Aimee Pan Reads

09. Matched, by Ally Condie.

The Amazon blurb:

For Cassia, nothing is left to chance–not what she will eat, the job she will have, or the man she will marry. In Matched, the Society Officials have determined optimal outcomes for all aspects of daily life, thereby removing the “burden” of choice. When Cassia’s best friend is identified as her ideal marriage Match it confirms her belief that Society knows best, until she plugs in her Match microchip and a different boy’s face flashes on the screen. This improbable mistake sets Cassia on a dangerous path to the unthinkable–rebelling against the predetermined life Society has in store for her. As author Ally Condie’s unique dystopian Society takes chilling measures to maintain the status quo, Matched reminds readers that freedom of choice is precious, and not without sacrifice.–Seira Wilson

A new entry into the arena by newcomer Ally Condie, Matched is precisely the book I was hoping to read this year after reading the Hunger Games trilogy. This book is the other side of the story–in a dystopian society, a girl lives in a privileged four-person family unit and grows up with zero crime, zero unhappiness… or so she’s told. A seemingly perfect Society where the government Matches you to your future husband or wife based on genetics, psychology, and calculation for the “best of Society,” Matched had well-rounded characters, a convincing and unannoying love triangle (I can’t tell you how many annoying love triangles I’ve had to read this year in the name of 150 books a year), and fascinating, fantastic world-building.

It is, at some points, rather too straightforward and simplistic for my tastes, but that only means that it’s another book you can recommend to your younger relatives (say, age 10-14). It does however, touch upon serious issues about society, the media, the role of government, and the meaning of freedom. It seems almost a tongue-in-cheek commentary on modern American government’s emphasis on big government—issues like universal healthcare, the Patriot Act, and Wall Street bailouts come to mind when reading this novel.

All in all, an impressive debut novel for the dystopian YA sci-fi genre.

“We speak of grace often. But do we understand it? Most important, do we truly believe in it… and do our lives proclaim it as powerfully as our word?

In his most personal book yet, the best-selling author of The Jesus I Never Knew takes a probing look at grace: what it looks like… what it doesn’t look like… and why Christians can and must reveal the grace the world is searching for.”

– From back of cover.

Despite this being essentially a blog for young people reading fantasy and science fiction, my dad, upon seeing my one-star rating on Goodreads for this book, asked me to write an article about it that he can link to. I guess it’s worth doing so, even if it means I had to look over and read this thing again, when in my opinion, it was already a waste of time the first time I read it.

A few years ago I had the chance to take a look at What’s So Amazing About Grace, a phenomenally popular work in Evangelical circles by Philip Yancey.  According to the back of the book, various scholars such as Gordon MacDonald claim that “This is great writing! Only those blind in spirit, hardened with hatred, will miss its significant message.” Possibly I am blind in spirit and hardened with hatred, because I did not think this book contained any significant message at all. At best this is Philip Yancey’s take on “The Idiot’s Guide to Christianity,” and there are certainly other authors who do it better, and with far more substance.

I do not pretend to be a theologian, or even a truly advanced believer who has lots of Bible verses and doctrine crammed under my belt. However, even to me, a plain, simple believer, this book reduced and over-simplified the message of grace to an idiot’s level. During the first pages of this work, the author discusses various secular uses of the word “grace,” such as being grateful or having grace notes in music, or grace issues (free issues) of magazines that come with subscription. This apparently is proof that the word grace is pretty much, from gospel truth to everyday uses, the “last best word,” what someone of my generation would describe as “OMG, the best word ever.”

I, personally, cannot see what the relevance of this passage is to the overall message of grace. What is grace? Grace is undeserved forgiveness and love from a perfect Father who expects perfection and yet has loved and received ungrateful, sinful, horrible human beings such as ourselves into his family. Grace is the unyielding, unchanging, undeserved expression of love from God to us.

Grace has nothing to do with the various semantic usages of the word itself.

And yet, throughout the entire book, Yancey continually uses irrelevant examples such as these to show the meaning of God’s grace to us. Like God’s grace can actually be expressed at all through ordinary things like “the many different things” that grace has come to mean. Does that mean “milk” is a super-special God-given amazing miraculous word, because you can milk a cow and drink milk and milk a franchise and milk an audience and have milk and honey all together?

What’s So Amazing About Grace? contains numerous examples of people with miraculous stories of grace, which is all nice and well, but does this book actually add to the ever-growing pool of Christian books on the subject of grace? Bible study groups all over the country are using this book as a Bible study subject, when the book rarely goes to the ultimate proof of grace itself—the Word of God. The book is more anecdotal than a serious examination of grace. If you pared down this entire book to where it actually discusses the idea of grace in a biblical, serious manner, without all the frills, bells and whistles, even including the bits where Yancey talks about other theologians talking about grace, the book would be about 50 pages long, not 266.

In the end, what Yancey’s book amounts to is a self-absorbed examination of what God can do for us, and not really about how we should be living to glorify Him. To me, what this book says is that Christianity can be summed up as “God is really amazing and gives us stuff even though we don’t deserve it,” completely missing out on the aspect of following Christ and changing our lives after we have received grace. Part of grace is the amazing, tumultuous, difficult, ridiculous ride and journey that we have in our walk with Christ, but this book neatly skips over most of this part, and has a sort of sweet, sugar-coated “but let’s love Jesus back because he loved us too!” message, attached almost as an afterthought.

Yes, Yancey calls us to be less judgmental and more loving. Yes, this is a good message. However, grace should not be defined by tiny sugar-coated moments of revelation of how, wow, God is really there for us after all. Grace is a continuous thing, and Yancey limits it by telling it through sweet little anecdotes.

Why is it that American Christians turn to books like this for an expression of grace? I don’t know. My pet theory is that we, as a lazy society, no longer reads, and if we’re going to read at all we prefer our books like our food–fattening, without substance, and full of empty carbohydrates. There’s really not much to this book other than a bunch of heartwarming stories that really come to nothing and do not truly illustrate the story of grace in different ways. The book repeats itself over and over again without any new message from chapter to chapter.

Look. I am not a theologian and I am not pretending that I am a smart person who reads really complex, academic, or deep books on my own faith. However, the bottom line is that I didn’t get anything out of this book, because of its grotesque lack of substance. Yancey never stops to explore what Paul meant in 2 Corinthians 7:10, when he wrote “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.” Grace inevitably contains some not-so-nice thing, such as Godly sorrow which brings repentance. Yancey’s book focuses on God giving us stuff, but it is ultimately a feel-good message that skips over the part where we must have also Godly sorrow, not feeling merely sorry for ourselves, but having true repentance for our sins, in order to have salvation. What’s So Amazing About Grace reduces the Gospel message to sugar and spice, and everything nice, but fails to comment thoroughly on this essential point of the Gospel message.

The bottom line: Yancey’s book reduces the message of grace to a bunch of well-intended and sweet sugar-coated anecdotes, but readers of this book will miss out on the many wonderful and complex aspects and facets of grace, if they come to this book for a full exposition on the concept of Godly grace.

Welcome to the first ever blog series of this new book blog. In this series I will be writing about my favorite 10 books of this year! These are books that I have read for the first time this year, not necessarily books that have been published this year (though some were, in fact, published this year).

Yes, I know there’s nearly a month left, but let’s face it. With only 26 books to go for the year, and no new releases for new books over the holidays, I am unlikely to find a book that will change this list.

Check back tomorrow and every day after for the rest of the list!

10. The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan

Having grown up well-versed in Greek mythology thanks to my incredible father, and having been traumatized at an early age by the blasphemy that is the Disney version of Hercules, I was dubious coming into this series, especially seeing as the main character sounded like he could easily be crossing over into Gary Stu territory—aka a shameless author self-insert character who is just there to fulfill the author’s personal fantasies. I was afraid that it’d butcher the awesome beauty of the endless array of Greek mythology in order to make it fit within modern American perceptions of what makes good YA.

I am relieved to report that none of my fears about this series were true. It’s a smart, well-written boys’ adventure series, and all the winks and nods to Greek mythology fans kept me interested. It was fun to read about stories I thought I had long forgotten, recalling childhood memories I didn’t know I had. My only gripe for this series was the author’s assumption that the Greek gods go where Western Civilization goes, and therefore Olympus is now in New York. Typical American self-centeredness, but I can forgive that for the exciting, tightly knit, and ultimately satisfying series. They are incredibly easy, fast reads, so I definitely recommend this for younger ages, though I wouldn’t be ashamed caught reading this in public either (unlike another certain popular YA series I can name, hem hem).

I really enjoyed this series, and this book is a great opener to it.