en-US Mon, 28 Apr 2025 10:32:32 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg ReadStatus9362893675 Mon, 28 Apr 2025 10:32:32 -0700 /review/show/7526121567 J. Alfred is currently reading Created in God's Image by Anthony A. Hoekema
]]> ReadStatus9362889122 Mon, 28 Apr 2025 10:31:06 -0700 /review/show/7526118370 J. Alfred is currently reading This Other Eden by Paul Harding
]]> Review7210059917 Mon, 28 Apr 2025 10:30:41 -0700 /review/show/7210059917 J. Alfred gave 5 stars to Peace Like a River (Paperback) by Leif Enger
I don't really have categories for this book. Like-- Narnia/ Willa Cather/ Wendell Berry/ To Kill a Mockingbird is maybe getting us in the area.
So we've got a kind of Penecostalist fever dream of being Led by God and Miracles Really Happen as the setting, but itself set within a world that doesn't especially like miracles and doesn't know what to do with people who don't live by its rules, and also the recognition that if God exists he doesn't seem especially interested in making everything right in lived reality, so things continue difficult. And then you add in some really interesting black and white good and evil, and then blur those distinctions in intense ways. And strong thoughtful delicate writing that almost glows and you're pretty sure it must be sentimental because it's making you feel good but you're also convinced it's very talented and allusive.
I'm not sure this book is artistically excellent because it knocks all my normal criteria around, but I'm 100% sure it is interesting and worth your time.

Note: One person I told this book about told me later that she was listening to it on audio book and had to stop driving at the end because she was being blinded by tears. Rookie mistake ]]> ReadStatus9312363271 Tue, 15 Apr 2025 10:53:08 -0700 /review/show/743899576 J. Alfred started reading The Long Patrol by Brian Jacques
]]> Review7425026677 Tue, 15 Apr 2025 10:43:10 -0700 /review/show/7425026677 J. Alfred gave 3 stars to The Bluest Eye (Paperback) by Toni Morrison
Obviously powerful, cringy, intense: how do we have different gradations of society so different they might as well be in different universes, except that the cultural norms of one grouping seems to form the horizons of another grouping. Or, how do people come to hate their own physicality?
This is a haunting first novel that shows the traits of someone who will eventually be capable of writing Beloved. Read it with fear and trembling, I guess.

Personal note: I believe my copy of this book was stolen. At least, it was with my stuff in the parking lot at the grocery store (I put it on top of my beer because I thought, ironically, I don't want anyone to think they might want to steal my beer), and then later it wasn't anymore. If someone did in fact steal this book-- I wish that person well and I hope the reading experience was a good one. Come talk to me about it. ]]> ReadStatus9300808473 Sat, 12 Apr 2025 11:29:32 -0700 /review/show/7483023377 J. Alfred is currently reading From Pre-Reformation to the Present Day: The Rise and Growth of the Church in Its Cultural, Intellectual, and Political Context by John D. Woodbridge
]]> Review7477506581 Sat, 12 Apr 2025 11:15:52 -0700 /review/show/7477506581 J. Alfred gave 4 stars to Surrender to Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality (The Spiritual Journey, #1) by David G. Benner
Okay, it's really important to see yourself as loved prior to any of your self improvement and noncontingent on it. Heard.
The question then is: what does a life of being supported by the experience of love-- like floating in the gentle river, yea verily-- supposed to actually look like?
I mean, the experienced presence of love can keep us coming to God even in our sins, yes and amen, but our sins keep us uncomfortable in God's presence, yes? Don't we want to progress in Christlikeness, and therefore desire self improvement? Isn't that what we call sanctification, with some jostling of nuance?
I'm convinced that this book and others like it (The Ragamuffin Gospel, Life of the Beloved) are drastically important, but I don't get how to make them personally 'stick.'
To his credit, Benner recognizes that this is a legitimate response: this is a "process-- a lifelong journey of formation, deformation, and re-formation. It is the ongoing journey of being born and reborn and reborn again-- over and over. But rather than being bad news, suggesting a job that is never ending, this is actually good news, revealing a life that is never ending!"
So. Keep going strong, I guess ]]> Review7472867567 Fri, 11 Apr 2025 05:30:44 -0700 /review/show/7472867567 J. Alfred gave 2 stars to Living to Tell the Tale (Hardcover) by Gabriel García Márquez
This autobiography reads like Marquez's novels, which is to say slowly, obscurely, brilliantly, in a world tinged with sadness, unintelligible magic, and incompatible moralities.
I gave up halfway through, and not without cause. He says "we should read only those books that force us to reread them," which seemed distant from the experience I was having in this book, which reads like exquisitely manicured oatmeal. ]]> ReadStatus9292803833 Thu, 10 Apr 2025 05:16:57 -0700 /review/show/7477506581 J. Alfred started reading Surrender to Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality by David G. Benner
]]> ReadStatus9285982055 Tue, 08 Apr 2025 09:58:38 -0700 /review/show/7472867567 J. Alfred is currently reading Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel García Márquez
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