Category Archives: books

Silence is a novel set in 17th century Japan.  The feudal system in Japan had welcomed missionaries for a few decades but had turned against the Christians, both foreign and Japanese, at that time.  The narrator is a missionary priest who sneaks into Japan during this time of persecution in search of a former teacher who was rumored to have apostacized.

For a translation, the prose is good.  It wasn’t difficult to read and captured my attention, two problems I’ve encountered with some modern translations.  The writing passes muster, but I wouldn’t read the book for it alone.  It’s worth reading because it deals in such a gripping and insightful way with the questions, “What is apostacy?” and “What does it mean to be a pastor?”  Every Christian ought to read it at some point in their lives.  It does contain accounts of violence, but they are not gratuitous, and it doesn’t dissuade me from recommending it, even for the faint at heart.  (10/10, borrowed from the library.)

I’ve never been all that interested in macroeconomics, but intrigued by the title, I gave Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher a try. It was a long read, but a good one, and I culled interesting insights from every chapter. Schumacher’s visionary simplicity with the largest elements of society were radical 30 years ago, but incredibly relevant, then and today.

A fair portion of the book is spent emphasizing the way our economy is unsustainable and how quickly we use up our natural resources. Schumacher also explains how little consideration was put towards pollution until it was too late. In the folksy way of a 60s radical, he speaks about the importance of the land in a way that is neither hollow nor flippant, but full of wisdom and grace.

“The whole point is to determine what constitutes progress.” What is progress? What should aid to the third world look like? These questions are where Schumacher particularly shines, explaining a need for intermediate technologies to improve the quality of life for everyone and not just investments which only improve the quality of life for the highest classes and leave the lower ones even more destitute.

No system or machinery or economic doctrine or theory stands on its own feet: it is invariably built on a metaphysical foundation, that is to say, upon man’s basic outlook on life, its meaning and its purpose. I have talked about the religion of economics, the idol worship of material possessions, of consumption and the so-called standard of living, and the fateful propensity that rejoices in the fact that ‘what were luxuries to our fathers have become necessities for us.’

When I read quotes like that one, I couldn’t help but think about what the economic implications of Christian thought are, and how few Americans I know, least of all me, embody them. (10/10, from the library.)

A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken is one of those books I’ve always heard great things about and never read. It’s of particular importance to a couple I know, which only served to deepen its mystique. I finally read it last week and it certainly met my expectations. I appreciated the integration of both the romantic and spiritual elements of the story, and enjoyed it far more than most autobiographies because the prose was better than most in that classification.

The beauty of the relationship remembered is breathtaking. Sometimes I wondered if everything really happened just that way, but we all reconstruct memories from time to time and even if it is partly fiction and partly fact, it’s nothing but the truth, as Pierce Pettis so aptly sang. The conversion story is also interesting as it captures the classic pattern of the modern coming-to-faith. I think it will help people in the future to understand the classic evangelism of the past.

A quick but thoughtful read. (8.5/10, from the bookshelf, acquired on paperbackswap)

I expected great things from Housekeeping and Marilynne Robinson did not disappoint. I read her second novel, Gilead, last year and thoroughly enjoyed it but Housekeeping surpassed it by its gratifying use of language and description. Robinson has an breathtaking ability to write in a way that is plain but wonderful, in the true sense of the word.

If you prefer novels with gripping plots, you might find Housekeeping plodding. It’s a coming of age story about two sisters, narrated by the older of the two, that centers on loneliness and loss, two centerpieces of the human condition. Despite its themes and dreary setting, I didn’t find it to be a depressing book, likely because of the thoughtful, interesting prose and the way the story drew me into Ruthie’s world and made me see things from her perspective as the very best novels do.

The exceptional beauty of this book restored my faith in contemporary literature and gave me hope that great fiction is still being written, but it wasn’t lofty or condescending. The sparse simplicity made me want to write, to use the English language, to edit and edit again until I could find a small bit of beauty in my labor and Marilynne Robinson has created on every page. (10/10, from the library.)