Tag: Books

Nightmare

So I had a dream last night. We were vacationing somewhere where it snows, and David was with us. And we ran in to some people of the type that, when you just meet them, you think that maybe you are already dear old friends.

Anyway, I had brought with me my leather-bound copy of The Hobbit, and I was considering whether to let David read it, but I was nervous about him handling such a high quality binding. So I acquired somewhere some thick cardboard that I wanted to use as a book cover. My friend happened to have a circular saw, so I asked him to cut the cardboard to fit the book. He took the book and the cardboard and said, “Oh, about this size?” and then he proceeded to cut my leather-bound edition of The Hobbit into a square.

And then I woke up.

Top 10 Books

I don’t know who asked me to jump on this top 10 books list, but I’ve finally gotten round to it.  Here goes:

  • Emma, by Jane Austin.  It’s a long story, but this is how I decided I was looking for love in all the wrong places.  I had a long discussion with the girl who became my wife, shortly after reading this book
  • The Way the World Works, by June Wannasiki.  I don’t know that this is the best economics book.  Wannasiki is kind of like Algernon – he doesn’t necessarily write accurately, but he writes with wonderful expression.   Anyway, this book opened my eyes to the sort of political shenanigans that are being done in the name of bad economics.
  • Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, by Mark DeverI had been looking for what exactly was going wrong in the sort of churches I was going to.  Even in the prosperous, well-populated churches, there was something rotten about their state.  9Marks pointed me in the right direction. Incidentally, I gave my copy to somebody, so if you’d like to help me replenish my library…
  • Humility: True Greatness, by CJ Mahaney.  It was a toss-up between this and The Cross-Centered Life.  Either way, what I really appreciate about Mahaney’s little books is their practicality: “XYZ is true.  Here are some habits you can build into your life so it will have an practical effect.”  Want to be humble?  Start by thanking God that you get tired at night.
  • The Bruised Reed, by Richard Sibbes.  Just… Wow.  I used to want to be Dennis Jernigan when I grew up.  Now I want to be Richard Sibbes.  So incredibly helpful to see how exactly the Spirit of God works in actual broken hearts.  As a happy side effect: the sweetest, most reassuring teaching of God’s selection in salvation you have ever heard.
  • Surprised by Joy, by CS Lewis.  This is a cheat.  It stands in for “The Complete Works of,” which I understand is against the rules.  I might have been CS Lewis, if my middle class lawyer dad had just sent me to a private tutor for my entire high school, where I studied classics in Latin and Greek for 12 hours a day.  Surprised by Joy is less biography and more a spiritual memoir in the style of Augustin’s Confession.  The picture he give of his conversion still sticks with me:  a lobster in a corset on a bus, I think.  Strangely, he falls on the side of free will in salvation, while describing a perfectly Calvinist conversion.
  • Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.  I wrote a paper on Gustave Flaubert my junior year in college. It kind of revolutionized my view on the world.  I got an A-.  My hard drive crashed, and now I have only the vaguest recollection of what my conclusions were.  Flaubert was set to be a fantasy author.  He had this blockbuster story he wrote about Saint Anthony in the tombs.  It was a colossal flop.  His friends urged him to quit writing about “Chimeras,” that is fantastical ideas, and to focus on realism.  So he wrote a story about a girl who wanted to have a truly great romance and ruined her life chasing it while ignoring the perfectly good romance right in her lap.  I was totally unable to relate to this concept.
  • Institutes of Christianity, by John Calvin.  This is kind of a cheat, since I never actually finished the book.  But he really knew how to pack ‘em in there. The one that comes up the most is his explanation of faith – not just confidence, but confidence in a person’s word in the face of very good reasons to doubt. We’ll skip past how much Calvin talks about the Spirit, and how I totally avoided him the first time I heard of him, because I knew he had nothing to say to me due to his ignorance of the Holy Spirit.
  • Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer.  More specifically, The Franklin’s Tale, which taught me about the complex overlay of loyalties that we would now call “Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.”  As a bonus, reading journal articles on The Franklin’s Tale taught me that Feminism is bunk, specifically because it can’t see those loyalties as anything other than systematic oppression
  • On the Cessation of the Charismata, by John Ruthven.  Specifically, the footnotes to the first chapter, which gave me references to a whirlwind tour of early church thought on spiritual gifts, and the supernatural.  I used it as the bibliographical launching point for a church history paper, and it inspired me for the thesis for my PhD, which I will probably never get to write.
(Yes, Tolkien is lovely, but he didn’t change my life.  I’m very fond of Luther, but I haven’t actually read any books by him. Paradise lost did nothing for me, other than give me some perspective when reading Middlemarch. Inferno was extremely interesting, but Purgatorio was distressingly Catholic.  Robinson Crusoe was a waste of time.)
There’s a strange lack of fiction titles in this list.  I went through a major theological shift about 15 years ago, so my top 10 list changed accordingly.  The books above are the ones that got me going in my current direction.  It just so happened that when I was grasping, very few of the branches that held were fiction.

Lived or Existed

Since then, I have lived or existed as one does at School. How dreary it all is! I could make some shift to put up with the work, the discomfort, and the school feeding: such inconveniences are only to be expected. But what irritates me more than anything else is the absolute lack of appreciation of anything like music or books which prevails among the people whom I am forced to call my companions. Can you imagine what it is like to live for twelve long weeks among boys whose thoughts never rise above the dull daily round of cricket and work and eating?

C.S.Lewis, to Arthur Greeves, 5 June 1914

Yes, Virginia, there really is a line

See my previous post for thoughts on books that needn’t bother to be books. Nevertheless, I agree wholeheartedly with Tim Challies’ review of Sex, Dating, and Relationships: A Fresh Approach. There is no Biblical category for “girlfriend.” A girlfriend is a practice wife, and the only reason to practice being married without actually getting married is so you can practice getting divorced.

BUT (wanting to justify himself, he said) is there a Biblical category for betrothed? I’m looking at you, Song of Solomon.

Three in one

glamour-198x300Three favorites in one: David Maliki quoting Howard Tayler, talking about Mary Robinette Kowall’s book Glamour in Glass. Valerie’s reading the first book in the series right now (Shades of Milk and Honey), which I liked, but I thought it gave the plot away too quickly. One of these days I’ll get around Glamour, which is supposed to be much better.

A short review of the Amazon Kindle

The Kindle has many advantages as a reading device: It’s light and portable, generally smaller than the average paperback, by volume. It can hold thousands of books, and keep your place in all of them. Purchasing a book on the Kindle is thousands of times faster than having it delivered through the mail, which is an incredible advantage on the road, away from good book stores. Its paging system makes it seem remarkably like a book, as does its reflective digital ink. However, there is one significant flaw:

I have never broken a book; not in my pocket, not in the mail. So far I have broken two Kindles.

Assuming an outstanding warranty service, which Amazon seems to have, the delivery time on a Kindle is the same as a book. Only, if I ever did manage to break a book, it would be just the one book. With the kindle, break it, and you’ve broken your whole library!

CBDReformed

So, Christian Book Distributors has a special site for Reformed Christians. For some reason, that seems really signficant to me. Honestly, it’s looks really helpful – all the books I’ve been interested in, all in one place! It also feels really strange. Imagine CBD Pentecostal, or CBD Mainline liturgical.

Have Reformed Christians expanded their influence to the point that they warrant their own directed marketing? Or is it merely a function of the fact that the Reformed stream of Christianity has always been the most bookish?

Help!

Ok. I now know exactly what I want for Christmas. More Amazon money. Even on the Kindle, books are expensive!
I can buy books used, for pennies to dollars, but then the delivery time is measured in weeks, and there’s still the cost of postage.

I’m not used to actually having to pay for my reading habit. But it feels like the library system has crashed for me. I haven’t seen a book I was looking for available for immediate check-out from a library in years.