Review of The Gift of Story, by John Schu

The Gift of Story

Exploring the Affective Side of the Reading Life

by John Schu

Stenhouse Publishers, 2022. 170 pages.
Review written August 1, 2023, from my own copy, purchased via amazon.com
Starred Review

First, a disclaimer: John Schu is a librarian I’ve met and even was briefly on a committee with. He’s also the kind of person whom once you meet, you think of him as a friend. He has Mr. Rogers’ ability of focusing on the person he’s talking with, making you feel like he cares – and you can’t help but care back. So this is a review of a book by my friend and fellow librarian, and of course I’m going to love it.

That said, this is a wonderful book for people who love children’s books and want to influence children to love children’s books. It’s a book about Story, and the wonderful ways that Story touches and enriches our lives. The book is written mainly for those who work with kids in schools, teachers and librarians and staff, with many ways for connecting children with books they will love. Here’s how John sums it up in a note at the front:

I want you to know that this is a book of my heart. In it, I’ll share thoughts, recommendations, stories, and the interactions I’ve had with thousands and thousands and thousands of students and educators over the past twenty years. And, even as I write — without the energy of a live audience providing input, guiding the conversation, and filling the room and my heart with joy — I will imagine you are sitting beside me as we take this journey together, working tirelessly to create environments in which all children interact with teachers, teacher-librarians and administrators who read to them, booktalk with them, and view them not as labels but as individuals who need to be surrounded with authentic literature, given opportunities to discuss, debate, connect, laugh, and cry over stories — and experience buckets and buckets of love.

What is Story, anyway? John Schu has been pushing children’s books in schools for years, and so he has connections with hundreds of authors. He asked authors what Story is to them, and their answers appear throughout the book. In fact, he invites people to make their own #StoryIs statements, and you can find responses by searching the #StoryIs hashtag.

He sums up where he’s going at the end of the first chapter:

Stories affirm our experiences. They challenge our comfort zone. They give us space to hibernate and pull us out of our isolation when we need to be reminded we aren’t alone. They help us evolve. They feed our human existence. In the following chapters, we’ll explore how stories can change us, inspire us, connect us to others, answer our deepest questions, and help us heal. We’ll look at ways sharing our hearts through literacy can help us celebrate, tell, define, revise, and imagine our own stories and how experiencing other people’s stories can connect us through universal truths. And we’ll do all of this while shining particular light on the important role books and libraries in our communities play to help us connect across stories.

The chapters that follow focus on particular aspects of Story: Story as Healer, Story as Inspiration, Story as Clarifier, Story as Compassion, and Story as Connector. Each chapter talks about the topic, has a section “From the Brain to the Heart” talking about what it means in lives, a section “From the Heart to the Classroom” about getting the ideas into the classroom, a section bringing in other voices on the topic, including other librarians and teachers and authors, and many recent book recommendations that tie in with the theme. And of course the whole thing is peppered with authors’ #StoryIs quotations. At the end of every chapter, there’s a place to list your favorite titles for that chapter’s focus on Story.

I was reading this book on vacation and saw my sister who’s a school psychologist. She needs this book! In fact anyone who works with kids in schools needs this book. There are so many ideas of ways to bring books into your students’ lives, so many great children’s books introduced, and inspiring reminders of how you can touch and uplift students’ hearts.

Yes, it’s also fantastic for public librarians who work with kids. You’ll get a fantastic list of books to check out and recommend, and you, too, will get ideas for ways to connect books with readers and be inspired.

This book reminds me how lucky I am to do the important and wonderful job of connecting children with books that will touch their hearts.

johnschu.com
stenhouse.com

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Review of You Could Make This Place Beautiful, by Maggie Smith

You Could Make This Place Beautiful

A Memoir

by Maggie Smith

One Signal Publishers (Atria), 2023. 314 pages.
Review written July 18, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

Oh my goodness. This book was hard to read. But so evocative. So perfectly expressing something awful — what it’s like to go through divorce.

The book is a series of essays, vignettes, poems, thoughts — all about the time period after the author learned her husband was cheating on her.

But it’s not so simple as that. Not by a longshot.

And that’s what I loved about the book. Because, I, too, learned my husband was cheating on me. For me, it was Dalmatian hair on his socks, not a pine cone. And nothing, but nothing, was simple after that. I love the way she captures the oh-so-complicated emotions and thoughts and heart-pangs involved.

It also made me feel like some of the things I was slightly ashamed of — Oh, someone else did that, too!

For example, I didn’t tell my family and friends at first — because I didn’t want to hurt their relationship with him. (And that was a lonely, horrid, place to be.) I, too, went to counseling with my husband, where we didn’t talk about my husband seeing another woman, but about what I was doing wrong. For me, too, the hardest thing to forgive was when he moved to the other side of the world from our children, in order to get away from me. The second-guessing. The weird dreams. So much about her experiences reminded me of my own.

I very much liked the way she told the story in essentially a nonlinear way. Because I’ve tried to tell my story in linear ways, and it inevitably leaves so much out. Not that this includes everything, but I like the way it expresses the wounds within wounds, but also how it’s all tied up in someone you once loved with your whole heart and it’s tangled up in beautiful memories and what does your life mean now and all the bundle of questioning and pondering and trying to keep moving.

And I already loved Maggie Smith’s Keep Moving book. Her divorce happened many years after mine, and as thoroughly happy as I am with my life now — this will always still strike a chord.

Yes. It’s the story of the end of a marriage and moving on after it and somehow coping with parenting and adulting and making a living with a completely unexpected life — all beautifully told.

Thank you, Maggie Smith. This book is beautiful.

maggiesmith.substack.com
@MaggieSmithPoet
SimonandSchuster.com

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Review of Razing Hell, by Sharon L. Baker

Razing Hell

Rethinking Everything You’ve Been Taught about God’s Wrath and Judgment

by Sharon L. Baker

Westminster John Knox Press, 2010. 222 pages.
Review written July 3, 2023, from my own copy, ordered via amazon.com
Starred Review

For decades now, I’ve been collecting books on universalism. Razing Hell is a lovely example. The book is focused primarily on rethinking our views of hell, by looking at what the Bible says about it in the original languages, and checking how it matches the strong Bible message of a God of love.

I like Dr. Baker’s approach, because although she’s coming at it from deep scholarship (as evidenced by the list of sources in the Appendix), she makes the book accessible and uses the questions of actual students she’s known to elucidate these views. I also liked that she goes beyond presenting a new view of hell to talk about the aspects of theology that would affect, such as retributive vs. restorative justice and the purpose of the atonement. It’s all presented in a readable and accessible way, with the Appendix loaded full of references, both Scriptural and academic.

She presents a view of hell I found familiar from George MacDonald’s writings: She builds off the idea that God is a consuming fire. And then suggests that this fire is love — that will burn away what is evil — so will be painful for those who hold onto evil. She even imagined part of the pain of judgment may be an offender being confronted by the pain of all those they had hurt. She isn’t saying this image is necessarily exactly how things will go, but she does present a solid case that the purpose of hell is restorative justice, not retributive justice.

One small point that I don’t remember seeing in other books on universalism is that in the Bible, justice and violence are often presented as opposites:

First, in the biblical texts, justice is often opposed to violence. In Isaiah 5:7, God “expected justice [from Israel], but saw bloodshed” instead (NRSV). Isaiah 59:3-4 begins with the violent, wicked actions of the people, stating that “your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue utters wickedness. No one brings suit justly, no one goes to law honestly” (NRSV). Because of these unjust, violent actions “justice is far from [them]” (59:9). If we compare that passage to Isaiah 16:4-5, it indicates that once oppression and violence are gone, justice is established. From these verses we see that justice and violence have nothing in common. In other words, where there’s violence, justice is absent. We may even be able to say that justice and violence stand as opposites so that one cancels out the other. The absence of justice in acts of violence begs this question: If justice is not present in violence, how then can we conceive of a God who executes justice through violence, especially the eternal violence of hell as we have traditionally thought it?

She talks about how forgiveness fits into this picture of justice:

Reconciling justice is also transformational justice. It pierces the darkness of retributive violence with the grace of God and the message of peace through love, forgiveness, and reconciliation. to do justice is to love; to do justice is to forgive; to do justice is to reconcile; this is a chain reaction in which love forgives, forgiveness reconciles, and reconciliation restores — all characteristics of divine justice, God’s reconciling justice.

And here’s a crucial question that years ago got me started along the path of universalism:

But does the defeat of sin within the person take place only in the temporal realm, within time itself, while we live in this body? Why should it? If we are beings who live on after death, like the Bible seems to say, what makes us think that God limits the bestowing of eternal grace to one time period? Why can’t God extend the offer of grace, forgiveness, and reconciliation through Jesus even at judgment — when all will be laid bare, when all persons will see the extent of their sin and the extravagance of God’s love?

And later on, she asks similar questions, after referring to the parable of the workers in the field (where those who labored one hour got the same wages as those who worked all day, who were angry about it):

If God desires to continue the work of reconciliation up to the last second, how can we protest? A sermon I heard as a new Christian put forth one of my favorite images of God as a God of second chances, a God who never gives up on us, who pursues us like a hound of heaven, always offering opportunities for repentance and reconciliation. Why wouldn’t God offer that same invitation on that final day? Why would God’s work of salvation end just because someone’s body dies? The work of Jesus must still be effective after the end of time or even after time runs out.

And here are some broader questions, at the end of the chapter “The Fire, the Wicked, and the Redeemed”:

Which vision of hell most coheres with the God revealed in Jesus — the view of hell in which persons suffer for all eternity with no hope for reconciliation with God, or the view of hell in which persons understand the depth of their sins, take full responsibility for them, and reconcile not only with God, but also with their victims? Which view offers a more compassionate eschatology? Which view takes more seriously the extensive significance of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus? Which view most adequately and permanently exterminates evil? Can hell coexist with God’s kingdom of love?

And there’s more. She looks at specific Bible passages and the meaning of Greek words translated “hell” or “eternal,” among others.

Then I appreciated where she looks deeply at the Old Testament sacrificial system. It wasn’t about payment, but about cleansing and dedicating your life.

For the Hebrew people, blood was a symbol for life or the giving of life represented in the Old Testament sacrificial system. So when the priests sprinkled the blood on the altar, it symbolized the people giving their own lives up to God as living and holy sacrifices. The blood served as an outward symbol of an inward reality: the life of the worshiper given to God, set apart (the meaning of “holy”) for God’s purposes.

And then she lists many Old Testament scriptures, especially from the prophets, where they learn God is far more interested in their hearts than in their sacrifices.

We needed to see the message of the prophets, proclaiming that God rejected blood sacrifices, the formalism of worship without the heart to go with it, and the shedding of blood without the investment of a life given to God to back it up. I’ll reiterate for the sake of emphasis: God never intended for Israel to kill animals and pour their blood out on the altar as an exercise in itself. God hoped the people would catch on to the true meaning of the blood poured out and perform their external sacrifices as a symbol for the true internal sacrifice of their very lives set apart to God and for God.

And there’s lots more about atonement, about forgiveness, about the kingdom of God, about Jesus reconciling people to God — and what that all means in our lives now.

Jesus makes this clear to us in John 13:35. He says that all people will know we are his disciples . . . how? By preaching hellfire and brimstone? By throwing around threats of eternal punishment for those who reject Jesus? No! All people will know we are the disciples of Jesus by the love we have for one another. Through our love for others! The very nature of our reconciliation with God through Jesus makes us God’s agents, God’s ministers of reconciliation — not so that we can work to keep people out of hell, but so we can transform the world through reconciliation. The only way to get rid of enemies is not to throw them into an eternal hell, but to preach divine forgiveness and guide them to a life reconciled with God and others.

As with all other books on universalism that I’ve reviewed, please don’t imagine that my summary is a complete argument or contains all the important points. I hope this review piques some people’s curiosity and inspires them to read this book.

There’s a spectrum for books about universalism that ranges from super academic and full of footnotes, designed for biblical scholars, all the way to books written entirely for laypeople and that don’t use a lot of Scripture references to back up their points. This book is pretty squarely in the middle of that spectrum. Maybe a little on the academic side, because it does get into the weeds of other ramifications of universalism — but she puts the notes into an appendix to keep the analysis flowing.

Highly recommended, and I do hope this will motivate some of my blog readers to read this book.

wjkbooks.com

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Review of One Coin Found, by Emmy Kegler

One Coin Found

How God’s Love Stretches to the Margins

by Emmy Kegler

Fortress Press, 2019. 209 pages.
Review written June 4, 2023, from my own copy, purchased via amazon.com
Starred Review

What a beautiful book! I bought it years ago and meant to read it, but recently read something the author wrote in A Rhythm of Prayer, edited by Sarah Bessey, and was reminded that I’d been meaning to read it. So I took it on vacation and was thoroughly blessed by its words.

The book is the author’s life story and how she found grace and love from God even when some churches failed her.

Emmy grew up in church and felt called to be a preacher. But when she realized she was queer, that was an even bigger obstacle than being a woman. The story of how the Lord’s calling kept after her is a story that she compares to the parable of the woman who loses a coin and keeps searching until she finds it.

Also along the way, she teaches beautiful principles about interpreting Scripture which tied in well with a book I was also reading, Godbreathed, by Zack Hunt.

Here’s a beautiful passage in the introductory chapter, where she talks about the “Lost” chapter of the Bible, Luke 11, which has the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son:

What I think, my fellow second sons, is that we were told the truth. The story is for us. We are the prodigal son. But too we are lost and hungry sheep. We have gone unfed, walked without rest, been chased by wolves, and our friends and leaders did not see our pain. But God, in big and little ways, has donned a shepherd’s cloak and come running after us. God, in big and little ways, has clambered over rocks and climbed down cliffs. God has found us, hungrier and more hurt and terrified, and cradled us close to say: No matter why you left or where you went, you are mine.

We too are lost and dusty coins. We have gone unnoticed, rusted from others’ indifference, misspent and misused, and our friends and leaders did not see our neglect. But God, in big and little ways, has picked up a woman’s broom and swept every corner of creation. God, in big and little ways, has tucked up her skirts and flattened herself on the floor, dug through dust bunnies and checked every dress pocket. God has found us, dustier and rustier and without any luster, and held us up to the light to say: No matter how you rolled away or what corner you were dropped in, you are mine.

The book is more theology laced with memoir, and her writing is beautiful, and it builds to this conclusion that mirrors the beginning:

We are, beloved, the impossibilities of God. We have dared to believe the stories of Scripture. Not the verses easily slung like stones from a condemning hand, but the stories that are real, and make us real, and bring us home. We have faced near-insurmountable boundaries between us and God. We have had the treasured stories of Scripture torn from us by those too bound in fear to see the beauty of our witness. We have been pushed to the edges again and again, our voices silenced, our cries mocked. And every time, the love of God has gone out after us. God has put on callused feet and taken up a knobbly staff to crawl down crevices and call us back to pastures full of lush love, nourishing and sweet. God has taken up a broom and cleared each corner, untucked and retucked each sheet and quilt, turned over pitcher after pitcher to see where we have landed. And God has paced the flagstones of a farm porch, eyes always on the horizon, wondering and wanting, a seat still empty at the table, heaven incomplete until all the family is home.

We have been and are and will be found in such a myriad of ways, but always, always, always love is seeking us.

Dare to be found.

I highly recommend reading about Emmy Kegler’s journey, with its beautiful picture of what our faith can be.

emmykegler.com
fortresspress.com

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X + Y, by Eugenia Cheng

X + Y

A Mathematician’s Manifesto for Rethinking Gender

by Eugenia Cheng

Basic Books, 2020. 272 pages.
Review written May 9, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

I love this book so very much! And I’m so glad I finally got it read — had meant to ever since it came out. I’m going on vacation this week and decided to finish it before I left — and Wow! — it’s full of transformative concepts.

Now, if you’re not a math-lover like me, please don’t be put off by the fact that this book is written by a mathematician. She works with Category Theory, a branch of mathematics that doesn’t necessarily deal with numbers, but about relationships and how things interact with other things.

In this book, she uses category theory to take on gender. And wow! What a lovely job she does.

Now, she starts with something I related to completely — the lack of women in higher mathematics. I started a PhD program in math at UCLA immediately after college. I was one of only 5 women out of 120 new math graduate students that year. Three of the other women were in master’s programs, not doctoral — and I ended up dropping out a year and a quarter later with my Master’s. So I am very aware that there’s a gender disparity in mathematics.

The first part of the book looks at difficulties with even talking about gender disparities. She looks at problematic arguments about nature or nurture.

And then she takes us to another dimension. She takes the gendered dimension out of the discussion and defines some new terms.

We need new, ungendered language in order to separate character traits from gender and have less divisive conversations in which people don’t have to get defensive about “not all men” or “not all women” being a certain way. Because indeed men are not the same, and neither are women. Not all men are aggressive, competitive, risk-taking, and unempathetic. And even those who do behave in those ways might only do so because of social pressure and the idea, perpetuated by social norms, that this is how to be successful in society. When certain behavior is rewarded by society many people will strive to behave in those ways even if at some deeper level it makes them unhappy.

The ungendered language she comes up with are the terms “ingressive” and “congressive.” Ingressive behavior focuses on the individual, and congressive behavior focuses on the group. Here are her definitions:

ingressive: focusing on oneself over society and community, imposing on people more than taking others into account, emphasizing independence and individualism, more competitive and adversarial than collaborative, tending toward selective or single-track thought processes

congressive: focusing on society and community over self, taking others into account more than imposing on them, emphasizing interdependence and interconnectedness, more collaborative and cooperative than competitive, tending toward circumspect thought processes.

This is not a clean dichotomy even though some aspects sound like exact opposites of each other. It’s not a classification of people into two camps. It’s a way to evaluate behavior in a flexible and dynamic way to reflect the fact that people are flexible and dynamic day by day and also over the course of their lives, not fixed and rigid.

She goes on to talk about spaces that are more ingressive and spaces that are more congressive. Interesting to me, she left her position at a university and began a career teaching math at an art school. Yes, she found many more women at the art school, but she can go beyond gender and talk about how it’s much more set up as an ingressive space. And she’s happier working in that space.

She describes examples of other people, both women and men, who gave up more ingressive careers (after achieving success) for more congressive roles.

And she talks about how math education is set up to reward ingressive behavior, with lots of testing and competition. This was interesting to me, because at first I thought, oh, I must be mostly ingressive because I love competition, and really enjoyed math competitions when I was a student.

But then I think about my happy switch from teaching college math to becoming a librarian. I’ve said many times, “In the library, I still get to help people learn, but now I’m on their side! As an instructor, I had to test them, and I felt like their adversary. Now I get to show kids the fun side of math.” So I have to stand as another example of someone who turned out to be much, much happier in a more ingressive career path.

I was also fascinated by her ideas to make education – yes, even mathematics education — more congressive. She suspects that could attract more people to the field who might be turned off by the current more ingressive way it tends to be taught. I loved when she started elaborating on that idea:

Congressive math is what I have been teaching to art students for several years. I think it’s also what is introduced to children at the very beginning of school, when it’s all about play and exploration with blocks and toys and other things they can touch and feel. It comes back around to being like this at a research level, but by that time I think we’ve already put off far too many congressive people with the phase in between.

I think math should be congressive all the way through. We really don’t need to train people to be human calculators anymore, now that we have actual calculators with us more or less all the time (for example, on our phones). So math could be more congressive by being about exploration and processes. It could be more about ways of thinking than about knowledge.

I would like to see a non-cumulative curriculum so that each stage doesn’t depend on the previous stage. The traditional model is more like a series of hurdles that get higher and higher and are specially designed to weed people out at each level. Not only is this ingressive, it’s also counterproductive, as we are not weeding out the right people.

But I shouldn’t go on so much about math, because that was a side point. The really beautiful thing about this book was how it took gendered language out of discussions about our society. I suspect you could also use these ideas in discussions about race.

I believe that the new dimension of ingressive and congressive traits can help us overcome bias that can’t be addressed on the dimension of gender alone. I think this is how we can deal with implicit bias in the system that comes from our association of character with gender, and how we can deal with indirect bias that comes from favoring ingressive behavior. But I think it will also have an effect on explicit bias, as it is a way for everyone to escape one-dimensional gendered thinking in their heads and think more clearly about what contributions to society we want to see. With every individual who escapes that thinking, the hold of both implicit and explicit gender bias will be lessened.

And the book finishes up with a vision of what things could be like in a society that encourages congressive behavior — and offers tips on ways to be more congressive in your personal life and perhaps in your personal environment (such as her math classrooms in art school). There’s even a helpful appendix at the back that demonstrates how you can respond to personal attacks with congressive statements instead of ingressively attacking back.

Now I’ll admit, I was predisposed to love this book having been a woman working in the field of mathematics, even if it was at a lower level than Dr. Cheng. But I’m also delighted with and impressed by her ideas. May we work together, in our lives and in our communities, to make the world a more congressive place. I highly recommend this book, and would love to discuss it with others who have read it.

eugeniacheng.com
basicbooks.com

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Review of Godbreathed, by Zack Hunt

Godbreathed

What It Really Means for the Bible to be Divinely Inspired

by Zack Hunt

Herald Press, 2023. 188 pages.
Review written May 30, 2023, from my own copy purchased via amazon.com
Starred Review

Godbreathed is a book about inspiration and what that means when we’re talking about the Bible, but also what it means when we’re talking about ourselves.

Zack Hunt was brought up, as I was, revering the Bible and believing in its inerrancy. But he shows in this book what’s wrong with that and how Christians who worship the Bible end up worshiping their own interpretation of it.

Here are some thoughts I marked from the first chapter:

When we transform the Bible into the divine, or more accurately our interpretation of the Bible into “a biblical worldview,” we begin to focus on the story we think it tells, rather than the story we are being invited into. When we conclude we have the Bible figured out, we end up telling others where they belong instead of trying to figure out our own place within the story of the people of God. We begin to tell a new story of our own creation and we have become very bad storytellers. We tell stories about exclusion and damnation, oppression and misogyny, of condemnation of the poor and scapegoating the stranger, and we do it all in the name of God.

When we put bad stories in the mouth of God, we smother what the Hebrew Bible calls the ruach of God, the very breath of God — that is to say, the Spirit herself from blowing how and where she will and to and through whom she will. This sort of idolatry kills, sometimes physically, but always spiritually. It should come as no surprise then to see the Bible lose not just its place of authority in modern life, but also its relevance or appeal to anyone not already warming a pew on Sunday morning. After all, who would want to be part of a story that crushes your spirit with constant judgment and damnation?

But this is not a book primarily about tearing down beliefs. It’s also a look at how the Spirit moves in the living church today.

It is from this biblical rebirth that we can begin to reimagine divine inspiration not as a form of heavenly dictation, but a Spirit-infused, wholly saturated way of life that begets more life. This is the indwelling of the spirit in our lives, this inspiration, literally the in-Spirit-ing of our very being. Or as the Bible calls it, being godbreathed (2 Timothy 3:16).

This is by no means a book about throwing out the Bible. But the author looks at the Bible as a godbreathed book written by humans in specific places and times. This is an uplifting book challenging but also helping the reader to be moved by the Bible to live a life of love.

I can’t say it enough: you are godbreathed. You. The one reading these words right now. God breathed you into existence and wants you to find your story within the story of faith that has already been told and is being told all around you. This is the calling of all godbreathed things, whether that be the written word or flesh and bone — to be godbreathed, to be filled with the Spirit of God, to be filled with love and wonder and share that love and wonder with the rest of the world just as God first shared it with us. We cannot make any claim to believing the Bible is godbreathed if that belief in a godbreathed word doesn’t lead us to love our godbreathed neighbors just as God first loved us.

zackhunt.net
heraldpress.com

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Review of Everybody Wins, by James Wallis

Everybody Wins

Four Decades of the Greatest Board Games Ever Made

by James Wallis

Aconyte Books, 2022. 221 pages.
Review written May 4, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

I enjoyed this book so much! It looks at the recent history of the rise in popularity of tabletop games through the lens of the German award Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year), through its first 44 years of selecting winners.

The reason I loved this so much was that I lived in Germany from 1996 to 2006. At the time, before I’d even heard the term “Eurogames,” I discovered awesome games at the local stores (not even specialty stores, just the local Aldi), and thought a great way to practice German was to buy games and translate them. Eventually, I learned I could download translations from the internet, but I had fun puzzling out how to play the games and delighted in their cool wooden pieces. The games were fun to look at and to touch and to play. My theory at the time was that because the German games listed the designer on the box, you’re going to get better games. It’s just like books — series books that don’t list the actual author on the cover aren’t as good as books that do list the author. Same with games. Now I also argue that awards help things improve. As the Newbery Medal made American children’s books better, so the Spiel des Jahres has helped German games improve. I also loved reading this book and discovering games with interesting new mechanics and nicely calibrated combinations of strategy and luck.

In this big and beautiful oversize book, the author dedicates two spreads to each Spiel des Jahres winner from 1979 to 2022. He also lists other nominated games and eventually the Kennerspiel and Kinderspiel winners. He tells if the game was a worthy winner and if it’s still available today. And talks about trends and new innovations and all kinds of fascinating stuff. There are also chapters grouping different eras. It turns out that the author called 1996 to 2004 the “Golden Age” — which is exactly when I lived in Germany. I own most of the winners from that time period and lots of runners up.

Here’s what the author says this book is about, not actually a history of the Spiel des Jahres:

Instead, the book’s focus is about the games themselves — the winners and, in some cases, the runners-up and also-rans — and uses them as a lens thrugh which to look at the ways in which games, games culture and the games industry have changed over the last five decades. It looks at how tastes have evolved, how German game design (not unlike superb German engineering) became a worldwide trend, and how our understanding of the way games work has led to a renaissance in new designs and new ways of making and playing games.

I have only one complaint about this wonderful book — the sidebars are written in tiny white letters on colored backgrounds, and some of those colors made it impossible for me to read the words, even with a magnifying class. The printing may have been a little fuzzy, too. I could read the ones with lots of contrast, but not so much for the gold background (which was in the Golden Age chapter). This annoyed me, because I was so fascinated with the book, I wanted to read every single word. So it took a high level of frustration before I gave up and stopped reading the golden-colored sidebars.

But apart from that, I love Eurogames. I’ve been fascinated with the Spiel des Jahres since 1996. So this book was a complete delight to read. If you enjoy board games, I highly recommend it. And, yes, I’m ordering some new games based on this book. And pulled out some old games to show my gaming group.

aconytebooks.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of A Rhythm of Prayer, edited by Sarah Bessey

A Rhythm of Prayer

A Collection of Meditations for Renewal

edited by Sarah Bessey

Convergent, 2021. 146 pages.
Review written March 7, 2023, from my own copy, purchased via amazon.com.
Starred Review

A Rhythm of Prayer is a book of prayers and meditations about prayer from a stellar group of Christian writers — I found some new books to buy from the credits after some of the selections.

This little book gave me something to think about each morning as I read and prayed a selection, and usually this included something I hadn’t thought of before in that way.

In her Introduction, Sarah Bessey says she thinks of this book as calling you into a prayer circle.

When I first began to envision this book about prayer, I knew right away what I didn’t want to give you: a nice and tidy new set of prayers to co-opt for your own. Nope, what I wanted was equal parts example and invitation, permission and challenge, to acknowledge the heaviness of our grief and at the same time broaden our hope.

Frankly, I love to pray, and I think the prayers of people like us — however we show up to these pages — matter. Not in spite of scripture but because of it. Not in spite of Church but because of her. Not in spite of our questions and doubts but because of them. Not in spite of our grief and our longing, our yearning for justice and our anger, but because of them.

So no, the point of this is not to give you prayers to pray but to show you: you still get to pray. Prayer is still for you. You still get to cry out to God, you still get to yell, weep, praise, and sit in the silence until you sink down into the Love of God that has always been holding you whether you knew it or not.

This book will give you things to think about, things to meditate on, things to contemplate, and yes, things to pray. And it will also inspire you to do those things on your own.

I’m thinking about prayer often lately, because I recently finished writing a book about prayer, using patterns from the book of Psalms. (I’m still seeking a publisher for that book.) This book fit beautifully with all that I’m thinking about, modeling opening your heart to God in prayer.

sarahbessey.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Spare, by Prince Harry

Spare

by Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex
read by the author

Books on Tape, 2023. 15 hours, 40 minutes.
Review written April 15, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I’ve never been much of a celebrity-watcher, but I did watch Diana’s funeral so many years ago, and along with so many others, my heart went out to Harry, losing his mother far too soon. When he wrote a book, telling his story his own way rather than through an intermediary, I wanted to hear it, wanted to hear that his heart had healed.

And yes, this is a story of healing.

Though first, it’s a story of pain. It was heart-wrenching to hear how many years went by before he stopped believing that his mother had simply staged her own death and built a life for herself elsewhere and would one day call for him.

There are stories of romances with good people who couldn’t hold up to the horrendous persistent invasive attention of the press. (Prince Harry doesn’t like the press.) But the story of him meeting and falling in love with Meghan Markle simply shines with love.

He finally got therapy. He stood up for himself and sued the press. And he withstood basically being cast out of the royal family.

The end says that a large portion of proceeds from this wildly best-selling book are going to charity, but I hope he keeps some for himself and his family, as the story also includes how the royal family is no longer paying for his security or any living expenses. And I would have rolled my eyes about that before I heard this story. The work of the royal family is public relations. And that includes raising money for charity. That he’s continuing that work he was born into, despite being cast off, is admirable.

I’m left after reading this book wholeheartedly wishing for him and his family health, happiness, and continued deep love for one another. And goodness, I hope the press will start leaving them alone.

This one’s worth a read, and like all audiobooks where the narrator has an English accent, it’s well worth hearing with Harry’s own voice reading it to you.

archewell.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of The Light We Carry, by Michelle Obama

The Light We Carry

Overcoming in Uncertain Times

by Michelle Obama

Crown, 2022. 318 pages.
Review written January 16, 2023, from a library book
Starred Review

Michelle Obama is a treasure. This book doesn’t contain profound new insights, but it does contain words and stories to inspire you to be your best, and to see the best in other people. She doesn’t pretend any of this is easy, but she tells stories about persevering when things are difficult.

I like the title, because Michelle Obama is exceptionally good at seeing the light in everyone. Everyone carries light inside them, and she is good at finding it in others. This is reflected in this paragraph talking about her book tour for Becoming:

When I looked out into those audiences, I saw something that confirmed what I knew to be true about my country and about the world more generally. I saw a colorful crowd, full of differences, and better for it. These were spaces where diversity was recognized and celebrated as a strength. I saw different ages, races, genders, ethnicities, identities, outfits, you name it — people laughing, clapping, crying, sharing. I sincerely believe that many of those people had turned up for reasons that stretched well past me or my book. My feeling was they’d shown up at least in part to feel less alone in the world, to locate some lost sense of belonging. Their presence — the energy, warmth, and diversity of those spaces — helped tell a certain story. People were there, I believe, because it felt good — it felt great, actually — to mix our differentness with togetherness.

She talks about living life in relationship with others — friends and family you let into your life. And there may not be anything earth-shaking there, but it is inspirational.

Here’s another paragraph I liked:

All I can do is try to draw closer to your uniqueness, to feel linked by the small overlaps between us. This is how empathy works. It’s how differentness starts to weave itself into togetherness. Empathy fills the gaps between us, but never closes them entirely. We get pulled into the lives of others by virtue of what they feel safe and able to show us, and the generosity with which we are able to meet them. Piece by piece, person by person, we begin to apprehend the world in more fullness.

It’s worth the wait on the Holds list.

michelleobamabooks.com
crownpublishing.com

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