I’m not quite accomplishing my goal of 1 book per week (currently averaging 1.5 weeks) but so far I have surpassed the total amount of books I read all of last year, and I’m counting that as a huge win only 2 months in. February felt busy and rushed, and it took more focused attention to get these books done. I’m hoping as I establish the habit for longer the book reading will become easier and a more natural part of the schedule.
- The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown
This is the best book I have read in a long time. It is a wonderfully written account of great perseverance in the midst of great hardship, and beautifully tells the story of a group of young men and their journey together rowing as the men of Washington.
Notable Quotes:
“It’s not a question of whether you will hurt, or of how much you will hurt; it’s a question of what you will do, and how well you will do it, while pain has her wanton way with you.”
This is not simply a book about an athletic feat or historical event, it is a look at the mindset required to succeed as a team against all odds. The boys’ growth together and their coach’s ability to inspire discipline and dedication will make you look critically at the goals in your own life and what you are doing to obtain them.
“It takes energy to get angry. It eats you up inside. I can’t waste my energy like that and expect to get ahead. When they left, it took everything I had in me just to survive. Now I have to stay focused. I’ve just gotta take care of it myself’ Joe Rantz”
This portion of the book was hard to read- parents choosing to abandon their son because they could not afford to feed the rest of their children. Joe’s forgiveness of them and continued perseverance is both heartbreaking and inspiring.
“The wood…taught us about survival, about overcoming difficulty, about prevailing over adversity, but it also taught us something about the underlying reason for surviving in the first place. Something about infinite beauty, about undying grace, about things larger and greater than ourselves. About the reasons we were all here.”
The other books on the list for February were interesting and provided good information, but I appreciated how beautifully James Brown chooses his words in Boys in the Boat. It helps the reader feel the grace of the shell gliding smoothly through the waters, the pain the rower’s lungs, and hopes of an expectant nation rooting them onward.
2. Another Gospel?: A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity by Alisa Childers
Another Gospel recounts the author’s journey of faith and her interaction with the progressive gospel movement. Alisa Childers delivers a frank and honest look at the battles of faith that many believers go through and provides good perspective on the dangers of progressive Christianity.
There is nothing particularly profound about this book, but it is an encouraging charge for the Christian to hold fast to the true Gospel and the truth of God’s Word. The progressive church, in an attempt to reconcile the hurt that believers have undergone because of the ‘church’, has ironically provided such a watered down substitution for God’s love and holiness that in the end can only result in hopelessness.
Notable Quotes:
“But I know this: The promises of progressive Christianity offered me nothing through this trial. They offered my sister nothing. How could a weak view of God’s Word, a disdain for the Cross, and a relativistic approach to truth bring my family any peace in this kind of adversity? In that hospital room, “my truth” was darkness. But “the truth” was true whether I felt it or not. God was there. God is sovereign. He is good and trustworthy.”
We can’t have faith in something that is subject to change or subject to the interpretations of changing cultural sentiment. God’s truth revealed in scripture must be central to the believer’s hope and faith.
“In the end, I’ve come to see that hell is not only necessary, it is ultimately loving and just. If someone desires sin and corruption now, what would make me think he would desire to be separated from sin and corruption for eternity? If someone continually chooses to hate God and reject his gift of reconciliation in this life, what would make me think she will desire to be in his Kingdom forever in the next? And here’s something to ponder: If someone wants to bring their self-serving sin into heaven, what would it say about God if he allowed it in?”
Much of the progressive gospel is centered around substituting our own view of what love should be and how God should act instead of studying scripture to learn what true love really looks like in conjunction with holiness, justice, and redemption.
I think ultimately if you want to do a deep dive into the progressive gospel movement there are better books available; however this is an easy and relatable read to help understand why it is such an important topic.
3. Bitcoin: Hard Money you can’t F*ck With: Why Bitcoin will be the next global reserve currency by Jason A. Williams
More than just a book shilling Bitcoin, this actually is a good elevated view of monetary policy, money printing, and inflation. If you don’t understand how inflation and poor monetary policy ultimately reward the upper class at the expense of the lower class, this book is great introduction to those principles as well as advocating the importance of Bitcoin’s underlying scarcity that distinguishes it from any other store of value in the world.
Bitcoin: Hard Money is a casual read that does a good job explaining complex financial details in layman terms. Jason Williams is one of my favorite businessmen and investors (follow him on twitter @GoingParabolic) and will motivate you to learn all that you can about the money that you are working hard to earn and save.
Notable Quotes:
“No-one owns the Bitcoin network. There’s no CEO, no headquarters, no master computer with a reset password, no central database to hack. Again, it’s like the internet. No-one owns the internet. No government can shut it all down because it exists on millions of computers all at once.”
The implication of these facts is so much more significant than Bitcoin simply being a good investment. They are underlying principles that have the capabilities of reshaping how the entire world looks at money.
“They know what they’re doing. They are devaluing your savings every year. Like going out and setting fire to your cash. This has been going on quietly for a long time, but never on this scale. In just three months of 2020, the Fed expanded its balance sheet by $3 trillion. Put it this way, that’s more new dollars in a few weeks than the first 240 years of American history.”
The 2008 financial crisis was just a glimpse into the failure of our current financial institutions. The rich will continue to get richer, and the poor will continue to get poorer unless a radical shift occurs in the way we treat and think about our money.
I’m hoping to read more fiction in March; if you have any suggestions please let me know!
