If It Bleeds

 

If It Bleeds – Stephen King

A collection of four novellas, or “short” stories.  I believe this is probably the fourth or fifth release by King with such a structure.  This isn’t to be confused with his releases (again, there have been four or five) that contain about 15 stories - the average story consisting of about 25 pages.   This collection of only four stories or so gives the tales more page space, so it allows them to breathe better, and perhaps the reader will remember these stories several years after they’ve read them.

King usually succeeds with this model. Of course, the public is very fickle with Stephen King, and even his biggest admirers will admit that he quite often fails to deliver. I’m sure my opinion of these stories would be shared by some, but opinions of his works are usually all over the place.   Of the four stories here, I enjoyed three of them. They weren’t earth shatteringly great, but they were entertaining, easy to digest, and all had a sense of weirdness and creepiness that King is most known for in the literary world.

The three stories I enjoyed were about a cell phone, a dying world, and a….er…..rat…..I guess.  There’s not much else that I can comment on other than to say I enjoyed the stories. They were all a tad creepy, but overall a lot of fun with an occasional impulse to laugh.  Sadly, the fourth story, the one with the same title as the book, is the one that I didn’t enjoy. It was also about twice as long as the rest of these stories. My instincts, though, tell me that many of King’s readers probably enjoyed it a lot better than I did.

The novella “If It Bleeds” is yet another Bill Hodges story. Of course, those who know Bill Hodges know he’s long gone due to pancreatic cancer. One of his assistants, Holly Gibney, has been promoted to the senior role of main protagonist. After the Bill Hodges trilogy of books, Gibney was the star of a later work by King called “The Outsider”.   Gibney has a lot of fans; including King himself. He says so in the conclusion of this collection. Unfortunately, I wish I could say the same.  I’m a bit tired of her and her cohorts. I enjoyed the Bill Hodges trilogy, but even those grew thin over time. So I was less than enthused to see the same group of characters pop up once again.

It must also be said that one really needs to read those three-plus-one books before they tackle this one. There are too many references to those stories (“The Outsider”, in particular.)  One wishes that there would be a disclaimer on the front cover of this book with a warning not to waste one’s effort reading this thing unless they have first read the other four.  Imagine if you tried to read “The Dark Tower Part 6” before you read the first five.  Would you be a tad lost?  I think you would.

Then there’s the fact that Stephen King tends to fluctuate his style depending on the story he’s writing. This isn’t necessarily a good thing. I’ve commented before than King is a great storyteller, but he seems to lack sufficient knowledge when trying to write characters having simple dialogue with each other. I find such interactions a tad unbelievable, and it can wear on you after a while.  With Holly Gibney, he also has the tendency of not knowing when to put up a stop sign that prevents every single detail from his brain making its way to the printed page.  Example: Consider this entry from the story:

“Holly orders out to Domino’s – a small veggie pizza and a large coke. When the young man shows up, she tips according to Bill Hodges’ rule of thumb: fifteen per cent of the bill if the service is fair, twenty per cent if the service is good. This young man is prompt, so she tips the full amount.”

Now, I think it would be just as effective to simply say:

“Holly orders a veggie pizza from Domino’s.”

I’m sure every English teacher I ever had would say the same thing.  When a reader has to deal with this for almost 200 pages, you can see how one can feel a tad worn out when one has to read so much with so little of actual action.  Again, though, this doesn’t seem to affect King when he wrote his other three stories. So why does writing about Holly Gibney give him such OCD tendencies?

A good collection overall though.  This is what I expected; good and bad.  Most King readers will find multiple things to like here, and maybe have some minor gripes such as the ones I listed.

The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Biblical Truth

 

The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Biblical Truth – by Beth Allison Barr

When many evangelical Christians essentially started worshipping Donald Trump instead of Jesus during Trump’s presidency, it raised a lot of doubt and uncertainty within my soul. I never wavered from my faith, but I had a lot of questions about the evangelical movement (which to some extent I was part of) and I was given very few answers. None of them made any sense.  The more I studied the history of the church, the more I came to understand that so many of the biblical “truths” that today’s evangelicals cling to weren’t considered infallible and unquestionable until the last few hundred years.  I mean, our Bible wasn’t even a Bible until around 450 years after Christ.  So I had a lot of questions.

So does Dr. Beth Allison Barr.  Her main beef, for obvious reasons, is the role of women throughout the history of Christianity. This is a wonderfully well-written book. Part of what makes this book so captivating is that Barr alternates between her present-day situation and travails within the church around this particular issue, and the history of Christianity going all the way back to the apostle Paul.  Dr. Barr, until recently, was a member of a church in Waco, Texas where her husband was on staff.  She and her husband were essentially kicked out of their church when they started challenging the notion that women weren’t allowed to teach men.  So in many ways this book is Barr’s personal journey as well as a deep dive into church history.

Dr. Barr is a historian. What better person to learn history from than a historian.  Well, sadly, the church doesn’t think so. This shouldn’t really be that surprising. Think of how many evangelicals refuse to listen to geologists when it comes to the age of the earth, or epidemiologists when it comes to the advantages of vaccination. So why should they act any different with Barr’s concerns about women and their real history of leadership within Christianity?  She’s obviously frustrated with how so many churches interpret this matter, but she keeps a level head throughout. This book never comes across as angry, but it’s definitely a major concern to the author that she would like to see addressed.

She starts with the epistles of Paul, and works her way forward. She makes excellent points throughout. Although she remains Protestant, her claim is that the role of women really took a turn for the worse around the time of the Reformation during the 16^th century.  Her claim is that rather than letting Christianity shape the world around it, the church let the world shape the faith instead. Since many cultures have incorporated various themes of subjugation of women, it trickled into the Christian church  and began its cancerous growth. 

What we all need to acknowledge is that “power” is very addictive, and the evangelical church has sadly showed us that it consistently craves such power. If the world (and the church) is led by a buncha white men, some of those white men will do everything to keep things status quo. Who wants to be a “minority?” they probably say to themselves. Oddly, that shouldn’t be an issue unless, of course, the majority is treating the minority poorly which is, in fact, the case within so many elements of society.  Although many within the Christian church would be insulted by the accusation, this is a fact within the church as well; especially the “men” part.

She lists several examples in the book of just how damaging these sentiments can be. Essentially, there are “Christian” men in power, who blame every problem within a marital relationship on the woman (John MacArthur comes to mind.)  I’ve heard instances, for example, where a Christian church leader cheats on his wife and has sex with an underage girl.  The leaders of the church blame, of course, the man’s wife.  They argue that if the man’s wife had been giving him “enough” sex, he never would have had to stray and seek pleasure elsewhere.  Now THAT example isn’t in this book, but Barr does include several examples of such warped behavior that exists within the sanctuaries of too many churches.

She even goes as far as to give good reasons for believing many of today’s Protestant evangelical churches have tweaked their “vision statements” to accommodate the subjugation of women.  In doing so, they essentially haven managed to make these new vision statements actual Arianism versions of heresy.  So, yes, this is a book that badly needs to be written and read. Sadly this book probably won’t change the mind of many obdurate men who are already in power.  Maybe it will change a few minds though.  I would imagine that it might be easy to claim that women were intellectually inferior than men hundreds of years ago. But living in the 21^st century has proven that such notions are ridiculous, and to hold such opinions and state them out loud is highly offensive and malodorous. One could lose their job for stating such nonsense. I would argue this is a good thing.  If your response to this is that “That’s how God designed it”, well, reading this book just might change your mind.  It’s time for Christians to start being more Christlike and do their due diligence and study the history of their faith.

Decision Points

 

Decision Points – George W. Bush

I recently read President Barack Obama’s presidential memoir titled “A Promised Land” and it dawned on me that, although I’ve read more than 60 biographies of U.S. Presidents, Obama’s was the first book I’ve read written by the actual president.  There have been many books written by presidents, but I guess I shy away from them because I don’t think they can be very objective when dealing with their presidency. Obama’s “A Promised Land”, however, was outstanding and I thoroughly enjoyed his recollections of his first term as president (there will be a part 2 at some point). Sadly, though, I didn’t think as highly about this book by former president George W. Bush. It seemed to lack much of the depth and objectivity the I encountered when reading Obama’s remembrances.

Now, I must stop here and throw out a disclaimer.  My enjoyment around reading a presidential biography has absolutely nothing to do with how I regard the subject matter and/or their politics. My goal is to only read reputable authors and not the blowhard loudmouths; such as the ones who somehow manage to get fired (with no explanation to the public) from high profile universities or that need pardons (again, no explanation) from presidents who they then write about. There’s too much mud slinging out there.  So when it comes to a book written by the politician himself, you expect it to be somewhat biased, but my opinion of the person doesn’t reflect my taste for the book.  What I’m trying (and failing) to succinctly say is that had this book been written by someone whose politics were a 180 from George W. Bush, I’m confident that my overall opinion of the book would have been the same.

Although this is a book that mainly focuses of Bush’s presidency, it’s not a linear account. Nor is it really an autobiography. As the title implies, this book focuses on many of the decisions that Bush found himself wanting or needing to make as leader of the free world.  Each chapter is devoted to a different “decision” such as Iraq, Katrina, or the 2008 Financial Crisis. Despite what many of Bush’s critics claim, the man isn’t a spoiled hayseed who is ignorant about the affairs of the world.  No, as he dictates, he has a very firm grasp and understanding of what is happening under his watch as president, and he details for his readers his in-depth thoughts and how he came to the conclusions that he did.

He admits when he makes mistakes, and subtlety takes credit when he’s right, but I guess this just misses the mark for my tastes.  I would prefer much more transparency and wanted to read about what others thought of when he made many of his key decisions. We do read about some of the other main players, but not much. I don’t recall much at all about Dick Cheney, and yet most other books that I’ve read about the Bush 43 presidency seem to indicate that Cheney was always whispering in Bush’s ear. This is a particular “hot point” for me because I always believed that if Bush didn’t listen to his VP so much, he just might have walked away from his presidency a tad more popular that he actually did. So if this is the only book you read about George W. Bush, you really won’t come away with anything indicating how influential Cheney was.

Reading these recollections, one really can’t distinguish Bush’s failures (such as Iraq and Katrina) from his successes (such as PEPFAR and the TARP initiative). When he and John McCain squabble near the end of his second term, Bush can’t seem to realize that the reason McCain doesn’t want him campaigning for him is because Bush is such a huge liability by that point. To be truthful, maybe Bush DID know, but he seems to sugarcoat this, as well as many other instances, an awful lot in this book.

Although Bush is more learned that many give him credit for, that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a scholarly writer. I felt this book could have used a co-author to smooth out a lot of the rough edges. A big part of George W. Bush’s appeal as president was his down to earth manner that came across as “someone you’d like to go have a beer with”.  His writing emulates those sentiments as well.  Maybe that was his intention, but I just didn’t enjoy the simplicity of his observations.  There were times where I thought this would be a much better book to LISTEN to as opposed to reading.  I really don’t mean that in a condescending way.  If this is truly how the man is, you really can’t fault the writing if it is, in fact, a genuine reflection of his style.

If you happen to read this book and come up with many of the same conclusions as I did, I would highly recommend Jean Edward Smith’s bio (“Bush”) as well as Peter Baker’s account of Bush and Cheney (“Days of Fire”). Both books seem to paint a much better picture of the true atmosphere during the Bush presidency and capture a lot more of the many nuances that this memoir basically ignores.