Wolverine was fun, Star Trek was flashy, and Terminator was philosophical. But Adventureland was hands down the best movie I’ve seen this year. Set in the recession of 1982, the film follows a recent college grad who must forgo his trip to Europe in order to work at a local theme park in hopes of raising money for grad school.
Money is only one of his problems. The other problem is that whenever he gets a date, he rambles on about books (“Dickens was a travel writer. He just traveled to insane asylums and slums”) until the girl loses all interest in him.
I sat there, and realized that I spent most of my time between the ages of 16 and 22 as that guy. Cash strapped, and burning through stacks of books each summer.
These days, I’m less broke, but I still burn through stacks of books. If you’re looking for a summer reading list, here’s what I’ve read so far in 2009.
The Catcher in the Rye-This is considered a classic, and something you may have been assigned to read in high school. I hated it. One problem was that I thought the book was about baseball (as in, a baseball catcher who chases a foul ball into the rye). It’s not. It’s about a rich kid at boarding school in New York. He brags about a lot of things. The end.
One Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible-A.J. Jacobs. The agnositc editor of Esquire Magazine decides to follow every rule in the Bible. Hilarious, and insightful read. There are things I learned about the Old Testament that I've never learned in church. Highly reccomended.
Love is a Mixtape-Rob Sheffield. The memoir of a Rolling Stone writer who loses his wife suddenly to a blood clot...and looks back on their relationship through a series of mix cassette tapes, and later CDs, that they made for each other. This is the 2nd time I've read it in six months. One of my top 10 books of all time. Just read it.
Lessons From San Quentin: Everything I Need to Know About Life I Learned in Priosn-Bill Dallas. Bigwig lawyer goes away for a white collar crime, and gets stuck in America's worst prison. While he's there, he meets Jesus, and learns to cut away the all the useless garbage our society values.
The Everlasting Stream-Walt Harrington. A white man’s touching memoir about hunting rabbits with his black relatives in Kentucky. One of the best books I’ve read.
Crossings: A White Man’s Journey into Black America. Walt Harrington. An award-winning book about a white man who’s married to a black woman and the father of two bi-racial children who takes off on a road trip across America to understand race, hatred, forgiveness, and reconciliation. I only finished half of it, because it was already drastically overdue to the library.
Nick Hornby’s Long Way Down-Written by guy behind the book/films High Fidelity and How to Be Good, this novel focuses on four people who meet on a rooftop on New Year’s Eve. All are planning to jump. They make an anti-suicide pact for 90 days. Musings on the human condition ensue.
Nick Hornby’s How to Be Good-A fortysomething dr. is cheating on her husband. But instead of leaving her, he decides to stay, and actually live out his beliefs. Since homelessness is terrible and wrong, he brings a homeless teen home to live with them.
Surprised by Joy: The Redemption of a Cynic. Steven W. Simpson. As far as spiritual memoirs go, this one ranks just below Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz and far above most of the other attempts at the genre. If one book has changed my thinking this year, it’s this one.
Making the Climb-John Bowling. The reflections of the President of Olivet Nazarene University, my parent company, on climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in his late 50’s. A very good, concise read on trying hard, leaning on God, and finding beauty in everything. It’s the only climb in the world that takes you through every climate on planet earth-from the tropics to Arctic temperatures. One day, I hope to follow in his footsteps, all the way to the top of the roof of Africa.
The Beat Generation. An anthology of Jack Kerouac (most famous for the novel On the Road) and his motley band of beat poets. Sick of the white picket fence life of the 1950’s, Kerouac quit college and left behind his football scholarship for life on the open road, hitchhiking, taking odd jobs, and always writing. This collection puts together some of his lesser known writings, as well as the poems of his crew. I haven’t quite finished it yet, but it’s a surprisingly stark commentary on the countercultural worldview at the time. Some of the concepts are decades ahead of their time (early rejection of consumerism), and some don’t make much sense to our modern situation (reflections on just how much the average person feared a Russian Invasion/nuclear war).
The Singlehood Phenomenon. Drs. Tom & Bev. Rogers-These two spoke at an event I was at for work a couple of weeks ago, and we really hit it off. Right now, more women are living in America without a husband than with one. This is a great breakdown of why people aren’t getting married. More than anything, it touched on a topic that I really want to write more about…the immaturity and narcissism of the younger American male. I’m absolutely sick of seeing so many of my peers have moved back in with their parents after college, and continue to receive financial and “life help” (like laundry and cooking). This is inexcusable, and we’re going to pay for a it as a society. Great read, fascinating topic, and two authors I hope to collaborate with in the future.
Hero-Fred Stoeker. While I haven’t read much of Fred, I highly respect him the guy behind the Every Man’s Battle Series. The book, which deals with raising sons who are coming of age, is a little tired in it’s ideas for the first half (borrowing a little too much from John Elderidge…if you’ve read Wild at Heart, you’ve read this), and is absolute garbage on the tail end. The book ends with Fred’s oldest son, who’s never dated, or kissed a girl, meeting a girl at his college. They get married in seven months. He then tells all young guys to go do this, as it is surely God’s plan.
The problem here is that I did the exact same thing, and it fell apart at the seams. I may have “kissed dating goodbye” between my high school relationship and my engagement, but it was unintentional. A number of factors came into play. A rough break up at a young age, my parents divorce, a threefold career (radio, TV, writing) that quickly pulled me in over my head. Sometimes I hurt too much to let girls in, most of the time I was flying through life at a lightening pace, and simply wouldn’t, or couldn’t, slow down.
I met a girl. We got engaged after about 5 months. We were engaged for three weeks.
The theological point here is that just because ONE person did something a certain way and became successful doesn’t mean that it’s God’s universal plan for the rest of us. The “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” phenomenon within the church in the late 1990’s flies in the face of what 90% of research, and the opinions of most Christian counselors, will tell you is reasonable.
If I took the Hero/I Kissed… model and applied to writing a book about God’s plan for your career, this is what the thesis might be.
“Go get an internship in what you love. Within three months, God will promote you to your dream job.”
In reality, this IS what happened to me at the age of 19. It’s a truly beautiful story of how God took an inexperienced teenager from overnights on country radio in Iowa to a major market Christian station. Whatever happens with my career (and any of us, in any field, could be out of work in 6 months in this financial climate), I’ll always be thankful for His hand on me at that critical age.
While it’s my story, there’s no part of the Bible that would support this as being God’s plan for ALL believers. I fact, it wouldn’t even make sense. And in trying to apply it like that, I would rob the beauty from the story of how God worked in my life.
Derek Webb sings “Should I read between the lines/to become handsome, rich and wise/is that really want you want from me?”
I’m not saying that some of the principals in the Bible can’t be applied to having a successful business, marriage, sports team, etc. But that’s not the point of the book. The point is that Jesus was actually God, and that he died. And then he came back. And he loves you and wants you rescue you.
All that to say, be watchful of who’s theology you buy into (if you’re a Christian). If you’re not a Christian, my apologies for some of the terrible ideas that people have wrapped a bit of Jesus around and sold as a product.
Wow, I didn’t mean to get that heated. But anger often shows where our passions are. Expect to hear more on this subject…
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