Three Ghost Stories (Brief Book Review)

ghost-stories

Bag of Bones by Stephen King

I think this is my second favourite King novel after The Shining. It is about a recently widowed writer, Mike Noonan, who decides to spend some time living at his lake house, named Sara Laughs, to cope with the loss of his wife and his writer’s block.

There’s a dark history at this lake village which involves Mike’s own ancestors, and the ghosts of that past begin to haunt Mike in his home. It is a simple, yet effective storyline. It reads smoothly, like most King’s novels do, and it does scare at times.

An excerpt…
The house had been aired out and didn’t smell a bit musty; instead of still, stale air, there was a faint and pleasing aroma of pine. I reached for the light inside the door, and then, somewhere in the blackness of the house, a child began to sob. My hand froze where it was and my flesh went cold. I didn’t panic, exactly, but all rational thought left my mind. It was a weeping, a child’s weeping, but I hadn’t a clue as to where it was coming from.
Then it began to fade. Not to grow softer but to fade, as if someone had picked that kid up and was carrying it away down some long corridor … not that any such corridor existed in Sara Laughs. Even the one running through the middle of the house, connecting the central section to the two wings, isn’t really long.
Fading… faded… almost gone.

I gave it 5/5 stars.

Check out more reviews of the book here.

Dark Matter by Michelle Paver

This book is about a group of British men who go up to the arctic to do some scientific research. The main character, Jack Miller, is a bit of an outsider and a loner. Three of the men make it onto the island, Gruhuken, to begin their work. When they arrive it is the last days of light, and soon the unending darkness will begin as the sun never rises in the winter up north. Jack is the communications man, and since the novel is set in the 1930s, that means morse code. As one of Jack’s companions gets sick, two of the three sail away from the island, and Jack is left alone for weeks in the darkness. He does, though, have a pack of Huskies to keep him company. There is a malevolent presence, a man, a murdered trapper, which begins to haunt Jack.

Jack has multiple opportunities to leave – his friends stay in communication with him via the wireless so he can always ask for help, another man who is staying on the other side of the island visits Jack and asks Jack to come home with him – but Jack always chooses to stay. He does not want to let his team-mates down, especially Gus, the team leader. And it’s this fact, I think, which makes the book very interesting. The story is not just a ghost story – it is a story about loneliness, darkness, and (less obviously) guilt and depravity.

An excerpt…
Two days since Bjørvik left. One since the dogs disappeared.
I walk bent over, as if there were a tumour in my gut. I miss the dogs. Without them, there’s nothing between me and what haunts this place.
It can come at any time. It can stay away for days, as it did when Bjørvik was here. But always I sense it waiting. That’s the worst of it. Not knowing when it will come. Only that it will.
A few years ago, I read a speech in the paper by the American president; he said, The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know.
I’ve tried to pity the trapper of Gruhuken. He had a miserable life and a terrible death. But I can’t. All I feel is dread.
And knowing who he was doesn’t help me, because I can’t do anything to appease him. It doesn’t matter that I’m innocent. It isn’t only the guilty who suffer.
Besides, I am guilty. Because I’m here.

I gave it 5/5 stars.

Check out more reviews of the book here.

The Elementals by Michael McDowell

This is a creepy and strange book. The story is of two related families visiting their holiday homes after the death of the mother in one family. The homes are three houses in the middle of nowhere. The houses are identical but each faces a different direction. The middle house always remains empty, and is slowly being consumed by a sand dune. It’s also haunted.

I could not relate to the characters that well; they are too different from what I know in my own life. However, the interesting storyline makes up for that. The families have been coming to these homes for years, and one wonders why they keep going back. I was hoping for a better explanation as to why the third house is haunted — there was potential to connect the haunting to one of the families more strongly, but that never came about.

An excerpt…
“Child,” said Odessa. She stood out of the swing and turned her back on Luker and Dauphin, who were getting out of the car a dozen yards away. Odessa loomed before India, blocking sight of her father and uncle. “If anything happens at Beldame,” said Odessa, looking down at India sternly, “I want you to do something…”
“What?” said India, craning around to catch sight of her father. Odessa’s tone and her suggestion that something else might happen made her fearful.
“If anything happens,” Odessa said in a low voice, “eat my eyes…“
“What?” demanded India in a hissing whisper. Her father and Dauphin were coming nearer. She longed for their protection. Odessa stepped closer to India, pressing her hands behind her to signal the two men to keep back. “What does that mean?” cried India desperately. “What do you–”
“If anything happens,” Odessa repeated slowly, nodding her head with terrible significance, “eat my eyes…“

I gave it 4/5 stars.

Check out more reviews of the book here.

***

Wealth, Poverty, and Politics (Book Review)

wpp-ii-cover I’m writing this review from the point of view of Christian Missions. Too often, in my opinion, Christians disconnect themselves from the context of real life, and end up living in a vacuum, mostly unaware of the world around them. Whether it is because of the love for a vision, or an idealistic view of the future, Christians can easily become guilty of the old saying: “You’re so heavenly minded, you’re no earthly good” – although I would change ‘heavenly’ to ‘spiritually’.

“[A] feeling of being on the side of the angels can be a dangerous self-indulgence in a heedless willfulness that is sometimes called idealism. This kind of idealism can replace realities with preconceptions, and make the overriding goal the victory of some abstract vision, in defiance of reality or in disregard of the fate of fellow human beings.”
(Thomas Sowell. Wealth, Poverty and Politics, pg. 420. New York: Basic Books, 2016.)

The above quote was not made by Sowell in any kind of religious/missions context, but the principle still applies. If I were teaching a missiology course at a seminary, I would make this book required reading.

The main question Sowell is asking in this book is: “Why, given that poverty is the default for humanity, are some nations wealthy?” That’s the reverse of what other poverty/economic books ask, which is: “Why are some nations poor?” To Sowell, the answer to that questions is obvious; all of humanity is flawed and ‘fallen’ and it is a ‘miracle’ that some nations get out of that fallen impoverished state at all.

Sowell looks at culture, politics, geography, history, and other factors to determine how some nations and groups of people are able to create wealth. For example, while there are large rivers in Africa, there are no rivers in Africa like the Mississippi river. The Mississippi is a slow moving river traveling along a small decline in elevation. Therefore, it is easy to travel on and transport goods on. In Africa, the largest rivers have many rapids and cascades, making it difficult to travel on. That inability to travel isolates people from economic trade and cultural trade. Some land is better for growing crops than other land. Some countries have oil, others not. Some nations have a culture of honesty and hard work, other nations view deception as necessary.

That’s really what the whole book is: looking at the various different factors of reality and trying to determine how each factor applies to the wealth, or lack thereof, of peoples, groups, and nations. My one criticism of the book is that it is too repetitive, and could have been 100 pages shorter. I read the ‘revised and enlarged edition,’ so perhaps the first edition is 100 pages shorter.

In missions the same method which Sowell uses to explain wealth and poverty can be used to explain why some nations are Christian and others are not. First off, I’m not denying the spiritual aspect of missions. The Holy Spirit kicked off the Great Commission, and continues to guide it along, but the spiritual and the physical are not two different things, but rather are two parts of the same thing: reality. We can not remove ourselves from the context of the world in which we live. Culture, geography, religion, language, etc. all play a factor in the spread of the gospel. That is a fact and can not be denied spiritually. These physical factors need to be taken into account and used as a starting point. As C.S. Lewis said, “Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.” God’s universe has an inbuilt capacity for the miraculous. “Nothing can seem extraordinary until you have discovered what is ordinary. Belief in miracles, far from depending on an ignorance of the laws of nature, is only possible in so far as those laws are known.” (Lewis)

Why is the Church growing rapidly in the Philippines, but not Thailand? What happened in South Korea, where nearly 30% of the population is Christian, that didn’t happen in North Korea? Why are the western nations, colonized by the British, the most prosperous Christian nations compared to South American nations colonized by Spain? What about India, where Christianity was supposedly introduced there 2000 years ago by the apostle Thomas? Why did Hinduism, and later Buddhism, spread so far from India into South East Asia in the centuries past?

But… this post is just a book review. I’m not going to attempt to answer those questions here.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand how the world works and why it works that way, and, using that knowledge, figure out how to predict the future and make life better for everyone.

I give it 4/5 stars. One star less than 5 for being too repetitive.

N.T. Wright’s Justification (Book Review)

This book is written in response to John Piper’s book “The Future of Justification”, which I have not yet read. You do not have to read Piper’s book in order to understand or enjoy Wright’s book.

The whole debate is about the “New Perspective of Paul”, a debate I do not fully understand, although this book helps a lot. From what I can gather, the arguments center around what Paul was really talking about when he was describing salvation in terms of God’s faithfulness and righteousness. The Old Perspective focuses on the individual’s salvation and little else, while the New Perspective says there is more going on than that: a greater purpose which looks at the overarching salvation plan of God including Old Testament Israel.

It seems like it is an “either/or” argument when it should be “both/and”. God both saves the individual sinner through the work of Christ and is creating a special people for Himself who will one day inherit the new heavens and the new earth.

I do recommend the book.

Here’s a video of N.T. Wright explaining the book himself…