February 2019

Christian Book Review

 Love and Respect

Hold on to your hats, folks, because Dr. Emerson Eggerichs has discovered the secret to a good marriage. It's been hiding in plain sight for two thousand years.

Ephesians 5:33 "So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband."

A wife needs love, a husband needs respect. That's the key to a happy marriage that God revealed to Dr. Eggerichs, and you can't argue with him because it's in the Bible.

The book focuses mostly on respect because as Dr. Eggerichs points out, modern Western culture places an emphasis on love within a relationship, but there's little understanding of the need for respect.

What is Love?
Love is an overly-broad term, but in this context, I think Eggerichs is using it to mean something akin to cherish.

Pink and Blue
Dr. Eggerichs makes some rather broad generalizations about what men and women are like. Get over it. Take the principles he offers--the value of respect in a marriage--and apply it to your particular situation. We're all smart people here. We can listen to his examples, generalize the advice, and apply it appropriately to a given situation.

Good-willed Husbands and Wives
The book has some insights and could be helpful in relationships where both the husband and wife are committed to the marriage and to each others' best interests. In that case, Dr. Eggerichs points out a lot of ways that men and women may miscommunicate or misunderstand, or even just communicate and understand sub-optimally. In cases where one or the other spouse is not committed or is abusive or manipulative, I can't see how the principles in this book would help. Some relationships need to be ended, not saved. (Dr. Eggerichs would likely disagree, as he offers more than a few examples where he counsels a wife to commit to the Love and Respect principles even when her husband is not committed to her best interests, or in some cases, is abusive.)

There is about thirty pages' worth of content, but it's padded out into a full-length book by examples, letters, cheesy anecdotes, and lots of folksy repetition.

Complementarianism
The book seems rather harsh on women, and in the second half it takes a distinctively complementarian turn. So...you know, take it for what it is. You can take his teachings about respect and interpret them in a way that values mutual respect, not just respect from the wife to the husband. Genuine mutual respect is vital--otherwise, everything we do is just a performance designed to manipulate the other person, and that's not a foundation for an authentic partnership in this crazy thing called marriage.

The Energizing Cycle: C.O.U.P.L.E. and C.H.A.I.R.S.
To help couples get off the Crazy Cycle, Eggerichs has a list of specific ways that husbands and wives can treat each other that will communicate love and respect in ways that will energize and improve the relationship. First, he helps men understand their wives with the acronym COUPLE. And then he explains how wives can use the CHAIRS principles to better interact with their husbands.

Closeness
A woman wants face-to-face time to talk with her husband about their thoughts and feelings. A man who watches TV after a day at the office is not meeting his wife's needs. She desires time to connect through talking. Be present, listen, pay attention, make her a priority.

Openness
Wives want their husbands to open up about their feelings, their desires, their hopes and dreams. Wives want to talk about the relationship--not because there is anything wrong, but just to keep up-to-date and to strengthen the relationship.

Understanding

Peacemaking

Loyalty

Esteem

Conquest
The modern American male defines himself by his profession. When men meet, the first question is "What do you do?" A wife would to well to understand that a man's job is not just something he does, it is who he is. Criticism of his work or profession, or even just a lack of interest in it, can cause a man to feel devalued. Eggerichs uses the term Conquest (as in a man conquers his profession, I guess) so he can make the clever CHAIRS acronym, but conquest is not what this is about. This is about men defining themselves through their work. They may be a husband and father as well, but men often think of themselves primarily defined by their profession.

Heirarchy
Again, heirarchy is a bad word choice. Eggerichs quotes Bible verses and goes on about men being the head of the family, but this really is just about men feeling a responsiblity to ensure the family is provided for. Even if the wife works and makes more money than the husband, he often still feels it's his role and responsibility to ensure the family is taken care of. A wife can encourage and energize her husband by acknowledging this; conversely, criticism of any inability to provide will be demoralizing.

Authority

Insight

Relationship

Sexuality
Men connect and bond through sex, and are more able to open up emotionally after their sexual needs are met. This is unlike woman, who typically seek to have their emotional needs met first, before they think about sex. Wives who wish to connect with their husbands should consider opening up sexually and not withhold sex as a way to force their husbands to open up verbally and emotionally.

In this chapter, Eggerichs also counsels women to accept the fact that their husbands will be sexually tempted by other women, and to allow their husbands to talk about this without being shamed. So...that seems a bit odd and wildly disrespectful. I cannot imagine how such a conversation would go without being deeply hurtful. "Hey honey, you see that woman in the park there? Man, I sure lusted after her. Not that I would be unfaithful or anything, but I just wanted you to share in my struggles." Uh, no. Men are not animals. I highly disagree with Eggerichs here, and I am offended at the suggestion that men are unable to master their sexual desires and thoughts.

Children's Fiction Book Review

 The Mystery of the Cupboard

Magic and fortune-telling. Gets a bit complicated with all the paradoxes of time travel. But overall not a bad story.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Doomtime

What if trees could think...

...and they were evil?

...and they grew six kilometers tall?

...and their root systems spanned continents?

...and the green and red trees competed with each other for world domination?

...and they controlled the weather?

...and the trees could suck humans into their trunks, merge with them on a molecular level, telepathically communicate with them, draw information from their minds, implant post-hypnotic suggestions, and convince the humans that this "dipping" was pleasurable and addicting?

If trees were like that, well then you would have Doomtime: The War of the World Trees.

Tedron and Krake
The green trees are named Tedron and the red trees are named Krake. The giant trees grow next to each other but are separated by an impenetrable concrete wall. They desperately want to touch each other, for love or for war is not clear, and the only way to do this is to spread around the globe and meet on the far side. Um. OK. I'm not sure how spreading thousands of miles across continents and seas is easier than growing above or tunneling under a concrete wall, but this wall is apparently special. And magic.

Creed
The main character is Creed, and he lives in a city called Neo that is built honey-comb like into a hillside. Neo is the only city Creed or anyone else knows of, and everybody lives in Neo. One day, a stranger tries to kill Creed. Then trees start appearing in the valley below Neo. They've never seen trees before, but they seem to know all about them despite claiming not to.

Things happen. Then other things happen.
Doris Piserchia has a style of writing where she tells about things happening, but there's no plot. Events occur. Somebody does something. Then she drops the plot thread and picks up something else. It's herky-jerky and disjointed, a mess of ideas scattered like a Jackson Pollock painting. It doesn't work for me, at least not mostly.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Ender's Game

Still good.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Stargate

Robinett's writing reminds me of Heinlein, in a good way.

I noticed that Robinett's characters talk. A lot. It's almost like Robinett lost a bet and had to write a book where the plot is advanced entirely in dialog. It's not bad per se, but it's sometimes overwhelming.

Stargate
Robert Collins takes a job at Merryweather Enterprises building their giant Jenson Gate. With the gate, Merryweather will reach across interstellar space and grab asteroids and chunks of planets from faraway solar systems. Interstellar mining.

Interstellar mining
Most of the real action centers around corporate shenanigans, because Merryweather's main competitor, Spieler, is trying to sabotage the stargate project. See, Spieler operates a fleet of automated drone starships that collect mineral-rich chunks of asteroids from faraway star systems and bring them back to Earth. A working interstellar Jenson Gate would put Spieler's interstellar mining business into bankruptcy.

To boldly stay home
Let me repeat all that, in case you missed it. They are building a stargate that reaches faraway solar systems--but they are not going to explore the universe, they're just going to grab some rocks and melt them down for the valuable ore.

And, the real action is not traveling to other solar systems, but corporate espionage and sabotage.

Grizzled Heinleinian hero
Collins is a young whippersnapper, so he teams up with a grizzled super-competent man named Scarlyn Smith. Smith is a true Heinleinian hero. He's brave, self-made, answers to nobody but himself (and especially not to his lazy freeloading daughter and son-in-law). Where Collins is hesitant, unsure of himself and his abilities, Smith is supremely confident because he is supremely capable.

Not the Heinlein woman
Collins has a love interest, Dolores, but she's not a Heinleinian woman. For instance, she frets that when Collins is away building the stargate he may be led astray by other women. Very un-Heinleinian, but realistic.

Madman
Collins manages to complete the Jenson Gate, and Spieler's true colors show. He's a madman. With his business ruined, Spieler hijacks the gate and points it at a pulsar. He intends to pull the pulsar into the solar system, destroying the sun and all life in the solar system. If Spieler loses, everybody loses.

In a truly exciting action sequence, Collins and Smith fight their way toward Spieler. There's a showdown in the Gate control room. Smith is shot and is down for the count, so it's left to Collins. If Collins can shoot Spieler before he throws the final switch, he can stop the stargate from activating.

Failed hero
Collins can't do it. Even with the entire human race hanging in the balance, Collins can't gun down another human being. Spieler throws the switch and dashes through the gate.

...and it doesn't matter
Oops, Spieler miscalculated. The solar system is fine, Earth is unharmed.

The end.