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alisarae's Reviews (1.65k)
This was okay! I looooved Doomsday series (The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen) so I wanted to read more by this author.
Unfortunately I didn't care flr the chracters, particularly Hart, so that is why I didn't enjoy it as much. He is very growly in the audio, and the opening paragraph describes him as having a "jaundiced eye" ..... not very attractive as a love interest lol.
Unfortunately I didn't care flr the chracters, particularly Hart, so that is why I didn't enjoy it as much. He is very growly in the audio, and the opening paragraph describes him as having a "jaundiced eye" ..... not very attractive as a love interest lol.
The art is so stylish and the story is cute. Both of the characters are polite and calm people, and I am looking forward to seeing their relationship develop. Mobuko is super socially awkward but also very relatable, at least for me!
First date! It's cute but they are both painfully awkward. Poor bebes.
Their second date! Plus Abe is such a good wingwoman. I like how there is no weird drama or jealousy between the characters.
This was so intense! I normally don't do well with body horror (I'm squeamish) so I am impressed with myself for sticking it out. I liked this book much better than the author's debut Hell Followed With Us, because the setting and worldbuilding were more interesting and the characters are more fully developed.
The levels of horror: sexism and mysogeny, homophobia and transphobia, anti-autism (idk if that has a name), and the hints of colonialism, were all well done.
The levels of horror: sexism and mysogeny, homophobia and transphobia, anti-autism (idk if that has a name), and the hints of colonialism, were all well done.
Intimate and personal poems about race and sex. I think it was classy that the author referenced others' poetry, artworks, and the poetic form. Kinda snobby but still approachable? Anyways. I started to imagine if I were her student and how awkward that would be since I read all these poems about her sex life.
Going into this, I really didn't know that it was going to be such a personal story--personal, both for the author telling so much of his own story and involvement as a pastor's kid at the Sovereign Grace mothership church, and for that story being so related to my own experience with Sovereign Grace churches, the denomination that my family was part of when I was in high school.
This book is a fantastic summary of what has been going on in evangelical churches in the US since the Jesus Movement in the 70s. With as much as I have read about this stuff, I think this author really does the best at explaining it to outsiders. The book hits on all the key players and movements, the main points of what they teach and how those unique teachings affect their actions. I learned some new things about what in the heck has been happening since I left the US regarding dominionism, the 7 montains, and the New Apostalic Reformation, which I had been hearing mentioned in some places but never fully explained.
One of the unique things about this book is that the author is a journalist who takes his job very seriously, and who started covering the conservative political beat for conservative news outlets because he was a right wing insider. Many former evangelical bubble kids have undergone serious personal transformations in their beliefs about God, religion, and morality in the past decade. It has been a time of intense growth and maturity for the people who went through a "deconstruction" phase and emerged on the other side still holding on to Christianity. Our faith and religious practices have had to be abandoned or re-learned, family and friendships have been dramatically reshaped, our understanding of institutions and government has fundamentally changed, the guideposts and mentors for the first 4 decades of life needed to be abandoned and new ones searched for or cultivated, all while going through a global pandemic and significant economic insecurity. The author details these shifts in his own life, openly and evenhandedly. He explains the specific news events, conversations he had, and things he read or listened to that led him to where he is in his faith and political beliefs today.
I am a bit surprised he didnt talk about the Exvangelical movement explicitly, but maybe he figured his own story covers it in a way?
Anyways, if you are in those circles and a bit fuzzy on what has been changing in American Christianity in regards to political engagement, I would definitely recommend this book. If you are looking for a book that is scholarly or an objective analysis, I don't think this is the right fit. It relies heavily on the author's personal experiences as a framing device for telling the political story.
This book is a fantastic summary of what has been going on in evangelical churches in the US since the Jesus Movement in the 70s. With as much as I have read about this stuff, I think this author really does the best at explaining it to outsiders. The book hits on all the key players and movements, the main points of what they teach and how those unique teachings affect their actions. I learned some new things about what in the heck has been happening since I left the US regarding dominionism, the 7 montains, and the New Apostalic Reformation, which I had been hearing mentioned in some places but never fully explained.
One of the unique things about this book is that the author is a journalist who takes his job very seriously, and who started covering the conservative political beat for conservative news outlets because he was a right wing insider. Many former evangelical bubble kids have undergone serious personal transformations in their beliefs about God, religion, and morality in the past decade. It has been a time of intense growth and maturity for the people who went through a "deconstruction" phase and emerged on the other side still holding on to Christianity. Our faith and religious practices have had to be abandoned or re-learned, family and friendships have been dramatically reshaped, our understanding of institutions and government has fundamentally changed, the guideposts and mentors for the first 4 decades of life needed to be abandoned and new ones searched for or cultivated, all while going through a global pandemic and significant economic insecurity. The author details these shifts in his own life, openly and evenhandedly. He explains the specific news events, conversations he had, and things he read or listened to that led him to where he is in his faith and political beliefs today.
I am a bit surprised he didnt talk about the Exvangelical movement explicitly, but maybe he figured his own story covers it in a way?
Anyways, if you are in those circles and a bit fuzzy on what has been changing in American Christianity in regards to political engagement, I would definitely recommend this book. If you are looking for a book that is scholarly or an objective analysis, I don't think this is the right fit. It relies heavily on the author's personal experiences as a framing device for telling the political story.
What a wonderful book - strip Christianity down to its bare bones so that other cultures can flesh it out with their own expressions. How much beauty has Christianity lost because we insisted on our own culture’s version of it.
I love the magic of seeing something so familiar through other cultures’ eyes. Reading how the Maasai retell the parables, create a liturgy, or perform a baptism ceremony is so neat.
But actually the book is not very much about the Maasai. It is more about the universal, communal practice of Christianity.
I love the magic of seeing something so familiar through other cultures’ eyes. Reading how the Maasai retell the parables, create a liturgy, or perform a baptism ceremony is so neat.
But actually the book is not very much about the Maasai. It is more about the universal, communal practice of Christianity.
This essay argues that when we rely on overused metaphors, idiomatic expressions, and latinized words, we are avoiding the truth or this is a symptom that we may not even know what the truth is. The practical correction of these language problems is described better in The Elements of Style, a book that did wonders for my own editing eye. Here Orwell is concerned about the political implications of lazy and vague language.
"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called 'pacification.'"
Orwell's rules for honest language:
i. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
ii. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
iii. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
iv. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
v. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
--
Rec'd by Why Poetry
"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called 'pacification.'"
Orwell's rules for honest language:
i. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
ii. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
iii. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
iv. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
v. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
--
Rec'd by Why Poetry
The story behind this book is bittersweet if you think about it: Keats was a children's book illustrator and he kept some photos of a Black boy pinned next to his desk, hoping to use them as inspiration for an assignment. After 22 years of waiting for an assignment with a Black character, he wrote the story himself. This book was first published in 1962.