I have a man crush on John Gottman and I actually have no idea what he looks like. Hold on, I’m going to go and google his image. John Gottman’s research and writings have changed the way I counsel, they’ve changed the way I am a husband to my wife. Having said that, a lot of his writings are dry. This book is no exception. His seven principles are not earth shattering, although I’d encourage to google his 5:1 ratio or use it in all of your relationships.

Gottman’s seven principles in this book are fairly straightforward (my thoughts are in parenthesis:

1. Enhance your love maps
2. Nurture your fondness and admiration
3. Turn toward each other instead of Away
4. Let your partner influence you

-The two kinds of marital conflict (this isn’t actually a principle but understanding this is important

5. Solve your solvable problems (does that mean there are unsolvable problems?)
6. Overcome gridlock
7. Create shared meaning

All in all, I think everyone will find this book to be a satisfying read and for almost everyone there will be at least one “ah-ha” moment where it speaks directly to something going on in their relationship. Even if you are thinking that your relationship is on solid footing I encourage you to read this book.

Marriages are something we do and something we have. As something we have, they are fragile and need constant attention and care.

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Let me begin with what I think is Nicholas Carr’s main statement in this book:

“What can science tell us about the actual effects that Internet use is having on the way our minds work?…Dozens of studies by psychologists, neurobiologists, educators, and Web designers point to the same conclusion: when we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. It’s possible to think deeply while surfing the Net, just as it’s possible to think shallowly while reading a book, but that’s not the type of thinking the technology encourages and rewards” (115-116).

Carr has written an engaging book that explores how our Internet habits are changing how we think. He tells how he noticed a shift in his concentration levels after his immersion in the Internet world of links, clicks, and tweets. This English literature major found that he had trouble concentrating on a novel beyond a few pages. After years of training his mind to follow links and read news blasts, he was troubled that he could no longer read deeply. This led him to write an article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” which he expanded into this book.

The bottom line of his findings is that our brains are malleable, and they will change to fit the environment. When we “feed” our brain a diet of short bursts of information with no contemplation, the neurons and synapses change. In essence, we teach our brains to be distracted. We become shallow thinkers.

This is a matter I have thought about as a teacher. I look out into a sea of brains that have been raised on digital distractions and see that they cannot sustain attention for a short story without pictures and accompanying videos, never mind a longer work of fiction. While many in education hail the Internet as a wealth of information and a Promethean gift from the gods, I do not see that teaching journals are addressing what this bombardment of information is doing to how we think and, in turn, how we behave in and about the world around us.

In my estimation, this book focuses on three main parts. The first is about neurology and the Internet. At times, it was too technical for me, but I was able to enjoy the idea of the “plasticity” of our brains. This section grounds Carr’s premise in scientific testing and research. The second part of the book addresses the history of written text and computer science. As an English teacher and a computer enthusiast, this was my favorite section. The third section discusses the effects of the intertwining of our lives with the Internet. The chapter titled, “The Church of Google” is worth the price of the book, as it gives us a side of Google that causes me to question its company motto, “Do no harm.”

Aside from the intriguing topic, I also enjoyed Carr’s writing style. This book is filled with excellent quotations and stories about books and reading. One story that is particularly vivid is his recounting of Nathaniel Hawthorne enjoying a peaceful time of contemplation in Sleepy Hollow when the noisy locomotive arrives in town. The juxtaposition of these two worlds powerfully captures how we are distracted by the Internet “railroad.” My copy of the book is marked up, and I intend to return to it for these reminders.

This book has given me an impetus to make some changes in my Internet usage. I am online far more than I want to be. Like Nicholas Carr, I have a difficult time concentrating on longer novels or books, due to my constant checking email, Facebook, Twitter, and IMDB. Writing pieces like this are often punctuated with non-stop searches for other distractions and procrastinations. Because of reading many small headlines or articles, I do not have time to process them so I don’t really “know” them. All I have at the end of a surfing session is three fewer hours in my life.

This is not the life I want to lead. In Mark 12:30, Jesus tells us to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Not only do I want to redeem the time to worship Him rather than wasting it on Facebook, but I also want every neuron and synapse to glorify Him as much as it is possible. If I am shrinking those connections that shorten my thinking, something must change. How can I love God with my mind if I am short-circuiting my brain with distractions and interferences?

The Shallows is one of the best books I’ve read on this list of my52books.com so far. Nicholas Carr has written a powerful book that I’ll think about every time I’m tempted to check my email or Facebook “real quick.” He has also, perhaps inadvertently, offered some spiritual advice to help in my improvement as a Christian. I see that even reading Christian blogs or religious news or even Bible study tools can, in effect, act as a stumbling block in our faith if they are distractions interrupting our mediation or contemplation of deeper things.

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My friend Mark put it best: Radical is Crazy Love with more theology.” As much as I liked Crazy Love, David Platt’s Radical addresses similar themes better.

The subtitle for this book is “Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream.” We as American Christians are so quick to settle into our comforts of success, society, and stuff that we forget that we are not our own and that we belong to another. We are nestled deep into this world that we forget that we are to live for the next one. David Platt reminds us that we are to live radical lives as Jesus was Himself a true radical. We should be willing to sacrifice our money, status, and time to be kingdom-obsessed.  He makes an important distinction between giving and sacrificing. Anyone can give a few bucks or an hour, but to sacrifice means something completely different.

Three parts of this book are especially worth reading.

1. The chapter titled How Much is Enough? American Wealth and a World of Poverty shows how much excess we have as Americans. 26,000 children will die today of starvation or other preventable illness. Two billion people live on under two dollars a day. Jesus says, “Go and sell everything you have an give it to the poor.”
2. Chapter 7 titled Why Going is Urgent, Not Optional outlines seven truths from the book of Romans that illustrates our sin and guilt before a holy God, and His provision of salvation. These seven truths provide one of the clearest depictions of the Gospel I’ve read.
3. Chapter 9 discusses “The Radical Experiment.” Platt challenges readers to live a one-year radical lifestyle marked by the following principles:

• Pray for the entire world
• Read through the entire Word
• Sacrifice your money for a specific purpose
• Spend your time in another context
• Commit your life to a multiplying community

This is one of those must-read books for Christians. For non-Christians, I encourage you to read it to see what Christianity should look like.

I think that this book can change individual lives, churches, and the world.

See Mark’s review of this book here.

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It’s hard to believe that C. S. Lewis is only now making the list at #29. He has been my favorite author for years now. Sorry, Jack!

The Abolition of Man is a treaty on the importance of Natural law, –an objective truth or a moral code– that transcends time and culture. Lewis refers to this as the Tao, a system of truth that is embedded in all cultures throughout history. It is not an American or British truth, or even a western one. There are objective truths that all recognize, whether they follow them or not. As he states, he does not like the company of children, but he recognizes that as a default in him, not in children. This is similar to the color-blind man; my inability to see color says something about me, not about the existence of color.

When we stop teaching children to look for ideas and truths larger than themselves, “we have cut out of his soul, long before he is old enough to choose, the possibility of having certain experiences which thinkers of more authority than they have held to be generous, fruitful, and humane…That is their day’s lesson in English, though of English they have learned nothing. Another little portion of the human heritage has been quietly taken from them before they were old enough to understand” (9). This vivisection causes society to produce “men without chests,” and we somehow are surprised when people behave poorly, criminally, or, even worse, immorally. As Lewis states, “we remove the organ and demand the function.”

We avoid feelings and beliefs as contradictory to the mind, to nature, to science. We seek to conquer nature in the name of progress. However, “man’s conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature’s conquest of Man” (68). It is interesting that these talks were given during World War II, at the time when Hitler and his cronies were focused on conquering nature via eugenics and other human experimentations. How, Lewis would ask, could you say that he was wrong if there is no overarching moral standard in which torturing humans and killing the innocent are counted as wrong? Conquering nature results in conquering ourselves. The abolition of Man.

Lewis states that this book is not an argument for the existence of a theistic God, but I think it is a clear apologetic for one. How can we have moral laws and objective truths without a lawgiver and one who exists above the laws? While it is not a defense for a Christian God per se, it does point to a designer of a coherent and morally good universe.

This is a difficult work in spite of its 81 pages, but well worth the effort.

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Unprotected is a book Dr. Miriam Grossman. I highly recommend it to everyone. I don’t agree with everything that Dr. Grossman states in the book, but the general tenor of the book cannot be ignored.
Sex has been made political in America. It is wrong to offend anyone except the religious and the fat. The psychological field is filled with left leaning and anti-religion sentiments. In short Political Correctness is causing doctors and counselors to not be able to give total treatment. To be sure, Grossman is more right leaning than I am but this book was a quick, easy read that brings into focus some necessary questions about the field of mental health and the direction it is taking.
In the world of APA the holy mantra is citation of sources and this book is full of them. Books, journals, peer-reviewed articles–they’re all there and most of them can be easily accessed for the lay reader to examine and check for accuracy.
My fear is that too many will dismiss this book because the author is on the right in the political arena. That would not only be unfortunate, it would be a tragedy because at the very least this book should begin a dialogue about how parties are treated, from the most left atheist to the most right fundamental.

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This book isn’t destined to be one that our grandchildren’s grandchildren talk about some day in school. But it is a fun book that has a believable plot. The characters are good. You can see them, and feel what they are feeling. They are complicated enough to be believable. The plot twists a little and yet has a somewhat predictable finish. I’ll be looking forward to more books in this series. They may not be old school James Patterson but they’re good enough to be read in two days.

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I wanted to like this book. I really did. All of my friends love this author and I want to be on the inside. I want to be able to have conversations where we talk lovingly of characters and my lips creep up into a sneer when a bad guy is mentioned.

I saw this book on a Bargain rack and figured that it would be a good segue into the Picoult’s world. The premise of the book is something I can get behind. I’m not a big fan of the Death Penalty as it currently stands in America. I already know that she tells the story from different perspectives of the different characters in her book. Some of my favorite author’s do that so I figure we’re good to go. She and I will get along like Peanut Butter and Jelly at the very worst and at the best we’ll be more like Peanut Butter and Chocolate.

But the book never did it for me. She never was able to scratch me where I itched. The only character I remotely cared about was the little girl. Her characters never seemed fully committed to me. They just didn’t seem real or all that sympathetic.

Her “surprise, twist ending” can be seen a mile off.

Contrived is the best word for the plot. Did the convict actually do the killing or was he protecting the child as he claims 11 years later from an abusive stepfather? I came to the point where I just didn’t care. A lot of reviews I have read say that this isn’t the author’s best work. Many of my friends say I need to give her another opportunity. I probably will but this book has brought me to the point where the next Picoult book I read will be a library one so that my investment is minimal.

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If you read only one book this year, read Radical.

I believe it is that good.

If I were as gifted as David Platt, I would try to write this book.

David Platt is a young, amazingly gifted, passionate, theologically solid pastor of Brook Hills church in Birmingham, Alabama.

I first discovered David Platt when I read another blog where the author had said he just watched him give the most powerful message ever delivered at a Southern Baptist Convention.  Naturally, since I respected this blogger (Justin Taylor), I was curious to see what kind of message this 34 year old with a Phd gave… It is the best message I’ve ever heard preached.

You too can watch that message here: http://vimeo.com/5514321

I am plotting now to develop a way to get every person who comes to The Harbor (www.okiharbor.com) a copy of this book… God has also use the book to stir my passions and help me think through the next season of ministry at The Harbor.

I don’t want to say too much here, because I plan on saying a lot more in the days and months to come…

Go read the book!

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Seeing as Ron has already read and written a review on this book, I’ll keep my comments short.

Here’s a quick summary:

Bill Bryson is a funny guy who one day decides he’s going to try to walk the 2,200 mile Appalachian trail that extends from Maine down to Georgia.  Along the way, an old friend joins him on the adventure.

SPOILER ALERT: They don’t make it.

I enjoy books about monumental adventures… and this book tried to do that… but it didn’t they ended up only making it about 40% of the way… and well, for me, the book was about 40% good.

I was disappointed because I thought the book would be much more funny… To be sure, there were some really funny moments… But overall, I felt like reading the book sort of dragged on like the author’s quest. If this book would have been about 60% shorter it would be a decent read.

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