culture. ish. page two

The current hot topic of justice is the subject of David Batstone's "Not for Sale." Offering detailed accounts of slavery found in the United States and in outside countries, the words flowing from the pages touch close to home. This is not an easy read. Although it is intriguing and heart wrenching, it is also scary, holding stories of which we would rather claim ignorance.

The official book of the Amazing Change campaign, this book both challenges and offers hope. Batstone skillfully networks together the different abolitionist efforts such as International Justice Mission and Free the Slaves, showing that this is a joint effort that needs more energy. He writes with passion and high expectations as he challenges readers to become abolitionists, a vocation that he believes still continues. This book tells stories of college students who have made successful efforts towards abolition.

Read this book. I challenge you to read it and to not feel a fire burn inside of you as you read of children soldiers in Uganda, of little girls being enslaved, of women continually tricked into prostitution. My hope is that after reading "Not for Sale" you will be unwilling to except the sight of injustice without digging past the surface.

Labels: books, david batstone, number twenty-three, respond, sk

I am Dutch and a Calvinist (more specifically a neo-Calvinist). The obligatory joke here is that God decided this before the beginning of the world. Words like "Calvinism" make people feel uncomfortable; people are suddenly confronted with theological conversations that seem to mean everything and nothing at the same time. Lucky for us, in contemporary times getting burned at the stake for small distinctions is unlikely. But we also shouldn't be lazy when it comes to knowing what we believe about the "ultimate things."

Mouw takes his book title from a scene from the Paul Schrader film, Hardcore. This film focuses on a Dutch Reformed man from Grand Rapids who goes to LA in search of his daughter, who has run away while attending a Christian youth conference. He ends up in the Las Vegas airport with a prostitute who has a lead on where his daughter might be. They have a brief conversation about their beliefs in which he can only manage to say that he believes in TULIP—the five points of Calvinism. The film suggests that in the emerging postmodern world, TULIP is a shabby antique of a theology.

Mouw has written this small book (127 pages) to show that the Calvinist heritage does indeed speak to a diverse and pluralistic culture. Using clear and concise language, he gives a brief explanation of the five points of Calvinism, and then goes on to apply them to contemporary conversations about God's sovereignty, the basis for cultural renewal and evangelism. Mouw is always reiterating the need for humility and compassion along side of conviction, in order to change the stereotype of Calvinism as an arrogant view that can be used as a pedestal and hammer—or in the case of South Africa, apartheid. For all of its downsides, Mouw also points out the valuable contributions that Calvinism has made to thoughtful Christianity, and a Christian engagement with culture and the public sphere.

I recommend reading this book, you might be surprised to find that God had you listed a Calvinist the whole time.

Labels: books, gpv, number twenty, richard mouw

In his latest novel, Dave Eggers undertakes a bold task, presenting a lightly fictionalized account of Sudanese refuge Valentino Achak Deng. Fortunately, Eggers proves himself to be up to the task.

Deng’s wild, tragic journey across Sudan and into refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya is framed around a tale of suffering induced in the one place Deng should allegedly feel safe--the United States. He tells his life story to the audience while lying on the floor of his own apartment, bound and gagged by robbers claiming to teach him a valuable lesson.

The stories of Deng’s hardships in both his native Africa and in America become a compelling--if emotionally draining--yarn in Eggers’ hands. He manages to mix in a measure of lightness into the heavy meditations on death and torment, keeping the book from becoming unbearable.

Eggers successfully presents a picture of the very real suffering of individuals in war-torn Sudan, and he does it without hitting a strident or preachy note. His honesty and earnestness give this novelized autobiography an unimpeachably authoritative voice. “Read this” isn’t quite strong enough a request.

Labels: books, dave eggers, nc, number twenty

Nick Hornby--author of High Fidelity, About a Boy and Fever Pitch--likes to read. Hornby likes to read so much that he writes about it monthly in the Believer, a literary magazine released by publishing house McSweeney's.

Housekeeping vs. the Dirt is a collection of 14 book review columns. Each month, Hornby lists the books he bought and the books he read. He may not read the same books he bought that month; in fact, he may not ever read some of the books he bought. The Believer staff also told Hornby avoid negative comments about the books; a madcap writer at heart, he manages to find ways around this.

The reviews don't stick to any format; he says what he wants, when he wants, how he wants. He's frequently funny, usually insightful, and possesses an eclectic taste in books. He spent one month reading as much Truman Capote as he could; he spent another trying to figure out why he can't understand science fiction; he spent another being freaked out by the Motley Crue biography the Dirt. Hornby makes it an entertaining read, but also succeeds in making you want to read what he's reading.

Labels: books, jp, nick hornby, number nineteen

“Music allows emotionally warped people to communicate by bombarding each other with pitiful cultural artifacts hat in a saner world would be forgotten before they ever happened.” Rob Sheffield is a man for whom music is almost everything; including the only connection he has left with his now deceased wife. Love is a Mix Tape is his way of dealing with his life, providing some fascinating insights about the nature of love and its relation to music along the way.

Sheffield’s book is structured around mix tapes, each chapter opening with the play list of a tape made by him or his wife. The chapter that follows is full of ruminations that were kick-started in his mind by that particular tape. His writing is warm and personal, inviting the reader into the world of his reminisces.

In its tracing of his relationship with his wife from the day they met until the day she died, the book takes an inevitable turn in to the melancholy without being dark or depressing. Despite his past experiences, Sheffield is a man who believes in love and in music, and he has an optimism and confidence lacking in so many memoirs of personal pain. Sheffield concludes that love is a mix tape--sometimes it’s good, sometimes bad, but always worth the effort.

Labels: books, nc, number eighteen, rob sheffield

Cormac McCarthy never specifies what turns the world to ashes in the Road. Nor does he need to; cities are reduced to slag, carbonized forests shudder in cinder-flecked wind, and very little life--plant, animal, human--remains. So why would the why or how matter?

The Road centers on a nameless father and his young son as they search for warmer weather and less dangerous surroundings. The latter is especially difficult, as rover packs of marauders are more interested in cannibalism than discourse. It's a grim, bleak setting for a novel, but that only emphasizes the selfless love the father and son share for one another. Paraphrasing Dostoevsky, the relentless darkness of the setting just makes the beauty more clear.

McCarthy's gorgeous, sparse narrative clings to the skeletal plot. The father and son spend much of the novel tired, hungry and cold. Searches for food never yield much, encounters with the remains of humankind are mortifying, and the bitter winter winds continue to follow the man and the boy coastward. Through haunting vignettes, McCarthy elevates the despair until it's shy of overwhelming; the parent and child's devotion to each other, though, always acts as a buffer before it becomes unbearable.

I can't relate the paradoxical nature of the book enough--it's harsh, brutal, but simultaneously moving and unbelievably humane. McCarthy is a master of brief, clipped sentences that give just enough flavor to convince you how absolutely dire the father and son's situation is. The world is a burnt husk. Plants will not grow. Canned food is increasingly hard to find, and fresh food is a decade-old dream. The child's mother took her own life because of her anguish. The father carries a revolver with two rounds left in the cylinder; they may be for protection, they may not be. But their shortcomings aside, the child possesses a luminous faith in the eternal, and the father a marked appreciation for the small things--fresh apples, beach breeze through his wife's gauzy dress--that are easily taken for granted.

Labels: books, cormac mccarthy, jp

In his book, World War Z, Max Brooks establishes an outbreak of the shambling undead as an allegory for all matter of contemporary ills. However, far from being as stilted as that sentence makes it sound, Brooks work manages to be personable and poignant, but never preachy.

The subtitle of this work is “An Oral History of the Zombie War.” Brooks’ usage of fictionalized interviews is a fascinating technique, and keeps the story from dragging along and getting mired in the clichés of the oft-revisited zombie genre.

His interviews manage to push across some very interesting points about the pettiness of humanity, and the horrifying reality of our inability to save ourselves. But far from being a gloomy deconstruction of human nature, Brooks leaves some hope mankind.

Labels: books, max brooks, nc