52 in 25: #4 - Dewey: Behind the Gold Glove

I fell at little bit behind due to my schedule, but next up is an autobiography of one of my favorite players of all time: Dewey: Behind the Gold Glove by Dwight Evans with Erik Sherman.  I’m not sure why, when I was young, I chose Dewey as one of my favorite players, but I was very excited late last year when I saw that he had written this book.

 

When I think of Dewey, I think of one of the greatest right fielders of all time, one of the most underrated offensive players of the 80s (as is pointed out, he had the most extra base hits of any player in the 80s), and a should-be Hall of Famer.  I did not know anything about his personal life, so I was very surprised at how difficult it was for him.  That being said, I knew when he began by talking about God on page 1 that I was going to like him even more.  He and his wife are people of deep faith, and they’ve had to be dealing with two very sick sons who died recently.  It’s always great to see a public figure speak openly about God.  It was also interesting to hear his feelings about various players.  He had great things to say about Fred Lynn, Cecil Cooper, Bill Buckner, Don Baylor, and of course Carl Yastrzemski, among others.  I was surprised at his animosity against my favorite player of all-time, Nolan Ryan, but I can understand where he’s coming from.

 

Overall, I was grateful to be able to learn more about him and gain a greater appreciation for one of my favorite players.  I’m sure I’ll have more baseball biographies coming this year, but I’m glad I started with this one.  Well worth the read.

52 in 25: #3 - Into Your Hands, Father

 

For spiritual reading, a friend recently gave me the book Into Your Hands, Father: Abandoning Ourselves to the God Who Loves Us by Fr. Wilfrid Stinissen.  I have been slowly working through this during my Holy Hour, and it is beautiful.  It was published by Ignatius Press in 2011, but originally published in Swedish in 1986.

 

The purpose of the book is to help the reader to get to a place of complete abandonment to God’s Will.  As such, it is broken up into three sections: “Accepting God’s Will,” “Obeying God’s Will,” and “Being God’s Instrument.”  Essentially, the first part is understanding that God has a perfect Will for you, that He loves you, and it has a great meditation on surrendering your past and your memories.  The second part is becoming an active agent of God’s Will, seeing how it effects every aspect of our lives and discerning it everywhere and every time.  Finally, and he acknowledges that not everyone can get here, is to complete surrender to God; rather than actively discerning His Will, it is getting out of the way and allowing God to work through you.

 

It is a great little book (only 105 pages).  It’s well worth a read, and I’ve already recommended it to a few people.  Anything we can do to grow closer to God and allow Him to work more effectively is always a positive.

52 in 25: #2 - Partners in Crime

 

As mentioned, I continued with Tommy and Tuppence, and their second outing, published in 1929, Partners in Crime.  I didn’t realize it until I started that it’s actually a collection of short stories, with an overarching theme that they are acting as a private detective to get to the bottom of a conspiracy surrounding the Russians.  Like any short stories collection, there are some really good ones, and some that are “filler.”  There were a few that I figured out well ahead of Tommy and Tuppence, (twins! The policeman did it!) which is perhaps because they weren’t written as well or because you begin to expect certain twists.

 

Throughout, they are playing as different famous detectives of the time, which was a mixed bag for me.  Sometimes I understood and appreciated the references (Sherlock Holmes!  Poirot as Christie got “meta”!) and others were completely over my head.  It did make them, and Christie, a bit more playful, which is a good thing.  Overall, it was good, and I do like short detective stories because they are easier to track.

52 in 25: #1 - The Secret Adversary

 A brief introduction to this series: “52 in ’25.”  For awhile now I have been saying that I need to read more, but I always find excuses to do other things.  I have shelves of books that I have not read.  Sometime in December I decided that I needed to challenge myself, that was the only way to actually do it.  While I love movies, I know that books are more engaging, more enlightening, just all-around better.  Without having a good gauge as to how many books I actually read a year (I usually have 3-4 going on various topics at the same time), I wanted to give myself a reasonable (?) goal.  So, I cut it from 100 to one a week – 52.  Then, of course, I realized that it works with the year.  So, “52 in ’25” it is.  I feel like I can do this.  I’m sure some weeks will be more difficult, and some weeks (like retreat week) will be more productive.  So rather than a strict “1 per week,” it is a cumulative 52 over the year.  One extra caveat, I didn’t want it to be me just re-reading things I have already consumed, so I am giving myself a limit of 5 books over the year that I have already read.  I think that’s fair, and it allows me to inevitably pick up Jurassic Park again, as I do every year.

 

So, as an additional challenge to keep myself honest, I lately decided I am going to do a brief review of each book.  Nothing groundbreaking, just a few notes on it and my impressions.  Again, this is more or less to publicly keep me going.

 

I wasn’t sure where I wanted to start, but eventually I landed on The Secret Adversary.  A few years ago, I started to read Agatha Christie, and she has quickly become one of my favorite authors.  I have read a good chunk of her Hercule Poirot books, so I wanted to dip my feet into a new set from her.

 

The Secret Adversary was published in 1922.  I was surprised to see that it was Christie’s second novel, after only Poirot’s debut in The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1921.  This novel marks the first appearance of Tommy and Tuppence, who are obviously not as well known as Poirot or Miss Marple in the Christie bibliography.  It revolves around the unknown “secret adversary” of Mr. Brown, who leads an organization of Marxists who are trying to find a proposed secret treaty from the First World War which would cause chaos and overthrow the British government.  Tommy and Tuppence have decided they want to start an adventure, and end up in the middle of this intrigue.  As always with Christie, it’s a true page-turner.  Once you get into it, it’s hard to put down because you want to know what’s coming next.  I will say, without giving anything away, I feel into her trap of thinking I knew who Mr. Brown was.  It was a good surprise twist in the end.  I also quite liked Tommy and Tuppence.  They are a little more easy to relate to, especially in comparison to the sometimes egotistical, almost unbearable Poirot.  Overall, I would put it pretty high up on my list of favorite Christie novels.  I would definitely recommend it, though not as a first Christie novel (that would be probably And Then There Were None or one of a handful of Poirot stories).  In fact, I liked it so much that, while I was planning on reading something else, I will be continuing with their second novel.

 

I will add that I have watched about half of the BBC production from the early 80s (I started it as I was reading and stopped before spoiling anything).  It’s pretty good, pretty faithful to the book, but I really don’t like the casting choice for Tommy and Tuppence.  They are supposed to be in their 20s, full of life, but the actors are in the mid-30s and somewhat dull.