The Sentinel by Arthur C. Clarke

The Sentinel is a collection of short stories by the sci-fi legend. I checked this out of the library sometime earlier in the year and just noticed that I never wrote it up. I can't recall many specifics of the stories except that they were really great. The title story is the foundation of 2001: A Space Odyssey, though it is really just the idea for the monoliths, and it is fleshed out considerably. 

I checked this out of the library. I'd like to read more of Clarke. I probably finished it in March or April based on where I found it in my "short" list I keep of books on my reading list and that I have finished. 

The Elephant to Hollywood by Michael Caine

Michael Caine's second biographical work is a treat to read. It's full of entertaining stories about his life in the movies, and with interesting biographical details about his early life in the poor area of London know as The Elephant. It was a quick, fun read that I started and finished in one day while my daughter and I were at the beach in Sanibel Island. It's a perfect beach read. I finished this back in May. 

Mistakes Leaders Make by Dave Kraft

Dave Kraft is a long-time Navigators leader. He writes about the fictional Christ Community Church and uses a series of stories about the pastors and lay leaders of the church to illustrate several important mistakes leaders of churches might make. Though the people are fictionalized, they are based on actual people that Kraft has experience with, and I suspect a number of people he knows might look at the stories and say "He's taking about me!" In other words, they seem to be composites, but the problems they have are all too real.

Lots of minor mistakes happen all the time and gross sin would be an easy target, but Kraft focuses on those mistakes that (1) cause effectiveness in ministry to be seriously diminished and (2) may not all be looked on as mistakes by the mistake-maker or even the onlooker. For example, what looks like peacekeeping can actually be failure to confront people or to provide appropriate direction and stick to it. What looks to one like a drive to complete the task of ministry and grow the church can actually be prideful indulgence in overwork, lack of delegation and people development, and desire to please man rather than God. His first mistake--wait, that sounds wrong. The first mistake he expounds is putting ministry before the love of Jesus. These are the kinds of "respectable" mistakes (to borrow Jerry Bridges term) that people may laud rather than condemn.

Kraft provides 10 common mistakes with examples and resolutions (sometimes too simple! One hard-to-confront person moves away and saves the other leaders from dealing with him!)

The book is geared toward pastors. I found it useful as an elder, and would recommend it for Sessions to read together. It's brief  (about 100 pages) and broad enough that most churches probably deal with one or more of the mistakes he enumerates. He also gives a list of other mistakes that he wants to write about further, just in case he never gets to complete that book.

This the the second book I've read this year from the RE:LIT series (the first was Gospel-Centered Discipleship). I bought this from a Crossway promotion and will definitely hang onto it. Though some of the specifics will change, the mistakes are timeless.

Our Triune God by Philip Ryken and Michael LeFebvre

Ryken and LeFebvre have written a brief and helpful book on a complex topic. It is biblical and practical. They do not attempt to convey the historical dialogue or the heresies surrounding the doctrine, but instead take a practical approach for those who already know the doctrine and agree with it. What are the implications of the Trinity for my salvation and walk? What about the fact that I can't get my mind around the concept of the Trinity? How does knowing the God who is three in one affect my worship? The final chapter, The Joyous Trinity, coveres times in the gospel of Luke where all three persons of the Trinity act together, which I've not seen focused on before.

They point out in their introduction that they are writing for the individual believer, and that they could easily write another volume on the affect on the corporate Church of the fact of the Trinity.

I read most of this on a plane trip, and finished it up right before leaving for vacation, on 11/16/12. I will hang onto it and will likely read it again and recommend it to people.

Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Years

Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Years is a collection of Charles Schulz's comics throughout his career, with introductions and commentary from Schulz.  I read it over a few months in bits and parts, the best way to digest a book like this. Of course, I'd read and still recalled about 95% of the comics, but they are still delightful and I'm glad to have this nicely bound collection.

I read Schulz and Peanuts last year (a biography), and seeing the history of the strip unfold in "real time" over several decades was quite enjoyable. One of my favorite blogs these days is Roasted Peanuts, a running commentary on the gocomics.com postings of classic Peanuts comics. Each of these increase my enjoyment of the comics themselves by revealing some of the inner workings of the strip.

I bought it from Amazon as a gold box deal, one of the few good ones I've seen. It was a real bargain and I'll be hanging onto it.

Books on Hosea

In preparing for our small group, I reread one book and read another on the book of Hosea. 

Love Divine and Unfailing: The Gospel According to Hosea by Michael Barnett is a well-done book bridging the message of the Old Testament prophet with the gospel of Christ. Barnett does not take the prophetic book sequentially as much as topically. He does a great job of connecting the crises in the life of Hosea and Israel to the finished work of Christ, in which all the promises of judgement and life are fulfilled. While not technical it is informative on the text, and it is also devotional, providing encouragement that our current state is not "final" but that I will be perfected in Him. This was an enjoyable read, and a good entry in the "Gospel in the Old Testament" series.

Hosea: The Heart and Holiness of God by G. Campbell Morgan was an unusual find. Amazon and CBD carry few books on Hosea. This is published by an unknown (to me) publisher. It turns out that this is actually freely available online. I bought it on Amazon and was expecting something a little meatier size-wise. But it turns out to be a great book of 12 sermons by the incomparable preacher. He is mostly on the mark, delving into the word and expositing the message of Hosea for Hosea's time and for ours. Occasionally he bases a sermon on one word ("Canaan" vs. "merchant" for example) without significant support, but overall a great book on, as the subtitle notes, the heart and holiness of God.

I also read most of Matthew Henry's commentary on Hosea (always good) and bits of Calvin. Calvin's was unusual in that it seemed to also be transcribed sermons. 

For our study we used Dale and Sandy Larsen's bible study from IVP. Great bible studies are hard to find, and I suppose that balancing exegesis and practicality is always a tension of preparers of group studies. The "how do you think the prophet felt when..." kinds of questions rarely seem valuable to me. This study has some of that...

Nevertheless, the Larsen's do a game job of making Hosea accessible and practical. The questions usually helped our group to focus our attention in specific areas. As leader I used them as a jumping off point and added my own questions based on my further studies. I think that what I missed (having read Barnett's book first) was the relentless return to the grace of God in Christ that is the ultimate story of Hosea. The practical story of Hosea's call to love Gomer and to redeem her echoes throughout the balance of the book--in some places louder than others, but always there. At times the gospel seems dim, yet it is always there, and needs to be seen.

As a note, I started the study with an overview of the history of Israel and Judah and the key societal situations during the time of Hosea, the two calves, and the reasons they were set up, and a brief geography lesson. Among other sources, I found this to be very helpful from a historical standpoint.  

Social and Cultural Anthropology by John Monaghan and Peter Just

Part of my work is understanding people and their behaviors within their context so that I can advise clients how to reach them effectively with their products and services. The things that are important to people are not as apparent as it seems, and research methodologies such as ethnography can provide insight into motivations that are not conscious to the consumer. 

What this book does primarily is to introduce the questions that anthropologists ask and the methods that they use to get their answers. The key research practice is to live among the people being studied long enough to be "forgotten" as an outsider, whereupon the routines and nonroutine events gradually surface what the values and mores of the culture truly are. Every culture has its assumptions about what is normal, and the authors make an effort to expose some of the common differences through examples of varied marriage practices, rituals of reaching adulthood, etc.  One had studied a tribal group in Papua New Guinea, a synchretistic Islamic group. Their practice after birth is to discard the placenta in a field, but the placenta has a spirit that is angry because it "did not become human" and this spirit can cause problems later. Their primary crops are considered sentient and receive offering before being harvested. 

The book is a brief introduction to the study practices of anthropologists and some of their findings. It naturally ignores the reasons for the adoption of some of the practices--worship of creation rather than the creator, and violation of the natural Law--that would be condemned as biblically abhorrent. 

The version of this that I read was published by a different publisher and the subtitle was "A Brief Insight." I finished this on 6/9/12 as we were driving home from the beach. I'll probably shoot it to the used bookstore. 

Gospel Centered Discipleship by Jonathan Dodson

I'd been looking forward to this since I started reading in Dodson's blog where he mentioned that he was writing it. It's an expansion of his book on "Fight Clubs" that focus on fighting sin in the believer's life. Overall, it's a helpful book. It's strength is in defining the problems it sees in certain areas of the current church and then helping to focus on the gospel as the solution rather than moralism. He suggests that small groups of men or women (2-3 at largest) read scripture together, confess to one another, and apply the gospel truth to fight against sin. Among the useful practices he suggests in the Fight Clubs (as he calls these groups) is defining the promises of God vs. the promises of sin. For example, what is the appeal of anger--self justification, power, getting my own way? Compare that to the promise of God to trust in His way and be justified by the person and work of Jesus Christ. 

Overall, a good book on putting the gospel in the center of discipleship, with some practical framework for helping that happen without making a list of legal requirements that constitute a new law. Having heard and read much in this line from Paul Kooistra and Jack Miller, I thought Dodson's work was a good primer to this critical understanding of Christian discipleship, with some new ways of implementing it within the current cultural framework. 

I read this during our vacation in Daytona Beach in early June 2012.

Blankets by Craig Thompson

Thompson writes his memoir of a pair of boys (himself and his younger brother)  raised in a fundamentalist household, and of his first love. It was interesting and the boys are very convincing. It's well-drawn and paced. It left me sad because ultimately it is a tale of lost faith. His spirit was stifled as a youth by a father who does not take seriously the command to fathers to "not exasperate your children." Rather, the father locked them in a scary cubby-hole when they misbehaved. Thompson sees mainly the negatives of "religion" as a result, and is lured away by more attractive prospects, especially in the form of a young girl he meets at camp.

I started Thompson's Habibi, which was recommended on Paste's list of the best graphic novels of 2011. Again it was well-drawn and engaging, but I got tired of the frank depictions of the harem, (which Thompson obviously relished,) and also found some of the character development so unbelievable as to be offputting. I finally gave up about 2/3 of the way through and moved on to more profitable reading.

Finished Blankets about 3/31/12. Gave up on Habibi about a week before that. Both library books. I was on a graphic novel tear for a while and moved on to regular novels and nonfiction for some balance.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

Well, I had a post here with a couple of paragraphs about my thoughts on this. But I tried to edit it to change a typo and somehow managed to wipe it out. So I'll just say this: The Power of Habit is an interesting layman's look at the influence of habit on daily behaviors and purchasing. Some of it seemed less related to habits than others (like the programming of radio stations and the making of hits, which was more about the use of repetition to "cause" popularity. Maybe that's forming a habit of "liking" a song?) The chapter on Target and the use of predictive models is interesting and touches the tip of the iceberg on that topic. All in all, a really enjoyable read, and one I have in my business book library now.

11/22/63 by Stephen King

King has written a story of redemption from a prior evil that had profound effects. An unassuming English teacher goes back in time to...save Kennedy from assassination? Yes, but really his purpose ends up changing, and what he wants most is to save his love interest, Sadie, from her past (an abusive and frigid husband) and her future (an attack by the same man that mars her appearance, affecting her forever--or so Jake assumes). King spends many pages developing the romance between Jake and Sadie, which has plenty of time to develop since Jake arrives in Dallas a few years before the assassination. It is a sweet story, not a sidebar at all but really the heart of the story. Jake cares for Sadie, for the other residents of his adopted home in Jodie, Texas, and for the people of his "future," whom he believes will benefit from his prevention of the assassination. 

But the past is obdurate, as Jake says often. It's a common theme of time travel books, and used to good effect here. Jake is beset by accidents and personal tragedy as he tries to "fix" history. His best efforts turn out, well, not as he expected. I see an aspect of the gospel here: Jake can  no more bring about redemption through his efforts, great though they may be, than man can bring about his own salvation. King does not name the "force" that keeps the past obdurate, but watch the "Yellow Card Man" and you will eventually see that there's someone watching over things. Is it the benevolent God or something more sinister that wants to protect the Plan and cares not for the individuals therein? Hmmm. 

King wrote an ending and then a suggestion of his son (also a writer) caused him to rewrite it. If you have read the whole book, read the original ending here and you will find that the ending as printed is better. It harmonizes with the balance of the book, it satisfies the reader more, and it answers that last question I posed. 

King did his homework on Dallas. I was not here in 1963, being only one year old, but the streets and descriptions are accurate, and the attitudes of the people coincide with what I have learned of the past during my 17 years in the Metroplex. 

I got this from the library, and finished it on 3/25/12. 

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Another graphic novel, my third of the year so far, and I have Habibi out of the library now. Persepolis has been on my list since the movie came out, so that I could read the book before seeing the movie. Took a few years but I can now move the movie up the Netflix list.

Marjane Satrapi was born in Tehran and was a small child when the Islamic revolution came about in 1979. This memoir tells of the changes for her family and the society through the lens of her own life.

While no one liked the shah, the revolution radically altered life in Iran, creating an oppressive environment and no real way of escape. Marji was sent to Vienna to live after Iraq began bombing Tehran, and living there in a variety of situations, you almost think that she will have a happy life there. She returns to Iran after the war and is struck by all the emphasis on the "martyrs" of the Iran-Iraq war, and by the oppressive environment.

The story is told straightforwardly and honestly. While there is no justice in the land, neither is she or her family portrayed as complete innocents. The futility of imposing Islamic law on those who are not true believers comes through loud and clear. The only fallback the morality police have is to kill the "sinners" who dare to wear makeup or to say the wrong thing.

The stark black and white of the art (lots of black thanks to all the veils) suits the situation, where the world is black and white and mostly dark. In Vienna we see more grays, but it's back to black and white in Tehran. The artist uses the medium well to let art tell part of the story.

Finished it on 2/26/12.

Ringworld by Larry Niven

Ringworld portrays a future world where interplanetary travel is normal, and people move to other places in the world by using a "transfer booth" and dialing a location number they want to visit (I guess they don't have "cell transfers" yet). Louis Wu's 200th birthday celebration is interrupted when an alien commandeers his transfer and sends him on a mission to learn about the ring world, a mysterious, enormous, manufactured ring around a distant sun. How was the ring world built? Learning its secrets will mean they can replicate the process and save civilization in their area of space, where a stellar explosion will wipe them out in 20,000 years.

So it's kind of a "road" book, where a motley crew heads off to explore the ring world. Niven creates an interesting world and explains it well, unfolding its mysteries gradually. For example, the ring is offset on the sun's side by large squares that rotate around the ring slowly, creating day and night.  The engineers of the planet, they deduce, created day and night to mimic their home planets.

The development of the ring world happened long ago, however, and things have changed. The people are not advanced, but savages. They treat the visitors as gods at times, since they can fly (on a flycycle, which is going on my Amazon wish list).

The characters each have interesting quirks that come into play over the course of the book. The advanced alien, a two-headed "Pierson's puppeteer" with articulated lips that act as hands (go figure) comes from a race of utter cowards yet he acts in brave ways at times. In fact, he was chosen for the task because he was considered insane by his peers.

The contrast in the mindsets/worldviews (universeviews?) of the characters from different planets is another fun part of the world Niven creates. Man retains his "monkey curiosity" but not so the warriors of the kzin. Their attitudes toward war, discovery, life, etc. vary significantly, yet consistently with their history.

If the book has any downside, it's that it moves a little slowly. The explanations of the ring world and the character are foreshadowed and many can be determined as the book progresses. Ringworld is the first of a series, and perhaps all the setup is necessary to make the series flow better, but I can't help but compare it to the spare prose of Bradbury. It was published in the early 1970s and won a Nebula award, so I am surprised I have not come across it before. Savannah gave it to me for Christmas, having searched for something like "books like Terry Pratchett." and I finished it on 2/21/12. I'd like to read the remainder of the series.

refractions: a journey of faith, art, and culture by Makoto Fujimura

A book of essays written between 2004 and 2007 by NYC-based artist Fujimura, with a foreword by Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian in Manhattan, Refractions is a lovely book, both in content and appearance. It it richly illustrated with art and photographs, some by the author, mostly by others. Most were written for magazines like Christianity Today.

Fujimura explores the reasons we make art and where faith, art and culture collide. He lived near the World Trade Center buildings when they fell, and many of his essays reflect his reactions and evolving thinking on the events of 9/11/2001. (One of my favorites was his encounter with the architect of the new WTC complex, a chance meeting in a voting precinct.) In contrast to the hate-driven "art" of the attack on the WTC, Fujimura posits the peace-creating power of art.

Fujimura goes outside the boundaries of the fine arts and brings in conversation on urban design, and film, to name just two examples. His essay on Jane Jacobs' stand against the suburbanist Robert Moses is a great lesson in standing for an idea.

His own artistic output consists of abstracts using precious metals applied in ways that refract light. In one essay he visits the site of an installation several years later to see how it has matured. The title is interesting: it could be "reflections" on the topics at hand, but instead he calls them "refractions," which suggests not a rote replica but an interpretation of the  people, art, events, and aspects of culture in view.

A lot of the artistic commentary is challenging to me because it's not the way I normally think. Reading it reminded me of hearing songwriters describing their processes--it is so "wholly other" from my experience that I have a hard time getting in their heads.

I finished it on 2/11/12. Alyssa gave me this for Christmas (thanks again if you read this, Lyss!) and I'll be hanging onto it.

Big Questions by Anders Nilsen

Big Questions is another graphic novel from the 2011 Best Of lists. It's a 15-year work of love from Nilsen, about a flock of birds who dine on seeds and donut crumbs provided by an old woman who lives in a remote shack with her idiot son. Their world is fraught with natural perils such as owls and crows. On philosophical bird asks Big Questions of the others and has a hard time finding an audience for his ideas. Unfortunately he asks an owl these questions and is promptly eaten.

Into this scenario, a bomb drops (unexploded) and is misinterpreted as an egg. Later a plane crashes and the pilot becomes part of the story. Thus the birds are unwittingly part of a war, (or maybe just a wayward pilot on a practice run?) but they interpret events through their bird filter and get it all wrong.

The story is (seemingly) simply drawn and is sparsely told, having many pages with no words at all. It falls together well, though there are some digressions (such as a friendly snake with what appears to be a den of bird souls) that I am trying to understand.

Overall, Nilsen seems to be making a statement about assembling stories based on what we see. The birds do not understand the happenings around them, and some place fanciful interpretations on the events and invite others to believe and act upon these beliefs, with dire consequences. This is indeed a danger in the human world as well, but if Nilsen is trying to indict all religious beliefs, his argument is too simplistic.

It was an enjoyable book, and despite its 600 pages, it can be read in a couple of hours. I borrowed it from the library and finished it on 1/22/12.

Daytripper by GABRIEL BÁ and FÁBIO MOON

Daytripper is a graphic novel created by twin brothers. It's a beautifully illustrated treatment of the life and deaths of the protagonist Brás de Oliva Domingos, an obituary writer for the newspaper who aspires to be a novelist. And "deaths" is correct--at the end of each chapter, Brás meets his demise, always at a critical moment in his life, such as the day his father dies and his first child is born. The next chapter picks up, sometimes following the prior chapter by a few years as though the prior tragedy had not occurred but instead been resolved nicely, and sometimes earlier, with a different tragedy befalling Brás earlier in his life.


The nicely woven vignettes of the important days of Brás' life create a set of counterfactuals that point out the mortality of man--he could die at the moment of a near triumph or at the time of a different tragedy. Or in an "ordinary" time, of course, though the authors do not present us with that sort of death for Brás. 



We learn that Brás was a "miracle child" who literally turned on the lights for the whole city at his birth, and we gradually learn what that means and its significance to his family. And we learn how he will be remembered from his obituary at the end of each chapter.  Though he is a miracle child, he is fallible and mortal, and makes many mistakes along the way.  He aspires to be a novelist like his famous father, and in some of the counterfactuals, he makes a strong beginning. 


That Brás always dies at some critical juncture of his life, when he is filled with hope or joy, or stepping out in hopes of finding the perfect woman he saw across the bakery or recovering a lost friend, says something about the hopes of men and the empty joys of this world. They are fleeting, and at the moment they seem to be ours, they could be taken away in an instant. The authors do not seem to follow any particular spiritual outlook, but the stories remind me of the parable of the man who stores up grain and builds bigger barns, and then learns that that very night his life is required of him. It happens to Brás again and again in a sort of reverse "Groundhog Day" way. 

This graphic novel was at or near the top of some year-end 2011 wrap-up lists that I saw. I picked it up from the library and  finished it on 1/21/12. The beautiful art is worth a second look and this would be a good book for a group discussion. 

The Haves and the Have-Nots by Branko Milanovic

The subtitle of this is "A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality." Branko Milanovic is an economist at the World Bank, and he brings an interesting review of inequality of incomes throughout history and across the globe. He introduced me to the Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality within and between countries. If all income were equal for everyone in a country, their coefficient would be 0. If one individual managed to wrest all of the income and leave the rest of the population with no income at all, the Gini would be 100. 

The most egalitarian countries in the worlds have Ginis of 25-30. The Gini coefficient for the US reached its low of 35 in the late 1970s, and has risen to over 40 since the Reagan era. 

The recent Occupy Wall Street protests obviously reflect the increasing disparity. What they fail to do is propose any solutions. The book also provides few solutions or even suggestions, but describes the concerns quite well. He has three main sections, each with an overview of the economic theory and some statistics, followed by a series of "vignettes" that help to understand the concept. It's a good format, since the impacts can be somewhat abstract, and the vignettes help bring the concepts to earth.  

I wonder if some of his analysis of the strength of the EU holds up. He touts the EU's ability to "absorb" lower income countries with much weaker economies, but the problems with Greece and Italy this year seem to call that into question. (The book came out in early 2011.)

My friend and former colleague Don Cole wrote about this book on his blog (http://mediarealism.blogspot.com/) and got me interested in it, to I reserved it from the library. Finished on 1/21/12.

Cocktails for Three by Madeleine Wickham

Very light novel about three friends living in London. A fourth girl enters the equation and bad things ensue. Not very believable, but a quick read that I started and nearly finished on the plane from San Francisco. Enjoyable? Not really. At the start it seemed like you could add songs and make a terrific light Broadway comedy from it. But then it got a bit too convoluted and petty to keep up the interest. ("My roommate whom I rescued / from a life of tawdry waitressing / brought flowers when she moved  in / and I'm sure that she is genuine! / Her cooking is a wonder / So despite my old friends' cautioning / I'm expecting Heather to be ... myyyyy neeewwww besssttt friendddddd!")

It has the air of being a side project written under a pseudonym, but after looking it up I find that it's by a famous author of chick-lit who also writes as Sophie Kinsella (there's the pseudonym). She writes a series of books about a shopaholic, of which this is not one.

How did I get this? I was looking for Wodehouse books at Half Price Books in December, and came across this in the W's. It looked interesting. It was an light read for the airplane. And it will go back on the next run to Half Price Books. Finished it 1/16/11.

Managing God's Money by Randy Alcorn

Managing God's Money is a trimmed-down version of two of Randy Alcorn's longer works, making it more accessible to readers. I've gone through Crown Ministries' materials a couple of times and pre-crown Larry Burkett information. This book is a good addition to that teaching, and very hard-hitting.

Alcorn does a nice job of setting up the biblical concept of the ownership of money and things--they are all God's. And then he exhorts us to use God's money for eternal purposes, and supports this with Luke 16 and many other scriptures. Like other authors on finance and the Christian life, I think he uses some parables too literally as being about money vs. being about idolatry, but he does point that out in the book. These are not talking ONLY about money, but for cultures across time, money and possessions can become idols.

Gave me lots to think about. I got it free from a Tim Challies' Friend of the Blog offer and found it well worth the read.  Finished this on 1/15/11 during a trip to San Francisco. I'll hang onto it if only to pass along to someone else.

Witness to an Extreme Century by Robert Jay Lifton

I read this on vacation in Florida over Thanksgiving 2011. Lifton is a well-known and groundbreaking psychoanalytical researcher, and he recounts his experiences in his studies as well as in areas like agitating against the Vietnam War (sit-in at the Supreme Court for example). He had four main areas of study, each interesting in its content and the techniques he pioneered.

1. Chinese Mind Control victims
2. Survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima
3. Nazi doctors
4. Vietnam veterans who oppose the war

I was not familiar with Lifton, but this made me want to read his previous books on Nazi doctors and on his concept of Totalism. 

Pinched by Don Peck

The subtitle is "How the great recession has narrowed our futures and what we can do about it." Peck writes for Atlantic magazine, and each chapter has the brisk pace and fact-ratio of an article on economics would in the magazine. Much of the book (almost all of it) recounts recent economic history, which is pretty depressing and mostly already top-of-mind for me. So that part was a little dull. Some interesting economics research is presented, such as stats on how people who graduate during a recession are have lower earnings for their entire careers, and the impact of long-term unemployment on willingness to hire by employers--a topic I've heard covered more on the radio lately, and which I confess I have a bias concerning. I've hired people on 4-5 occasions who seem good on paper and in interviews but who have been out of work for over a year. In each case, they did not work out for various reasons.

The "what we can do about it" chapter is OK, and presents no silver bullets for individuals or the economy. That's good, since there is not an easy answer, but I expected more in this chapter.

I got this from the library based on a recommendation from somewhere, probably the NYT book review.

Hark A Vagrant by Kate Beaton

My mother-in-law gave me this for Christmas  (yay for Amazon Wish Lists!), and I finished it Christmas night. It's a collection of Kate Beacon's webcomic of the same name, with the same commentary she included with the original postings. I'd probably read 90% of these online before, but it's nice to have in a shelvable copy.

Kate Beacon writes and draws these comics, which are based on oddball takes of historical events, comicbook superheroes, and Nancy Drew books, for example. These are worth a reread once a year.

It's comics, so of course I will keep it.

Witness To History by Rodney Castleden

Castledan's book has short first-person accounts of significant historical events. They are never more than a few pages long and include two introductory quote/photo pages per event and occasional sidebars. That makes this a coffee table book to me, but it's an interesting one. The witnessed events include events such as the Battle of Hastings and the execution of Mary during Elizabeth I's reign. I had seen the latter depicted in a couple of movies, and the eyewitness account was both interesting and chilling. More modern events include the D-Day invasion and the fall of the Twin Towers. The most distinctive thing about the book is that there is only a short description of the event, an introduction of the eyewitness, and then their first-person account. The only commentary on the account relates to whether the eyewitness is actually reliable and what biases he might have. 

I picked this up at a B&N closeout table for a few dollars, and I will probably hang into it for a while as some of the stories and language are quite quotable.