adamrshields's reviews
1902 reviews

Summary: A very special Solstice (Christmas) edition.

I am of an age where we lived through "very special episodes" not just made fun of them. After a TV show had a hundred episodes and could go to syndication, then it would have a couple of seasonal episodes that would always be shown out of season during syndication. I kept waiting for this the purpose of this book and I never really found it.

The book is overshadowed by recovery from "the war." But the war was really a couple of battles. We know from previous discussions that 500 years ago there was a war that had lasted for years. And we know that the Rhys and others had been captured for nearly 50 years. I am not asking for more war narrative, but three battles without a real peace settlement doesn't feel to me like the end of the war is here. So the whole premise of the book, Feyre and others trying to come to terms with the trauma of the war, seems off.

Most of the story revolves around the solstice celebration and buying or gifting presents. And people hanging out and being a bit overcrowded in the townhouse and there still being tension between Feyre and her sisters. In the end, Feyre find some purpose and vocation in helping other with her art. And not everyone else has started healing their trauma. But nothing else really moved.

This is a forgettable book that didn't add to the story and feels like an add on after the previous trilogy. And nothing about it makes me want to bother picking up the next book.

originally posed on my blog at https://bookwi.se/a-court-of-frost-an...

Summary: Roz becomes a farm robot and wants to find her son and make her way home to the island.

At the end of the first book of the series, The Wild Robot, Roz had been damaged trying to protect her adopted son (a wild goose) and her friends (the other animals on the island where she lives) from the robots that had been sent to retrieve her. Those robots were Those robots were all destroyed, but Roz had no choice but to turn herself in so that she could be repaired.

Roz was refurbished but she maintained her memories and personality. After refurbishment, she was sold to a disabled farmer. As Roz works the farm, she becomes friends with the farm animals and the two children on the farm.

She is good at farming. She understands how to work with the animals and the other farm machines. She can see that there is real value in the work, not just because the work is enjoyable, but because the work she does serves the family and Roz likes the family.

It is not a surprise, based on the name of the book, but she grapples with whether she should escape (the farm does run better with her), but she misses her son. It is a spoiler to say she does decide to escape, but that seemed clear from the beginning, and from the title and about half of the book is the story of her escape and trying to find her way back to the island.

I wrote a long post about the importance of depth to a story. Children’s books and young adult books are improved by writing depth into the story. Yes kids will only get the surface the first time they read them. But kids generally like to revisit stories. And I do think these are short enough books and simple enough reading level that many kids will revisit them. I don’t think there is as much depth to this story as KB Hoyle’s writing, but there are good philosophical questions embedded in the story. Ideas of vocation and family and what we were meant to become are natural questions for a learning robot.

There is a twist toward the end of the book that I look forward to understanding more about when I read the third book. My son read the first book on his own last year when he was in third grade. He enjoyed the Wild Robot but did not keep reading the series. I picked these first two up on sale because of the movie, but I do think they are worth reading. I tend to like young adult books more than middle grade books because I like more complex stories. But this series has had good characters and an engaging enough story that I have read them on my own without kids and enjoyed them.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/the-wild-robot-esca...

Summary: Theological account of Christianity as a way of living, not simply as an intellectual system.

In an overly simplified sense, the point of the book is to move Christianity from a series of propositional belief statements (thin) to a "thick" belief system where those beliefs matter to not just how we see the world, but what we do in the world.

I appreciate academic books because they often interact well with not just the ideas being discussed but the alternatives to those ideas. A good academic book should grapple with the best arguments which disagree. What I don’t always appreciate about academic books is that in general, academic books tend to have really long chapters because they are making a sustained argument that pays attention to not just their point, but everything around that point as well. Long chapters require a level of sustained attention that I do not always have.

I picked this up initially as an audiobook because it was cheater for me that way. But about half way through the book I broke down and bought the (very expensive) kindle edition. There are a number of really good quotes and I know I need to read the book again because there is nuance that I need to pay attention to. To try to keep the whole idea together, I tried to mostly listen to whole chapters while I was on a walk. This meant that I was not taking notes, but it meant that I was listening without much distraction.

So much of theology is about framing. Not in the sense that there is nothing beneath the facade, but that the way you look at something matters. Hector’s framing takes seriously Christianity as an ethical system that calls us to action. His thin/thick metaphor that is common in theological discussion, assumes that while there is not perfection within the church, that the church will be recognizable as doing church. Part of the problem with some of the discussion around Christian nationalism or cultural Christianity is that what is being held up as Christian doesn’t look like Christianity any longer. The following quote I think does a great job at illustrating that there is some point where what we are doing ceases to accurately reflect Christ.

Part of what Emerson and Bracey were trying to do in Religion of Whiteness is identify when the center of the religious expression (belief and meaning structure) centers more on whiteness (cultural expression of white racial hierarchy) than on Christianity. Hector is approaching this not from the negative description that Bracey and Emerson are, but from a positive constructive theology.

There are only seven chapters in Christianity as a Way of Life and there is certainly more that can be said about Christianity than what is included here. But in an overly simplifies description, he lays out what theology is for, how we see the world, the impact of sin, how we are reoriented from sin to a new life, what is is like to be in the world as a new creation, being with others as a new creation and how we maintain a view of the end which keeps us grounded as Christians.

Hector is a professor at the University of Chicago, where I went to the divinity school, although I graduated 25 years ago now, so we didn’t overlap. He is approaching theology in a way that takes seriously the critique of theology from liberation theology or feminist and womanist theology. He regularly cites James Cone or Schleiermacher, Rosemary Radford Ruether and others that are mistrusted in the more conservative evangelical world. Taking seriously critiques of modern theology does not mean that this isn’t grounded in the history of Christianity, because he interact with Martin Luther, Augustine, Aquinas and Teresa of Avila and others just as often.

I have been involved in a long reading project about Christian Discernment over the past year or so and I appreciate that Hector is taking seriously the ethics and wisdom orientation of Christianity. He isn’t reducing Christianity to wisdom or ethics, but a theology that does not take seriously the ethical implications of its teaching or the way in which it has been influenced by Jewish wisdom systems as a grappling with complexity and nuance is oversimplifying what it means to be Christian.

As I have regularly written about, my favorite definition of spiritual formation is from M Robert Mulholland Jr, “Spiritual formation is a process of being formed in the image of Christ for the sake of others.” This may not be the best book if you have not explored theology in a more academic setting, but this is one of the best books of theology I have read that takes seriously what it means to live as a Christian.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/christianity-as-a-w...

Summary: How do you summarize a life like John Lewis'?

I am not new to the story of John Lewis, but this was the first full-length biography I have read about John Lewis. I have previously read the graphic novels (The March Trilogyand Run) and the short biography by Jon Meacham, as well as watching the documentary Good Trouble. And Lewis figures prominently in many biographies, memoirs, and Civil Rights era histories. But I had not read a full-length biography.

David Greenberg has previously written biographies of Nixon and Coolidge and two books about the presidency. This is a biography that used hundreds of interviews and personal papers. And I think perhaps most interesting to me is that the biography was only half finished when  Lewis was ousted from SNCC. The main difference is that everything I have previously watched or read primarily focused on Lewis' early civil rights work prior to leaving SNCC.

Part of what has always previously struck me about Lewis was how young he was when he was thrust into leadership. He was a leader of the Nashville Student Movement before he was 20. He was one of the speakers at the 1963 March on Washington when he was 23. Stokley Carmichael replaced him as chairman of SNCC when Lewis was 26. Everything I had previously read about Lewis was how his orientation toward a belief in nonviolence as a principle, not just a strategy paired with his maturity as a young man. He was not inclined to date or drink or parties, but he did draw people to him.

That early fame did not just lead to an easy later life. He successfully led the Voter Education Project for seven years. Under his leadership, VEP registered more than 4 million people. He also served for short periods for a foundation and then in the Carter administration supervising the VISTA program. Eventually, he moved back to Atlanta after a time in New York and Washington DC.

A bit over two years after leaving SNCC Lewis married Lillian Miles. Lillian was a librarian and an important figure in his later life. But they spent significant time apart. Lewis was used to traveling with his work for SNCC and continued to travel for his various jobs. In 1977, Lewis first ran for Congress but lost the primary. Over the next year, there were many changes. He had resigned from the VEP to run for Congress. The couple had adopted a son in May 1976. In June, he was offered a job as Associate Director for ACTION, an umbrella agency that included Peace Corps, VISTA, and other programs. In July he was confirmed by the Senate. Lillian and their son did not move to Washington DC with him.

Lewis did not agree with Carter on many issues and resigned before the end of Carter's term and ran for Atlanta city council. The city council job was officially part-time with part-time pay. And they lived mostly on Lillian's salary as a librarian. Lewis served in the city council for seven years, primarily acting as a conscious against corruption and against development projects that would break apart communities. This included opposition to the original plans for the Carter Center.

In 1986, Lewis again ran for the 5th Congressional District, this time against Julian Bond, one of his friends from SNCC days. That was a brutal campaign, one that split the friends for the rest of their lives. But Lewis won and served the rest of his life in Congress rising to senior leadership within the Democratic delegation.

Part of what I appreciate is that while Lewis is honored in the book, he is not lionized inappropriately. He had weaknesses. He maintained his position as conscious of Congress, he took difficult stands, and not all of them were wise stands looking back on history. He had weaknesses as a leader and manager. But he was not prone to some of the ways that leadership, power, and money tend to become a problem for many. He was still largely an everyman, even as his fame grew in later years.

The March Trilogy and earlier books that he worked on (usually with a secondary author who primarily did the writing) increased his fame. Because so many civil rights era figures passed away young, either from violence or health issues that were often impacted by stress and violence, Lewis became not just a figure of history for the civil rights movement, but also a visible symbol of the movement. Lewis' work to commemorate the Selma March, including bringing annual delegations from Congress to the march, and his work to get the African American History Museum approved and built were some of the most significant work he did while in Congress. Lewis used his history to remind Congress and the country of the struggle for equality that was not so long ago.

I think the most significant weakness of the book was a lack of attention to his faith and the way it shaped his life and thinking. Greenberg does not ignore Lewis' faith, but it isn't a significant theme of the book. I think Lewis would be a good subject for Eerdman's Library of Religious Biographyseries.

This review was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/john-lewis/

Summary: After the war, Lord Peter starts telling Harriet about his first case, and that telling leads to a new case.

One of the ongoing themes of this set of four books is that there is a play between what is real as a mystery and how mysteries can be written about to be believable. As a setup for the rest of the book, Lord Peter describes to Harriet his first case and how he started as a detective. Throughout this early section, Harriet and Lord Peter talk about whether something would be believable if it were in one of Harriet's novels vs in one of Peter's cases. This is a running gag in the series because Peter is often asking Harriet what he should do or if she were writing the story what the perpetrator would do at that point. It is both a running gag, but also a serious discussion about the nature of reality and how the nature of writing works. You can't just write a story, you have to fall within the set of conventions that seem believable unless you are intentionally subverting the conventions to suggest that the conventions themselves are not believable.

Part of the thread of the book is that the Attenbury Emeralds, which is what his initial case was about, has continued to come up again and again over the years. That is improbable, but it is improbable because there is more to the story than what it initially seems.

There are definitely different types of thriller/mystery stories. Some stories invite the reader to figure out what the story is as the clues are dropped. Some stories do not really give clues as much as narrate the story so that the mystery is slowly revealed. And some stories are thrillers where the point is the thrill, not the mystery. (And there are other types as well.) The reader doesn't know what the reader doesn't know, so as Walsh is playing with the conventions here, the improbable becomes the only option as time goes on.

Personally, I tend to like mystery series more for the character development than the specific mystery. The end of the book brings about something that was hinted at in the previous book and is more fully developed in the fourth book of the series.


This was originally published on my blog at https://bookwi.se/the-attenbury-emera...

Summary: A retelling of Beauty and the Beast in a modern (spicy) romance/fantasy format.


Summary: A retelling of Beauty and the Beast in a modern (spicy) romance/fantasy format.


Recently my local school district removed A Court of Thorns and Roses and the rest of the series from all of the school libraries. I was unfamiliar with the series and so I looked it up. I saw that the first book is a loose retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I read the original short story about fifteen years ago and was very familiar with the Disney movie and the live-action remake. As I was looking up information about it I saw that the audiobook was free to me in the Audible lending library for members. So I picked it up and fairly quickly decided to just buy the Kindle edition.

There is a good discussion in the YA author community about the role and purpose of young adult and middle-grade fiction. I think KB Hoyle, cofounder of Owl's Nest Press has done the best at discussing the changes to the category "Young Adult Literature". There are a variety of podcasts and articles where she has done that. But I will highlight this article and this podcast about the need for a real middle grade and YA category and this post about why retellings of classics are useful. To summarize her point, with the rise of adult interest in young adult stories (Twilight, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Divergent, etc), there has been a shift to writing coming-of-age stories for adults and it is included in the category of "young adult books." There are a number of reasons for this, but the coming of age story is a popular format. The rise of the internet seems to have pushed interest toward simpler stories. Then these books sold well. And then there was the mega-success of Fifty Shades of Gray, a type of coming-of-age story that included sex as a central theme.

KB Hoyle started Owl's Nest Press particularly to address the ways that middle-grade children and young adults were getting ignored in their own category of literature. I have read every one of KB Hoyle's books, many of them more than once, so I definitely think that books written for pre-teen or teen readers can still be read by adults with great enjoyment. But that category of books, the adult-oriented coming-of-age novel which includes sex is still being written and remains popular. And it is one type of book that is being targeted for school book bans. I am not particularly in favor of school book bans, in large part because the act of banning draws attention to the books. My local library now has over 100 people in line for the ebook of A Court of Thorns and Roses and that doesn't include the print or audiobook waits. When I looked the estimated wait time was 18 weeks.

I am not going to give away significant spoilers but I did read the whole book in two days and it was good enough that I started the second book. But the quickness of the read and my shift from audiobook to print was in part because this was a simply written book. It read quickly because there was not a lot of subtlety and complexity.

But there were two sex scenes. The later books likely have more sex because this first book is about the meeting of the couple who you know are going to end up together by the end. Previous books banned by my district have largely been queer-affirming books, so I did think it was interesting that a fairly tame heteronormative book was banned. I also can say that I think that the two scenes were far less problematic than many of the male-oriented sci-fi or fantasy oriented sex scenes that I read as a teen from authors like Piers Anthony and Robert Heinlein. Here there was consent and love. The male character was an immortal Farie who was about 500 years old and the female character was a human who was 19, so there was a difference in age and experience, but the book was clear that this was not the first sexual experience of either character.

I don't think there is a way to write about sex that doesn't have some sense of cringe to it. And clearly, since the books were banned and the ban was for sexual content, someone was offended. But there are many other books that were not banned which have more pages devoted to sex (this might have been six to ten pages total) and more problematic views of sex (rape, violence, coercion, sexual objectification, etc.) While the book didn’t need the sex scene as a necessary plot point, it also wasn’t completely out of left field or just gratuitous. On the other hand, I do think there was a choice to include the sex scenes so that the book could be considered a “spicy” fantasy.

Again, I am not saying that books NEED sex in them. I am of the opinion that there needs to be more books that have the more traditional coming of age as a growing awareness of the need for selflessness and considering of others and the complexity of the world instead of reducing coming of age to simply first sexual experiences. I think this book was mostly about the right kind of coming-of-age maturity even if it did also include sex.

Instead, my concern here is that what is driving book bans like this are concerns by some adults that teens should not have any access to material about sexuality. The district superintendent is on the record suggesting that people opposing book bans are trying to sexualize children and groom them and he uses the stark language of good and evil to suggest that anyone opposing book bans are evil adults trying to harm children.

I have mostly been writing about the bans and not the book. This is a retelling of the story of Beauty and the Beast. There are a couple of interesting tweaks to the story. They might be considered spoilers, but the original story is almost two hundred years old and the Disney movie is nearly 40 years old. We do not know until nearly the end, but the curse in the original story is based on the Prince being unkind. That is not the case here. The Prince was cursed because of an evil character, not because he brought on the curse as judgment for negative actions.

In the Disney movie, the beauty's father is incompetent, scatterbrained, and loving. Here, the beauty became the protector and provider of the family but there was a sort of curse on her that came about as a result of her actions. For most of the book, we do not know about how her family was reacting and whether or not they really were loving toward her.

These types of fantasy/romance stories almost always have a plot driven by poor communication and misunderstanding. In this case, there is a curse that prevents the beast and others in the household from talking, but also the Beast character uses magic to protect the beauty from being scared by fairie world, which does cause problems. Similar to current "princess story" trends, Beauty is capable and can often save herself and in the end, she is the one who needs to save the prince. Also part of the trope of these types of stories, belief in herself is part of what has to change within herself.

I like the fact that the Beast points out to her that she has a history of doing what it takes to care for those around her. She loves those around her, but she also somewhat resents that she has to be the one who does the hard things to care for those around her. That seems like a valid point of conflict in the book and becomes a plot point at the climax of the story.

I don't think this was the best written book. There is little nuance or subtlety here. I like the fact that I can read any of KB Hoyle's books and find references to other books or subtle foreshadowing and depth that encourage rereading. I do not think that is the case here. There are a couple of annoying writing crutches beyond the sex scenes. She uses variations of the line "My bowels turned watery" five times and a good editor should not have allowed that.

More positively I did appreciate that there was some discussion of meaning and vocation. When Beauty comes to the castle, she doesn't know what to do with herself because she no longer needs to care for her own family at every waking moment. Connected to that, beauty and goodness have a role in healing. There is a good in beautiful music and paintings and life that I think points to goodness as something intrinsically good and helpful not just as decoration.

I originally posted this on my blog at https://bookwi.se/court-of-thorns-and...

Summary: A joint biography of Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Walker Percy, and Flannery O'Connor.

I have been wanting to get around to The Life You Save May Be Your Own since it came out in the early 2000s. After having read a brief biography of Dorothy Day and a book of essays about Thomas Merton earlier this summer, I decided it was time. I have also read three books about O'Connor, a more academic look at her work, a short biography, and a collection of her early journals I felt like I had a pretty good handle on O'Connor. But I knew nothing about Walker Percy outside of his novels.

Elie mostly tells the story chronologically. Dorothy Day is almost 20 years older than Merton and Percy and nearly 30 years older than O'Connor. But she also lived longer than both Merton and O'Connor. And while Percy lived until 1990, and Day passed away in 1980, Day was 83 when she passed away, and Percy was only 73.

All four are well-known Catholic writers who were consciously Catholic in different ways. O'Connor was the only cradle Catholic, the other three were all adult converts to Catholicism. O'Connor and Percy were both also very much Southern Writers while Day was most identified with NYC and her non-fiction writing. Merton was the most clearly a "spiritual" writer and the only clergy member of the group.

As a biography or a group of biographies, this was well written and included good detail on their lives as well as context on their writing. But as a stand-alone, I think it was too long. It was too long to feel like a brief biography and it was too short to be a definitive biography of any of them. It was interesting to see how much the four of them interacted and wrote one another, although there were very few personal interactions. Merton considered joining the Catholic Worker movement but decided instead to become a monk. They all had mutual friends, and drafts of different books were passed around.

The value of the book was in the exploration of the different ways to think of themselves as writers and "Catholic" writers and how they related to the church more broadly. I don't regret reading The Life You Save May Be Your Own, but I did pick it up over the summer when I tend to hit a reading slump. And the length of the book did not help the reading slump.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/the-life-you-save-m...

Summary: Stories of resistance.

This is a natural next book for Jemar Tisby. His first book was a survey of the ways that the church in the US has been complicit with racism. The second book was a response to the question, "What should we do now" that he kept getting from people who read the first book. And this third book is designed as inspiration for continuing to work for justice.

I am fairly well-read in civil rights history and there were both well-known figures and people I did not know here. The balance between the known and the unknown (or lesser known) was good. You can't ignore major figures like Martin Luther King Jr, but in some ways, those figures are less inspiring because they have become "saints" of the movement. The lesser-known figures I think are more inspiring because they worked toward justice without becoming well-known.

That isn't to say those lesser-known people are less important. Part of what Tisby is doing is bringing balance to the story. There is a whole chapter on women of the civil rights movement, not because they were completely unknown but because the sexism of the time impacted how we tell stories today. And many behind-the-scenes figures were essential to the organizational and movement-building work that allowed the well-known people to become well-known.

Immediately after finishing The Spirit of Justice, I picked up a new biography of John Lewis. Lewis was well known by his death, but part of what the biography illustrated was the long arc of that fame. Lewis spoke at the 1963 March on Washington, but that was after having led the Nashville student movement and then SNCC. But when he left SNCC leadership, he was only 26. He had several completely separate careers after that. He headed the Voter Education Project for 7 years, and under his leadership VEP registered an estimated 4 million people. He also spent several years working for the federal government in the Carter administration, six years on the Atlanta city council, and 34 years in Congress.

I bring up John Lewis because as well known as he is today, had he done any one of the many things (Freedom Rider, Nashville sit-in movement, SNCC leadership, SCLS board member, voting rights advocate, Selma Marcher, and a main mover of the remembrance of the Selma March, he may not be well-known. But whether he was well-known or not, his contributions mattered.

And that is why The Spirit of Justice matters. This is a book of inspiration to know those who have done the work to bring about the progress toward justice that has been accomplished thus far. While not every person is primarily known as a Christian, the reality is that justice, especially around racial issues in the US has been historically rooted in the Black Church. Most of the figures in The Spirit of Justice were themselves shaped by and a member of the Black Church. There were a lot of complaints about the Color of Compromise not telling the stories of how the church worked toward justice. Those complaints missed the point of the book in highlighting how the church was compromised. The Spirit of Justice now highlights the stories of those who worked for justice. And I think contextually important, it records how often those stories of justice were opposed by other members of the church in the United States.

This post was originally on my blog at https://bookwi.se/spirit-of-justice/

Summary: In the early days of World War 2, Harriet is managing children while Peter and others are in the war effort.

A normal for me, I keep getting caught up in information and forget about fiction. And then I return to it to remember again why fiction is a necessary part of a healthy reading diet. I have been reading a long joint biography of Dorothy Day, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton, and Walker Percy. As much as the book has been worth reading, I remember why reading about fiction is not the same as reading fiction.

I read the Thrones, Dominations, the first book of the series where Jill Paton Walsh continues Dorothy Sayers' mystery series last year. I saw A Presumption of Death on Kindle Unlimited and needed a fiction series to work on. It has been several years since the events of the first book. Peter and Harriet have several children, and she and her staff are watching several more children because of concerns about the bombing of London and so that their parents can work in the war effort.

There are many discussions about the refugees from London or other countries in this book. Harriet and the children are living at Tallboys, their country home. The limitations of the war, from the lack of food to the danger, are constantly constantly present. Peter is gone and there is also the worry for his safety.

I understand the point, Harriet needs to not be overconfident as a character or that overconfidence would be off-putting, but I do think that the continues to be a problem with Harriet being too unsure of herself at this point in the series. That has been a problem for many books. Harriet is doing war work by caring for the extra children and supporting the community projects, but she doesn't think that her efforts are as helpful as her sister-in-law's or Peter's. But then a young woman is murdered and the head of the local police asks her to look into the murder because he is understaffed and has no leads.

I am not going to give away more of the plot. There are twists as any good mystery should have. I think Walsh did capture the characters well, and did a good job with the feelings of impending danger at this point in the war effort. My only complaint is one with Harriet's lack of confidence and that isn't Walsh's fault as much as it was the character that Sayers presented in Busmans' Holiday and the other books at the end of the series that Walsh needed to stay true to.

There is a subtle change in writing that you can tell it is Walsh not Sayers doing the writing. But I did enjoy the book and I quickly went to the next book in the series.

This was originally published on my blog at https://bookwi.se/a-presumption-of-death/

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Engaging Thomas Merton is a book you can dip in and out of because while the book is thematically about Thomas Merton, you can easily skip around chapters based on your interest or read it slowly over time. I spent about six or so weeks slowly working through the book.

Because of my interests, I think the most engaging chapters were chapter 6 (using Merton’s work on the true and the false self to engage ideas of how we are embodied and digital selves) and then the three chapters about Merton’s engagement with the civil rights movement.

Overall, I think the digital self chapter is probably both the best chapter of the book and worth the price of the book for me. Horan makes the case that Merton would have seen that one of the realities of the digital age is that identity is “almost infinitely negotiable.” As a means of engaging with Merton in a situation that Merton didn’t experience, Horton takes Merton’s understanding of the false self and engages those insights. The clearest summary of Horton’s thesis here is, “The true self only appears elusive because we are too concerned with our false self (selves) to turn toward God.” (p93)

But that simple statement doesn’t get us to a point where we can do something about working toward our true selves. Knowing the truth doesn’t help us move toward the truth, especially when we are tempted to believe that methods of instant gratification might work. Jacque Ellul argued against “techniques” that solve our spiritual problems. Similarly to how Ellul argued against technique, Merton approached the true and false self not as a problem to be solved, but as an “entire lifestyle shift.” As Horton summarizes, “Precisely because this focus on the need for instant gratification is so deeply ingrained in the false self, Merton explains that real and substantial changes in the way one relates to others and sees the work must become priority. And this takes time.” (p99)

I think one of the most helpful turns of the Digital Self essay is an exploration of vocation as a solution to the false self.

The other chapters that I was particularly interested in were the chapters on race. I think the juxtaposition of the chapters is helpful. Two of the chapters explore some of the ways that Merton’s thinking about race prefigured the later developments of thinking about race, especially critical race theory. Horan suggests that Merton’s understanding of racism is ultimately a white problem, and that change would not happen until white people choose to allow changes in a similar way to how Derek Bell understood interest convergence. And that Merton understood race as a social construct, not a biological reality as Bell and other critical race theorists have posited were interesting suppositions of how Merton may have developed his thought had he lived past 1968. (It was enough that I picked up but have not read Merton’s Faith And Violence, the last book he had ready for publication before his death.) And Merton thought of racism as a type of violence, which again is language that was developed more fully in the decades since Merton's death.

But the last chapter on race primarily looks at areas of weakness for Merton on racial issues. Merton did approach racial issues in a more helpful direction than many of his white Catholic contemporaries. However, he was still shaped by his culture and had areas of sin, and where change was necessary.

There are other areas of the books that I think were helpful, longer discussions of vocation, of environmentalism, of engaging other religions. But I also think that most people will not be interested in a whole book on the modern use of Merton. Some of these essays are available in digital formats outside of the book. But if you can find the book in the library or for cheap, I think many people will find at least a couple of the essays engaging and helpful.

This was originally published on my blog at https://bookwi.se/engaging-thomas-merton/