What God Has Joined Together, The Christian Case For Gay Marriage,David Myers and Letha Scanzoni

"Gay marriage has become the most important domestic social issue facing twenty-first-century Americans -- particularly Americans of faith. Most Christians are pro-marriage and hold traditional family values, but should they endorse extending marriage rights to gays and lesbians? If Jesus enjoined us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and the homosexual is our neighbor, does that mean we should accept and bless gay marriages? These and other, related questions are tearing many faith-based communities apart."

Subtitling your book as 'The Christian Case For Gay Marriage' is an inflammatory prospect considering the difficulty in convincing many Christians that there's a case for gay anything, let alone marriage. Thankfully this is a book that is by an large an altogether subtler and more nuanced tome that the title suggests - albeit one with a very specific axe to grand.

Starting on the supposition that the two sides of the argument (reduced down to conservative Christians and liberal everything's) can be convinced through logic and reason seems a more challenging idea than the actual argument. As the authors freely acknowledge most people's opinion is made up in advance and they choose the arguments that reinforce that stance. Despite the overwhelming evidence (both scientific, psychological and biblical) to reinforce their case it's unlikely that anyone who seriously stands opposed to homosexuality will be convinced by reason - but it does provide a wealth of arguments for those who would take up that battle to those who choose to ignore it.

Setting the argument within the context of years of church-science battles (astronomy, global warming, contraception, women) and the changes to biblical marriage that have been accepted (divorce, interracial partnerships, female roles) they create a compelling argument in favour of strengthening marriage by welcoming gay couples that can be sold as a conservative and liberal victory.

It contains a great breakdown of actual evidence, philosophy and biblical teaching about homosexuality and marriage, whilst never descending to platitudes. Definitely worth picking up if you want a way to advance the conversation past 'Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve'.

Also Try:

Phillip Yancey, What's So Amazing About Grace

Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis

The Age of Consent, George Monbiot

"A visionary road map for humanity's first global democratic revolution.  All over the planet, the rich get richer while the poor are overtaken by debt and disaster. The world is run by a handful of executives who make the most important of decisions—concerning war, peace, debt, development, and the balance of trade. Without democracy at the global level, the rest of us are left in the dark. George Monbiot shows us how to turn on the light.

Emphasizing not only that things ought to change, but how to change them, Monbiot develops an interlocking set of proposals that mark him as the most realistic utopian of our time. With detailed discussions of what a world parliament might look like, how trade can be organized fairly, and how underdeveloped nations can leverage their debt to obtain real change, Manifesto for a New World Order offers a truly global perspective, a defense of democracy, and an understanding of power and how it might be captured from those unfit to retain it."

Like Captive State this is a brilliant read that will make you so, so mad, although it takes a lot longer to get going and is mired in a slightly confused intent.

Set out as a manifesto for a global democratic institution Monbiot seeks to answer the question of who rules the world, where their authority is derived and how we can change this at an international and global level.

This is the less interesting part of the book, because Monbiot's key strength is in tearing apart the hypocrisy and deceit of the powerful, and nowhere is this clearer than when he turns his attention to the global institutions designed to help the poorest nations. His anger is infectious, in a few short chapters he rips apart the arguments and dissembling and presents a picture of Western culpability and responsibility for global poverty that cuts through the promises and words of politicians and shreds their empty rhetoric.

Like The Bottom Billion it also has some ways in which this can be changed, but again these are secondary to the real meat of the book. As an exposé it's riveting reading, and cherry picking chapters is well worth doing.

Unlike the Bottom Bilion, that isn't the real intent though - it's meant to be a practical means to kick start reasonable global governance, which is a somewhat lofty goal which doesn't seem to have too much backing it up. In fairness Monbiot addresses this problem at length but the conclusion he draws (better to try) doesn't really engender much hope.

Also Try:

www.monbiot.com

George Monbiot, Captive State

Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion

Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto

Animorphs; The Stranger, K A Applegate

"The fight for the planet continues in this gripping installment -- and the Animorphs must make an exacting choice.

The last time Rachel and her friends entered the giant Yeerk pool beneath their town things went very bad. This time they plan to be careful, and sneak in as roaches, just to spy.

Once they're inside, though, the team gets caught. But right as things are looking their most dire, everything stops. Everything.

Then Rachel and the Animorphs hear a voice. It belongs to a very old, very powerful being, and it says it can save them. But if it does, the Earth will be defenseless."



The Stranger is the seventh Animorphs book, and as I've mentioned before, as a kid I was a little bit obsessed with this series. So when I saw a copy of this book (one of my favourites) for sale at a library clearance I picked it up for JJ's brother. It's actually an updated version of the book I read, re-released last year as part of an unsuccessful relaunch of the line.

The Stranger is Rachael centred and has a couple of plot threads. Kicking off with the discovery of a new entrance to the Yeerk Pool, and the Animorph's decision to infiltrate it with the intention of discovering the whereabouts of the Yeerk's Kandrona (the replica sun that they feed from). Whilst there they encounter the Ellimist (essentially an all powerful alien God) and get given the opportunity to decide the fate of humanity.

The B plot is Rachael being given an out; a chance to leave behind her life as an Animorph and relocate to a different state with her Dad.

The plot then is all about choices, Rachael is given the chance to end her involvement in the war by both her father and the Ellimist, and her personal struggle, as well as the decisions of the Animorphs as a whole are the main focus of the book.

It's a theme that comes up a lot in the books; more notably with Cassie and Ax who both face difficulties in justifying their role against their morality (Cassie) or duty (Ax). But for a series where the decision to fight and keep fighting despite all the horrors they have experienced was notably quick, it's nice to see the ramifications of these choices.

Rachael can sometimes be a very one note character in the books that don't focus on her, but she tends to be far more nuanced in her own stories. Between this and the David arc she shows far more compassion and fear than is normally the case, even going as far as to admit to it to the rest of the Animorphs.

The key thing here is that the heroes are given an explicit opportunity to choose their destiny. The heroes choice is a common trope in fiction, emphasising that these individuals knowingly give up on the things that would make them happy for the greater good (think Bruce Wayne sacrificing his reputation to maintain the Batman secret, or Spider-Mans 'with great power must also come great responsibility').

The Ellimist gives the series a chance to explore exactly what it means for these teens to be facing up to a potential lifetime of war, it's the first time they question what the future will look like should the war drag on and on.

The conversation between Rachael and Tobias represents an acceptance that their life can't be normal again;Rachael's decision to stay with the Animorphs and not leave foreshadows the fact that, (spoiler alert), she won't make it through this war. Her chance to get out rejected she will be in it to the end, and won't get to live beyond it. The tragedy is that here is the last point at which she could conceivably have escaped from the path laid out for her - rejecting the warrior she is becoming and returning to normality with her Dad.

By contrast the Ellimist presents a different choice; not a return to the status quo and abandoning the mission, but recognition that their cause it lost and choosing to save those they care about. Abandoning the war for Earth to save their families is a harder choice to make. Unusually, despite initial resistance they eventually make the decisions to do so. The fact that the Ellimist is playing a different game altogether is irrelevant: this is a book in which the heroes do come to the conclusion that abandoning earth to an almost certainly inevitable conquest by the Yeerk's is the best option. It says something about the stakes of the series that this decision is presented as almost certainly the best one; saving a few families and the species from extinction is better than allowing the entire population to succumb to enslavement. 

It absolutely blew my mind as a kid that just a few books into such an epic mega-series the heroes are so shell-shocked and traumatised that giving up and letting the bad guys win to save a few dozen people is not only considered a valid option, but actually gets chosen as the strategy.

There are some parts where it's clear that this is one of the earlier books, and the rules haven't quite been solidified yet; during the escape from the Yeerk Pool the Animorphs demorph to human to avoid being eaten by a Taxxon, something which is unlikely to happen in later books where the paranoia about being discovered to be humans has really crept in. Rachael complaining that a controller pushed her over is especially disconcerting; it would be hard for anyone to mistake a human girl for an andalite,    so if he's knocking her over you would assume he had realised that the guerrilla force the Yeerk's were hunting wasn't just comprised of blue alien centaurs with deadly blade tails. Clearly observational sloll isn't something that Visser 3 prizes.

We do get some great action sequences in the book that made it stand out for me when younger though; the inevitably future scene of Yeerk victory with dead bodies in schools and burnt out cars was one of my first post-apocalyptic scenes. Hands down the highlight however has to be Marco punching a security guard in the face through a reinforced window whilst in gorilla morph. It's up there with his driving the truck as a gorilla (in Megamorphs 1?) as a highlight for the character.

This is a pretty important book in the series introducing the Ellimist, Rachael's Grizzly morph and fleshing out the character so often written off as a gung-ho blood knight. More tha that though it's one of the most entertaining, and features some great moments and character development for almost everyone.

Also Try;

K A Applegate, Animorphs - http://animorphsforum.com/ebooks/

Michael Grant, Gone

R L Stine, Goosebumps

Kate Thompson, Switchers Trilogy

X-Men; Powerless, Alan Davis

"Mutants are supposedly evolution's next step, but the High Evolutionary doesn't like where it's headed! All over the world, mutants are robbed of their powers, leaving X-Men and adversaries alike on the edge of defeat! But who is the Evolutionary's mysterious patron, and how is the disempowerment his next step? Plus: threats from the Acolytes, the Neo, and more! Guest-starring the New Warriors, X-Force and more than thirty years' worth of robots! Collects Uncanny X-Men #379-380, Cable (1993) #78, X-Force (1991) #101, Wolverine (1988) #149, and X-Men (1991) #99."








Proving that there really are no news ideas at all, here is the pre-House of M story of mutants losing their powers as the High Evolutionary and Mr Sinister devolve all mutants to baseline humans. Now, this is the kind of story that was obviously the inspiration for a later big event, and it's honestly (and unsurprisingly) handled a lot better by Bendis in House of M and by the X writers in every X-Men book after that until Second Coming.

Still, this is a pretty neat little book, that allows the X-Men to showcase what they do (go to space and beat up scientists mostly) whilst also giving Polaris a chance to do something with an actually interesting Magneto plotline.

The main problem with the book is that it's one of those classic X-tie ins which feature issues from half a dozen separate books, with competing art styles and plot lines to flesh out the idea. So alongside the main story in Uncanny X-Men and X-Men you also get a truly rubbish Cable story with some of the most pedestrian art imaginable and a totally out of place tale of Wolverine fighting robots with Nova and the New Warriors whilst dying of Adamantium Poisoning. He almost gets killed by a Spider Slayer, and it is awesome.

Also Try:
Brian Michael Bendis, Avengers: Disassembled, House of M
Brian Michael Bendis, Uncanny X-Men
Grant Morrison, New X-Men
Mark Millar, Old Man Logan

Blockade Billy, Stephen King

"Even the most die-hard baseball fans don’t know the true story of William “Blockade Billy” Blakely. He may have been the greatest player the game has ever seen, but today no one remembers his name. He was the first--and only--player to have his existence completely removed from the record books. Even his team is long forgotten, barely a footnote in the game’s history.

Every effort was made to erase any evidence that William Blakely played professional baseball, and with good reason. Blockade Billy had a secret darker than any pill or injection that might cause a scandal in sports today. His secret was much, much worse... and only Stephen King, the most gifted storyteller of our age, can reveal the truth to the world, once and for all."

I managed to pull this from a chance visit to Waconia Library in Minnesota, and figured that at a hundred pages or so I could read it in an evening. It actually took a little less time, as it turned out that the book is actually two short stories, rather than a single piece.

Blockade Billy is the story of a historically significant, minor league baseball player with a dark secret. King's key strength has always been the way he can evoke character in just a few lines of dialogue, and the telling of this tale (by an old man, to Stephen King, in a bar) is an excellent way for him to immediately invest a truthfulness to the story which gives it a real shine. It helps that King writes about baseball so effectively that even when I had no clue what was being spoken about, I still felt invested. The pacing of the story, unlike baseball as a game, is relentless.

The second story, a much shorter piece called Morality, is a little harder to describe, but basically boils down to what impact does an evil deed done for money have on the life of two otherwise ordinary people. Whilst King is usually known for his more exuberantly supernatural tales (The Mist, The Shining, IT, Carrie) he also has a fairly firm line in psychological and suspense led horror - real life tales, essentially (think Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, Dolores Clayborne, or Geralds Game).

Morality is one of these - a corrosive tale that's more impactful than Blockade Billy for it's simplicity. Told in flat, short prose, it sets up its idea and then lets it run its course. By making the reader implicit in the action, it turns the sedentary voyeurism of the act committed around, and places the weight as much on the reader as the characters.

Also Try:
Stephen King, The Dark Tower Series, any short story collection
Michael Chabon, Summerlands
Michael Lewis, Moneyball