Category Archives: Reading

Reading

100 Best Scottish Novels

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The Herald of Scotland is culling a list of the 100 best Scottish novels from their readers. They have 30 so far, including The Death of Men by Allan Massie, The House with the Green Shutters by George Douglas Brown, and The Heart of Midlothian by Sir Walter Scott.

Readers might take this recent list of crime fiction into consideration. They say Scotland can have an sobering, perhaps despairing, effect on people. Writer Helen Fitzgerald appears to disagree.

“My mum said 20 years living in the grey, murder capital of Western Europe, has made me write about darkness, despair, and deviance. She suggested I come home to Australia to write something with hope and joy in it. Taking her advice, I headed downunder in December, sat at an outside table in a cheerful, sunny beach-side cafe, and started writing. The story I started writing is about a dysfunctional Australian couple who accidentally overdose, kill and bury their baby whilst a raging bushfire burns folk to a crisp in the distance. Sorry Mum, it’s not Glasgow. It’s me.”

Reading

An Illustration on Paying Attention

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“(And whatever is placed in active and direct Oppugnancy to the Good is, ipso facto, positive Evil.)” Patrick Kurp ties this line by Coleridge to this line by Waugh: “Civilization has no force of its own beyond what is given it from within.”

Reading, Religion

Are reader-friendly Bibles just marketing hype?

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J. Mark Bertrand echoes another reader of the ESV Reader’s Bible in finding he reads more in this edition than in other editions. Readability, he says, is a thing, and it influences how we read. “Yet, like Steve, I’ve found myself getting sucked into the reader, coming up for air much later than expected.”

Reading

Leawood Boy Allowed to Keep Free Library in His Yard

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Last month, I linked to a story on a 9-year-old boy who had his “little free library” taken down by his city government. Yesterday he appealed to the Leawood, Kansas, city council and won a temporary moratorium on these structures. The council will take up a permanent resolution this fall.

But all was not good in the hood, according to The Daily Signal. “Why do we pay taxes for libraries and have those boxes on the street?” asked one attendee. Another member claimed the little libraries were eyesores and argued, “You will destroy Leawood if you destroy our codes and bylaws.”

One must ask how many towns across America will be destroyed before the freedom to read will be abolished. One can only hope that citizen will vandalize the boy’s little library in the name of John Adams, George Washington, and all of our great forefathers who looked upon their children with books in hand and said, “Not today, son. That’s not what this country is about.”

Authors, Reading

Alone with Classics

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Author Sarah Perry was “raised by Strict Baptists” in Essex and not allowed to watch movies or read contemporary books. The result? “I turned my back on modernity and lost myself to Hardy and Dickens, Brontë and Austen, Shakespeare, Eliot and Bunyan. I memorised Tennyson, and read Homer in prose and Dante in verse; I shed half my childhood tears at The Mill on the Floss. I slept with Sherlock Holmes beside my pillow, and lay behind the sofa reading Roget. It was as though publication a century before made a book suitable – never was I told I ought not to read this or that until I was older. To my teacher’s horror my father gave me Tess of the D’Urbervilles when I was still at primary school, and I was simply left to wander from Thornfield to Agincourt to the tent of sulking Achilles, making my own way.”

And she soaked in the King James Bible. Her debut novel, After Me Comes the Flood, is reviewed here. (via Prufrock)

Authors, Reading

Your Reading List for Muriel Spark

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Philip Christman has ranked and encapsulated (sort of) 22 works by Muriel Spark. He says, The Hothouse by the East River comes off like overripe fruit. For Robinson and The Bachelors, he says “Spark was pretty much kicking ass right out of the gate; these are ‘the worst’ of her early novels, and yet they would have represented a quite respectable peak for anyone else.”

The Girls of Slender Means Christman considers Spark’s best. Have you read any of these works? What do you think of them? (via John Wilson)

Reading, Religion

Francis Schaeffer on Sharing the Gospel

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“Francis Schaeffer was asked what he’d do if he had an hour to share the gospel with someone. He responded by saying he’d listen for 55 minutes and then, in the last 5 minutes, have something meaningful to say. In other words, he listened in order to speak the gospel.

Our evangelism is often unbelievable because we don’t listen at all. All too often the gospel we share is an information download, not a loving articulation of how the good news fits into the needs, fears, hopes, and dreams of others’ lives.”

— Jonathan Dodson, Unbelievable Gospel: How to Share a Gospel Worth Believing.

Reading

Read What You Like

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Austin Kleon writes, “We all love things that other people think are garbage. You have to have the courage to keep loving your garbage…” He says this because someone out there is telling us we should be embarrassed to read certain things. Kleon points to Alan Jacobs’ twitter feed for some good points on reading what you like. There’s also this.

Reading, Religion

Understanding the Bible Yourself

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John Piper has a new plan to teach people to understand the Bible on their own. He’s calling it “Look at the Book,” and at first blush it looks to be inductive Bible study, something Precept Ministries and Bryan College have done for years. Not that it isn’t worth doing again by other people. I’m just making the connection.

Reading

Should Your Kids Read Dark, But Truthful Books?

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N.D. Wilson writes about “dark-tinted, truth-filled reading” for children: “I would understand if hard-bitten secularists were the ones feeding narrative meringue to their children with false enthusiasm. They believe their kids will eventually grow up and realize how terrible, grinding, and meaningless reality really is. Oh, well—might as well swaddle children in Santa Clausian delusions while they’re still dumb enough to believe them. But a Christian parent should always be looking to serve up truth. The question is one of dosage.”

He says Christians should be protecting their children, but not over-sheltering them from the real painful world. Christian kids need “stories in which murderers are blinded on donkeys and become heroes. Stories with dens of lions and fiery furnaces and lone prophets laughing at kings and priests and demons. Stories with heads on platters. Stories with courage and crosses and redemption. Stories with resurrections. And resurrections require deaths.”

Julie Silander has begun a list of such reading on StoryWarren.