Rev. Dr. Jeff Garrison
I am trying to catch up on reading reviews. Below are four reviews that contain fiction, poetry, philosophy, and history. I will start with the lighter books and move on to the more heavy ones. There’s something here for everyone! Aaron McAlexander, This Old Store (Stonebridge Press, 2014), 95 pages including photos and maps. There really … Read more Catching up on my reading
Dave and my introduction to Blue Hole Canoes In the winter of 1976, I was a freshman at University of North Carolina at Wilmington. One night, I attended the local Sierra Club meeting. The hot topic at the time was the protection of the New River, a river I’d paddled and felt I should become … Read more Dave, Blue Hole Canoes, Bill, Bob, and a book review
Montreat I’ve been on vacation this past week, which is why I didn’t post a sermon on Sunday. Instead, I spent five days at Montreat, a Presbyterian conference and retreat center in the mountains of North Carolina. While there, I caught up with an old friend from the time when we both lived in Hickory, … Read more Catching up and two book reviews
Today, I’m just trying to catch up on some books I’ve read over the past few weeks… If one doesn’t interest you, you can skip it and move on to the others. Andy Stanley, Not in It to Win It: Why Choosing Sides Sidelines the Church Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2022), 231 pages. This is a book … Read more Catching Up on my Reading
Anne Applebaum, The Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism (2020: New York: Anchor Books, 2021), 206 pages including notes. No index or bibliography. This is an important book for understanding much of what is happening in our world. However, at first, I wondered what I was getting into as Applebaum describes a party she … Read more Three reviews: Democracy, Beza, & Tides
Hannah Anderson, Humble Roots: How Humility Grounds and Nourishes Your Soul (Chicago: Moody Publishing, 2016), 206 pages. I heard Anderson at the HopeWords Writers Conference I attended in April in Bluefield West Virginia. Another speaker referred this book of hers for its ability to create a sense of place, which is why I chose it as the … Read more Gardener Spirituality and Olmstead the Gardner: Book Reviews
Billy Beasley, Home (Abbeyville, SC: Moonshine Press, 2022), 234 pages. Things just don’t seem to go Trent Mullins way. Never able to please his father, he has stopped trying. Two different women have broken his heart (and one of them twice). Depression has set in. To break out of the depression, without pills, Trent finishes up his … Read more Where is Home?
Mark Jarman, Dailiness: Essays on Poetry (Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2020), 177 pages. I became acquainted with Jarman’s poetry through poems published in the Reformed Journal. Dailiness consists of a series of long essays on various aspects of poetry. Originally, I thought I would use this as evening reading, but the essays were too long and deep … Read more Books on Poetry and Writing and a Poem
It looks like we’ll have a baseball season this year. Why are there so many good baseball books? I don’t know of any other sport who produces as many good writers as baseball. In anticipation of the season, I listened to Robert Creamer’s Baseball in ’41, which I’m reviewing below. I’m also attaching a review of another … Read more In Preparation for the Baseball Season: Book reviews
Anne Applebaum, Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine (2017), 17 hours and 46 minutes I read reviews of this book when it first came out. It looked intriguing, but I never got around to read it. When Russia invaded Ukraine, I decided I needed to read something to get myself up to speed on what is happening … Read more Red Famine (some background on the conflict between Ukraine and Russia)