Books for Boys

Today Dr. Mohler pointed out on his blog that a major reason many guys don't like reading is that they don't have reading material that captures their interest and fires their imaginations. He recommended a list of books that sound fascinating, but are definitely for older teenagers and adults.

When I was a boy I had no such dislike of reading. I read just about everything I could get my hands on. Visiting the library was a several-times-a-week occurrence. When I was disobedient and in need of correction, my parents found that one of the most effective punishments was not to let me read anything for a period of time.

I thought I'd list a few of the books that I loved when I was a kid, in case you know a boy who is always in search of new reading material. Most of these will be appropriate for kids who have graduated from Dr. Seuss but aren't yet ready to tackle unabridged, adult-oriented novels.


The Hardy Boys, by F.W. Dixon. The classic boys' mystery series, and I read them all. The woman who evaluated my homeschooling work told me one year that I needed to read fewer Hardy Boys and branch out into other material.

Tom Swift, by Victor Appleton. Original science-fiction for boys, these books have been around since 1910. I read the atomic-age books (the New Tom Swift, Jr. Adventures series) that were written in the '50s and '60s.

The Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander. Alexander draws on Welsh folklore to tell a fantastic store of Taran, a boy who doesn't know he's a king.

The Dark is Rising sequence, by Susan Cooper. Cooper's stories incorporate Welsh and English mythology, including Arthurian legends, and revolve around five kids who are caught up in a climactic struggle between good and evil

Grimm's Fairy Tales. The original stories are nothing like their Disneyfied modern incarnations, and will appeal to boys' love of monsters, witches, gore, and adventure.

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien. I can still remember discovering The Hobbit on the shelves at the library for the first time. Probably the best fantasy stories ever written.

The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis. These really need no introduction, given their current publicity with the movies.

The Borrowers (and sequels), by Mary Norton. A Carnegie Medal-winning story about little people who live in the walls and borrow things from big people.

Doctor Dolittle, by Hugh Lofting. The 1967 film adaptation with Rex Harrison is a classic; the books are even better.

The Redwall series, by Brian Jacques. A fantasy series about talking animals. I only became aware of these books as a teenager, but I read a bunch of them and thoroughly enjoyed them. Jacques has a gift for adventurous plots.

The American Girl books, by various authors. Yes, that's right. I secretly read every single one of my sisters' AG books, and was fascinated by them. It has taken me a decade to find the courage to admit it, though. :-)

Perhaps a better series of historical novels, for boys who can't bring themselves to read American Girl books, are the books written by G.A. Henty in the late 19th century. Each focuses on a boy who lives through an important historical time or event. They've recently been republished by Dover. I only read a couple, but they're great.

I should also mention that I was introduced to many of the great classics by Moby Books' "Illustrated Classic Editions." They're abridged, illustrated versions of classic novels that are perfect for younger readers. Some of the ones I loved include:

A Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne
The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells
Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne
The Three Musketeers, by Alexander Dumas
The Man in the Iron Mask, by Alexander Dumas
The Swiss Family Robinson, by Johann Wyss
Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson
Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe
The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, by Mark Twain
Ben-Hur, by Lew Wallace
Captains Courageous, by Rudyard Kipling
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville

Progress and Renewal

"[T]hose who operate from an Enlightenment perspective typically associate progress with renewal and view disillusionment as a symptom of decay. Those who operate within a framework of Judeo-Christian values, on the other hand, characteristically view a belief in progress as a symptom of decay and a sense of disillusionment the first step toward a realistic appraisal of the world without which renewal is impossible."

~David F. Wells, No Place For Truth, p. 56

Real Men Read Austen

Many of those familiar with great literature know that Jane Austen is among the greatest novelists of all time--perhaps the greatest female English-language novelist ever. There seems to be, though, a widespread perception that she wrote novels aimed at and appealing to only women--sort of a 19th century version of chick lit. A quick look on Allconsuming.net shows that the overwhelming majority of those who say they've read Emma appear to be women. I, too, was under the same impression for years, but I have to say now that I was wrong. Austen's books are just as appealing and enjoyable--and instructive--for men as they are for women. I've read Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, and I'm currently reading Emma.

Peter Leithart comments on this at the beginning of a lecture on Austen's art, a lecture he gave in 2001 at the Christian Worldview Student Conference. Men should be more willing to read Austen for a number of reasons. First, she's actually less romantic and more grounded in a realistic view of the world than, for example, Dickens was. Second, she's funny. She writes with a sharp wit and a keen sense of irony that makes her dialogue and narrative commentary tremendously entertaining--just read the first chapter of Pride and Prejudice for proof of this. Third, because she's a woman and tells her stories from the women's point of view, reading her novels can be a helpful way to learn how women think--and that's useful to any man. Fourth, men can learn a lot about the character of honorable and dishonorable men from studying her male characters. Mr. Knightley (Emma), on one hand, is a gentleman who uses his wealth and position selflessly for the benefit and protection of those less fortunate than him. Wickham (P&P), on the other hand, is a scoundrel who seems charming at first but reveals his deceitful, self-serving nature in the end. Any man who wants to be a gentleman should study the kinds of male characters that Austen writes, and think about why each one is portrayed as he is, good or bad.

So, there you have it. Jane Austen's books aren't just for girls. Real men read Austen.

As always, electronic versions of Austen's works, in text and audio, are available from Project Gutenberg and Librivox.org, respectively.

Favorite Site

Sometimes, in my current employment, I do work that...well, let's just say it doesn't require intense concentration. To stave off boredom, I've found a great resource to help me pass the time: . Similar to Project Gutenberg, LibriVox (the name comes from the Latin words for 'book' and 'voice') hosts audio recordings of scores of classic books that are now in the public domain. Like Wikipedia, it's an open-source, collaborative project, so anyone can expand the site's catalog by recording chapters of books and adding them to the collection. I'm slightly ashamed to admit it, but this is how most of my reading has gotten done in the last several months. Here are some of the LibriVox books I've consumed recently

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
Dracula, Bram Stoker
Ghost Story collections (1) (2)
Gift of the Magi, O. Henry
King Solomon's Mines, H. Rider Haggard
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Iriving
My Man Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories, Ambrose Bierce
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Psmith in the City, P.G. Wodehouse
Right Ho, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe

Reading

I've updated my sidebar with a link to my reading list on Allconsuming.net. The old reading list I had posted there hadn't been updated since last December or so, and I figured it was time for a change.

Disclaimer: The times associated with my beginning and ending the various books are not necessarily accurate. That's a list containing books I've been working through for months, as well as some that I've started in the last couple of weeks.

Reformation History

If you have never studied or read much about the Protestant Reformation, It would be an invaluable way for you better to understand the origins of the various strands of Protestantism that are around today, and a wonderful look at the way God has preserved the witness of the Gospel in His church. Right now I'm reading Diarmid MacCulloch's excellent The Reformation: A History. It's a hefty volume, at 864 pages, but it's excellent. I'm about two hundred pages into it so far, and I'm amazed at MacCulloch's evenhanded treatment of the events, and more importantly the ideas, of the Reformation. Unlike many secular historians today, he takes seriously the idea that people are often moved to do extraordinary things because of what they believe--not simply because of political, social, economic, or psychological factors under the guise of religious belief.

One key selection:

The old Church was immensely strong, and that strength could only have been overcome by the explosive power of an idea. The idea proved to be a new statement of Augustine's ideas on salvation. That is why there is so much description of apparently abstract thought in my account of the Reformation, and why the discussion of this abstract though sometimes has to get extremely intricate. Monarchs, priests, nuns. merchants, farmers, labourers were seized by ideas which tore through their experiences and new memories and made them behave in new ways, sometimes admirable, sometimes monstrous. Social or political history cannot do without theology in understanding the sixteenth century.

One Book...

Last week I saw a book meme on Gideon Strauss' blog, and wondered if it would make it around to me. Looks like it has--I've been tagged byThabiti Anyabwile.

1. One book that changed your life: Grace Unknown: The Heart of Reformed Theology, R.C. Sproul. Credit for this one goes to my dad, who lent me the book when I asked him as a teenager what this "Reformed" thing that I'd been hearing about meant.

2. One book that you’ve read more than once: 1984, George Orwell

3. One book I’d want on a desert island: The biggest collection of Spurgeon's sermons available

4. One book that made me laugh: Right Behind, Nathan Wilson

5. One book that made me cry: A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis

6. One book that you wish had been written: On Baptism, by Polycarp (a disciple of the Apostle John)--in which he explicitly settles the question of whether the church under and immediately following the Apostles baptized infants or not

7. One book you wish had never been written: The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, John Maynard Keynes

8. One book that you are currently reading: The Reformation: A History, Diarmid McCullough

9. One book that you’ve been meaning to read: Biblical Theology, Geerhardus Vos. Own it, read the first few chapters last summer, never finished it.

Now I tag...Emily O'Neal, Kyle Newcomer, and John Letoto.

Generosity Added to Love

"She went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love--which is always a tremendous task, dear friends, a mammoth task."

~ O. Henry, The Gift of the Magi.

That phrase--"the ravages made by generosity added to love"--is one of the most beautiful and profound things I've heard in a long time. It stopped me in my tracks when I heard it, and I was so startled by its simple beauty that forgot what I was doing. O. Henry's short story about a young husband and wife who each sacrifice what is most dear to them so they can show generosity to one another is, likewise, one of the more delightful things I've read recently. It's an amazing picture of the generosity and wisdom of love, and a tremendous encouragement to display the sacrificial love of Christ. You can find the text of the story online here, and an audio recording here.

Science (fiction) and faith

If you like science fiction, check out Arthur C. Clarke's short story, The Star.  Clarke explores the centuries old-question of the relationship between science and faith, in a story that is as powerful and startling as it is brief.  Clarke won a Hugo Award in 1956 for this story.

 

Sci-fi has never made much of an impact among the great works of western literature, with only the works of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne available in the "classics" section of your local library or bookstore.  Nonetheless, I think the genre has gotten short shrift and is capable of carrying the same literary weight as other forms of fiction.  Though lots of the sci-fi that is out there is written purely for entertainment and in that respect aspires little higher than a Harlequin romance, many sci-fi novels are quite well written and explore important social, philosophical, and personal issues.  One good example is my favorite modern sci-fi author, Timothy Zahn, who in his recent novels has explored marriage and irony.

Currently reading

There are in fact quite a number of things I'm currently reading, including Preachers and Preaching, Mind: A Brief Introduction, The Cross-Centered Life, Beyond the Fall of Night, and From Embers to a Flame: How God Can Revitalize Your Church, just to name a few. I have a habit of starting a book before I finish the one(s) I was already working through, and sometimes it makes it seem like quite a triumph to actually finish one.

At any rate, a smaller work I've discovered recently is an article by Herman Bavinck called Calvin and Common Grace. I've long been interested in the doctrine of common grace and what various theologians and Christian authors think of its importance, and this is, so far, an interesting treatment of the subject in manageable size. Bavinck takes a high view of the value of learning from the wisdom of so-called pagans:

The good philosophical thoughts and ethical precepts found scattered through the pagan world receive in Christ their unity and center. They stand for the desire which in Christ finds its satisfaction; they represent the question to which Christ gives the answer; they are the idea of which Christ furnishes the reality. The pagan world, especially in its philosophy, is a pedagogy unto Christ; Aristotle, like John the Baptist, is the forerunner of Christ. It behooves the Christians to enrich their temple with the vessels of the Egyptians and to adorn the crown of Christ, their king, with the pearls brought up from the sea of paganism.

Review: Evangelicalism Divided, by Iain Murray

The term “evangelical” is in a questionable position these days, at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Many Reformed Protestants, Emergent Church folks, and others are reluctant to use the term to describe themselves, despite coming from ecclesiastical traditions that have historically had that label. Others take pride in using the term, finding it useful to locate themselves in the Protestant world, identifying themselves with supporters of a number of political, social, and cultural causes. Nonetheless, many (if not most) of those who use the term have a hard time defining just what an evangelical is. One case in point is a recent forum on evangelical involvement in foreign affairs where a panelist, head of a Texas evangelical association, was unable to provide any useful or satisfactory definition of evangelicalism.

Part of this inability to pin down what an evangelical is stems from the movement’s convoluted history over the last half-century, as its leading figures in Britain and the United States came to be deeply divided over what evangelicals are about and how they relate to other groups within professing Christianity. It is this history that Iain Murray chronicles in Evangelicalism Divided: A Record of Crucial Change in the Years 1950 to 2000.

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Review: Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church by Don Carson

Augustine of Hippo, in his essay De Mendacio (“On Lying”), wrote, “When regard for truth has been broken down or even slightly weakened, all things will remain doubtful.” In that essay, as will appear by the title, Augustine illustrated the nature of lying and its evil effects, apparently addressing a problem that was widespread among Christians, and perhaps even pastors, at the time. In the intellectual framework in which many pastors today operate, however, lying is scarcely possible, because truth has ceased to be a meaningful category. As Augustine opined that evil was but the perversion of good, so lying is the perversion of truth—but if truth is denied, there is nothing to pervert. Such is the state of many people’s understanding of religion today, including many Evangelicals influenced by postmodern thought, some of whom are identified with a movement known as the Emerging (or Emergent) Church.

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Review: A Generous Orthodoxy, by Brian McLaren

What is orthodoxy? What is the essence of “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” for which we are to contend? Through much of church history Christians have understood “orthodox” to mean (as the word itself would suggest) right thinking—belief in a body of essential doctrine that the Bible reveals as the central message of Christianity. For some today, however, this definition does not suffice. Whether because of a postmodern aversion to doctrinal propositions or because of a desire not to be “divisive,” many today are redefining the essence of following Jesus as a mission, rather than a message. Brian McLaren is perhaps the most visible example of this. His book, “A Generous Orthodoxy,” seeks to paint a new vision for what orthodoxy ought to be in a postmodern world.

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Review: Reformation of the Church by Iain Murray (part 3 of 12)

This post is the third of what will ultimately be twelve essays interacting with Iain Murray's book The Reformation of the Church.
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In Section III of The Reformation of the Church, Iain Murray begins the examination of “The Need for Reformation” with three excerpted articles, one on the many abuses in the Church of England in the sixteenth century and two on the relation of the state to the church. Thomas Wilcox, in “The Necessity of Reformation”, written to Parliament in 1572, lays out various ways in which the English church still resembled too much the Roman church and failed to reflect the standards of Scripture. Among the abuses he attacks are absenteeism, scarcity of preaching, lack of a plurality of elders, corruption of the office of deacons, and failure of “ecclesiastical discipline.” William Ames, writing in 1631, continues a dialogue “Concerning a National Church” by responding to an essay by Dr. John Burgess. In the excerpt, Ames argues that a state-run hierarchy ruling local churches is found nowhere in Scripture, and that unity among particular churches is found primarily in common confession, not in organizational rule. Finally, Charles Hodge, writing in 1863, surveys various ways in which state and church related to one another throughout history, showing that the separation of church and state that has characterized the United States is both biblical and a historical innovation.

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Corporate Worship and the People of God

For millennia, worship of God has been the fundamental act that characterizes His people. From the Old Testament distinction between the pagans who worship false gods and the Israelites who worship the true God to the New Testament division between the church and the world, worship has always defined the people of God, for it is fundamentally what God’s people are all about. Since the Reformation dispensed with the idea that the practice and pronouncement of the Church are inherently infallible, Christians have asked what worship is, and how Christians should go about doing it. They have answered these questions in many different ways. Ligon Duncan, in his two chapters in Give Praise to God, Don Carson, in his chapter in Worship By the Book, Terry Johnson, in Reformed Worship, and David Peterson, in Engaging with God, all address the topic in slightly different, yet helpful, ways.

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Review: Reformation of the Church by Iain Murray (part 2 of 12)

This post is the first of what will ultimately be twelve essays interacting with Iain Murray's book The Reformation of the Church.
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The second section of Iain Murray’s The Reformation of the Church is titled “The Rule for Reformation—The Word of God.” Martin Luther argues, over against the Roman doctrine of the infallibility of the Church and the Pope, that all human men are sinners subject to error, and that therefore their writings must be submitted to the judgment of Scripture. William Cunningham lays out the Regulative Principle established by the reformers—the doctrine that all the Church’s practices in worship must be positively found Scripture, and he goes on to apply it to the matter of church government, arguing that the Scriptures set out a particular form of government to which we must hold. John Hooper, writing during the Vestment Controversy in England in the 1550s, gives four criteria which must be met for something to be considered a “thing indifferent,” and concludes that the wearing of special priestly garments does not meet the criteria and is therefore prohibited by Scripture. John a Lasco delves into the vestments issue more deeply, showing how their use is prohibited by the abolition of the Aaronic priesthood in Christ. Finally, an excerpt from the Geneva Service Book of 1556 gives several scriptural proofs for the Regulative principle.

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Review: Reformation of the Church by Iain Murray (part 1 of 12)

This post is the first of what will ultimately be twelve essays interacting with Iain Murray's book The Reformation of the Church.
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In his introduction to The Reformation of the Church: a collection of Reformed and Puritan documents on Church issues, Iain Murray lays out his reasons for publishing this volume of collected works. He outlines how questions of the internal life of the Church were being discussed widely in England at the time of the volume’s publication, driven largely by an ecumenical movement that raised these topics in an attempt to “burst the bands” of denominationalism (p. 7). Murray points out that the Reformers and Puritans wrote extensively on the Church, and that their works had virtually disappeared from the conversation by the early twentieth century. This volume is intended to remedy that deficiency, providing the perspective of the men who perhaps more than anyone else in history had to consider the nature of the Church as they dealt with the world-shaking implications of the recovery of the gospel of justification by faith alone.

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