Stopping to Think

The Meateater Fish and Game Cookbook: Recipes and Techniques for Every Hunter and Angler by Steven Rinella My rating: 5 of 5 stars The recipes are good, the introductions to different varieties of game and how to properly butcher are educational, and the photography is beautiful. Worthy of a place on your coffee table, if you weren't busy using it in the kitchen. View all my reviews

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a thin, very broken up book. It reads a little like a coaching seminar. So if you're looking for a long book with lots of careful argumentation and footnotes, this isn't for you. However, if you're looking for a quick and easy read with some solid takeaways, then Stanier has written a helpful little manual for you. I personally struggle in conversation, due largely to what he calls the Advice Monster. I want to jump in and speak, rather than asking follow up questions and drilling down where the other person is coming from, in pursuit of helping them come to their own conclusions. He offers helpful tools to combat that tendency. Also, as a tool tip, all 7 questions are listed on page 200. Might want to dog-ear that page for future reference. View all my reviews

Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson by D.A. Carson My rating: 5 of 5 stars As a bivocational, small-town church planter, this was hugely encouraging. Tom Carson, and many men like him over the centuries, labored in relative obscurity. Often having little observable success. But God sees their labors, and as the writer to the Hebrews says, he is not so unjust as to forget them. So keep reading your Bible, ministering to people with that Bible, and trust that the Lord who sent you will work. Be faithful to the end. May the Lord raise up more men like this in our day. View all my reviews

Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people.  Titus 3:1-2 The World We're In We're coming, as a nation, out of the most contentious election cycle in a number of years. While negative ads and trying to make it seem like voting for the other side would be an awful idea are nothing new, this year did seem to elevate the level of rancor that we've seen, at least compared to elections that I've observed (which reaches back to Clinton/Dole, 24 years ago). But while this tactics are certainly nothing new, it seemed the volume was pushed up to eleven this year. Part of that, undoubtedly, was that fact that this is 2020. The year of coronavirus, the year of shutdowns and a massive economic downturn, the year of rising deaths and the burden of facing all this trauma disconnected from so many we know and love. If y...

Peace Like a River by Leif Enger My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a book I had picked up for dirt cheap when a book store I shopped was going out of business and the owner was begging me to fill bags with books. It then say on my shelf neglected and always perilously close to becoming the victim of one of my occasional book purges, until I ran across a few reviews that led me to think I ought to give it a read. Very glad I did. The story had me gripped, and Enger's prose moves between good and very good. My heart was often tugged, and I felt every jarring blow to the back that Reuben Land takes. We'll worth your time. View all my reviews