Category Archives: Reading

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.

Fiction, Reading

Men Would Enjoy Good Stories, If They Tried Them.

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“If men read fewer books on manhood and more really good stories they’d be much better for it,” Barnabas Piper tweeted sometime last year. He fleshes out his reasoning in this post, saying stories make you want to be better, show you role models and anti-heroes, and get under the surface. If it’s true, he says, that we learn more by what we catch than what we are taught, then good stories are the places where we will catch what we want to learn.

Reading

What Fiction Do Men Read?

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One of our friends, Nick Harrison of Harvest House, asks on his Facebook wall:

“What can we all do to boost men’s fiction? What authors do the men you know read? What are their complaints about the state of men’s fiction (if they have any complaints)? I’d especially like to hear from male readers, but all who can offer some insight are welcome to respond.”

So what do you think? Don’t confine your answer to Christian books. What fiction do you or the men you know read? Answers from the original post include Dale Cramer, Athol Dickson, Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, David Baldacci, Vince Flynn, John Hart, John Lescroart, and Lee Child. I mentioned names you’ve seen here, like Bertrand, N.D. Wilson, and Andrew Peterson.

BIG UPDATE in the comments below.

Publishing, Reading

Do You Read eBooks on Your Phone?

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Last year, Digital Book World asked its Twitter crowd, “Do you read on your smartphone? Do you read on other devices, too?” They got 30 answers. About half said they read on multiple devices; the other half said they don’t read long works on their phones.
Now, 56% of Americans have smartphones, which are also called pocket reading devices. Some companies are marketing ebooks only to their pocket readers, like the Samsung Galaxy S4.
With some many mobile devices like this, publishers should consider them first when designing ebooks and ebook marketplaces.