Theology Thursday: Doctrinal Wind-Surfing
I wonder, have I mentioned before that I do my New Testament reading on the weekend, leaving me free to read ahead a bit in the Old? With my schedule of reading once through the Old and twice through the New, it means reading basically ten chapters in the New Testament every weekend. I thought it better to basically take whole books at a time, the better to appreciate the context of 
what I was reading.
Anyhow, I read through Galatians and Ephesians a couple of weekends ago, a total of exactly ten chapters.
Ephesians is a pretty rich book, packing in a lot of famous theology in just six chapters. But I was struck by a passage in which Paul discusses the need for Christians to use their gifts in order to build each other up, with the goal being all Christians coming to maturity in their faith. He then mentions an outgrowth of this maturity:
Ephesians 4:14 (NLT)
14Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth.
This is a great passage for me, because I find it’s my nature to be easily persuaded by a good argument, even if it’s for a bad position. I have to challenge myself to really engage with the argument and make sure it holds up.
In fact, I sometimes remind myself of Homer Simpson. There’s an episode of The Simpsons in which Homer is considering joining The Stonecutters, a not-so-subtle reference to The Masons. His daughter, Lisa, warns him about his vulnerability to cult-like organizations, given that he’s “the easily suggestible type.”
Homer’s response?: “Yes, I am the easily suggestible type.”
That’s me, sometimes.
Awhile back (talking years here, not months), I was listening to the radio and heard a Catholic call-in show. It was, of course, put on by a couple of really good Catholic Apologists, and they said some things that made me question why I’d never even considered the claims of the Catholic Church. (Or, for that matter, why I couldn’t even articulate what those claims were.)
I was shaken quite a bit by the idea of there being a One True Church that I might be missing out on. So, I dove into What Catholics Believe, and spent quite a bit of time really undecided.
There’s something very comforting about the idea of a Monolithic Church, with a received corpus of Teaching and Tradition you can take to the bank. (There are so many theological issues with wiggle-room to them that it might be nice to just look up The Church’s view and go with that.) And the idea of the Sacraments is something I find attractive.
I never really shared my angst/doubt with anyone while I was going through it. And it’s not like I was ever close to conversion, but I had to at least open myself to the possibility if my investigation was to be truly honest.
Should I have shared some of this with my family? Probably. A close friend? Maybe, and I did mention some of it, after the fact, to someone I trusted. (By the way, I have regular theological ramblings with a good friend nowadays. I can only get as far afield as he lets me.)
The reason I didn’t share my little excursion with anyone close to me was that I didn’t want to let emotions get in the way. I didn’t want anyone talking me out of anything. I needed to find out for myself. I figured that when I came to a conclusion, I’d deal with the consequences from a position of certainty.
But the bottom line is that I was definitely tossed about by those guys’ doctrine.
(By the way, I’m not trying to indicate that they were trying to trick anybody. I believe they were sincere believers in exactly what they were teaching, and I believe they’re fellow Christians. I still listen to the show now and then when I’m interested in the topic. And while some of my investigations led me to an understanding of some doctrines closer to the Catholic understanding of them, I’m not going to be converting.)
Of course, it’s not that they were tossing me about by anything they did. I was being tossed. Because I wasn’t mature in my faith.
So there was a very positive outcome of my investigations/angst: I learned to really dig on my own. To challenge my beliefs and make sure I knew why I held them. To find out what the Bible actually says about things, and not just go with whatever Traditions I’ve heard.
(By the way, I’ve also come to recognize that as much as evangelicals malign Catholics for holding to Tradition, we often don’t have a leg to stand on.)
I’m not claiming to have come to full maturity in my faith. I just know I wasn’t at all mature before. I’ve at least moved along the road somewhat.
You know what’s funny? I planned this post almost entirely around the Homer Simpson quote. I had no intention whatsoever of being so transparent. So now you know why I seem to know quite a bit about Catholic doctrine.
Another odd thing is that these days I find that I’ve swung over toward being stubbornly difficult to convince in some areas. So I not only have to battle myself to not be too easily convinced, but I also have to make sure I’m staying open-minded (reading helps quite a bit with that).
Anyone else out there struggle with either side of this issue? Too rigid? Too pliable?
Next week, my first ever Colossians post! Woooo!
Wordful Wednesday: Button, Button
I can’t claim to have ever been a huge fan of The Twilight Zone, but there are several episodes of the show that I really enjoyed. One in particular I’ve always remembered was called Button, Button, and it’s now being expanded from the original source into a new movie titled The Box, starring James Marsden and Cameron Diaz.
When I investigated the new movie, that’s when I discovered that both the Twilight Zone episode and the film are based on a Richard Matheson (I Am Legend) short story titled, as you might expect, Button, Button.
And the Library had a collection of Matheson’s short work. Button, Button: Uncanny Stories is a decent collection of some very different stories. Some are quite short (indeed, the titular one isn’t even ten pages long), while others are closer 
to novella size. And the topics aren’t at all similar, either, though they probably all fall under a loose science-fiction/fantasy umbrella.
Button, Button is a great story and the short length is perfect. It asks a simple question: How much is a human life worth?
In the story, a mysterious package arrives at a home of a husband and wife. In the package is a box with a button on it. A mysterious man shows up and instructs the couple that if they push the button, they’ll receive $50,000 (quite a sum back in 1970), and someone they don’t know will die.
As I said, the story is short, so the deliberations between the two characters are brief, and the ending is a classic twist. I’m not sure how it’ll be expanded into a feature-length movie, although I’m almost certain the punch line will be changed (as it was in the Twilight Zone episode).
The other stories I enjoyed most were Mute, about a boy brought up to be telepathic being thrust into a world of talkers, and A Flourish of Strumpets, about a door-to-door service pedaling female companionship, with an absolutely poetic twist at the end. There’s also a hilarious one called The Creeping Terror about Los Angeles taking over the country like a weed and infecting people with “Ellieitis.” As you might imagine, there’s a bit of anti-Hollywood subtext there.
There were also a couple of stories that left me scratching my head. But short stories are almost always a grab bag (well, Philip K. Dick’s stories are pretty uniformly awesome).
Ahh…the Internet. I found a YouTube of the Twilight Zone episode (it’s a multi-part one, so you’ll have to click more than once to see the whole thing). Check it out:
Oh, and if you’re curious about the other episode I fondly remembered, it’s The Man in the Bottle.
MM: Aliens, Fall Ball, World Series
There are several Ultimate Guy Movies that I absolutely love. And James Cameron managed to direct two of them: The Terminator and Aliens.
Now, I recognize that most movie critics find Alien to be a superior film to its more booty-kicking sequel, but in terms of good old fashioned blowing-stuff-up, Aliens wins in a walk.
Besides, Ripley is one of the all-time great Guy Movie Heroes.
But there’s something that’s been bugging me for some time, and I’m hoping that someone familiar with the film will help me understand how this isn’t a plot hole.
Who was piloting that big gun-shaped ship the Marines and Ripley arrived on? Because it seems like they could’ve helped out the planetside folks. Or are we really to believe that big ship was just sitting up in orbit, on autopilot, waiting for the Marines to come back and fly it home? (Seems like it’d have been piloted by some Navy folks.)
Or were the folks on the ship the ones expected to rescue everybody after they’d been overdue for seventeen days?
I realize a good percentage of Internetters won’t have a clue what I’m referring to, but I’m hoping somebody can help.
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Well, Fall Ball is finally over. Which means we get a good six hours per week, at least, added back to our Time Available For Doing Other Stuff. With AWANA, Baseball, and Swim Team, our schedule has been packed lately.
The last game was muddy, and it was a defeat. But our guys got a lot better over the course of the season, and Ethan definitely enjoyed it and honed his defensive skills quite a bit. He pitched again in this game and struck out at least one batter. He also threw somebody out at first.
So now we’ve just got to practice, practice, practice and get ready for Spring Baseball. Wooo!
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So, the World Series will be the Phillies and the Yankees, just as Ethan predicted. I’m hoping for a long series, and though I’m pulling for the Phils at least a little bit, I don’t really care who wins. I can root for the players of any team, even if I don’t particularly like the team. How can you not like Mariano Rivera?
I could see these games having football scores, given the potency of both offenses. If there’s going to be a major pitchers’ duel, Game 1 is a good bet, with the two former Cleveland pitchers (Cliff Lee and C.C. Sabathia) as the starters. Other than that, I’m expecting an absolute slugfest.
Flippin’ Friday: The Guinea Pig Diaries
Another Friday, another alliterative title. I’d go with Fiction Friday, but the book in question falls under non-fiction. So Flippin’ it is.
(True, I may’ve written this post on Tuesday night, and I didn’t have an idea for Foney Friday, but the two things don’t have anything to do with each other. Also not a factor was my intention to post every day this week.)
Sometimes, even though I have a backlog of books checked out from the Library, a new one will displace all others. Given that A.J. Jacobs’s previous book, The Year of Living Biblically, was one of my favorites of 2008 (in fact, my favorite nonfiction title), new titles from him now get a bump in priority.
His latest, The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment, was every bit as entertaining and hilarious as Year was, if not as consistently worthwhile. Part of what made Year so charming was the subject matter. And while it was occasionally crude-ish, the fact of it being about the Bible seemed to temper any such tendencies.
In the new book, the excellent writing and wit are still there. The subjects just aren’t as solid, and the writing is a bit more, well, colorful. More colorful metaphors, as Mr. Spock would say. It’s not so much a criticism as a parental advisory.
Even if the subjects weren’t as worthwhile, that doesn’t mean they weren’t interesting. The list of topics (and my nutshell explanation for each) went like this:
- My Life as a Beautiful Woman – average man experiences power while posing as a lovely lady online.
- My Outsourced Life – man enjoys paying folks in India to do stuff in his place.
- I Think You’re Fat – Radical Honesty giveth and taketh away.
- 240 Minutes of Fame – when you look like someone famous, it’s fun for a while.
- The Rationality Project – engaging the brain where it’s normally idle.
- The Truth About Nakedness – how it feels to post nude. Did I really need to write that? (edit: slightly Freudian typo there on "post." Of course I meant to write "pose." And for the record, I still had my PJ's on when I posted.)
- What Would George Washington Do? – applying GW’s 110 Rules of Civility to modern life.
- The Unitasker – One activity at a time, please…
- Whipped – Yes, dear.
My favorite chapter was The Rationality Project, because there really are many ways we coast through life without really thinking things through. The Appendix also had a list of Cognitive Biases that was pretty enlightening. For instance, we tend to remember things we don’t like and correlate them as always happening. (This probably explains why I think Elaine’s always just bought a purse when she tells me she’s looking for a new one.)
The Unitasker was also a good one, because I realize how rarely my brain is doing just one thing. One of the reasons I’m not a big fan of swimming as exercise is that I can’t listen to audio books while doing it. Even now I’m listening to a radio program. Focus can be good. Especially when trying to, you know, interact with people.
The most “Duh” chapter was the one on Radical Honesty, where basically adults throw off all the restrictions of polite conversation and revert to being three and a half years old in the way they talk. Bluntness and openness can be good things when applied with care. But most of the time, we’re better off zipping it. I figure that, most of the time, my thoughts aren't really worth sharing.
So, in summary, I enjoyed the new book very much indeed, it made me laugh out loud quite a few times. I just liked the earlier book better. But I'll still bump his next book to the top of my list.
Theology Thursday Lite: Tagging Up
While I (and my family) were sick a while back, I went through my theology posts, going way back to before I decided to use the Theology Thursday title. I tagged them. All of them.
I put a tag on for Old/New Testament, and for the individual books referenced in the posts. So now I can say with complete confidence that I have never blogged about either Zephaniah or Zechariah, a situation I will attempt to remedy later this year as I read through them again.
In all, there are seventeen books of the Bible (14 OT, 3 NT) that have managed to escape my clutches. I’m making it a goal, right now, to blog about all seventeen of them by this date next year. By the way, here’s the list:
| Ruth | Amos | Zechariah |
| 1 Kings | Obadiah | Colossians |
| 2 Chronicles | Jonah | Titus |
| Esther | Micah | 3 John |
| Song Of Songs | Nahum | Jude |
| Zephaniah | ||
| Haggai |
I have a reasonable expectation that I may be able to cover everything from Amos forward. Definitely doable, and it gives me some built-in Theology Thursday Lite posts if I really need them. I’m already apprehensive about blogging about Song of Songs.
Consider yourself warned that there’s some posting to be done here.
BTW, the book I’ve posted most about is Matthew (12), followed closely by Psalms (11) and Genesis (9). Three others were at eight.
Databases are cool.
Wordful Wednesday Morning: The Girl Who Ran
One of the things I’ve long thought was cool about homeschooling is that all the teaching materials are in my house, and I stand a fair chance of actually (gasp!) learning something. Now, I’m sure that all parents are surprised at the things they’ve forgotten that their kids are just learning (hence, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader). But I think the condition is particularly acute with homeschoolers.
At this point in our homeschooling experience, I’m mostly the nighttime read-aloud dude. And the library-book-procurer. And the baseball thrower and catcher (sometimes catching one on the spine).
I’m loving the read-alouds, because I get to learn something new almost every time.
Our latest read-aloud was Naya Nuki: Shoshoni Girl Who Ran, by Kenneth Thomasma. The story follows Naya Nuki, a young Shoshoni girl and friend of Sacajawea who was taken captive by an enemy tribe during the Shoshoni Buffalo Hunt (which took them into enemy territory), along with her more famous friend.
Both girls, among others, were taken on a long trek (a thousand miles, give or take) and made slaves of the other tribe. While Sacajawea apparently made 
peace with her fate, Naya Nuki focused on planning her escape. For the entire trip, she noted landmarks to help her find her way (the Missouri River was a major help in this).
Once they came to their destination, Naya Nuki worked hard in order to gain trust, and then began gathering materials she would need for her long return trip, including a buffalo skin and knife.
The story of her arduous return trip after her escape is very inspiring, as she was attacked by bears, nearly died of some kind of illness, and struggled to find enough food to make it home.
The narrative is interesting, because there is rarely any dialogue. This is expected, of course, because for a full three quarters of the book, Naya Nuki is entirely alone.
One quirk of the book was the frequency of occurrence of Naya Nuki’s name. It appeared in practically ever other sentence. Now, I understand that using “she” over and over again would get tiresome, and I may not have noticed the frequency of the name if I hadn’t been reading it aloud. But it was still somewhat strange.
By the way, the book notes that we have actually no idea of Naya Nuki’s real name, because her name was changed after she returned home. Naya Nuki means “Girl Who Ran.”
The Epilogue mentions the joyful reunion of Sacajawea and Naya Nuki, and excerpts Meriwether Lewis’ journal describing the event.
In many ways, Naya Nuki’s story is more interesting and inspiring than Sacajawea’s.
Once again, Ethan was riveted by the story. I sometimes wonder if I could read baseball box scores to him and he’d still beg, “just a little more!”
True Love Tuesday
I'm sending this message out into the blogosphere, where it will be read by ones of people, I'm sure. But there's only one who really matters.
Happy Birthday, Elaine! I love you more than I can say. But here’s a short list of things I love about you:
I love that you persist in trying to talk to me while brushing your teeth, even though you know it bothers me. (And I get that you do it just to tweak me, and I'm cool with that.)
I love that you watch sports with me. I figure I owe you a few Chick Flicks by now.
I love that you mow the lawn. I’ll keep doing the dishes…(well, I do know the optimal way to load the dishwasher…)
I love that you love my pancakes and encourage me generally in my cooking (and I've gotten better since we were first married and I thought chicken had to be cooked for twenty minutes and basically turned into shoe-leather).
I love that you don’t complain about how hairy I am. That can’t have been high on your list of husbandly traits to look for.
I love that you haul around that heavy (and expensive, but we won't mention that) camera equipment and document our lives, and especially the life of our Little Man. Even when sometimes that means just documenting our getting take-out for dinner.
I love that you enjoyed it when Ethan discovered armpit music.
I love that you encourage me to write, and to even be a writer, even though you’re the English Major. And even though I want to write about bathrooms and theology.
I love that you nod politely when I talk about science fiction. And allow Ethan and me to enjoy Star Wars even though you’re not into it.
I love that you occasionally do random movie quotes, and don’t complain that I do it way too much.
I love that you have vision. For our home, for our yard, for our family.
And I love that you stretch your comfort zone. That you pour yourself into Ethan. Into homeschooling him, even though you don’t feel up to it. Even when you don’t feel good about how it’s going.
I love that you rebel against the “I could never homeschool” line we hear so often. That you do it even when it’s hard.
I love that you found something that worked and taught Ethan to read even though he wasn’t always into it. (You’re a big reason he loves to read now.)
I love you. I hope you have a great Birthday Week.
MM: Arm, Early, Equaled, Playoffs
My son really has an arm on him. I know this because he threw me a baseball yesterday, and I caught it. On the spine. Right between the shoulder blades. I happened to not be looking at the time, and he failed to alert me to his throw. But the impact certainly helped me get the message. (He also received the message that I was not pleased with his failure to warn me.)
It makes a nice bruise.
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Ethan’s back to having swim meets. I just wish they weren’t so early. We had to be over at Terpenning (Tualatin Valley Rec Center) at 7am on Saturday. I’m not a big fan of such hours on Saturdays.
I’d post video, but it was hard to get a really good angle. He did win one of his heats, and I know he finished in the top five in at least two of his events. Room to improve, but a good start to the season.
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I finished reading a book to Ethan yesterday, and I’ve now equaled last year’s Book Total of fifty-seven. I’m still a good fifteen hundred pages short, though, which means my average book length has decreased this year. I haven’t finished my Bible-reading for the year yet, though, and that’ll restore the average a bit.
(I’m still a good eight thousand pages shy of my 2005 reading record, and I don’t think that record’s coming down this year.)
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Watching the MLB Playoffs, I’m more and more glad I don’t have a team to root for in them. Because some of these games must be causing huge blood pressure swings for the fans. I like just watching and enjoying the games.
On the other hand, I’ll be willing to suffer some stress if the Mariners ever decide to make it back to the postseason.
(BTW, I find myself feeling good for A-Rod, and I’m not a Yankee fan. Is this a sign of serious mental collapse?)
Theology Thursday: Caffeine Bondage
I’m not a morning person. But I’m not exactly a night person, either. In short, I like my sleep. Still, I get up five times a week, earlier than I’d like, and some days I really could use a coffee to help get me going.
And I really like coffee. But I don’t always allow myself a coffee. Now why would that be?
First, some background on my tumultuous past with the dark beverage. Really, I promise I’ll work in at least a tiny drip of Theology by the time we’re done.
Back up a few years. Wow, it’s actually more years than I thought. Anyhow, I used to not really like coffee. Oh, I tried to like it because I thought it looked grown-up to drink it. But really I had to drown it with cream and sugar to make it at all palatable.
Then I started college. In Newberg, home of the Coffee Cottage. And I still didn’t really like coffee. I tried a mocha or latte now and then, but they were too bitter.
Then I took a summer job working swing shift, then moved to graveyard shift. And the coffee flowed.
Anyone who’s ever worked graveyard can attest to the strange sleeping hours playing havoc, at least for a time, with one’s circadian rhythm. And I went for normal sleeping hours on the weekends, for the most part, so I didn’t help my own cause very well. And there was the small matter of the Suicide Run (get off at 8am, drive to the Kenai Peninsula for some fishing, limit out, drive back, sleep for two hours, and back to work).
So I started packing a thermos of coffee. Or at least cocoa with some coffee mixed in. As the summer waned, the mixture had gone from 20% coffee to 10% cocoa. I’d broken through.
Espresso drinks were still too bitter, though.
Then came my first senior year of college (graduated in December, so I had three senior semesters, or four junior semesters). Then came Dr. Graff and Electrical Engineering Lab 3. One hundred percent design. This was a class with a one hour lecture once per week, but it was a four credit hour class. The math doesn’t seem to add up there, eh?
We were expected to spend ten or so hours per week in the lab working on our designs. These included our weekly design projects, plus ten or fifteen required side projects. Required in that if you didn’t complete them, you failed the class. Complete them and you got a C. To pull the grade higher required even more extra work.
This was one class. I also had Senior Design to do. I didn’t sleep much.
In fact, I can give a detailed description of what it’s like to fall asleep on a lab stool. While soldering. I’m lucky to still have both eyes.
I once biked home from the lab at 6:10am and slept for forty minutes, then got up and went to my 7am class. The class with three other guys in it. An eighty minute class with my most droning professor. Advanced Control Systems. Sounds riveting, doesn’t it? (Actually I loved that class. When I stayed awake.)
So it’s probably not surprising that, upon surviving that semester, I discovered suddenly that espresso drinks were suddenly not so repellent. In fact, I loved them. It didn’t hurt that I worked for my brother-in-law that summer, and we always, always, always stopped for lattes on the way to work (at 6am).
For the next several years, my coffee consumption was mostly a workbound phenomenon. I’d go for a mocha midmorning, then maybe grab some nasty drip in the afternoon.
And then Mr. B came along. Actually, I moved into the same campus as Mr. B. And he brought his French Press. And he’d email me around 9:30am with a subject line normally approaching “2, 4, 6, 8, when do we caffeinate?” or “I have a pressing matter I’d like to discuss.”
And then he moved and I had to fend for myself. I got my own press. Made my own. And then I decided to just make it at home. Saved on the hauling of the apparatus to and from work.
I certainly didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. It’s just coffee, right?
But I certainly knew the Caffeine-Withdrawal-Headaches were Not a Good Thing. Of course, there’s an easy way to avoid such a thing. Just keep drinking, just keep drinking, just keep drinking, drinking, drinking…
And then I read a verse, or heard it on a radio show or some audio Bible teaching. And I thought it was Time To Cut Back.
So I quit. Cold turkey. And I basically had a headache for a week and a half.
I didn’t quit with a mind to never have coffee again. In fact, I fully intended to still partake of it. You see, I still liked it. I just didn’t want to need it.
So now I’m on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule. The other days, I go for herbal or green tea (yes, it has caffeine, but only about a quarter as much).
I’m no longer a slave to caffeine. I like my coffee days, and actually look forward to them. I enjoy having my morning cuppa.
Want to know the verse I referenced? It came up in my reading last week. And here it is:
1 Corinthians 6:12 (NLT):
12You say, “I am allowed to do anything”—but not everything is good for you. And even though “I am allowed to do anything,” I must not become a slave to anything.
Of course, Paul isn’t specifically talking about hot, caffeinated beverages here. Actually, it’s a lengthy dialogue on avoiding sexual immorality. But still, he gives a very general statement that basically says a Christian shouldn’t be in bondage to anything.
I’m not trying to pretend I’m super-spiritual here because I’ve managed to throw off Caffeine Bondage, though it seems it’s a rare thing to do around my work. (Energy drinks and caffeinated pop are thrown down with alarming regularity. I’ve still never tried Red Bull.)
But I do think it’s a good idea for Christians to examine their lives and see if they’ve become slaves of anything. Television? Internet? Chocolate? Shopping? It doesn’t have to be one of the Big Three (alcohol, drugs, sex) to qualify as a Not a Good Thing.
And I think throwing off a bondage issue can often reveal the underlying Good Thing that had been masked by overuse. Or allow us to focus on a different Good Thing. Or the One who gives us all such good gifts.
And now I’m going to have some tea.
Wordful Wednesday: Vanished
I used to be much more of a monogamous fiction reader. Then I slipped into serial monogamy (one author at a time), and now I’m just willing to read anybody. How have I fallen so far?
In college, when I first discovered my love of reading, I read stuff my dad read. Clancy, mostly. After I’d read all of those, I started in on Grisham. Then I added in Crichton.
Of course, all three of these authors are prolific, and there had to be a certain amount of overlap once I’d “caught up” with them. Because they’d all three publish something every now and again, and I found myself reading whatever, whenever. Even (gasp) new authors!!!!
I think Washington County Cooperative Library Services has had a lot to do with it, too. I see a book come through on their RSS feed for new materials, read the summary, and give it a whirl.
Actually, the Internet itself is probably to blame. I read book review blogs, and then I go over the WCCLS website and request the titles. The ease of requesting titles also makes it easy to follow-through on recommendations from real-life friends. Which is how my Koontzian obsession started. But that’s neither here nor there.
I must confess I don’t remember what possessed me to first pick up a Joseph Finder novel, but I remember it was Paranoia, and it was eerily like reading a thriller set at my office. Seriously. Since then, I’ve read each of his more recent offerings and I’ve just finished his latest, Vanished.
This is the first Finder novel I’ve read that didn’t mostly focus on somebody working at a large corporation. In this case, it focused mostly on the brother of a guy working at a large corporation. Nick Heller, former Green Beret, is an investigator who finds himself investigating his brother’s disappearance. 
The story alternates between first-person narrative following Nick Heller, and third person narrative revolving around Lauren Heller, wife of Roger Heller the Vanished man. So it’s the classic plot-subplot thing, and it works, because the plot requires us to not really know everything that goes on in Lauren’s head.
As Nick investigates his brother’s disappearance, he finds himself delving deeper and deeper into government conspiracies and Roger’s shady dealings and many secrets. And his investigation involves lots of cool techo-gadgetry and cleverness. Good stuff.
There’s a twist I spotted from the instant it was set up, as I think most readers would, but the ultimate twist I didn’t see coming. Well, okay, so it was one of three or four possible turns I was tossing around.
The book ended well, and I hope we see Nick Heller as a lead character again.
One thing I really liked about the book was the uber-short chapters. I doubt if there was one chapter in the whole book that exceeded six pages. Makes it seem like you’re flying through the book.
At some point in the future, I may decide to catch up with Mr. Finder by going back and reading his pre-Paranoia publications (you know I just couldn’t resist that alliteration).
Next up, after my latest read-aloud with Ethan, will be Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What it Says About Us). Woo! Nonfiction!