Showing posts with label Book Reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book Reviews. Show all posts

Unrepentant Surrender

Sunday, January 22, 2012 6:39 PM By crosswaysnet , In ,


On the passing of J. Keith Miller...

Keith Miller has been tapping energy for 60 years. Today he tapped into the mother lode. He went Home this afternoon at the age of 84 in the arms of his wife, Andrea, and at the insistence of an enemy - pancreatic cancer. He died faithful, and in the only kind of faith he believed worthy - Expectant. He pursued a surrendered life with a maddening obsession at times. He expected God to meet him when he did. He chased after God passionately, sloppily, even in anger. And he journaled his failures. Later in my own life, I came to understand how merciful God is to me by watching Keith crawl back to the foot of the cross after some spectacular personal crises.  Expectant faith is desperate. It was the only kind he ever seemed to live. It is the only kind that matters. When it came to surrender, Keith was adamant and unrepentant. It shows in his final blog entries.

Once upon a time, Keith drilled the earth of Texas and Oklahoma looking for his meaning as a man. As an unsettled, lonely and driven member of the 'Greatest Generation' he doggedly pursued wealth and the American dream across the American South as an entrepreneur in Oil Exploration. He worked for the biggest names in Energy and launched a number of successful related businesses.

By the late 50s, he was on his way to the top. And he found it profoundly meaningless...

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Death Mocks Her

Wednesday, August 24, 2011 1:25 PM By crosswaysnet , In


"Doom am I, full-ripe, dealing death to the worlds, engaged in devouring mankind." Lord Krishna

For two cycles now, Katniss Everdeen has stared straight into the maw of death… and let it consume her. There's only a shell left, yet this irrepressible teen has become immortal by becoming the dealer of death. "I’m running on hate. When the energy for that ebbs, I’ll be worthless," she groans. At first she had to kill to survive. Now she must hate and kill to survive. What kind of survival is this? It's not. And to think, all she ever wanted was to settle down and spend her years angst-ing over which high school crush to marry. Well, dear soul-weary reader, if you've persevered with her this far (and millions have) there's no choice but to see her through until she flames out and rises from the ashes.

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The Island of Misfit Troikas

Tuesday, June 7, 2011 10:21 PM By crosswaysnet , In


Katniss Everdeen has a problem. Everyone who admires her wants her dead. Everyone who loves her soon will be. So what's a girl to do? Fight like Hell. It's all fatalist frustration, because she just can't seem to die. And it's not for lack of trying.  She's determined to see her one and almost love survive another round of sporting mayhem if it kills her. Unfortunately, it doesn't.

The Hunger Games have become the Hungrier Games. The unprecedented happens. The victors of previous Hunger Games must square off to appease the Hunger Gods one more time as they luxuriate in their plush vomitoriums. They're getting dyspeptic and a tickling feather won't help. Rebellion is ravaging the slave districts like a cruise ship virus. And it's putting a dent in the Capitol's menu. Used to satiating every gluttonous pang, the grumbling of a million starving bellies has become an annoyance that surround sound and 3d special effects can't drone out.

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Darker by Day

Monday, May 16, 2011 12:45 AM By crosswaysnet , In ,


Welcome to the Heart of Darkness. Only this darkness has no heart. It's lit with high-watt tungsten - camera ready. It comes with a cast of thousands, and thousands more to do their hair, nails and wardrobe. Live from the Capitol! It's Running Man 24/7 on every network!! You can't miss it! By law you may not avert your eyes. Let the killing of children begin! Better yet - we'll have the children do the killing!!

The most sinister Stephen King novels are set in broad daylight. The Twilight Zone episodes that linger in your mind for years were more 'zone' than 'twilight.' So it is with The Hunger Games. Yet this is no allegory or cautionary tale - at least not in a way accessible to young minds. In the adrenaline-doused diary of Katniss Everdeen, it's a present progressive universe. More unrelenting than urgent. We're stuck in the unending infinitive. How else is a teen girl to document her own demise? the world she observes is all objects to her gerunds. She's 16 years old and there's nothing sweet about it. It's all acid, bile, blood and burning. She's the noble savage and coy flirt. Sounds a lot like High School. The only relief is a twitching retreat into your own troubled dreams.

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Trail of Tears

Tuesday, October 26, 2010 2:51 PM By crosswaysnet , In ,


Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here...

On first read, 'The Road' is all ending with no beginning. The world has long since descended into madness. Nature has abdicated. Abbadon has cleaned the table and cashed in his chips. The universe has shrunk to the flickering flame of one father and his only son. Unable to separate his identity from his only remaining responsibility, The man sets off to the South and his rendezvous with oblivion. As long as he moves the long scythe cannot take its final swing. Yet he knows he must prepare his son for the inevitable, one bleeding cough at time. Their language is sparse, poetry, but only of the free verse kind. It's the visual language of full-faced tenderness that is the world's final sonnet. They profess love till there is no breath left to bear the words. We've reached the endless sea.

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The Lovely Bones

Wednesday, August 4, 2010 12:15 PM By crosswaysnet , In ,


This movie has been savaged by the well-meaning and those who don't know well what they mean.

What are 'the Lovely Bones?' Ah, now the answer to that will take a fair viewing to sort out. And the closing paragraphs from the lips of Susie Salmon will mean nothing to the viewer without the story that precedes it.

What of all the talk of Heaven? There is no Heaven here - just the longing for one. We peek over the rim from Neverland at the very end, but since we're not supposed to go there, we're not allowed more than a glaring obscurity. Some criticize the imagination of Peter Jackson for bringing us a techno-color CandyLand, all sugary sweetness and no nourishment. But that complaint completely misses his genius. This is Susie Salmon's time of bright shadows, not Peter's. Ripped from a world of polyester, psychedelic daisies and David Cassidy posters, we're entering a very different inner world than our 'today.' It's one of a 14-year-old young lady of the 1970s. It is groovy and timeless. Yet the horrors that preceded it bust in with alarming rudeness proving this is no Nirvana. Just when we've grown accustomed to this playground and think it will resolve, it crumbles to dust. As it must. It was never meant to be something of substance. Susie's looking glass is the quick blog of a soul beginning a much larger adventure. A tweet from the unending song.

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The Shack

Monday, June 22, 2009 11:18 AM By crosswaysnet , In


by William P. Young

Why did I read this? After all, I'd been dissuaded a number of times by mixed reviews and my own reticence. I'm a parent, now. What dad wants to read about the abduction of a child?

Of those who previewed the book for me, they came from two camps: 1) Those who thought it was too 'New Agey'; and 2) those who thought it was the best theological writing in a century. Camp "1" almost prevailed before I even started. Camp "2" types always make my eyes roll. It's a piece of modern fiction, not the second coming of C.S. Lewis! Come on! God as Aunt Jemimah?

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