Reading log

[ajyouthguy]

Going All the Way: Preparing for a Marriage That Lasts--Craig Groeschel

awesome book that is gonna be what I use in premarital counseling for the foreseeable future.

[ajyouthguy]

just finished these two the past two days:

Jesus Wants to Save Christians--Rob Bell and Don Golden
The Stuff Christians Like--Jonathan Acuff

[RedcoatJones]

just finished these two the past two days:

Jesus Wants to Save Christians--Rob Bell and Don Golden
The Stuff Christians Like--Jonathan Acuff

I love Acuff's blog. How is the book?

[ajyouthguy]

it is excellent...i laughed, hard, a lot, partly because it was funny period, but mostly b/c you find yourself realizing how many of those things YOU, people you know, your church, etc, have done/said/etc.

[ajyouthguy]

finished The Christian Atheist by Craig Groeschel (excellent) and The Most Loving Place in Town: A Parable for the Modern Church by Ken Blanchard and Phil Hodges (very good too)

[ajyouthguy]

Stripped: Uncensored Grace on the Streets of Vegas--Jud Wilhite

[ajyouthguy]

read:
Lose Your Cool by Zach Hunter (Thursday)
Refuel by Doug Fields (Friday)
Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore (Saturday)

[NewDimension]

A Brief History of Everything - Ken Wilber

[ajyouthguy]

The Justice God is Seeking--David Ruis

[ajyouthguy]

It by Craig Groeschel

[ajyouthguy]

Beyond Charity: The Call to Christian Community Development by John M. Perkins

[NewDimension]

Walden - Henry D. Thoreau

[ajyouthguy]

Lead Like Jesus--Ken Blanchard

[ajyouthguy]

Start Here: Doing Hard Things Where You Are--Alex and Brett Harris

[ajyouthguy]

Plan B by Pete Wilson

[RedcoatJones]

Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor, by Brad Gooch.

Very good bio of a "Christ-haunted" writer. I remember liking her stories in school, but now I'm inspired to go read some more, especially Wise Blood and the short story collections.

[ajyouthguy]

We Get to Carry Each Other: The Gospel According to U2--Greg Garrett
The Story Behind Every U2 Song--Neill Stokes

[ajyouthguy]

Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream by David Platt

[ajyouthguy]

And: The Gathered and Scattered Church by Hugh Halter and Matt Shmay

[ajyouthguy]

Transformational Church by Ed Stetzer and Thom Rainer

[ajyouthguy]

Viral Churches--Ed Stetzer and Warren Bird

[Vlad!]

Show Stopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft, G. Pascal Zachary
I read this book partly due to an interest in the history of computer programming and partly because I strongly suspected I would see some similarities between the events it describes and the events going on in my job as we race to complete the multi-year development cycle on a new operating system.

Overall, I think Zachary does a good job of chronicling the events in a way that the layperson will easily be able to follow, while not getting bogged down explaining every little thing and making the narrative tedious for the experienced developer. The story the book tells is one I found to be fascinating; though I thought I knew much of the sordid history of Windows, it has both a depth and a breadth far beyond my own knowledge.

Not being a historian, I'm not sure I'm qualified to comment on his methodology, but I will say that he appears to have gleaned the majority of his material through personal interviews. He interviewed a lot of people, but I know if several years later some guy came to me to ask me about the project I was doing, my story would no doubt be an exaggerated caricature of actual events: small slights would be amplified into major grievances, small triumphs of my own would be trumpeted as major coups, and events would no doubt be twisted in a way which suggests I was much more of the lynchpin of my team than I actually am. Perhaps Zachary has found ways to ameliorate this.

In any case, I really enjoyed the book, and for anyone interested in the history of the operating system most people use every day I think it would be an extremely enlightening read. It's very well-written, reads very easily, and is certainly worth your time and attention.

[Vlad!]

Consider the Lobster (and Other Essays), David Foster Wallace
I'd been meaning to check out some DFW stuff for some time, and I had this book sitting on my reading table for an honestly embarrassing number of months.

Wallace is truly an incredible essayist, and it's a joy to observe such a skilled writer practicing his craft. Whether it's talk radio, the boiling of the titular lobster, politics, or even pornography, DFW waxes eloquent on many subjects. Though I don't necessarily agree with all his opinions, I certainly enjoy the way he presents them.

One criticism of this collection, and in particular of his piece on contemporary usage, is that he has a tendency toward the prolix which can make an otherwise entertaining essay drag on. I certainly recognize the irony here; I, of all people. criticizing a better writer than I for going on too long about something, especially a topic like nitpicking modern grammar.

I was very much entertained by his piece Host, about talk radio; not only was it supremely interesting in itself, but he experimented with a new kind of typesetting for footnotes which wound up working quite well. For those unfamiliar with his writing, DFW loves footnotes, and even his normal pieces present a challenge to typesetters in that his footnotes will sometimes wrap to the next page, or indeed have footnotes of their own! As I myself am quite fond of the footnote, I've devoted the occasional synapse toward thinking about how footnotes could be improved, especially in the context of web media. I think something similar to Wallace's approach would work fairly well in hypertext.

I certainly plan on reading more DFW at some point; perhaps I'll sample some of his fiction next.