Maybe We Should Read Like This

"If we consider men and women apart from their professions or occupations, there is only one situation I can think of in which they almost pull themselves up by their bootstraps, making an effort to read better than they usually do. When they are in love and are reading a love letter, they read for all they are worth. They read every word three ways; they read between the lines and in the margins; they read the whole in terms of the parts, and each part in terms of the whole; they grow sensitive to context and ambiguity, to insinuation and implication; they perceive the color of words, the odor of phrases, and the weight of sentences. They may even take the punctuation into account. Then, if never before or after, they read." - Mortimer J. Adler

He Actually Reads?

This satirical news piece is simultaneously funny and sad. It makes light of the fact that the reading of good books is becoming so marginalized in this day and age.

The "If You..." Book List

Christianity

If you want to a better Biblical exegete:
Read "Exegetical Fallacies" by D.A. Carson

If you want to learn more about L'Abri:
Read "L'Abri" by Edith Schaeffer

If you want to share a pint with the Puritans:
Read "Drinking With Calvin and Luther!: A History of Alcohol in the Church" by Jim West

If you are having trouble accepting (or understanding) the doctrine of particular redemption:
Read "The Death of Death: in the Death of Jesus Christ" by John Owen

If you're not totally convinced about Reformed Theology:
Read "Easy Chairs, Hard Words: Conversations on the Liberty of God" by Douglas Wilson

If you want to read Bible studies by a famous computer scientist:
Read "3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated" by Donald E. Knuth


The 1960's Counterculture

If you want a fair and balanced Christian perspective on 1960's counterculture:
Read "The Dust of Death: The Sixties Counterculture and How It Changed America Forever" by O.S. Guinness

If you want to know whether there ever was a real "Alice D. Millionare":
Read "Brotherhood of Eternal Love" by Stewart Tendler & David May

If you've ever wondered how psychedelic drugs were introduced to America:
Read "The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control" by John Marks

If you wonder about the nitty-gritty details of the Mexican counterculture and music industry:
Read "Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture" by Eric Zolov


Wars And Rumors of Wars

If you think peace has prevailed:
Read "Representations of Violence: Art about the Sierra Leone Civil War" by Patrick K. Muana

If you want to know what a child solider thinks:
Read "A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier" by Ishmael Beah

If you want to know whether you can trust a Serbian:
Read "Spy/counterspy;: The autobiography of Dusko Popov" by Dushko Popov

Computer Science

If you want to learn a bit about computer forensics:
Read "Forensic Discovery" by Dan Farmer

If you are a computer programmer:
Read "Code Complete" by Steve McConnell


Latin America

If you don't believe Fidel Castro once quoted John Calvin and refers to John Knox:
Read "History Will Absolve Me" by Fidel Castro

If you want to get a balanced perspective on the Cuban revolution:
Read "The Winds of December: The Cuban Revolution of 1958" by John Dorschner



Various

If you want to know whether 'James Bond' was for real:
Read "Spy/counterspy;: The autobiography of Dusko Popov" by Dushko Popov

If you wish your kids were more Cajun literate:
Read "Petite Rouge: A Cajun Red Riding Hood" by Mike Artell

If you think blogging is just hype:
Read "We The Media" by Dan Gilmor

On Reading

Douglas Groothuis has a good post on reading. I think he has some great advise. I don't agree with everything, though. I figured I'd provide some commentary on some of his points.

3. Mark up your books, underlining key ideas and jotting ideas in the margins. Keep an index in the front of the book of the most important ideas. If the book is especially profound, take detailed notes on it.

This is a good idea. Regarding keeping notes, I must state that most notes people take are very ineffective. First of all, they are normally far too volumnious. Secondly, they are usual illegible anyways. A mind map would serve the purpose much better in being more clear, more visual, and more succinct.

5. Reread important books. This is a mark of the literary person, as CS Lewis notes in An Experiment in Criticism. I have been rereading much of Francis Schaeffer recently, a man I first read nearly 30 years ago as a young Christian. It is well worth it.

Very true!

6. Never get rid of a book you have read. I have thousands of books, but lament that I let go some I read (and some I didn't).

I disagree with this one. I believe getting rid of some of your book is a good practice. Here are many reasons why I say this:

1. It will make you evaluate which books you really liked and which ones you plan to re-read


2. Rather than holding a copy of a book that you may never read, giving away some of your books will recirculate them


3. You could give some books for free, helping out a friend


4. You can trade them and receive another unread book in its place (ie. Title Trader


5. The cycle of is good for helping to avoid being attached to books as objects. This helps you to realise that what is really important are the ideas, not the physical object. Collection-mongering, while not inherently wrong, is sometimes problematic when one collects for the sake of collecting :)


6. If you are really taking notes (or mind maps) of the key points of a book, you should be able to give it away because you've condensed the important/crucial points

Now that I've said this, I think I might have scored some major points with any serious theologian-husband's wife. She now has some points to provide in favor of getting rid of that pile of books! :) But, alas, I'm not advocating indiscriminate elimination. I keep many books and probably have some that I should get rid of. However, I just disagree with Doug's idea that books should never be gotten rid of.

A good book collection not only grows, but also shrinks. Shrinking is not ridiculous, it is refinement. Use shrinking to enhance your collection, not decimiate it.

7. Read and reread old books. Don't be taken captive by fashion. Savor the classics.

Yes! Yes! I'd just add that a good way to get to the old classics is to read the citations in modern books and read those authors. Then also see who those authors cite, and read them.

8. Ask smart people what their favorite books are and why. Then read them.

Great point!

10. Always look up and learn unfamiliar words you find in your reading. From 1976-1994 or so, I filled a blank book of over a 100 pages with such words. Use such words in conversation, even if the person you are conversing with may not know them.

Good vocabulary builder! One suggestion, though, if you always interrupt your reading to do vocabulary, you might find yourself slowing down too much. I suggest reading through the chapter, underlining words and looking up them all later together. If you write them down in a book you are losing the context. If you underline them, you can later flip through the chapter or the entire book and see them in their original context.

12. When in doubt, buy a book.

A questionable ending to a good list! :) I haven't bought a book yet in 2007. Why must we buy a book? Do we not have 100's unread sitting on the shelf?

Douglas, thank you for providing a thought-provoking list as you so often do!

A Devil's View of Human Nature and Religion

INTRODUCTION

I'm currently reading Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I rarely read such classical literature, but a friend said good things about it and I had to check it out.

There is a compelling section toward the end of the book, where Ivan (the intellectual) has a nightmare and/or some sort of delerium. He begins to talk to a man who implicitly is understood to be a devil. The visitor doesn't necessarily identify himself outright, but there are many non-subtle clues as to his identity. At one point, the devil speaks on religion and his method within religion. Here I provide two excerpts that I found interesting.

ON THE FUTILITY OF ASCETECISM:

"Now, I lead you in turns between belief and disbelief and, in doing so, I'm pursuing a certain goal....I already know you well enough--that is how I'll achieve my goal..you will long to join 'the hermits in the wilderness and the immaculate virgins,' because that is what you are really secretly longing for: to wander in the desert, feed on the locusts and save your soul" [at this point Ivan makes fun of the devil, questioning whether the devil knows how hard it is to tempt someone who feeds on locusts and prays in the desert, to which the devil replies...] "I've done practically nothing but that, my friend. One can forget this and all the worlds when one works on such a person, because he is really a gold mine: in some cases his soul may be worth a whole constellation, that is, of course in our special accounting system. A victory in such a case is priceless! And some of those fellows, I assure you, are in no way less sophisticated than you are and, although you may not believe it, they're capable of visualizing such depths of belief and disbelief at the same time that there are moments when it looks as if the fellow is within a hair's breadth of plunging head over heals into the abyss."


ON THE CONFESSIONAL:

"As to the Jesuit confessional, it is, indeed, one of my sweetest distractions in the sad moments of my existence. Let me tell you of another instance that occurred only a few days ago. A blonde, twenty-year-old Norman girl comes to an old Jesuit father. A buxom, natural beauty...[I] was just about to leave when I heard the old Jesuit arranging, through that little grill of the confessional, to meet her later. Just think--that old man, hard as flint, and there he fell in the twinkling of an eye! The truth is, though, that nature took its due!"

CONCLUSION: WHAT WE CAN LEARN

These speeches given by the devil as portrayed in this fictional dialog point to some interesting truths.

1. Paul, in II Timothy 3:5, speaks of people who go about having "the appearance of godliness, but denying its power". And then Paul wraps up that statement in v9 with the following: "But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all". There are many people who outwardly appear very godly but turn out to inwardly be very different and in due time it will be evident who they really are. This is a two-fold warning. First, we need to examine ourselves as to whether our religion is only skin deep. Second, we need to be careful about what we assume about others just because they do some impressive thing.

2. Self-made religion, asceticism, and extreme instances of self denial may cause others to be impressed with our spirituality, but God wants our heart to bow to Him not just our body. In Colossians 2:23, Paul makes this clear when he wraps up speaking of the danger of being hindered by human teachings by saying the following: "These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh."

3. The final part of Colossians 2:23 also speaks to the fact that great displays of self-made religion or asceticism do not impart to us any sort of power. The greatest display of asceticism will not make us more resistant to Satan's onslaught, and the strictest Jesuit traditions and priestly concecration did not make the priest in the quote from Brothers Karamazov any more able to resist his temptation to use confession as a vehicle for his sinful desires.

What if our supposed spirituality and self-denial sometimes only leaves us wide open to crafty attacks from Satan? The aforementioned quotes really brought that thought to my mind.

What Kind of Reader Am I?

I rarely do this, but here is one of those "things":

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Book Snob You like to think you're one of the literati, but actually you're just a snob who can read. You read mostly for the social credit you can get out of it.
Dedicated Reader
Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm
Literate Good Citizen
Non-Reader
Fad Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

Alan Watts on the Gaze of the Christian God

I'm reading a book by Alan Watts, "The Book". He was famous for doing a lot to bridge the gap between the new mysticism (Western counterculture) and the old mysticism (Eastern philosophy/religion).

As I read this book, I'm acutely aware that as a Christian I do not accept his conclusions and in fact find a number of them quite bizarre and off-the-wall. His view of "god" and our existence can not explain reality as it really is. I'm reading this book mainly because I like to know
something about the things I critique.

As I've been reading through the book, I found a statement of his that really jumped out of the page. While I neither agree with his overarching thesis nor his developing argument, something about this statement made me say "WOW":

"The image of God as a personal Being, somehow 'outside' or other than the world, had the merit of letting us feel that life is based on intelligence, that the laws of nature are everywhere consistent in that they proceed from one ruler, and that we could let our imaginations go to the limit in conceiving the sublime qualities of this supreme and perfect Being. The image also gave everyone a sense of importance and meaning. For this God is directly aware of every tiniest fragment of dust and vibration of energy, since it is just his awareness of it that enables it to be. This awareness is also love and, for angels and men at least, he has planned an everlasting life of the purest bliss which is to begin at the end of mortal time. But of course there are strings attached to this reward, and those who purposely and relentlessly deny or disobey the divine will must spend eternity in agonies as intense as the bliss of good and faithful subjects.

The problem of this image of God was that it became too much of a good thing. Children working on their desks in school are almost always put off when even a kindly and respected teacher watches over their shoulders. How much more disconcerting to realize that each single deed, thought, and feeling is watched by the Teachers of teachers, that nowhere on earth or in heaven is there any
hiding-place from that Eye which sees all and judges all."

For all his faults, there are two things in this excerpt that Alan gets right on the money:

1. He identifies (at least as a concession) that the Christian view of God is the foundation for importance, meaning in life, and consistency in the laws of nature.

2. He identifies why the unbeliever does not like the Christian concept of God, He's far too all-knowing, far too holy and just, etc. Humans who rebel against the "Teachers of teachers" can not hide from the eye of God, so naturally they would much rather want no God, or at least a "god" who can be fooled and avoided.

Indeed there is no "hiding place" for those who continue to defy the God who created them.
Many people innately know that a personal God is the very foundation for the things that they depend upon in their life, and yet they still rebel against Him and deny His existence simply because they come to the conclusion that Alan Watts reached: It is "disconcerting to realize that each single deed, thought, and feeling is watched by the Teachers of teachers". I agree that it is disconcerting to our independent spirit to know that God is omnipresent and omnipotent. Unfortunately, though, denying reality does not evade the necessity of dealing with it.

More Hours In A Day?

I've been reading Brothers Karamazov for a long time, a VERY long time. It mainly has to do with the fact that I'm also reading a lot of other things simultaneously, but Brothers Karamazov is also a very long book!! (my copy is over 1000 pages)

After having read it for a few months at least, I've come to the realization that it is going to take me quite a bit longer to complete it. I figure that If I dedicate one hour per evening every day, it will still take me almost a month to complete it. Yikes! There is no way I'd keep up that sort of pace. Either I need to train myself to read faster or I need to find a way to stretch out more hours per day. This is just one of those books that you need to dedicate many huge blocks of time to complete. Oh the joy of being a Bibliophile :)