Forty Books

The picture of the two chairs is where I read to my oldest son this morning.  That, along with the 30 minutes of rebounding I did for him, was my favorite activity of the morning.

I love it when my family members wake up each day, but I also really enjoy reading before any of them wake up.  Yesterday, I woke up at 5:20 am and went off for a crazy running work out at the track of our local high school.  This morning, however, I enjoyed a variety of reading.  First of all, there was a delay in the delivery of the newspaper.  My normal routine is to read my Bible first and then read the newspaper while I enjoy a cup of coffee.  After that, I use my remaining time before family members rouse to read whatever other book(s) I feel like reading.

So…since the newspaper did not arrive in a timely fashion, here is what I read in chronological order:

1. The Bible: I am working on a memorization project and these were the verses I was practicing this morning from the fourth chapter of Ephesians: “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each of of you speak the truth to his neighbor, for we are members of one another.  Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.  Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.  Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”
2. Narcissus Leaves the Pool by Joseph Epstein: he is a very fun writer to read.  I finished his essay/chapter titled, “A Nice Little Knack for Name Dropping”.  A couple quotes from this, “What name dropping is…is using the magic of celebrated people to establish one’s superiority while at the same time making the next person feel the drabness of his or her own life.  Name dropping is a division of snobbery, and one of the snob’s missions is to encourage a feeling, however vague, of hopelessness in others”.  And later in the chapter, “Behind much name dropping is a desire for distinction.  Look, the name-dropper implies with each fresh drop, I am distinguished, at least by association.”  “The desire to be taken for distinguished seems all but universal.”  I must say that I am not immune from name-dropping, but I also do not like it at all.  In recent years, I have made effort to resist the temptation to name drop.  It has an ugliness and snobbishness to it.  For a VERY fun read, please check out Mr. Epstien’s book, Snobbery.  I’ve read it twice and will read it again sometime when I need to laugh.  Anyway, I start the next chapter titled, “So to Speak”.  It is about our pronunciation and mispronunciation of words, “Why does it feel so foolish, so ketchup on one’s white shirt-front, so absolutely fly open at the senior prom, to know one has been mispronouncing a word?”  “A mispronounced word or name has to be considered a lapse in taste, but unlike normal poor taste, it is brought about by genuine ignorance.  It also represents a self-puncturing of one’s own pretensions, assuming one has any, and I happen to have quite a few.”
3. Pursuing God’s Will Together: A Discernment Practice for Leadership Groups by Ruth Haley Barton: I finished the chapter titled, “Values that Undergird Community”.  One of the values discussed was conflict transformation.  I am conflict averse so this hit home as I would rather avoid it!  “One of the most important aspects of long-term community is agreeing to very concrete commitments regarding how we will handle the inevitable conflict.”  “it is a commitment for us to seek transformation in and through conflict.” “Commitment to engaging conflict in a way that changes us for the better and deepens our unity in Christ is more challenging that conflict management or conflict resolution…”
4. The Great Ideas: A Lexicon of Western Thought by Mortimer J. Adler: I have been reading this long book for a few years off and on.  It is made up of 101 chapters, each one dedicated to an “idea” that Mr. Adler thought was one of the 101 great ideas of Western thought.  The breadth and depth of his writing is amazing.  This morning I read the chapter on “Eternity”.  This stretched my mind so early in the morning!  Here’s a sampling, “But even so it can still be asked how the truth exists, for the attribution of eternity to anything also requires us to consider its mode of being.  If, for example, the truth exists only in the mind, then it exists unchangingly only in the mind of an absolutely infallible knower, a mind which neither learns nor forgets, nor changes in any respect with regard to what it knows.  If God is such a knower, eternal truth can have existence in God’s mind.”
5. The Dictionary of Christian Thought edited by Adrian Hastings, Alistair Mason and Hugh Pyper: this has also been a long term reading project for me.  My friend, Phil Stone, gave this to me years ago and I’ve slowly been working through it.  I’m still on the “D’s”, but I would like to read it more often as I always learn from what I read here.  This morning I read entries on Emily Dickinson, Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, discipleship and Dispensationalism.  My next topic is divine command ethics.
6. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis: This was my favorite reading of the morning because I read from this book to my oldest son (17) while he enjoyed the hot chocolate that I prepared for him.  We are only three pages away from finishing this book.  My wife will not understand how we could have stopped so short of the finish line!

I enjoy my reading more when I encounter words that I do not know.  This morning there were two I needed to look up:

• Mellifluous: (of a voice or words) sweet or musical; pleasant to hear (I cannot ever remember encountering this word before)
• Sycophant: a person who praises powerful people in order to get their approval (this is one of those words which I have looked up numerous times and cannot seem to remember the definition)

I love this quote from Richard Foster’s Freedom of Simplicity book.  I’ve read it so many times to my family, I think my boys have it memorized.  This quote also makes me feel good about my hatred of shopping for clothes for myself and feel okay about not having new and fashionable clothes.

“Consider your clothes.  Most people have no need for more clothes.  They buy more not because they need clothes, but because they want to keep up with the fashions.  Hang the fashions.  Buy only what you need.  Stop trying to impress people with your clothes and impress them with your life.”

 

 

 

I just finished this book by Kevin J. Vanhoozer.  I enjoyed reading it, but it was not an easy read.  I’m meeting with a small group of men to finish discussing the book in a little over a week.  I’m going to try to read the book again before we meet in order to have a better understanding of the ideas presented.

This is a good book to read this year as it is the 500th anniversary of the day that Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses to the church door at Wittenburg.  I thought it would be good this year to do some reading and thinking about the significance of the Protestant Reformation.

The author debates the claim that the Reformation was not a positive development in the history of the church since it unleashed interpretative pluralism.  There were five “solas” emphasized in the Reformation: sola gratia (grace alone), sola fide (faith alone), sola scriptura (Scripture alone), solus Christus (Christ alone) and soli Deo gloria (for the glory of God alone).  The author argues for “mere Protestant Christianity” and that these five solas should not be considered individually, but as a group.  The author even adds his own sola: sola ecclesia (church alone).

The author wants to “retrieve” the solas in order to address the contemporary critique of the Reformation: sola gratia addresses the charge of secularization by locating biblical interpretation in the economy of triune communicative activity, sola fide and sola scriptura address the charge of skepticism by focusing on the principle and pattern of the “economy of theological authority”, solus Christus is used against the charge of schism (via the teaching on the royal priesthood of all believers).  Lastly, soli Deo gloria addresses the challenge of hyperplurality and interpretive disagreement in the church.

In assessing the impact of the Reformation, the author considers whether the Reformation encouraged faithfulness to God’s Word and obedience (conformity to Christ) and he concludes with a very positive view of the Reformation and its “fruits”.

I plan to do a few more posts about some of the specific ideas in this book.

“A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth: this has been exactly reversed.  Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert – himself.  The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt – the Divine Reason.

In the Smarter Than You Think book by Clive Thompson, he discusses what he calls, “marginalia”.  As we read digital books, the comments from the smartest readers could become part of our reading experience and this could become a new type of public thinking.  The Kindle, the Nook and other e-readers already allow readers to share comments and highlights in the text of a book.

I think it would be fun for people to read something together and be sharing comments as they go.  I will explore this concept further.  You can read about it here:  http://futureofthebook.org/commentpress and there is also an app called bookship that looks very interesting.  I would like to know if anyone has experience with these.

 

 

I generally tend to be critical of the negative effects of technology in our lives (especially with the proliferation of iphone use by youth today) and the book I read below by Neil Postman about a year ago is along those lines.  The book was written in 1993, but many of his observations about the dangers of uncritical acceptance of new technologies into our lives are very prophetic.  Mr. Postman wrote another book that many of my friends in college read about T.V. called Amusing Ourselves to Death which was assigned reading in one of Dr. Greg Spencer’s communications studies classes at Westmont College, where I attended.

In order to better consider the positive elements of technology in our lives, I decided to read the book above by Clive Thompson.  So far, it is very good and thought provoking.  I will write another post about it soon but for now here are two quotes that I liked from his chapter on The Art of Finding, “Though we may assume search engines are used to answer questions, some research has found that in reality up to 40 percent of all queries are acts of remembering.  We’re trying to refresh the details of something we’ve previously encountered.” And, “…it’s hard to know what to trust in a world of self-publishing.  To rely on networked digital knowledge, you need to look with skeptical eyes.  It’s a skill that should be taught with the same urgency we devote to teaching math and writing.”

I love to read.  I read mostly non-fiction.  At the beginning of 2016, I made a goal to try to read 50 books in the year.  I was able to read 44 books last year.  Fifty was a bit over ambitious so in 2017 (and future years), I am going to make it my goal to read forty books per year (full disclosure: I am counting books that I listened to and there were about 5 of those in 2016).

I am always reading a separate book to each of my 3 boys (ages 17, 15 and 12) – this is my favorite reading (these books are mostly fiction) and a great way to spend time with my boys and talk with them about important issues and learn together.  I just finished reading The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R. Tolkien to my son, Andrew, yesterday.

It doesn’t really matter how many books I read each year, but I am a goal oriented person, and I like to have challenging projects so having the goal helps to push me to make sure to read lots.  I just finished my 21st book for 2017.

I thought I would start a blog just to have fun writing about the books I read and some of the ideas and thoughts I have as a result.

I love to recommend books to friends, and I also appreciate recommendations from others which give me ideas about which books to read.

Thanks, Chris