Nothing Like Some Good Fiction from an Indie Bookstore! (A Man Called Ove)

A Man Called Ove cover 2

Last week I purchased a book at nearly full price at a wonderful independent bookseller in Minneapolis. It was, of all things, a work of fiction, a genre I don’t read much. (That may be changing.)

The book is A Man Called Ove (pronounced “OOH-vuh”) by Swedish novelist Fredrik Backman.

It begins like this:

Ove is fifty-nine.

He drives a Saab. He’s the kind of man who points at people he doesn’t like the look of, as if they were burglars and his forefinger a policeman’s flashlight. He stands at the counter of a shop where owners of Japanese cars come to purchase white cables. Ove eyes the sales assistant for a long time before shaking a medium-sized white box at him.

“So this is one of those O-Pads, is it?” he demands.

The assistant, a young man with a single-digit body mass index, looks ill at ease. He visibly struggles to control his urge to snatch the box out of Ove’s hands.

“Yes, exactly. An iPad. Do you think you could stop shaking it like that . . . ?”

Every day Ove is frustrated by a highly tech-oriented world, where IT consultants and men in white shirts run society but can’t tighten a screw or back up a moving trailer properly.

Already at 59 Ove is a grumpy old man—but not beyond hope, and maybe even lovable if the author has his way.

A Man Called Ove begins with a young family moving into the neighborhood and crashing their trailer into Ove’s mailbox. Each new day thereafter is destined to bring a new interruption to the solitary peace Ove desires.

The story is interesting, compelling, and moves along well. Beckman deftly weaves between Ove’s past and present. At first the flashbacks felt like intrusions, but then I found myself equally engaged in both the back story and the main story.

The writing is enjoyable. Backman’s use of metaphor is clever and funny. A number of chapters make use of inclusio, using the same thought (and even wording) to both open and close a scene. And the occasional clipped writing style fits well with Ove’s character, as here, where subjects drop out:

 

 

There is lots of nodding and shoving of hands into pockets—maybe just a touch more than necessary. Some coincidences, especially toward the end of the book, are a little unbelievable. And I spotted about a dozen typos, as well as a couple handfuls of places that wanted a closer edit.

Those faults do not outweigh the pleasure of reading the story. As a bonus, the layout and cover and typesetting are some of the best I’ve seen in a novel, and made me want to pick it up even more. (Though the compelling story, especially in its second half, was sufficient for keeping me engaged.)

And–get this–there’s a movie version of the book. It’s supposed to be coming to the U.S. this fall. I watched the trailer after reading the book, and it looks like it perfectly captures the essence of the characters and interactions in Backman’s story.

Here’s the publisher’s page. You can find it on Amazon here, or (better yet!) at your local independent bookseller, or even at your local library.

Sabbath-Keeping for Pastors

Sabbath-Keeping for Pastors
From the new CTPastors.com

 

I’m honored to have a piece on Sabbath-keeping featured on the new CTPastors.com site. It starts out:

The lack of correlation between time at work and quality of work has been a recurring theme in Harvard Business Review over the last decade. Not long ago, I received an email newsletter with yet more research showing that working more hours does not mean working more effectively. The article cited a study where managers could not tell the difference in work output between employees who worked 80 hours a week and those who only pretended to work 80 hours a week.

The article summarized its findings with this statement….

You can read the whole thing here.

The Winner Is…

Mark ZECNT

 

Congrats to Brian Davidson, the winner of Mark in the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the NT! Enjoy the book, Brian!

I used Random Number Generator to pick the winner–tried and true. If you’d like to read my book note on the Mark commentary, it’s here.

Thanks for all who entered the giveaway! Subscribe via the right sidebar to get updated every time I post here.

Free Copy of Mark (ZECNT) in Print, and 80% Off Ebook Gospel Commentaries from Zondervan

Zondervan Matthew Collection

 

Starting August 8 and going until 11:59 (EST) on August 11, Zondervan is offering a host of commentaries on the Gospels at a steep discount. Almost all of them are ones I use regularly in preaching preparation.

Some highlights:

  • Matthew, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the NT, $7.99 (reviewed here)
  • Scot McKnight’s Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount (The Story of God Bible Commentary, reviewed here)
  • Mark, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the NT, $7.99 (book note here)
  • NIVAC volumes, including Gary Burge’s volume on John
  • Luke, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the NT, $7.99 (reviewed here, and I think the first commentary I reviewed for Words on the Word)

Find all the books on sale here.

Mark ZECNT
Up for grabs!

As part of the promotion, Zondervan has given me a print copy of Mark Strauss’s Mark commentary (ZECNT) to give away. It retails at $44.99.

If you’d like to enter for a chance to win the Mark commentary, leave a comment saying which Gospel you find yourself most drawn to and why. If you share a link to this post on Facebook and/or Twitter, you get a second entry. (Make sure you let me know you shared, and leave the link in the comments.)

I’ll announce the winner Friday evening. Check out the whole sale here.

Show Your Work! 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered (REVIEW)

Show Your Work Cover Image

 

Since starting Words on the Word four years ago, I’ve spent far more of my blogging energies on writing and reviewing books and apps than on marketing what I do.

I’m fine with the focus as it’s been, but I know I could stand to explore more ways to “get discovered,” as Austin Kleon promises to address in his Show Your Work! 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered.

I heard about Austin Kleon from Shawn Blanc. By telling you that, by the way, I’m following some of Kleon’s advice:

It’s always good practice to give a shout-out to the people who’ve helped you stumble onto good work and also leave a bread-crumb trail that people you’re sharing with can follow back to the sources of your inspiration.

Kleon’s got his own site which is worth checking out. Sitting down to write this review was the first time I’d been on it, and I’ve already got 15 tabs open that I’ll either read later or save to Evernote. A highlight: in his post on how to read more, suggestion #1 is “Throw your phone in the ocean.” Great idea. Not to mention this amazing wallpaper for your phone, to keep you off it.

 

Take It

 

Kleon organizes his book around 10 main suggestions:

1. You don’t have to be a genius.

2. Think process, not product.

3. Share something small every day.

4. Open up your cabinet of curiosities.

5. Tell good stories.

6. Teach what you know.

7. Don’t turn into human spam.

8. Learn to take a punch.

9. Sell out.

10. Stick around.

Chapter six, “Teach what you know,” is the shortest (barely 700 words) but best chapter.

I didn’t care a whole lot for the graphics (on every other page or so), but they do make the book easier to fly through, and a few of them illustrated the points creatively. The first one is compelling:

 

 

Some others are interesting:

 

 

And there are some real gems in this book, whether they are Kleon’s or others’ words:

When Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke was asked what he thought his greatest strength was, he answered, “That I don’t know what I’m doing.” Like one of his heroes, Tom Waits, whenever Yorke feels like his songwriting is getting too comfortable or stale, he’ll pick up an instrument he doesn’t know how to play and try to write with it. This is yet another trait of amateurs— they’ll use whatever tools they can get their hands on to try to get their ideas into the world.

And:

“The stupidest possible creative act is still a creative act,” writes Clay Shirky in his book Cognitive Surplus. “On the spectrum of creative work, the difference between the mediocre and the good is vast. Mediocrity is, however, still on the spectrum; you can move from mediocre to good in increments. The real gap is between doing nothing and doing something.” Amateurs know that contributing something is better than contributing nothing.

Much of the book can be summed up by this sage advice:

The best way to get started on the path to sharing your work is to think about what you want to learn, and make a commitment to learning it in front of others.

Kleon encourages writers and artists to “become a documentarian of what you do.” That can be a “daily dispatch” (think: email newsletter) or a behind-the-scenes video on how you do what you do. Kleon says:

Once a day, after you’ve done your day’s work, go back to your documentation and find one little piece of your process that you can share.

Leave It

 

Kleon encourages those who quote or borrow to cite, but he falls short of a robust understanding of what plagiarism is and isn’t.

He says:

If you have a weird hybrid job, say something like, “I’m a writer who draws.” (I stole that bio from the cartoonist Saul Steinberg.)

A nice citation, but unfortunately “I’m a writer who draws” appears uncited in his book jacket bio, on his Website, on his Instagram, etc.

He shows his work on the books he reads (great idea), but then appears to copy-paste in publisher’s descriptions without citing them.

No need to lambast the guy—but I already didn’t like the title Steal Like an Artist (his first book), let alone the concept. I get it’s supposed to be a pithy way to say, “Let others influence you.” (Just like “content creation” means “writing.”) But the lack of nuance around what I consider an important issue in art creation bugged me.

Show Your Work! is more than 200 pages, but could just as well have been a series of 10 short (albeit good) blog posts. It’s got even fewer words per page than a Rob Bell book! (All due respect to Rev. Bell….)

 

Image via Austin Kleon
Image via Austin Kleon

 

More to the point than a low word-to-page ratio is that there are plenty of pieces of advice Kleon offers that lack specifics. For example, in his section on getting a good domain name, he says:

Buy http://www.[ insert your name here].com. If your name is common, or you don’t like your name, come up with a pseudonym or an alias, and register that. Then buy some web hosting and build a website. (These things sound technical, but they’re really not— a few Google searches and some books from the library will show you the way.)

Because this is a print book, you don’t even get the benefit of a hyperlink to start you in the right direction.

But there are other parts where in even a few words Kleon fleshes out his ideas, as in the section, “Turn your flow into stock.”

 

Should You Get It? (Yes.)

 

Even with its flaws, this book was well worth the time I spent reading and marking it up. The book gave me some good, specific action steps to pursue, in the hopes of spreading the word about the work I’m doing on this blog (and elsewhere). And it’s given me months and months of sermon illustrations, inspiring quotes, and writing prompts.

For its reasonable price, the book is worth the purchase, though this might be better checked out from the library first. One way or the other, I found the book overall to be encouraging, inspiring, and motivating.

Check it out via Amazon or the publisher’s page.

 

 

Thanks to the good folks at Workman for sending the review copy.

Settling Down with Owen: Of Empty Bottles, Tourniquets, and… Hope? (King of Whys, 2016)

In 2011’s Ghost Town Mike Kinsella (Owen) sang his credo in “I Believe”:

Hallelujah! I just found Jesus
Swimming at the bottom
Of the bottle I keep crawling out of
He said, “You look familiar, but I can’t place your face”
I said, “You look like hell” and that we used to hang
At my mother’s request

On the one hand, it’s a post-Catholic-upbringing, anti-religious declaration of sorts.

Have I been saved?
Cause I feel the same:
Dirty and tired

Can I be saved?
Without having changed
Or remorse for what I don’t believe?

On the other hand, I can see an honest Christian praying those words. He prays on:

I offer up my humble soul
And my broken spirit
All those things that I can’t control
The intangible bullshit
To you, my Lord

I know he’s being sarcastic (right?), but it’s hard not to hold out hope that one of my all-time favorite artists would really mean words like that, words which sound like David or Paul, and which capture the essence of some of my own prayers.

The rest of the song seems to clarify, however:

I believe
There is no white light
Somebody’s mistaken
Or somebody lied

I believe
There’s only one truth
It resonates different
In me and you
So don’t try and sell me yours

I think that last line–“so don’t try to sell me yours”–is the song’s interpretive key. The prayers were just at his “mother’s request,” and didn’t really work if he’s still feeling “the same: dirty and tired.” The prayer to “you, my Lord” is in scare quotes.

Whatever he meant, the song, “I Believe” is one of my favorite Owen tracks out of his 9 full-length albums and handful of EPs in the last 15 years.

 

 

Owen King of Whys Cover

 

Five years later the first track on the just-released King of Whys is “Empty Bottle.” The song presumably refers to the Chicago concert venue with that name (“Empty Bottle / crowded goth show”). But the connection to “I Believe” is inescapable, as it borrow’s the older song’s melody from the line “Hallelujah! I just found Jesus!” I would have thought this move subconscious were it not also for the similarly of the “empty bottle” to “the bottom of the bottle” in “I Believe.”

Now Owen has found the transcendence he was looking for, it seems, in interpersonal connection:

You’ve got a lot of nerves
Will you please touch mine with yours?

This is, after all, the album of a man now married and with kids.

“Empty Bottle” is as close as an acoustic guitar will get you to headbanging. By the end of the track, the album is already set to be as lush, intricate, and ethereal as anything Owen has done.

Next is “The Desperate,” where the familiar palm-muted acoustic guitar soon gives way to some dreamy pedal steel–the first discernible mark of S. Carey’s production (Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens). The song includes violins, piano, and poignant coming-of-age lyrics:

Somehow all of the sudden I find myself struggling
Two lives are too much and not enough
I concede this childish need for attention
is the desperate act of a disappearing man
You’d better catch him while you can

What a mess
Past and present stitched together, perilously tethered I ain’t fooling anyone (least of all me)

He continues with his signature combination of the clever and the mildly profane:

I’m calling in sick forever
and I’m calling bullshit on everyone

His next line–“This is a test and I’m failing”–seems like an antiphon to Pedro the Lion’s “If this is only a test, I hope that I’m passing.” The music is sweet and textured.

The song concludes:

You were right, Babe
I love how you know me
I know how you love me
I know how you long for this song to end

Owen is “Settled Down” now, which he explores in a track with more interlocking and arpeggiated guitars, accompanied with some sweet kick drum work. As this song concluded, on my first listen, I knew this album was among his best work. (Multiple listens through have confirmed the assessment.)

And then “Lovers Come and Go,” came on. I felt how I did the first time I listened to Owen’s 2001 self-titled debut. I don’t know if it’s the strings or the electric guitar overlays or the subtle but steady bass and drums, but it’s the kind of euphoric high that has kept me bobbing my head to emo well into my mid- to late-30s. Maybe I should have grown out of it by now, but songs like this only encourage me.

“Tourniquet” sounds at first like the kind of overly effusive, heart-on-the-sleeve, lyrical navel-gazing that got/gets me made fun of for listening to this kind of music: “This tourniquet hasn’t stopped the bleeding yet.”

But give him a chance:

If you give me this battle
I’ll pretend like there isn’t a lifetime of bitterness inside of me
An ugliness I hide from you
Give me that goddamn bottle and then leave me alone

Then there is the entrance of the horn parts. Over the song’s gorgeous layers, Owen sings:

This tourniquet hasn’t stopped the bleeding yet
I fear that I might lose a limb
Or a wife
Or whatever’s left inside

The closing words…

This tourniquet hasn’t stopped the bleeding yet
I fear that I might bleed out

…suggest that the song really is about marriage and fear of one’s self in the context of a long-term commitment. Melodramatic? Possibly. More vulnerable than many songwriters? Definitely.

Owen’s back catalogue is full of not-exactly-pro-feminist references to women. Owen is not Mark Kozelek-level misogynistic, but at least the persona of some of his songs veers towards womanizing territory. Too many to list here, but songs like “Poor Souls” (from his 2002 No Good for No One Now) have likely made listeners wonder what songwriting on the other side of marriage would be like. “Tourniquet” offers a glimpse.

Whatever else one could think about it, Owen is raw in articulating the wayward human condition, and how even marriage does not quell a wandering heart. (It might take finding Jesus to do that.) “Tourniquet” called to mind one of CCM’s most striking numbers: Amy Grant’s “Faithless Heart” of 1988, a song that caught her much flack from an unforgiving (and often disingenuous) Christian music industry. Like Grant’s confession, “Tourniquet” is a tough song to listen to but an important one.

 

 

“Burning Soul” represents a years-later take on an alcoholic father: “He wasn’t a saint, but he wasn’t a bad man.” Like his father before him, Owen sings,

Now I’ve got a burning soul
What now?
Both ends of my prayer candle are burned out

“Sleep Is a Myth,” the second-to-last track, starts out fatalistic:

Is this how you say, “Mon coeur bat la chamade?”
Which pills did I take?
Were those bills ever paid?

Sleep is a myth
Believed but never witnessed by me

The spider bites are back
The eggs have finally hatched

But as the song progresses (and as the layers of vocals start to build), hope comes to the fore:

Don’t worry about the money
We’ll get by or we won’t
You look better hungry
You wear your weary eyes well
Now give me everything and then some
Bring out what’s dead and dying in your troubled head
Your lifeless body will awaken

Then the song moves into a nice, long, instrumental groove. The distorted drums and almost-shoegazing lead guitar line and choral vocals are a new sweet spot for Owen and company.

The album’s final track, “Lost,” is also its first single.

I winced at:

Stay poor and die trying
Take the drugs I didn’t take
Lay the whores I didn’t lay cause I was too afraid that I might like it

Kinsella sings to “the last of [his] feral friends.” Could the “friend” be his former self? Subtle allusions to previous Owen lyrics make it possible.

You may be wondering where all this wandering leads
You’re lost but at least you’ve nowhere to be and no one to leave you

The album closes on an odd note:

You may be wandering driveway to driveway drunk
A ghost without a house to haunt
The last of my feral friends, I know you’re lonely
but don’t waste your breath telling me that you want what I have
No one believes you

If this song is autobiographical (today’s Kinsella singing to yesterday’s Kinsella: “I see you but you can’t see me”), it’s a dour note to end on. Is he saying he really didn’t want the settled life? If he’s singing to a friend, there is the faintest hint of affirmation of the “settled down” lifestyle the artist has chosen (“you want what I have”), even while he knows “no one believes” his friend.

Musically the song never resolves to the tonic, so maybe the cliffhanger effect is on purpose.

After the strength of the first six tracks, I was hoping for something more final and summative at the end of the album, but maybe tension is how it has to end for Owen.

 

 

The horns and string and pedal steel on the album will leave you wanting that instrumentation on many Owen songs to come. His songwriting is as good as ever. And King of Whys is hands-down the best-produced Owen album to date.

Owen’s 2001 full-length record–his first–is still the benchmark against which I measure all of his albums. More than any other effort to date, King of Whys evokes the beauty of that first record. It’s a pleasure to listen to, and probably his most consistently good one since his debut. I’m already eager to hear where he’ll go next.

 

Purchase info: Amazon / iTunes / Polyvinyl

 

Thanks to the musical powers-that-be, who sent me an early download of the album so I could review it.

My Six-Year-Old’s Review of Shark Attack! (Scholastic)

Shark Attack

 

My six-year-old son wanted to start a blog to write book reviews, so I’m turning my blog over to him for today’s post. Below is his review of Shark Attack! (Scholastic, 2013), including a bit of Q and A between me and him. Enjoy.

 

 

I like this book.

Because it tells me about sharks. How long they can open their mouths.

 

What was your favorite part about this book?

When the shark does diving.

What was surprising about the book?

That sharks can hear.

How can they hear?

They sense it. “Sharks hear sounds too low for you to hear.”

Who would like this book?

Me.

 

Shark Attack Review

 

Where to find it: Amazon / Scholastic
Grade Level: 1 through 3
32 Pages, full color images

Bill Mallonee’s Slow Trauma

The 1:06 opening track, “One & the Same,” serves as a Prelude to Bill Mallonee’s most recent album–Slow Trauma–asking:

What you hold onto and what you let go of
and what you should give away
What’s gonna save you and what makes you smile?
Sometimes, they are one and the same

Then the full band kicks in with a sweet folksy rock groove in “Only Time Will Tell.” (“Where it’s all going? Only time will tell.”) And by full band, I mean: Bill Mallonee on vocals, guitars, bass, and drums. This is something like his 74th album (!), and I only learned an album or two ago that drums are his first instrument.

Before I say any more about this top-notch record, here’s Mr. Mallonee from an essay he wrote that serves as liner notes:

Death. Cessation.
A component of my interior world.
I feel like I’ve been staring it down in one form or another all of my life.
I’ve been “institutional material” once or twice.
It has certainly shaped my melancholy temperament and driven my art in noticeable ways.

I know some movements across the spectrum of human history have glorified it, romanticized it, even reveled in it…
Death. What’s to revel in?
Me? I don’t see it that way. At all.
I think it’s more like an aberration.
A blasphemy.
God, damn it. (That’s a prayer. Not an expletive.)

The third track, “Waiting for the Stone to be Rolled Away” has a great groove, too. It’s a resurrection song, written “from the parking lot of the Holy Spirit Assembly.” Mr. Mallonee takes the listener “down these sad, back streets of doubt to a new and brighter day / waiting for the stone to be rolled away.” (He does it with a killer harmony part, too.)

Slow TraumaIn this third track begins a trend that Mr. Mallonee thankfully repeats throughout the album: just when you get fully into the groove and expect the song to end, he goes another minute with some instrumental rocking out. I love this album for that. He takes his time with the songs. He comes to say what he needs to say, then lets the music do the rest of the talking, helping the listener mull it all over.

Even the album’s less remarkable songs (there are only two I would even begin to consider fast-forwarding on Listen #47) are only so because the others are so good.

“WPA/When I Get to Where They’re Taking Us,” the fifth track, has a really punchy lead guitar line that will stay with you for days. Mr. Mallonee is as gifted a guitarist as he is a songwriter.

Track six, “Ironclad,” is another highlight, closing with a melodic guitar riff you wouldn’t think possible on someone’s 70th (give or take a few) album! (How does he still do it? No idea, but I’m glad he does.)

The closing number, “That Last Hill,” is my favorite song on the album and one of his more poignant tracks in his massive catalogue:

will my highbeams flood the plain?
will the gatekeeper know my name
will there be someone to claim me for his own?

Even though that song is nearly five minutes, I could have listened to it for ten more. Throughout the album Mr. Mallonee offers beauty and a sure hand to help the listener think through difficult themes of death, life, loss, living, and giving.

The last words belong to the liner note essay:

“He Is Risen,” goes the Easter liturgy.
And you & I, the stumbling, wayward congregation of the spiritually poor, blind, sin-sick and lame respond:
“He Is Risen, Indeed!”
I’m there.

After hearing this record the listener will want to heed Mr. Mallonee’s call:

Do your part, in your corner and among your friends, to kick at the darkness and at death itself.

Slow Trauma is available here.

 

 

Thanks to Bill Mallonee for the opportunity to review this excellent record. It got me through my last handful of hour-long commutes to seminary last spring! He’s got a new record already in the works, which you can see here.

Scrivener iOS App: $19.99, Win it Here Free

Scrivener Logo

 

Scrivener for iOS continues to receive rave reviews in the App Store. For good reason. Here‘s my mini-review of the app, if you want to see what the hype is about.

 

Scrivener for iOS
Scrivener for iOS

 

Today I’m posting just to say I’ve got a free download code to give away to one lucky reader.

To enter to win, leave a comment with what you’re writing about now. If you share a link to this post on Facebook and/or Twitter, you get a second entry. (Make sure you let me know you shared, and leave the link in the comments.)

A week is a long time to wait for giveaway results, so this one is quick–I’ll announce the winner Friday at 5:00 p.m. EST.