the_jesus_fandom's reviews
501 reviews

How to Be a Pirate by Cressida Cowell

adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

 The saga truly begins! Already the stakes are higher, and now we have the series’ archnemesis prowling around. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Animal death, Gore, Violence

Minor: Slavery, Cannibalism, Murder

How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell

adventurous funny lighthearted fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

 I’ve decided to reread this series, because I remember how good it got later. Yeah, the potty humour is still a bit much (I already thought that when I read this as a 13-year-old) but the story behind it is actually good and fun. I do know it gets a lot deeper later, so I’m mostly waiting for that, but I did enjoy this first book. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Bullying, Violence

Great Migrations Amazing Animal Journeys by Laura Marsh

informative medium-paced

3.25

I read this book with my little brother. It's fun and the images are cool. Yeah... it's a book for kids, idk what else to say other than that it serves its purpose of being entertaining education.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Animal death

The Year of Miss Agnes by Kirkpatrick Hill

emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

I remember this book very fondly from when I was younger. It was the first book I read about deaf people, and how they can communicate through sign language. Even though I first read the book many years ago, many scenes were still embedded firmly in my memory. That made it a joy to read the book again and revisit those moments. It's also a beautiful story about the impact made by someone who believes in you.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Alcohol

The Traitor in the Tunnel by Y.S. Lee

adventurous funny mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Hmmmm. Did I enjoy this? Yeah, kinda.

The whole romance thing is a bit shallow. All they do is fight and make out. Once again, James says some very disrespectful things (calling Mary a typical soft-hearted, romanticizing, nurturing female.)

There's a scene where Mary finds James lounging on the carpet with some random girl, and it's never explained who she is. It's just a plot device for more drama. And at the end, Mary is still lying to James about her real work.

He stroked the length of her back, and she wanted to purr like a cat.
Ew.

Or this:
"animal passion has its place" (James' words) Sir eeewwww.

Mary helps a servant girl at the palace to get into bed with notoriously dishonest and dishonorable reporter Octavius Jones, even though that's not actually going to help her get a better life and could get her into awful trouble. But it would help Mary solve her case, so I guess you're allowed to ruin someone else's chances at a good life for that.

Mary apparantly thinks she owes so much to the Agency that she's willing to prostitute herself for her mission. Kinda crazy.

The twist villain is someone I'm pretty sure we've never met, which is pretty boring. And then the queen comes into the underground sewer tunnels herself and the villain is taken out with a crossbow. Okayy.

The whole drama with the agency breaking up was super unnecessary: there was a middle way. Tell James about the Agency, just don't recruit him.

I did find the story with her father interesting, especially since it subverted our expectations of him being a good man, but we still don't know anything about the whole mystery and that annoys me.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Cursing, Drug abuse, Drug use, Xenophobia

Minor: Sexual assault, Sexual content

Bodies on the Line: At the Front Lines of the Fight to Protect Abortion in America by Lauren Rankin

2.0

 I read this book as a prolifer, to broaden my view. 

The author makes a lot of claims about the prolife movement, which I can’t factcheck easily, but I reccommend this review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4897588621 

that tackles them from a prolife perspective. 

The claims: 

• photos of bloody fetuses are doctored
  
  
• the goal of protests is to scare patients
  
  
• dehumanization is the point; they want to make women invisible (Interestingly, the author claims clinic escorts give women their face back, but then also says that all contact they have with women is surface-level and only for as long as it takes to get the abortion done. This is ironic, since pro-lifers are always the ones who are accused of not caring about the woman after the baby is born… pro-choicers, it seems, only care for her before she’s had her an abortion, and then never follow up. Pro-lifers, on the other hand, make it part of their goal to actually get to know women and support them throughout her pregnancy and at least the early years of her child’s life.)
  
  
• “late-term” abortions are a mislabel (The author does not explain why this is so.)
  
  
• prolife literature is filled with junk science
  
  
• protestors come in their 1000s (these numbers seemed to change… she’d say a protest had thousands of people, then a few paragraphs later it’s only hundreds or even tens)
  
  
• the niceness of demosnstrators is a facade; they want a fight so they can report you
  
  
• pro-lifers are racist
  
  
• pro-lifers like rape: “All the energy seemed to be getting poured into defeating a guy who says, ‘Rape rules because then you have a baby out of it,’ but that’s not a vision, and that’s not expanding access to care.’ This is from an interview with a pro-choicer, who, as you can read, is talking about expanding the vision of pro-choice activism so that there are actual changes. There are two footnotes: one at the end of the entire quote, stating which interview the quote is from, and one at the end of the rape quote the pro-choice activist talks about. That footnote tells us about Todd Akin (Rep. Canditate), who apparantly said that if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. That is, of course, a ridiculous statement, but I want you to notice one thing: he doesn’t say that rape rules because you get a baby out of it – in fact, he’s saying you don’t get a baby out of it. So I don’t know who this mythical man is who is out here saying rape is cool, because the source isn’t actually of a man saying that.
  
  
• pro-lifers use disabled people as pawns: “One frequent protest group, the Church @ the Rock, would bring people with disabilities to the clinic to protest, a tactic I heard about from several clinic escort groups across the country. Some would be given gory signs to hold, standing quietly off to the side. But some were much more agressive, walking right up to patients and even screaming at them. ‘They were actually instructed to be most aggressive toward patients because their disability makes intervention more delicate for the patient and for the escorts,’ explained Moira Donegan, another clinic escort at Choices. Protestors were almost goading clinic escorts and patients into a confrontation, seemingly exploiting people with disabilities to do their bidding.
   Perhaps not surprisingly, abortion opponents have been criticized before for using people with disabilities as pawns.”
  
  
• Where to start… first of all, this all portrays people with disabilities as sheep without a will, going and doing whatever their church tells them (“they would bring people with disabilities”, “they were given signs to hold”, “they were instructed to be aggressive”, “they were used as pawns”… notice how in none of these sentences the disabled people are the actors) 
  
  
• Also, she often quotes clinic escorts like this, without telling us where these escorts got this information. How does that escort know that the church specifically instructed the disabled people to be more aggressive? That seems like a pretty bold claim that would need quite a bit of backing up.
  
  

Some other things:
 
The author always shows you the worst part of a demonstration, then goes on to tell you of the years after that, where it invariably got worse. She’ll say: “The years before weren’t so bad, now it gets worse.” This is confusing, since she clearly described the previous years as very bad. Basically: she first describes time period A as awful, then goes on to describe time period B by saying: “Time period A wasn’t so bad. Time period B is way worse.”
 
She shows a bit of hypcrisy: when pro-choice people infiltrate and spy on pro-life organisations, they are heroes. I doubt she would appreciate it if the situation were reversed. Another example is that she is okay with pro-choicers filming encounters (to protect them from the police and make sure reports are corroborated with evidence) but when pro-lifers are filming, she says they’re invading people’s privacy and doing it to intimidate.
 
Interestingly, pro-lifers are portrayed as violent and rude, but when they do act kind and nice, they are accused of still disregarding people’s realities and having “cooing” voices.
 
The author uses a very large amount of [] brackets, which means she is either replacing parts of quotes or filling in extra information. My question is: what is she replacing? Now, to be clear, I have done interviews and I know sometimes you have to use these brackets to make quotes understandable. But to this extent? It gets to be a bit weird when almost every quote has important parts within brackets.
 
The author complains about TRAP laws, but they seem reasonable to me. After all, shouldn’t both sides agree it’s important to protect women’s safety?
 
One thing this book should teach pro-lifers is that violence is an idiotic strategy (duh). Even if you don’t think it’s immoral – which I do – it ruins it for everyone. The peaceful sidewalk councelors have to follow the same rules that were set up to protect patients from violent protestors. This behaviour shoots the movement in its own foot. Sadly, most of the violent and rude protestors wouldn’t listen if you told them to behave, but still. We can try.

Slaaf van angst by Anita Franschman

2.75

Tsja… ik moet eerlijk zeggen dat dit boek me niet zo aanstond. Ten eerste mocht de auteur wel wat meer uitleg geven. Mischien ligt het aan mij, maar vaak werd er pas achteraf duidelijk wat er aan de hand was in een scene en werd er alleen verteld wat er precies gebeurde en niet de achterliggende redenen. Ze mag ook wel wat duidelijker schrijven, want het was niet altijd duidelijk wie er sprak. 

Maar mijn grootste probleem is de hoofdpersoon, en of dat eerlijk is weet ik zelf niet zo zeker. Maar ik kan er ook niks aan doen: ik vind haar gewoon niet sympathiek. 

Ze helpt bij het verzorgen van mentaal beperkte mensen, maar voor mijn gevoel – en dat haal ik uit hoe ze het zelf beschrijft – heeft ze daar het geduld helemaal niet voor. Ze reageert altijd direct boos op Djamila, een ietwat lastige jongedame, waar ze dan toch zegt een zwak voor te hebben. Op een gegeven moment zegt Djamila haar boos “eet poep”. Niet beleefd natuurlijk. Maar hoe Anita reageert is echt te zot voor woorden. Ze

belegt een broodje met letterlijke poep uit Djamila’s luier en legt die Djamila voor, of ze die wel wil eten. Nee? Nou, zeg dan ook niet dat ik het moet doen.

Mischien ben ik de enige, maar ik vind dat raar gedrag. 

Ze is ook lastig en onverstandig. Op een gegeven moment gaat ze bij een jongeman inwonen en slaapt zelfs in hetzelfde bed als hij, hoewel dit gezien de cultuur waarin ze leeft ontzettend onverstandig is. Ik heb het gevoel dat ze erg veel keuzes uit emotionele overwegingen nam, en dan kwam er niet altijd de beste optie uit. 

Verder weigert ze haar bord te bedekken tijdens de ramadan als ze ermee over straat gaat, want dat is “flauwekul”: ze hoeven zich niet aan te passen aan de moslims. Ze geeft wel uitleg, dat ze vindt dat het voor de plaatselijke christenen ook niet bemoedigend is, maar ze lijkt het vooral voor zichzelf irritant te vinden. 

Er zijn wat kleinere dingen, zoals hoe ze mensen beschrijft, die me niet bevielen, maar dat is mischien subjectief. (Ze zegt dat biddende mensen bij de klaagmuur haar aan mensen met klassiek autisme doen denken, en als een mentaal beperkte jongeman moet lachen om haar Arabisch, want ze praat “net als een kind”, zegt ze dat hij gewoon opmerkt dat zij “ergens op een gelijk niveau met hem functioneerde”.) 

Ik vind het een beetje lastig deze recensie te schrijven, want de auteur is een echt persoon die echte trauma’s heeft opgelopen en ik wil dat niet onder stoelen of banken schuiven. Ze heeft wel degelijk haar best gedaan om God’s roeping te volgen en heeft daarin ook offers gebracht. Maar dat betekent niet dat ze in dit boek – dat ze dus zelf geschreven heeft – erg goed naar voren komt. 

And Now Let's Move Into a Time of Nonsense: Why Worship Songs Are Failing the Church by Nick Page

3.5

 True to Nick Page form, the book is accessible and funny. The idea of worship with modern allegories was new to me, which was cool. 

Transforming Children Into Spiritual Champions: Why Children Should Be Your Church's #1 Priority by George Barna

3.5

 This was the second book I read on teaching children – somehow a lot of content about the topic came across my path this year. Good book. I especially appreciated the statistics on the importance of child education. I think most people don’t understand how important it truly is to start spiritual education young and hopefully shocking statistics like the ones in this book might serve to jolt them awake. 

The Crooked Sixpence by Jennifer Bell

4.0

 The creative magic properties of the setting and objects were super cool, and I liked reading a book with a little bit of mystery.