Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Books

Wingfeather Books

When Elijah was younger, I heard about the Wingfeather Saga book series. It’s a fantasy book series for kids written by one of my favorite Christian musicians, Andrew Peterson. I read the first book and loved it, but it was too much drama for Elijah at the time, and it was so good that I didn’t want to turn him off by giving it to him too early.

Fast forward to last year when we were driving down to Oregon for vacation, and we gobbled up the first audio book. Elijah loved it! There are four books in the series and we both read them whole series. I don’t know if I would have given it a chance if I didn’t have a kid, but it’s a solid story even for adults. There’s plenty of humor and a really good story. We talked about it so much that Tyla ended up reading the books too, and now we’re watching the TV show as a family.

As if one of my favorite musicians authoring a great book series in one of my favorite genres wasn’t enough, there were more great connections:

  • The music for the TV show is done by The Arcadian Wild which Spotify will agree is one of my most-played artists.
  • There’s a character in the books named Armulyn the Bard. There’s a piece of trivia that connects him to another one of my favorite artists, Rich Mullins.
    • The character Armulyn is author Andrew Peterson’s tribute to singer-songwriter Rich Mullins with Armulyn’s name being a play on words: when pronounced correctly, it sounds like R. Mullin. Armulyn is even described and illustrated as looking like Rich.
  • And trivia within trivia… the Armulyn character in the TV show is voiced by the late Rich Mullins’s brother, Dave Mullins.

I keep mentioning Christian artists, but this book isn’t religious. It’s not an allegory or anything like that, but there’s also no garbage that you wouldn’t want your kids reading. There is a deity in the book but it’s not a main point and they just refer to him as “the Maker”.

Unless you really hate the entire fantasy genre for some reason, I obviously recommend checking out the books. I’m usually one for books over audio books, but I liked doing the first one as an audiobook because we got to hear the hidden jokes with the way things are pronounced and get more of a feel for Peterson’s intention behind the characters (because he narrates the book himself.)

Book Quotes

I love being able to highlight parts of books on the Kindle and then easily look through them later on the web. Here are some of my favorite quotes looking back over the things I’ve marked in the two years since my last post on this topic.

His internal GPS updated and the horror that had become his life came rushing back.

Blake Crouch, Pines: Wayward Pines: 1 (The Wayward Pines Trilogy)

I especially love that quote! This is how I feel when I wake up before my alarm in the morning. If I can fall back asleep before my internal GPS gets a lock on the day, I’m good, but as soon as I remember all the troubles that I have to face, I’m done for and I might as well get up.

At least twenty percent are going to be wrong, and we’re going to alter them later. But if I don’t make decisions, we die.

It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and wrong.

I’m a big believer that a small number of exceptional people who are highly motivated can do better than a large number of people who are pretty good and moderately motivated.

Every year there are more referees and fewer doers.”

Elon Musk as quoted by Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk

When we struggle with depression, what we need most is not a list of things to do. It’s a reminder of what God has already done through his only Son.

Jesus did not tell his disciples to tell people who aren’t his disciples to start acting like disciples.

You’re not being bold when you stand up for God’s law on social media.

Our job is simply to love every person and love every passage, even the passages that tell us to repent.

What’s the goal of the government? Peace on earth. What’s the goal of the church? Peace with God… No legislation can do what the Bible values most: changing the human heart.

Mike Novotny, Taboo: Topics Christians Should Be Talking About but Don’t

Jorgen had always seen Cobb as strong, immovable. And he was strong. But strong men could still be used up.

Brandon Sanderson, Defiant (The Skyward Series Book 4)

It was one of life’s rules – Never trust someone who is willingly rude to low-paid service staff

Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.

Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

I have always found that there’s an inverse relationship between the number of people in a room and the amount of useful work that can be done.

John Scalzi, The End of All Things

Topics Christians Should Be Talking About But Don’t

Tyla and I really enjoy following Pastor Mike and the rest of the team at Time of Grace. He has written quite a few books and recently, he launched a new one called Taboo: Topics Christians Should Be Talking About But Don’t. It’s full of honest discussions about porn, gender identity, homosexuality, depression, politics, suicide, and more. He does an amazing job of taking an honest look at each question, researching all sides of it, and then diving into what the Bible has to say about it. Somehow he managed to write this one book for people who are lifelong Christians and for those who are simply curious about the Bible. If this at all intrigues you, please consider reading it.

Hardy Boys

As a child, I enjoyed visiting my cousins for many reasons, but one of them was that they had a bunch of Hardy Boys books. I don’t remember many of the stories, but I remember enjoying them. As I searched for things to read with Elijah, these came to mind. They’ve been out of print long enough that they’re all available for free download on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/hardyboys

The books have all been updated and revised to removal racial stereotypes, and the stories hold up. He loves them! We just finished book 3. I wonder how far we’ll get before I cut him loose on the rest by himself? For now I’m enjoying this as time that we spend together. Hopefully he is too.

Book Quotes

It has apparently been six years since I did my last post of things that I’ve highlighted while reading books on my Kindle. I thought I’d do another batch but this just goes back through books I’ve read in the last two years. For a full list of all the books that I’ve read, you can follow me on goodreads. It’s mostly science fiction and fantasy with a few nonfiction thrown in every once in a while.

Before I get to that though, note that I chose Hail Mary by Andy Weir for the thumbnail but I didn’t include any quotes. I’m not giving you any spoilers, but I think this was my favorite book of the period. If you’re even a little bit sci-fi curious, check it out.

Under what circumstances is it moral for a group to do that which is not moral for a member of that group to do alone?” “Uh … that’s a trick question.” “It is the key question, dear Wyoming. A radical question that strikes to the root of the whole dilemma of government. Anyone who answers honestly and abides by all consequences knows where he stands—and what he will die for.

Robert Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

“Relaxing isn’t relaxing,” he said. “Sit around too much, and you start sitting around even more.”

Brandon Sanderson, Rhythm of War

If your joy lives in a codependent relationship with anything on earth, then your joy is dependent on something undependable. You don’t want that. The wisest man in history doesn’t want that for you either. King Solomon warns, “Hopes placed in mortals die with them” (Proverbs 11:7).

Mike Novotny, 3 Words That Will Change Your Life

I always thought when I became a man, I’d feel more confident, but towering over this boy, I feel so very small.

Pierce Brown, Iron Gold

Anger is nothing more than justification for bad behavior. And I have no time for bad behavior.

C. Robert Cargill, Sea of Rust

He defined good company not by the conversation but by the lack of it. When there was no need to talk to feel comfortable, that was the right company.

Michael Connelly, The Black Echo

This time, when she’d pointed it at me, she’d flicked the safety on. If that wasn’t true love, I don’t know what was.

Brandon Sanderson, Firefight

When you’re young, you can assume that everyone older than you has life figured out. Once you get command yourself, you realize we’re all just the same kids wearing older bodies.

Brandon Sanderson, Starsight

The huge moments in life seemed like they should have more ceremony and effects. The important words—the life-changing ones—should echo a little. But they didn’t. They sounded just like everything else.

James S. A. Corey, Tiamat’s Wrath

And I have to give an honorable mention to Grace Abounds by Daniel Deutschlander. I clicked on that to look at the highlights and I made over 700 highlights in ONE BOOK.

Investing

Don’t make money decision based on my ramblings, but somehow I’ve found myself in and around quite a few investment conversations lately so I wanted to share a couple things that have helped me.

  1. When I found Dave Ramsey’s “7 Baby Steps“, it solidified a lot of ideas and thoughts I had around saving for emergencies, getting out of debt, and saving for retirement. He has plenty of books, website material, and podcast episodes about it, but honestly, the list alone is a great guide for us because I didn’t need to be convinced that it made sense.
  2. If I only read one book about investing (and that’s not too far off), I would want it to be “The Little Book of Common Sense Investing” by John Bogle. It’s short and it’s simple. He repeatedly lays out statistics to show that buying individual stocks is a gambling hobby. Investing for the long term means buying and holding a total stock market index fund (or ETF) and maybe a total bond fund and a total international fund too. Yes, there will be flashes of success here and there where people beat the market in the short term, but the lasting, winning bet is a low cost index fund that covers the whole market. It’s nearly unbeatable, and it’s super easy.

Ask me in thirty or forty years how it worked out.

The Expanse

This summer, I decided to read book 1 of The Expanse series. I’d heard that the TV show was really good, but before watching that, I wanted to read the books.

Honestly I was disappointed by the first book. It started off slow and then I felt like I got tricked. Instead of sci-fi, I thought it was turning into a zombie book. Thankfully it was not. Zombies are dumb.

I only gave the first book 3 out of 5 stars, but it finished really strong so the second book got it’s chance. And boy am I glad I read that one. I was completely hooked and I’ve read all the way up to book 7 which was just released.

The story is set in a believable future where we’ve expanded out to various parts of the solar system. There are a lot of politics that play out between Earth, Mars, and people who have settled out on the asteroid belt and various habitable moons. The physics of space travel make sense. There’s no hyper space or warp drives. And then… well, then spoilers.

I’m almost done with the 7th book and then I think I’ll switch over to watch the TV show. Then I’ll just gobble up TV seasons and new books as they come out. If you enjoy sci-fi at all, I can’t recommend this series enough. I’m hard-pressed to think of another sci-fi series that has captured me like The Expanse has.

Childhood Books

endersgamecoverI was listening to an old Stuff You Should Know podcast and they briefly mentioned some of their favorite childhood books. It got me reminiscing about books from my own childhood. I know there are some great ones that I’m forgetting but the ones that stick out are:

  • The Hardy Boys
  • Tom Swift (the third and fourth series)
  • Ender’s Game

Those first two entries contain lots of books in them, but Ender’s Game is probably the single book that had the biggest effect on me. It such an epic read, especially as a 10-12 year old (but even now it’s great.) I credit that book with launching me off into a love of science fiction.

What are some of your favorites?

Book Quotes

wheeloftimelogoIt’s been a couple years since I’ve posted some of the text that I highlight while reading books on my Kindle. I’ll pick out a few good ones since the last one.

A Survival Guide for Life: How to Achieve Your Goals, Thrive in Adversity, and Grow in Character by Bear Grylls

  • If you can be the most enthusiastic person you know, then you won’t go far wrong.
  • Success almost always follows great attitude. The two attract each other.
  • How you speak about others speaks loudest about yourself.
  • The smart man and woman save the best for those they love. If we show our loved ones the most gratitude every day, then life will smile on us in return.

Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert

  • Reason is the first victim of strong emotion

The Well of Ascension: Book Two of Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson

  • Those who take lightly promises they make to those they love are people who find little lasting satisfaction in life. This is not an easy time in which to live. That does not mean that it has to be a difficult time to love, but it does mean that you will find unusual stresses upon your lives and your relationship.
  • When you can’t have both freedom and safety, which do you choose…?

The Wheel of Time Series by Robert Jordan

  • Any fool knows men and women think differently at times, but the biggest difference is this. Men forget, but never forgive; women forgive, but never forget.
  • Morgase claimed she had just made it up, her reply was “At my age, if I make it up, it’s still an old saying.”
  • Never make a plan without knowing as much as you can of the enemy. Never be afraid to change your plans when you receive new information. Never believe you know everything. And never wait to know everything.
  • Married life taught a man about women; or about one woman, anyway.
  • One nice thing I’ve noticed about getting older is that your body doesn’t seem to need its sleep as much anymore. Dying doesn’t take as much energy as growing, I guess.
  • Darkness cannot push back Light. Darkness exists only when Light fails, when it flees.

 

Star Wars

howstarwarsconqueredcoverI recently finished reading How Star Wars Conquered the Universe. The first half of the book talked about how the original trilogy came into being, but I enjoyed the second half more which talked about the cultural impact of the movies and why the prequels were flops. The biggest revelation to me was about why George Lucas keeps changing the movies as he releases them on different mediums: in his mind, the movies are a work in progress. He had to make a bunch of compromises to get them produced and as he has more technology and money available, he’s able to remove some of those compromises. Makes sense to me.

After reading the book, I wanted to rewatch the movies (at least the original trilogy.) I’m kind of a fringe Star Wars fan. I really enjoy the movies and can quote some of the famous lines, but I couldn’t have told you the full story arc. It’s impressive how well those movies hold up. The editing was well-paced and the special effects generally don’t look too bad. The battle maneuvers and tactics are the only thing that really makes me realize their age. People just stand up in the hallways and shoot at each other with some random ducking thrown in. And why can’t anybody use a sight on their rifle? Maybe you wouldn’t miss people at point blank range if you weren’t shooting from the hip!

Thank you to Ken for loaning me the BluRay edition of the movies!