Book review: Captive in Iran by Maryam Rostampour and Marziyeh Amirizadeh

This is essentially a diary following the interrogation and imprisonment of two Iranian ladies, who were held by the government for nine months simply for being Christians. Their story covers everything from their arrest to the prison environment, relationships with the guards and other prisoners, the court case and hearing about the news reports.

Firstly: this is eye-opening. I knew basically nothing about Iran before reading this, and it almost reads like a fiction story. The Iranian government is controlling and insecure, oppressing women and silencing any voice against them going as far as falsifying statements and handing out the death penalty simply for disagreeing with them. This book is a well-written account of the experiences of two innocent ladies remaining calm and speaking out in the face of persecution.

By the nature of it the book’s saddening, but there’s an under-current of faith and hope throughout the whole thing; the authors are Bible-focused and love to pray, and are an incredible modern example of rejoicing in the midst of suffering.

That said, there’s humour in here as well; on a few occasions the ladies related giggling as a bit of a coping mechanism, and the mental image of pompous, ultra-serious prison guards being humiliated by two ‘infidels’ not being able to stop laughing made me chuckle on many occasions, despite the rest of the book’s content.

I’d encourage anyone and everyone to buy and read this book. It’s written really well and it’s informative; I’m certainly going to be more aware of the situation in Iran from now on, and not only for Christians. The message of the book is clear, true and simple: Maryam Rostampour and Marziyeh Amirizadeh were quite literally captives in Iran, but the people of Iran are themselves captives of the regime there, whether they realise it or not.

I got this book for free from Tyndale House Publishers in exchange for an honest review.

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I published a book!

Probably the most exciting piece news for me in the past week was that a book about teamwork that I wrote, Teaming with Geese, went for sale on Amazon.

The second most exciting piece of news was that at the time of writing, five people have bought it – quids in. Selling at just about £1.50 per copy, that means my royalties are hovering at about a fiver, so I only need that to double to hit Amazon’s minimum amount that I can cash out.

Just so’s you know, it isn’t about the money. And just to prove it, I’m trying to give it away for free! From now right up until Sunday you can ‘buy’ it through Amazon without spending a single penny, and even if you don’t have a Kindle you can read it using the online Kindle reader. And the book really isn’t that long, so you might as well!

[EDIT: Sorry, it's actually not free until tomorrow - I'll update you then!]

But I’d like to ask you a favour please. Please do as many of the following as you can:

• I have a ready-made tweet for you, just click here and it will give you a nice prompt
• Use Facebook to tell all your friends about the book
• Please leave a review on the Amazon page
• Please review the book at your blog if you have one

So you can get it for free here. Enjoy it! If you like it, tell your friends; if you don’t like it, tell me!

Book review: Gods at War by Kyle Idleman

This book is based around the simple concept that people are created to worship, and that the question is therefore not, ‘Do we worship?’ but ‘Who/what do we worship?’ All of us are guilty of idol worship, and Kyle Idleman deals with one idol per chapter, looking at things like money, family, job and self to ask whether they are idols in our lives, and how we ought to replace them with Jesus.

I think this book is absolutely outstanding. Kyle Idleman is encouraging, funny, challenging, biblical, Jesus-focused, and a good story teller. Reading each chapter is like savouring a richly-flavoured meal, but instead of tastebuds being hit it’s your soul being exposed for the idol worshipper you are. Each chapter is challenging and intensely practical, asking probing questions which make it easy to apply them.

It’s filled with good stories and links to more detail about them, as well as being packed with references to high quality books so reading this ought to be the start of an adventure rather than a goal in itself. There are also plenty of cheeky footnotes which made me laugh a lot; this is not some academic study in idol worship but a radically challenging and instantly applicable handbook.

If you think you need to read this book, you definitely do; it’s probably the best I’ve seen on replacing our idols with Jesus. And if you think you don’t need to the chances are that you’re in even more need of it because you’re unaware of your own idols!

I got this ebook for free from BookSneeze.com in exchange for an honest review.

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I read The Life of Pi. It was good.

Crooked Little Vein and Life of Pi (Photo credit: Rich_Lem)

I haven’t seen the film yet, but having read the book I’d quite like to. Before reading it someone said to me that it isn’t so much about him in a boat with a tiger as the adverts make it seem…but it really is, isn’t it.

Anyway, it was a good book. Gripping, interesting, perhaps a tad gory in places, with a disturbing twist at the end – incredible writing, although I’d probably have rather it finished in Disney style, because that’s the sort of guy I am.

But some of the most enjoyable moments for me came towards the start of it, where Pi is discovering Christianity for the first time. For a start, check out his first reaction when he walks into a church:

Something about a human sacrifice. An angry god who had to be appeased with blood. Dazed women staring up into the air and fat babies with tiny wings flying about. A charismatic bird. Which one was the god?

Well captured; how confusing must it be for non-Christians to encounter Christianity for the first time? A good reminder for us.

Then, Pi encounters a priest, who starts to explain things to him, and Pi begins to understand.

…the stories that came before it – and there were many – were simply prologue to the Christians. Their religion had one Story, and to it they came back again and again, over and over. It was story enough for them.

Preach it, Pi!

I can’t imagine Lord Krishna consenting to be stripped naked, whipped, mocked, dragged through the streets and, to top it off, crucified – and at the hands of mere humans, to boot.

Indeed; surely only a God with infinite power and self assurance would allow something like that to happen.

But once a dead God, always a dead God, even resurrected. The Son must have the taste of death forever in his mouth…there must be a certain stench at the right hand of God the Father. The horror must be real. Why would God wish that upon Himself? Why not leave death to the mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect?

A good question – what was the answer that Pi discovered?

Love.

Wow. And that’s the Good News. But the book explains yet more about Christianity, and how it differs from other world religions.

In a moment you are lost or saved. Christianity stretches back through the ages, but in essence it only exists at one time: right now.

Spot on. That’s called grace. Yes, God existed before time, and we’ll live with him for eternity, yet all that really matters is right here, right now.

Book review: Afraid to Believe in Free Will by Carl E. Begley

This book is a bit of an odd one, because I can’t quite nail it down. I suppose I was expecting a comparison between Calvinism and Arminianism, and this is definitely not that. It’s quite academic in flavour, looking at the philosophical and psychological history of belief in free will along with an analysis of societal contexts within which a stronger belief in free will would help.

First things first: I found this pretty interesting. I’m sure I’ll bring up stuff I’ve read here in conversations, and it definitely got me thinking. I’ve never put any time or effort into thinking through the ideas of whether or not we have free will, or whether or not belief in free will makes any difference, and this book has kick-started that thought process for me.

However, it’s fair to say that I don’t really get this book. It’s very academic in everything except the overall structure, which is frustrating – it took a while for me to understand where the author was going with this, and after having read it I’m not sure I get it even now, other than him saying that we ought to believe in free will. To say it’s branded as a Christian book that Christian input is fairly quiet throughout, and even when it comes in it’s analysed in the same way as any other philosophical source. The Bible’s quoted to back up Begley’s arguments and not to initiate thought, so I certainly didn’t feel like I’d learnt ‘the Christian view’ of free will here.

What particularly frustrated me was the way that the book looked at a couple of examples to demonstrate how belief in free will affects society, but the focus then shifted too far (in my eyes) onto the author’s own view of those particular situations; apparently offering financial support to the unemployed makes them lazy and reliant on good, hard-working citizens; of course communism is an idea from the devil himself; and scientific evidence shows that child abuse isn’t as harmful as society tells us it is. Yes, that last one is perhaps slightly skewing what the author says, but the particular chapter it’s in is long story about the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association and the confusion between the two – I still have no idea what the difference is, and I still have no idea how that relates to a belief in free will.

So in conclusion this has started some good thought processes, but I don’t think it’s done the best job at it – it’s got an academic tone without an academic objective, it gets too bogged down with the examples without explaining fully what we should conclude, and it doesn’t reinforce a Christian focus enough.

I got this ebook for free from BookSneeze.com in exchange for an honest review.

Book review: 20,000 Days and Counting by Robert Smith

The Bible tells us to ‘number our days’. Robert Smith took that literally, and when he realised that he had been alive for 20,000 of them he decided to take 48 hours out to make sure that every day he’d do everything in his power to make it count. This short book is basically him communicating the lessons he learnt during that time, encouraging the reader to make each day count and ‘echo in eternity’.

Most of my opinions about this book stem from the fact that it’s so short – some chapters are only two pages long. On one level this makes it very approachable and not at all scary to read, but on another it means that some ideas are not communicated as clearly as I’d  have liked. Because of the nature of the book being something requiring such personal application, I think the book could perhaps have done with some questions for application at the end of each chapter, particularly as it was so short.

On the whole I found the content to be inspiring, challenging and exciting, but at times hard to apply to my own life; Smith tells about how it worked for him (e.g. calling 30 people per day to sell something led to several ‘no’s but the all-important ‘yes’ as well), but it wasn’t immediately apparent how I might be able to put that into practice myself. This led to the book feeling like [a] it was Robert Smith telling me how great his life is (not that useful), and [b] it could have done with being a bit longer.

So if you’re looking for something quick that will give you food for thought, you could certainly do a lot worse than this. But if you feel like you perhaps need a bit more hand-holding through it, I’d probably push you more in the direction of Craig Groeschel’s Chazown, or John Piper’s Don’t Waste Your Life.

I got this ebook for free from BookSneeze.com in exchange for an honest review.

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Book review: The 5 Money Personalities by Scott and Bethany Palmer

This is a book for married couples who encounter conflict around money (i.e. every married couple). It suggests that there are 5 Money Personalities (Saver, Spender, Risk Taker, Security Seeker and Flyer), that we all relate to two of them, and that it’s our differences in Money Personality that cause conflict in marriage. It’s not a how-to guide on budgeting or getting out of debt, but it’s not intended to be.

It’s healthy for every married couple to honestly discuss money, and this book gives one good structure for this, with lots of capitalised activities (you have a Money Personality, a Money Relationship, you have Money Huddles…). By working through it as a couple it will unlock doors to understand where conflict is coming from, and to improve the quality of a marriage. Good news.

The book is definitely quick and easy to read and the chapters are short, so it’s reasonable to expect even a book hater to be able to read a chapter and discuss it. There’s a website connected to the book, themoneycouple.com, which has a bunch of extra resources on it, but I couldn’t get that to work.

The style is straightforward, related to real life, and funny, but at times got repetitive; why use ten words when a hundred will do? There’s also a really good appendix (which I think would have fitted perfectly well within the book) giving practical advice on how to cope with your spouse’s Money Personality, although the conclusion seemed to be ‘agree on a budget’ (key word being ‘agree’), which does seem to be the only answer.

Overall I did find the book interesting and it sparked thoughts and conversations in my marriage, but I’m not sure how strongly I’d recommend it if I’m honest. If you’re experiencing conflict in your marriage, definitely buy this book. If you’re not, I think you’ll find the majority of it a bit irrelevant.

I got this book for free from BookSneeze.com in exchange for an honest review.

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Book review: Holy, Holy, Holy: Proclaiming the Perfections of God

This is a book all about God’s holiness, written by a variety of authors including R.C. Sproul, Thabiti Anyabwile and D.A. Carson. Starting with an abstract description of holiness before looking at different aspects of God’s character including holiness in each of the three Persons of the Trinity, the book then looks at how to apply that holiness practically.

Each chapter is consistent in its approach, but different in its style as you’d expect in any book written by many authors. A Bible passage is taken and developed to understand what lessons about holiness can be learnt from it. The overall style is reasonably academic so this isn’t a light read, but it’s definitely not too taxing; the reasoning is clear, the language is relatively simple and the conclusions are straightforward.

There’s pretty much nothing I didn’t like about this, so I’ll pick up on something I found slightly strange: the book does a really nice job with fixing the reader’s attention on God’s holiness and all that means, then transitions beautifully smoothly through God’s holiness with regard to sin, and onto our response to that in sanctification before applying it to family life…then finishes with a chapter on the wrath of God. I don’t have a problem with the chapter (I thought it was one of the best in the book!) but it did seem like a bit of an odd, and abrupt, end to what was otherwise a fantastic book.

It’s clearly written from the perspective of people who regard the Bible as the Word of God, so I’m not sure whether a non-Christian would really ‘get’ that, but I’d seriously recommend it to you if you don’t know God. And if you are a Christian, God’s holiness is something we can never stop learning about and being inspired by, so I think you’ll get a lot out of it if you read it.

I got this book for free from Reformation Trust Publishing in exchange for an honest review.

Book review: Dirty God by Johnnie Moore

The title of this book makes it sound like this is going to be some controversial ‘the secret hidden message of Jesus that makes all of historic Christianity a joke’ books, but thankfully it’s not. It certainly is controversial, but for all the right reasons; it’s controversial because Christianity is controversial. From beginning to end this book’s about grace. It’s split into two parts, the first a detailed breakdown of grace shown in the life of Jesus, and the second a challenging encouragement for Christians to also live lives of grace.

To be honest, I found some things a bit annoying about this book at first. I’m not sure if it was just my copy or what, but there were some really weird text errors (like, half a paragraph appearing a page early) – there were too many for it to have just been a typo and they stopped halfway through, but that was pretty annoying. Also, the writer’s style is to make us realise that Jesus was a real person (something I appreciate), but at times it felt to me like he was trying a bit too hard for my liking.

That out of the way, I genuinely got a lot out of the book. At the most basic level it is ‘just another book about grace’, but the fact that Jesus is presented as a real person rather than some holy character really brings it to life, and to my mind the book got stronger and stronger the further I read. The book finishes with the author giving a vision for the global church which is absolutely massive, and that’s wonderful. What a joy to be called to be part of it!

I’d recommend this for anyone, Christian or not. It’s easy to read, fast-paced, and deeply challenging. Read and apply liberally.

I got this ebook for free from BookSneeze.com in exchange for an honest review.

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