Conquered Words: December

This is my monthly post where I tell you what I have read and (ever so briefly) what I thought about each work. If you haven't read these books, then read this blog and pretend that you did!

December is my favorite month to read. In college, you really have only one week of school during the month, and the rest is off. Beyond this, in my specific ministry, the work really winds down as people get busier and run off out of town. Or even more so, like this year, I get to leave town, which means travel time to kill using the weapon of a great book (I had flights to Detroit and back. Boo yah!). Over all of this, December in Portland is always somewhat cold and always rainy, which makes for some of the best reading weather our God can offer.

Here's what I read:

The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons (ESPN Books, 702 pages) Of course I didn't read all of this book. Please comment if you read every word because I think you deserve a medal for wasting your time. This is a good read, but if Simmon's wasn't such an egomaniac he could have written a great book on basketball in under 400 pages. His history is what I read. For the most part, I tried to skip his "what if" scenarios and "could you imagine..." sections. Yes, Bill Simmons, I COULD imagine what it would be like to put Michael Jordan on the same team as Bill Russell, but I won't because the exercise of rewriting history in my brain is a WASTE OF TIME AND ENERGY. Russell was a Celtic in the 60s (mainly) and Jordan was a Bull in the 90s (mainly), THAT'S HOW IT HAPPENED. WHAT GOOD IS IT TO PLAY PRETEND? Here's what I love about this book: Simmon's plain loves basketball and for anyone who loves the game, it's totally worth poking around in. Simmon's did an impressive amount of research and has a lot of statistics for you, but don't try and conquer every word, you'll only find yourself asking "What if Bill Simmon's could shut up?"

The Audacity to Win by David Plouffe (Viking, 390 pages) Whether or not you're a fan of Barak Obama, the man and his partners ran perhaps the greatest campaign for the presidency. Certainly it was a campaign that changed the way American politicians will run. David Plouffe was one of the main brains, if not THE main brain behind everything that Obama was able to accomplish. He was his campaign manager and remains a close friend to Obama. In this book, Plouffe gives the reader an inside look at every step of the campaign. At times it's a little excessive as Plouffe is an election nerd who expects everyone to care about each county in Iowa as much as he does. I certainly skipped some portions to get to the meat. What is rewarding in this book is the raw insight to how much of a political underdog this campaign really was. While seeing Obama win and go in to office, it looked like her was royalty, he sure didn't start that way. Plouffe gives an excellent account for how he and his team took the underdog to the Oval Office. If you have any love for the West Wing or political science, it would be worth your time. It was a historic run.

Them: Adventures with Extremists by Jon Ronson (Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 327 pages) Ronson writes medium sized books that feel like a 1,000 word article. He packs tons of information in his fast-paced gonzo journalism. It's one thing to expose great facts, but it's another thing all together to be such a thrilling storyteller. Ronson certainly has a niche. This book is a compilation of different profiles of extremists in America. And while each profile is separate, somehow, through Ronson himself, he ties them all together. It takes you until the third story to realize this is not a book with a bunch of different stories in it, but it's just one story. Each profile sees a group of people or a person who believes there to be a small secret government group that rules the whole world. They're called the New World Order. Most of my time in this book was reminding myself that these people were REAL. A magnificent portrayal of the fringe in our society. Ronson gives them a human portrait which gives the humorous moment a delicate tenor.

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee (Penguin, 220 pages) I found a new favorite. Coetzee is a South African who can write fiction so succinctly it's scary. Disgrace is the story of professor David Lurie, who could be one of the saddest characters I've read. Coetzee has a talent that very few writers have: the gall to offer no redemption to his characters, and to still write a great story. THAT is a difficult task and Coetzee does it well. And then in this, Coetzee writes some of the most beautifully constructed sentences. He's a trained scholar in linguistics, so I guess that kind of comes with the degrees. I need to read more Coetzee.

Logicomix by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou (Bloomsbury, 347 pages). My first graphic novel ended up being one of the biggest mind trips EVER. This will be difficult to write about but just to get it off my chest: I ADORED THIS NOVEL. I read it in about 8 hours over two days and then I read the ending again. My mom got this for me for Christmas, hearing about it through her friend who is a brainiac. Logicomix is a graphic novel that is about what the authors call "The Quest." In other words, the search for truth. It is most definitely a philosophy book masked in a modern medium. Yes, the authors are Greek and yes they're very intelligent. The book is mainly an autobiography of Bertrand Russell, perhaps the most important logistician the world has known yet. He changed mathematics and reshaped philosophical thought during a time when the West desperately needed it - through the World Wars. I learned a ton about Russell, more about logic/math, and even more about the human's desire for truth. This is my favorite subject and the reason I read so much. Truth is the most important concept humans can know and access. And, if I may, that is why Jesus Christ's most outrageous statement is not that he knew the truth or that he could bring you to the truth, but that he WAS the truth. This graphic novel will remain as one of my favorite pieces of literature. WARNING: Just because it has pictures doesn't mean it's fully accessible for all audiences. My head took a spin, I know I didn't get everything...

I was SO close to finishing The Contemplative Pastor by Eugene Peterson...I decided to wait until January to report on that. Stay tuned and keep reading, friends.