A minister’s open and honest love letter to his son.
In written messages to his infant son, a pastor dispenses spiritual advice and hard-won personal wisdom.
When his Julian was born, Ehlke did what many other parents wish they had: he started writing. In a series of entries, he mapped out the first year of his child’s life in prose, recording his joy at the miracle growing before him and articulating spiritual and personal insights. The result is this collection of letters to Julian that condenses a young father’s wisdom. Ehlke is a Lutheran pastor, so it is no surprise that many of these missives dwell on religious matters. Though he claims that they are not “letters in the forms of sermons,” many have a distinctly homiletic feel. In them, Ehlke meditates on biblical verses, explains the intricacies of Lutheran dogma and reflects on moments of spiritual revelation from his life. But the work is not only a religious guidebook; it is also an honest reflection on life’s vexing challenges. In moments of startling candor, Ehlke writes of the troubles he has endured—among them sexual abuse, traumatic injury, deadly illness and addiction—in the hope that Julian might be spared similar pain. Whether he is taking on theology or autobiography, Ehlke writes fluidly, and his speculative flights are astute but unpretentious. He dispenses wisdom humbly, as good fathers should. However, the organization of his volume can feel random. Though the order of his letters sometimes takes cues from the Christian liturgical calendar—an entry on Ash Wednesday, for instance, is written in mid-February—the connections that link one entry to the next are somewhat arbitrary. But the book is more diary than theological treatise, so such flexibility is understandable.
A minister’s open and honest love letter to his son.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1441561541
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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