and genre as Miller’s book, and that isn’t a bad thing. Like Miller, Wilson is a great writer, crafting clever and original sentences about everyday things. As like Miller, Wilson thrusts his pondering and wondering as the main protagonists of the book.

A couple of aspects that I didn’t like: it was too stream-of-consciousness-y for my liking. It had a self-awareness that felt almost contrived, even in the midst of excellent prose.  Also, I question why authors use only their initials. It is clear from the story that N. D. does not go by N. D. in real life, so why do it on the book’s cover? Are you trying to make yourself sound mightier and more Lewis-esque for your audience? Your book is good, but not that good.

There’s a trailer for a documentary about the book just released. It looks great, and we will probably use it in an upcoming Faith & Film night. This short clip will give you a feeling of the book.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqcx9Ccht1I

Ron’s #23: Kingdom without Borders by Miriam Adeney

In preparing for our trip to Cambodia in August, our team is reading through a stack of books related to missions, and this is one of them. Of all the books, this is the one I looked forward to least. Reading a book on missions harkened me back to my Multnomah days, and I’d rather read something else. Even the subtitle sounded dull: “The Untold Story of Global Christianity.” I’m pleased to say that I was wrong.

Miriam Adeney, a professor at Seattle Pacific University, takes readers on a tour of Christians around the world, ones often under persecution for believing in Jesus. She highlights believers in China, Afghanistan, Iran, Philippines, India, Latin America, and in several African countries. In each, she offers stories of how the Gospel spreads in that culture, and gives a few stories of the believers there. The accounts are powerful, and they show two things: one, the Word of God goes forth in every tribe, tongue, and land; two, even the newest Christian in this book has more faith than I live like I do.

I really enjoyed this book because it offers me a picture of what God is doing outside of America. I am guilty of thinking that somehow America is the main sender of missionaries, and this book shows how Christians from all over the world are missionaries, often in their own culture and town. Adeney seems to be intentional in leaving out Americans in this story, not because we don’t send out workers to the harvest, but rather because we must see that God is doing a good work all over the world. Often, it is the American missionaries’ stories that are told and published. The subtitle now makes more sense.

There are some features of the writing that annoyed me and obstructed the clarity of her message. Adeney was uneven in the narratives and connected stories that did not need connecting. She also started chapters and major sections with dialogue from the middle of a conversation. It felt a bit gimmicky. She also has unnecessary section titles with cutesy names embedded in many paragraphs. These criticisms are minor in light of the entire book, and they go to show that God’s story will be told, regardless of the vehicle telling it.

Kingdom without Borders further opened my eyes and heart to Christians around the world and how they interact and witness to their kinsmen who are Hindus, Muslims, or Buddhists. It also raised my awareness of the persecuted church that still exists all over the globe. We take our religious freedom far too lightly with our air-conditioned buildings, PowerPoint sermons, and ample parking.

I highly recommend this book to help you see the movings of God in proclaiming the majesty of Jesus Christ in all the countries of the world. It showed me that

“Jesus’ church will be alive, blossoming in a million places in several thousand languages, “salting” the earth, lighting neighborhoods, blessing broken people and connecting them with the God who made them and loves them and can empower them to live with meaning and joy in this terrifying and beautiful world” (39).

Ron’s #22: Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

I love reading books by Nick Hornby. He has a perfectly blending of music, relationships, and witty dialogue. I’ve read many of his books, including High Fidelity and About a Boy. Both books were great, and the movies were excellent adaptations. After quitting Hornby’s young adult offering, Slam!, I decided to try again with Juliet, Naked.

Juliet, Naked is the story of Duncan, an obsessive fan of the fictitious singer-songwriter Tucker Crowe whose 80s record “Juliet” is respected as one of the top break-up albums of its time. After this masterpiece, Tucker Crowe disappeared into obscurity, leaving rabid fans like Duncan to assess, analyze, and pontificate on the whereabouts of Tucker Crowe. When a striped-down version of “Juliet” arrives in the mail, Duncan reaches euphoria and posts how this version he dubs “Juliet, Naked” is the pinnacle of Crowe’s genius. Other Crowe aficionados are impressed and envious at Duncan’s review.

One person who is not impressed is Annie, Duncan’s girlfriend. She posts a critical review of “Juliet, Naked” with Duncan’s condescending approval. Soon, Tucker Crowe himself contacts Annie to praise her review of this terrible record, and a relationship begins without Duncan’s knowledge. He is too busy organizing his bootleg CDs and speculating how many Tucker Crowes can dance on the head of a pin.

The novel examines the idea of celebrity and fandom; how do these two work together and how do they contradict each other? It discusses how Tucker Crowe is defined by those few middle-aged men with prodigious knowledge typing away on the Internet. Is it possible that Duncan knows more about Tucker Crowe than Tucker Crowe does? One of the most entertaining and poignant scenes is when Tucker and Duncan meet to discuss his music.

Hornby creates a real musician with a powerful record that does not exist. I found myself wishing I could listen to “Juliet,” especially the closing track, “You and Your Perfect Life.”  I suppose we all have those “Juliet” albums in our lives, records that mean more to us than they mean to the artists who created the works. Perhaps there will be a small conclave of middle-age men analyzing Nick Hornby and the book Juliet, Naked twenty years from now, loving it more than Hornby himself does. What will Nick have to say to them then?

Ron's #21: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby is one of those novels that you should have read in high school, but you probably didn’t. Even if you did, it is worth reading again as an adult to appreciate the message within. I love teaching this to 11^th graders, and overall they enjoy the story of this extended soap opera of the rich and not-so-famous.

Nick Carraway is friends with Jay Gatsby who chasing after Daisy who is married to Tom who is having an affair with Myrtle who is married to George. There are lavish parties, adulterous affairs, violence, mint juleps, uncut books, beautiful shirts, and my hands-down favorite of all-time literary symbol: a huge billboard over the “valley of ashes.” The eyes of T. J. Eckleberg watch over the sin and human depravity going to and fro from Long Island to New York City. This is not your run-of-the-mill dull tale to read in your English class about pompous Englishmen and puffy Victorian dresses. It speaks volumes of human strivings, sacrifice, sin, and propitiation.

Even if you haven’t read it, you probably know that The Great Gatsby is about the American Dream, best symbolized by the first glimpse that Nick has of Jay Gatsby: his arms extended to a distant green light. Gatsby, like all of us, reach and strive for our dreams, to be like the Platonic conception of ourselves. Unlike the Horatio Alger stories, this does not end with hope and success.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning ——

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

We all die on that “one fine morning,” but that doesn’t stop us from reaching out farther to that green light, Old Sport.

Ron’s #20: Feed by M. T. Anderson

Continuing my interest in the future of technology, Feed explores the topic via a young adult novel. A girl in my English class reviewed the book, and it sounded so good that I borrowed it from her.

Feed is set in the somewhat-near future, when the Internet is not longer an external connection to our computers and phones, but rather it is implanted directly into our brains. The Feed is always on and ready to be at our service, whether it is searching for the right word, planning a hotel, or buying a new jacket. The user merely needs to think about the search, and there it is. This may sound wonderful to some, but the problem is no one bothers to know anything anymore. People in this society are dumber than the dumbest teenager at the mall. Anderson captures the “dumbness” so well in these pages.

The story connects Titus, an average teenage boy, with Violet, a girl who has been homeschooled (not that type), as her father is a lover of language and is trying to preserve remnants of intellectual culture that is quickly dying away in favor of blasting advertisements or mere entertainment.  While we’ve seen a character like Violet in many movies and books—the oddball girl that the boys think is weird but attractive—she is still compelling, as she is a key to the world as it used to be, our world, before The Feed. Like most teenagers, she also wants to experience life and fun and love as well. When her feed begins to malfunction, how will it affect she and Titus’s relationship? Can they still stay connected when they are no longer connected?

M. T. Anderson created a powerful yet funny satire on our over-dependence on technology that is worth reading. It’s a cross between Blade Runner and Idiocracy. I only wonder if the message will be lost on the young audience. They may think it is a great idea to implant Google into our brains. With Apple’s new iCloud service announced today, this may soon be arriving.