I read books sometimes.

Wilson is one of my favorite writers, so this made for a fun read.

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“Live an actual life out there, a full life, the kind that will generate a surplus of stories. Don’t go slumming in order to garner a few superficial observations. A two-week camping trip doesn’t make you a mountain man, and a three-week job does not constitute the kind of life experience platform that will bear the weight of a lifetime of writing. If you want to say a lot, you need to have a lot to say.”

“Most of the good your reading and education has done for you is not something you can recall at all.”

“You read widely to be shaped, not so that you might be prepared to regurgitate.”

“As long as you live, if you continue to ask this question of language, “What else can it do?” you will always find an answer.”

“Good writing is like a great cathedral. The echoes are lovely.”

“The brain is not a shoebox that “gets full,” but is rather a muscle that expands its capacity with increased use. The more you know, the more you can know. The more you can do with words, the more you can do. As it turns out.”

Really solid, helpful book. Voddie will be sorely missed.

Good stuff. The main point of the book is that death is the only thing certain in life (and I'm closer to dying now than when I started this book), and as such we ought to order everything else around the fact that we will die.

"Dying people who truly know they are dying are of all people most alive."

"To die well means everything I have in this world I hold with open hands because I love Jesus more than anything and anyone else, and I'm happy to go home to him."

"Wise people, who understand how God has made us to long for him and for heaven, don't look backward when they get nostalgic. They allow the feeling to point forward. They look up to heaven and to home."

"Living a good life means preparing to die a good death."

A healthy dose of classic Puritan wisdom. Such a valuable perspective on the Christian life, which the Bible repeatedly describes in terms of waging war or running a race.

Couldn't help but think of the famous John Piper "Make War" sermon clip while reading.

Quotes:

"Lord, teach me to use every piece of the spiritual armour; how to hold the shield how to wear the helmet, how to use the sword of the Spirit. Lord, strengthen me in the battle; let me rather die a conqueror, than be taken prisoner, and led by Satan in triumph."

"Christ was violent in dying, to teach us to be violent in believing."

"Can we behead our beloved sin? To pluck out the right eye requires violence."

"The heart will persuade that a slight tear is repentance; a lazy desire is faith."

"Faith not only not yields, but beats back the temptation. Faith holds the promise in one hand, and Christ in the other: the promise encourageth faith, and Christ strengthens it: so faith beats the enemy out of the field."

"Heaven is inherited by the violent. Our life is military, Christ is our captain, the gospel is the banner, the graces are our spiritual artillery, and Heaven is only taken in a forcible way."

"This, if any thing may excite prayer, and carry in it a fiery chariot up to Heaven, when we know we pray for nothing but what God is more willing to grant than we are to ask."

Super well written. We become like what we worship.

Pretty good. I finally feel like I get Ecclesiastes now. Favorite takeaway is that the very ability to take joy in anything - in a world where all is meaningless, fleeting vanity - is itself a gift from God.

“In the world of creatures, we may only enjoy what we do not worship.” 

Some good takeaways and worth reading (especially on company time), but not quite what I was hoping for.

Worth reading. The opening sentence of this book sums it up: “I am writing a book that should not have to be written, to return to men a sense of their worth as men, and to give boys the noble aim of manliness, an aim which is their due by right.”

I think the author achieved what he set out to do, not hesitating to criticize, deride, or mock those ideas of our modern society which deserve criticism, derision, or mockery. And thankfully, he did it without falling in to the ditch of throwing a pity-party for men, which is always off-putting and counterproductive.

Lots of what I have to assume are good guidelines for designing software systems. Gonna call myself a software architect now. Also got paid to read this.

This is the little book that first convinced me to try memorizing full books of the Bible, and for that reason alone, it earns 5 stars from me. Figured I’d read through it again as I try to get back into the habit.

What a story. The splendor of the gospel is on full display in the author’s life and in the pages of this book. A powerful example of what it looks life to lose everything for the sake of Christ.

Definitely learned some things reading through this book. I’m gonna follow one of the suggested marathon plans, and if I break 3 hours in November, I might have to update my rating to 5 stars. But for now, 4 stars.

I'm most definitely not in the target demographic for this book, but I was super curious to see how the author approached such an interesting premise. Plus, most of what Canon Press publishes is worth reading.

I'm no woman, so I obviously can't speak to exactly how accurate/insightful "Madame Hoaxrot's" letters to Hemlock were, but I do think the author captured the essence of Screwtape. I really enjoyed the last three letters.

Really good stuff. Made me realize I should be spending way more time in Proverbs.

The author’s tone and style both fit the subject matter really well. Not overly formal or verbose, but straight-to-the-point, matter-of-fact, and practical.

Read for work. I could get used to getting paid to read books.

The last chapter on smells and heuristics is really helpful.

Very, very good. So much punchy wisdom packed into such a little booklet.

"Health, unhappily, is not contagious, but disease is. It is far more easy to catch a chill than to impart a glow; and to make each other’s religion dwindle away, than grow and prosper."

"Think of the privilege and luxury of doing good."

"Youth is the seedtime of full age, the molding season in the little space of human life, the turning point in the history of a man’s mind. By the shoot, we judge of the tree; by the blossoms, we judge of the fruit; by the spring, we judge of the harvest; by the morning, we judge of the day; and by the character of the young man, we may generally judge what he will be when he grows up."

"A small leak will sink a great ship, and a small spark will kindle a great fire—and a little allowed sin in like manner will ruin an immortal soul."

"Tomorrow is the devil’s day, but today is God’s. Satan cares not how spiritual your intentions may be, and how holy your resolutions, if only they are fixed for tomorrow."

"A boy may bend an oak when it is a sapling; a hundred men cannot root it up when it is a full-grown tree. A child can wade over the river Thames at its fountainhead; the largest ship in the world can float in it when it gets near the sea. So it is with habits."

"No sort of sin appears to give a man so much misery and pain as the sins of his youth. The foolish acts he did, the time he wasted, the mistakes he made, the bad company he kept, the harm he did himself in both body and soul, the chances of happiness he threw away, the openings of usefulness he neglected."

The intense pastoral burden Ryle feels, even for people he never met, is extremely evident in his writing.

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"Oh, prayerless reader, who and what are you that you will not ask anything of God? Have you made a covenant with death and hell? Are you at peace with the worm and the fire? Have you no sins to be pardoned? Have you no fear of eternal torment? Have you no desire after heaven? Oh that you would awake from your present folly. Oh that you would consider your latter end. Oh that you would arise and call upon God."

"If a doctor came to see you when sick, you could tell him where you felt pain. If your soul feels its disease indeed, you can surely find something to tell Christ."

"Fear not because your prayer is stammering, your words feeble, and your language poor. Jesus can understand you. Just as a mother understands the first lispings of her infant, so does the blessed Savior understand sinners. He can read a sigh and see a meaning in a groan."

"The greater are our affections, the deeper are our afflictions; and the more we love, the more we have to weep."

"The devil has special wrath against us when he sees us on our knees. Yet, I believe that prayers which cost us no trouble should be regarded with great suspicion. I believe we are very poor judges of the goodness of our prayers, and that the prayer which pleases us least, often pleases God most."

Okay. Overall message was good, but it was hard to get through. While I did find some of his thinking a little problematic, it was his writing style that really bugged me. One of my biggest pet peeves is when an author pretends to extemporaneously correct himself, as if he couldn’t just press backspace a few times and actually fix what he wrote. When it’s used as an effective rhetorical device, I’ll allow it. But when it’s used as an attempt to be funny or relatable, it just ends up interrupting his actual point, and I reject it with prejudice.

I listened at 2x as an act of defiance.

One of the best books I've ever read, no question. In classic Puritan style, it's not for the faint of heart. Owen has brought my conscience to its knees, weak, feeble, battered, and bleeding. I think I might commit to reading this book every year.

------ Quotes -------

(I wish I could quote the entire book)

"Do you mortify; do you make it your daily work; be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin, or it will be killing you."

"Bring thy sin to the gospel — not for relief, but for further conviction of its guilt; look on Him whom thou hast pierced, and be in bitterness. Say to thy soul, 'What have I done? What love, what mercy, what blood, what grace have I despised and trampled on!'"

"He that shall call a man from mending a hole in the wall of his house, to quench a fire that is consuming the whole building, is not his enemy. Poor soul! It is not thy sore finger but thy hectic fever that thou art to apply thyself to the consideration of. Thou settest thyself against a particular sin, and dost not consider that thou are nothing but sin."

"All other ways of mortification are vain, all helps leave us helpless; it must be done by the Spirit."

"To apply mercy, then, to a sin not vigorously mortified is to fulfill the end of the flesh upon the gospel."

"Such a man as opposes nothing to the seduction of sin and lust in his heart but fear of shame among men or hell from God, is sufficiently resolved to do the sin if there were no punishment attending it; which, what it differs from living in the practice of sin, I know not."

"Consider who and what thou art; who the Spirit is that is grieved, what he hath done for thee, what he comes to thy soul about, what he hath already done in thee; and be ashamed."

"Get thy heart, then, into a panting and breathing frame; long, sigh, cry out. You know the example of David; I shall not need to insist on it."

"Use and exercise thyself to such mediations as may serve to fill thee at all times with self-abasement and thoughts of thine own vileness."

"God will justify us from our sins, but he will not justify the least sin in us."

"Set faith at work on Christ for the killing of thy sin. His blood is the great sovereign remedy for sin-sick souls. Live in this, and thou wilt die a conqueror; yea, thou wilt, through the good providence of God, live to see thy lust dead at thy feet."

Welp, that’s 374 pages worth of my time that I’ll never get back. Based on Dawkins’ reputation, I expected much more from this book. It says a lot that he didn’t raise a single objection to God/Christianity that a dumb 20 year old like me didn’t have an immediate and easy answer to. I was hoping to be challenged at least a little bit. Instead, I was bored, constantly rolling my eyes, and even trying not to get angry in some of the later chapters.

I’m sure Dawkins is a fantastic scientist (the random pieces of fascinating science he relates are the only redeeming quality of the book, and the only reason I gave more than one star), but he’s a terrible philosopher and dreadfully ignorant about Christianity. His definition of God at the outset is inadequate, which is pretty problematic for a book that seeks to prove that the idea of God is delusional. His arguments relied on characterizations of Scripture and Jesus that are easily and directly refuted by some of the most well-known passages in the Bible, like the Good Samaritan and the Great Commission, the kinds of passages you either have to be severely incompetent or else dishonest to ignore (to be clear, these are instances where he was trying to argue FROM Scripture). The book was also full of obviously fallacious reasoning and constant strawmen attacks.

I think the fundamental problem in his thinking is that his conception of God is far too small.