What Brings a Reviewer Joy

September 22, 2020September 22, 2020 / rtrube54 / 2 Comments

I seem to be getting these more often. Requests from an aspiring author to review their book. I just responded to one. I also interact a good deal with authors, publicists, and publishers. There are some things that bring joy to this task.

When the author does their homework and looks at what I review and helps me identify why their book fits my interests. One of the best books I’ve reviewed from an author contact reflected this. She figured out I liked local authors and regional works in the vein of Wendell Berry’s fiction. In most other cases, I turn the author down.
I love to review books from real friends when the book is a work of quality–well-written about things that matter, fiction or non-fiction. It is fun to bring recognition to their work.
It is a joy when a publicist follows what you’ve reviewed and suggests books from their publishing house in a similar vein.
On some days, it is a joy just to get an answer to a request for a review book. Some larger publishers are very good about this. Some small publishers that need to be good at this just aren’t.
What all this gets at is that one likes to be treated with respect. I’ve done this for seven years, built an audience, put thought into my requests, providing information about my platform and interests in the book. In my case I do it for the love of books, and getting the word out about good ones.
I like getting physical books. If the cover is striking or I’ve been looking forward to getting it, I’ll snap a picture of it and post it on social media. I can’t do that with e-books. On social media, a picture of the actual book just looks better and allows me to promote it more than once. I find it easier to review physical books as well.
I don’t expect to be thanked by the author. Reviewing ethically is a bit of an arms-length task. But I do take joy when an author writes to say I represented their book well and accurately. I try hard to do that because I respect the work of writing and re-writing and re-re-writing that goes into a book. I will say that when I have a pleasurable interaction with an author whose work I’ve liked, I’m more inclined to review their next book.
It is a pleasure to come across a book that is well-written and has a degree of originality–it isn’t a rehash of things you’ve read before with a different cover. It is a joy to come across a new author who does that. It doesn’t happen very often.
Above all, I always enjoy learning that someone who has read one of my reviews acquired, read, and enjoyed the book, and shares with me what it meant to them.

Reviewing does involve a certain amount of work, from scanning catalogues and publications to identify books, responding to queries, actually reading the book (I always read it through, sometimes more than once), writing and editing the review, posting it (I post in multiple places with a reach of over 12,000–without shares), and interacting with comments, sometimes providing more information about the book. Mostly, I do it for the intrinsic satisfaction. But authors, publicists, publishers, and readers can greatly add to the joy, as they often do. Mostly, it just comes down to a little respect. Aretha was right.

Sharing What Gives You Joy

January 23, 2019January 23, 2019 / rtrube54 / 3 Comments

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One of the memes doing the rounds on the internet in the wake of Marie Kondo’s video.

Bookish circles around the internet have been buzzing about the Marie Kondo video about tidying up your books, suggesting you identify the 30 books that give you joy, and dispose of the rest. There has been huge pushback among bibliophiles. One I know said “all my books give me joy!” Another said they had more than 30 books just on their nightstand. I think for some of us, a booklined wall (or walls) brings a feeling of safety. When I imagine a “safe place,” the first image that comes to mind is a book-lined library with a fireplace and rich and comfortable leather furniture.

At the same time many of us have far too much clutter in our lives. I’ve also recognized that a certain amount of de-accumulating of books is necessary at this stage of my life and I regularly donate, re-sell, and gift books, and still truly have more than I need–and they keep coming in!

As I’ve reflected on this idea of keeping books that give us joy, I have found that a corollary is giving books that give us joy, and that giving may even be a deeper source of joy than the books around us. It is interesting that we are encouraged to dispose of the books that don’t give us joy (although they may for someone else). Might a more meaningful gift be to share a book that has given us joy? In some cases, we may end up acquiring another copy, particularly if the book is one we want to revisit!

There was an article I read yesterday about physician burnout and how reading helps doctors replenish the emotional tank. We have a primary care doc who we really like, and, over the years, I’ve gotten a sense for the books he likes and I periodically bring one in when I have an appointment. Little did I realize that I might be helping avert burnout, but sharing joy may amount to the same thing.

I take for granted the ease with which I acquire books. Through interactions on this blog and on Facebook, I’ve discovered that this is not the case in many parts of the world, or even in some parts of our own society. This has led me to begin exploring various ways to respond including donations of theological books. One place I’ve found that accepts scholarly theological works published after 1980 is the Theological Book Network that has shipped books to 1400 schools in the global south.

Prisons are another place often in need of books. The American Library Association publishes a list of secular organizations that accept donations of books. Among Christian ministries, Christian Library International serves over 1,000 prison facilities in the US.

Of course, one of the simplest things we can do is ask the question as we read a book that we really like is to ask who else would like it. One of the delights in sharing books is that when our friend has read the book, we can talk about it, and it adds to the things we share in common.

Of course, there are a number of other ways to share books and bring joy to others. Joshua Becker at Becoming Minimalist has a great list of twenty places to donate books. He thinks of all the places I know of and many more. Often, it is simply a matter of collecting books in a box and hauling them to a nearby local location. Others provide help in preparing books for shipment.

What I’m proposing is that a joyful life is a giving life. As joy-giving as great books are, finding ways to share those books offers the chance to enhance that joy for ourselves and to bring joy, knowledge, diversion and all the things we love about our books to others. That, it seems to me, is the prize beyond book lined walls and tidy shelves.

Thinking and Believing

July 10, 2017July 10, 2017 / rtrube54 / 4 Comments

Caravaggio_-_The_Incredulity_of_Saint_Thomas

The Incredulity of St. Thomas by Caravaggio. Public Domain

I help people discover how it is possible to both think and believe.

This is often what I say when people ask me what I do. I work in a Christian collegiate ministry with graduate students and university faculty. I say this because it is not obvious either inside the church or inside the university that one person may do both.

In the university world, it is often thought that if one is serious about thinking, that this rules out believing. One study, by sociologist Elaine Ecklund, found that only 36 percent of university professors still claim some form of belief in God whereas 90 percent of the American public does. Sometimes this has to do with the perceived conflict between science and faith, most often due to the evolution wars in this country. Yet there are leading biologists like Francis Collins, who led the effort to map the human genome, for whom this has never been a problem. Sometimes this is a consequence of what I call, “stupid things done in Jesus name.” For some, the wounds they have experienced at the hands of Christians are serious. And sometimes, I’ve met people who simply do not want there to be a God.

I also find that some really do not think authentic faith has room for authentic questions. And yet questions are at the heart of what a university does. Jesus loved questions. He loved it when his disciples asked him questions. And he probably asked more questions than anyone in the New Testament. He even asked questions in response to questions! This runs so contrary to the idea that a person who believes has lots of answers and lots of certainty. For me, it is much more the case of finding someone who I can really trust with my questions, and who often uses questions to transform me and my outlook on the world, if I am patient and persistent enough with them.

Sadly, I’ve often found the church to equally be a place where, if one is serious about belief, it means that one must rule out much of what some people think. Often it comes in the form of some conflict with what we understand the Bible to be saying. Most often, I’ve found the conflict to be apparent rather than real, more often the result of trying to make the Bible answer questions its’ writers didn’t intend to answer. Sometimes there are real conflicts, but then there are also real anomalies in the data of any field, and the worst thing you can do is force a solution, as much as you’d like to “neaten” things up. And sometimes, the conflict is really one between cultural ways of life in society and the counter-cultural life of God’s people. Here, it seems, the answer is to not simply ask what but why–to understand the reasons behind a different way of living.

I think it is equally the case here that people struggle with the idea that an authentic life of faith does not have room for questions. Yet in the gospels, I see that faith is acting on what one does know about God or Christ, even while asking about what one does not know. After all, none of us gets to one hundred percent certainty about anything. We live and act on knowledge about which we have far less than 100 percent certainty all the time.

To the contrary of what some think, I am convinced that the life of faith may actually open up the life of thought and research. First of all, at the heart of the formative practices of Christian faith is the practice of attentiveness, first of all to God, but also to one’s own life, one’s neighbor, and one’s world. Often, attentiveness is the seedbed in which the curiosity that leads to good questions grows. And good questions are at the heart of good research. Don’t get me wrong. I know lots of people who are not believers who are attentive and ask good questions. I’m simply saying that the attentive life that flows from faith prepares us to be attentive, whether in the lab or the art studio, or when we are studying a musical score or a balance sheet or statistical table.

I could go on. The conviction that we worship and follow the one who is Truth ought make us dogged in the pursuit of truth, because we really believe it is out there, and isn’t just a masquerade for who has power. The paradoxes of the faith–the incarnation, the Trinity, humans as the imago dei and yet as finite and fallen–leads, I believe to a flexibility or suppleness in thinking that is open to the answer being “both this and this” rather than an oppositional binary. Certainly, the belief in a Creator who thinks (the ultimate, it seems to me, reconciliation of believing and thinking), gives a powerful rationale for hypothesizing theories, and searching for lawful order in the cosmos, and even for the power of mathematics to map onto the physical world.

At the end of the day, however, what I am about is not an argument about whether it is possible to think and believe. Rather, what I am about is deeply desiring that my friends engaged in the “heavy lifting” of academic or professional life are able to live with this deep sense that the joy they experience in the joining of prayerful pursuit of knowledge and attentive inquiry, the wonder of those “aha” moments, is the pleasure of the Creator upon them, for which they were made.

St Irenaeus wrote:

The glory of God is man fully alive; moreover man’s life is the vision of god: if God’s revelation through creation has already obtained life for all the beings that dwell on earth, how much more will the Word’s manifestation of the Father obtain life for those who see God.”

My longing? Human beings fully alive discovering in the creation of God the glory of God, bringing thought and belief together. That is joy indeed.

Review: Called to Be Saints: An Invitation to Christian Maturity

September 1, 2014September 1, 2014 / rtrube54 / 4 Comments

Called to Be Saints: An Invitation to Christian Maturity by Gordon T. Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book might change your thinking about “sainthood”. Sometimes, we conceive saints as these unworldly, serious, ascetic, and somewhat odd creatures. Gordon Smith would propose instead that being a saint is something to which all of us are called and what this means is growth into Christian maturity–a kind of perfection of holiness that isn’t perfectionism but rather a kind of completeness or wholeness of life.

This is especially important for many evangelicals, who may excel at seeing people come to faith but have little idea of how to direct them into becoming holy (or sanctified, a word drawn from the same root as saint–in other words, saintified). Most often, since we do the crisis experience of conversion so well, we simply propose additional crisis experiences. Smith proposes a different route.

Smith begins with what he sees as the essence of the Christian life, which is union with Christ. To be in Christ is to be united with Christ through his Spirit, which is a profoundly humbling thing that promotes our dependence upon Christ, our focus on the person and work of Christ, and our Spirit-enabled obedience of faith. In a later appendix, Smith applies this to the scholarly life, which is a life grounded in prayerful dependence upon Christ and illumined by Christ.

Smith then talks about four expressions of holiness that might surprise you. The first of these is wisdom, the practical understanding and knowledge of how to live well in the fear of the Lord. This can be expressed as having the mind of Christ, of seeing all of life through the lenses of creation, fall, and Christ’s redemptive work. Wisdom that understands the cross understands suffering in light of the cross.

The second expression of holiness is vocational holiness. By this, Smith means a life of good work that flows out of a sense of being called both into union with Christ, and into the world. Vocational holiness understands our agency in the world as fallen but redeemed image-bearers of God. It involves self-understanding of our temperament, skills, gifts and situation and lives in hopeful realism throughout the seasons of one’s life.

The third expression of holiness is social holiness expressed in our love for others in the communities to which we are called. This will find expression in radical hospitality where we welcome each other as we have been welcomed in Christ, forbearance, forgiveness and reconciliation, and in generous service to others. All of these are formed in the worship, teaching, and witness of our churches.

Finally, and surprisingly, Smith speaks of joyful holiness–the ordering of our emotional lives around our hope in Christ. He sees these particularly worked out in the practices of worship, friendship, and sabbath. This last is especially radical because in sabbath, we trust that while we must rest God doesn’t and his work is prior to and over ours.

The book concludes with two extended appendices, one addressed to applying these truths to the life of the church, and the other to the life of the academy, particularly, but not exclusively the Christian university and seminary.

I came away from this book with a different rubric for thinking about Christian maturity that is neither obsessed with sin nor activity, but rather in the kind of person we become in union with Christ–wise, called, loving, and joyful. That is a kind of “sainthood” that seems quite attractive, and one to which all, and not simply some “spiritual elite”, might aspire.

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Review: A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C. S. Lewis

December 22, 2013December 22, 2013 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C. S. Lewis by Devin Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Why of all the biographies of C.S. Lewis, including his own Surprised By Joy, should you read this biography? That’s a fair question but rather than try to answer that outright, I will tell you what I liked about this particular biography.

First, it is a sympathetic biography without being a hagiography. Brown accepts Lewis on his own terms while also recognizing his faults and foibles–particularly his priggishness as a young scholar prior to his conversion. The only place where this might be open to criticism is on the subject of his relationship with Mrs. Moore. Some might think he handled Lewis’s relationship with his war-time friend’s mother with kid gloves. I’d say he was probably being circumspect with regard to matters open to speculation.

Second, this is a good work of scholarship, which exposes the reader not only to writings they would already know, but also to his correspondence, some of which has only recently been released. We hear Lewis in his own words and see the care with which he writes to friends and total strangers. And Brown does all this in a book of modest length.

Third, Brown explores a motif of Lewis’s life, his ideas about Joy throughout his life. One sees a person who not only discovered Joy as a signpost to greater realities, but also one who tremendously enjoyed his life–his scholarship, his friends, his wife, appropriately enough named Joy, and even his last years and the anticipation of his own passing. We follow Lewis from boyhood to his last years, which while punctuated by the death of his mother and of Joy, and a horrendous grammar school experience, was a journey into Joy.

Finally, I appreciated some of the new insights this book brought me into his conversion and the role played by friends like Hugo Dyson and J.R.R. Tolkien. It was also delightful to read Brown’s account of the Inklings and the ways Lewis and Tolkien in particular encouraged each other in their writing projects–would we have the Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings otherwise? Likely not.

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