trywii's reviews
384 reviews

A fun and wicked monster-hunter romp. With historical strings tying together a fantastical story, Ring Shout is a treat to read.

*This book was received for free as a part of a Goodread’s Giveaway*

Jesus Christ. Okay.
I need to preface by saying the book has a very specific style of prose, so if the introductory chapter turns you off at all, you may not be able to sit through the whole book. It’s a slow burn.

That aside…wow. I really can’t dissect the story without leaving much of the important details and thus spoiling both the story and the pacing of which details are revealed.

What I will say is that each chapter was incredibly gripping, and having better sense than the protagonists as they stumble into misfortune made me all the more anxious as the spiral continued downward. It’s like watching a baby fall out of a crib and you can’t possibly run over and stop the baby from hitting the ground, however the outcome may be.

How everything ties together, how elements appear and reappear, how the family tries everything to just do ‘good’ and survive- It’s masterfully crafted. And painful.

Like ‘House of Leaves’, I think this book will both find a cult following and a split opinion. It’s tough to digest and a little tougher to get used to the particular style, but I think the right people will find it and love it.

Easily one of my favorite reads so far this year, and I may even go out and grab a physical copy.

A very bland murder mystery where none of the characters feel like people, so the reader feels nothing when they die one by one. The dialogue for the teenagers is especially atrocious.

While a timeless vampire story, I’m finding that a lot of literature written before a certain point has a style that’s too slow and boring for my tastes. I’m glad that this is on the shorter end and doesn’t drag for too long, though.

This is more of a book on dating, relationships, and sex than anything. Much of the latter portions of the book are helpful for teens to know (Don’t send/post nudes, don’t feel pressured into dating/sex, do everything at your own comfort level and pace, disclosure is yours alone to control, don’t meet strangers you met online), the LGBT portions are lackluster at best.

*For an extended commentary, please view the highlights*

So ‘Apologetics’ in and of itself is about arguing for the bible and Christianity’s legitimacy, and this can be approached in a number of way with varying degrees of outside evidence. What I was *expecting* was a guide for Christian moms about arguments and hard questions about the bible for when their kids start having questions and moral dilemmas. What I *got* was a book so focused on schools of thought, Communism, and self-referenced material that you would get a better picture and waste less time had you just read their blog.

It doesn’t help the opposition arguments made in the book are incredibly watered down or just turned into straw men. For example, when defining the term ‘Humanism’, the author gives a made up definition that doesn’t align with any dictionary or wiki. Another example is a very, very, VERY brief history of feminism in the US that fails to mention *why* women were demanding jobs without discrimination, better birth control, and the ability to be independent from male family members and husbands.

The arguments made for the bible and Christianity are poor in quality, and some questions posed that are reasonable to ask and want answers for are largely ignored.

Earlier in the book, the author mentions her child asking something along the lines of ‘Why are some things that are immoral today considered okay in the bible when these stories happened? (such as incest)’ I read that and thought that was a good question to ask, and was interested to see how the author came to an answer. She doesn’t. There isn’t an answer given. This happens again when either a child asks ‘Is this bible story true?’. I was wondering how the author may give examples of arguing the legitimacy of a bible story, but again, none is given.

The arguments for the bible and it’s truth boils down to this quote early in the book:
“Thankfully, Christianity is based on verifiable and supportable facts about Christ’s life, death, and resurrection” In which the author gives absolutely *nothing* as evidence to back this. I really do mean nothing, there isn’t a website linked talking about documents found, there’s no scientific study or data, there’s no ANYTHING! I would’ve even accepted something that’s provably false had *something* been cited, but nothing is! ‘Miracles are real and happen!’ provides no examples of what a miracle can be or what they are.

It makes it all the more frustrating when half the time the ‘answers’ are just ‘because the bible says itself that it’s telling the truth, so that means it’s true’- That’s not an argument! If that logic isn’t acceptable for any other document, why is it being posed as legitimate when the bible does it??

There’s also a weird thrum of ‘past good present bad’ all throughout. Kids asking the validity of the bible is seen as a fault of ‘communism and postmodernism’ instead of just kids being inquisitive. Divorce and contraceptives are framed as secular, modern issues, despite centuries of history rooted in both including within religious contexts. Advertisements of today are ‘making emotional appeals’, as if somehow no salesman pre-2000s has thought of using ethos as a selling point. Meditation is Un-Christian woo woo, only it’s not and there’s several imperial studies showing the benefits of practicing mindfulness. On and on, Old Man Yells At Cloud.

I feel the book to be like a sleight of hand trick- the articles of communism, postmodernism, feminism, and so on are a means to distract the reader from the ball hiding in the hand: That the authors don’t have answers to tough questions, they don’t have scientific evidence, they don’t have sources outside of the very book that’s being called into question, and they aren’t prepared for arguments stronger than a scarecrow.
If they do, they certainly didn’t provide any of it it, and I shouldn’t have to scroll through years of blogs and listen to hours of podcasts to get the information that was promised *in this book*.

If there’s one saving grace the book has, it’s the list of books referenced in the back. I’m hoping that at the very least the books mentioned will have some arguments in it that this book claimed to have, and will be adding them to my reading list.

If you’re looking for apologetics, this is not the book to look for. If you want to see moms complain about abstract art, make up definitions for terms, and contradict themselves every other paragraph, you might love this book!

Much more abstract than what I was expecting, although it’s a short listen with powerful visuals.

A funny/cutesy dream journal organized loosely. A few comics were laugh-out-loud, but most of it was just abstract dreams being played out.