Analog Archives - Bob on Books

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Book Groups

Many of us who enjoy reading love to discuss what we are reading with others. I’ve been a part of one book group or another for nearly thirty years. And I have to say that the books I’ve discussed in groups have been the ones that have stayed with me.

I’m thinking of this because the book group of which I’m a part just finished our latest book. Now, the idea of getting together to talk about books seems inherently nerdy. Our group probably takes that to another level. We dig into theological texts, usually a chapter at a time, a week at a time, working through a book. Our latest was N.T. Wright’s The Challenge of Acts. And if that sounds nerdy, our next book is Judea under Greek and Roman Rule by David deSilva, which looks at critical background behind the Gospels and Acts.

What makes it work is we are reading what we want to read. And while our choices might seem strange, I think the principle is important, whether the group is into romantasy, historical or literary fiction, or non-fiction. We also talked about something else important. We look for books that don’t just inform us but give us something to discuss or even disagree with. They engage us, stretch our horizons, make us think and re-think.

I’d enjoy hearing from others who have been part of book groups that you thought were good. What made them work?

Five Articles Worth Reading

Her latest book, Onyx Storm, broke first week sales records, selling 2.7 million copies. In “Rebecca Yarros’s ‘Onyx Storm’ Is the Fastest-Selling Adult Novel in 20 Years,” Alexandra Alter explores her phenomenal emergence as the leading romantasy author.

There is a renewed fascination with analog–vinyl records, VHS and audio cassettes, film, hand-drawn game maps, letters–you name it. In “The Stranger Things Effect Comes for the Novel,” Mark Athitakis explores this phenomenon as it manifests in recent fiction.

Agnes Callard considers the shift she has seen in children’s literature to characters that are “weird” in some way in “Where the Wild Things Aren’t.” She explores why this is important to children and what this signifies.

Have you wondered why we refer to characters in a text as uppercase or lower text? Mental Floss answers this question in “The Surprisingly Literal Reason We Call Letters ‘Uppercase’ and ‘Lowercase’.”

Finally, I probably don’t have to do much to convince this crowd of what a good thing libraries are. But we may need to advocate for that in some communities that don’t see the value. James Folta summarizes a new study by the New York Public Library that confirms “It’s official: Research has found that libraries make everything better.“

Quote of the Week

“To read is to surrender oneself to an endless displacement of curiosity and desire from one sentence to another”

David Lodge, who was born January 28, 1935 was an English author, critic, and professor. This statement caught me up short, making me reflect on what may be one of the reasons for my undying love of reading. David Lodge died on January 1, 2025.

Miscellaneous Musings

I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about the announcement by the publisher of Simon and Schuster that they will no longer require authors to solicit “blurbs” for their books. Sometimes the practice seems excessive, when I have to wade through page after page of these endorsements. But I also have to admit, that with an unfamiliar author, who endorses them tells me about their audience and serves as a clue as to whether I’ll like it. What do you think?

I’m about 200 pages into Haruki Murakami’s The City and Its Uncertain Walls and it feels a bit like walking through a labyrinth, with a surprise around each corner, and no clue what lies at the center. It plays on questions of what is real, what is substance and shadow. I’ll let you know what I thgink of it when I figure that out! But I’m enthralled.

I’ve loved the idea of Bookshop.org as an online platform that supports indie bookstores. To date, they have generated nearly $36 million for over 1900 stores. This week, they expanded their capacity by offering a way to purchase e-books and support your favorite local indie. you can read more about it here.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: The Month in Reviews: January 2025 (21 reviews)

Tuesday: Samuel Parkison, To Gaze Upon God

Wednesday: Stuart M. Kaminsky, Lieberman’s Choice

Thursday: Timothy P. Carney, Family Unfriendly

Friday: Amy Peeler, Hebrews

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for January 26-February 1, 2025!

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page.

Analog Church, Jay Y. Kim (Foreword by Scot McKnight). Downers Grove: IVP Praxis, 2020

Summary: An argument for churches maintain real community, participatory worship, the ministry of the word, and communion in an era when it is tempting to “go digital” with the rest of the culture.

This has been an interesting time to come out with a new book. This book takes “interesting” to a new level. It “dropped” on March 31, amid lockdowns and the pivot of business, education, and church to all-digital. In the words of the subtitle, it argues “why we need real people, places, and things in the digital age.” Gathering to sing together in close proximity to other people in an enclosed space, listening to the Bible taught without a mediating screen, sharing the Lord’s table right now seems like an epidemiologist’s nightmare scenario. I can’t recommend it–for now.

Jay Y. Kim’s argument is an important one that our current constraints actually amplify. He commends “whole body” worship where we are not passive observers of a performance but actually join our voices with others. Right now, the most I can do is sing to a computer screen, with my mike muted, to the accompaniment of either an actual singer or a recorded music track. I’ve had desserts online and hundreds of conversations, including some rich interactions, but apart from socially distanced visits with family without hugs and a few socially distanced visits with friends, no real presence other than with my wife. I’ve listened to some great teaching of the scriptures and webinars with thought-provoking content (I’ve even hosted a few) but none of the times of sitting around a table, Bibles open, wrestling with a text and letting it wrestle with us together. I’ve not partaken of the Lord’s Table since lockdowns began. I’ve heard of it being led virtually where we bring our own bread and cup. Our church does threefold communion including footwashing, a “love feast” or meal, and the bread and cup.

Kim, I believe, would argue that despite our increasing creativity with digital technology in this time, we are becoming more aware than ever of its limitations, as much of a mercy as it has been. We grow impatient, we become aware of how shallow many of our interactions are, and we feel our isolation even though we may have thousands of “friends” on our social media accounts. He proposes that the medium is not just a neutral means through which the message comes but that, in McLuhan’s words, “the media is the message.” He contends that the move of churches, even in normal times to an increasingly digitized worship is actually contrary to the spiritual longings of the rising generation’s longing for transcendence rather than relevance, in the gatherings of God’s people unmediated by digital technologies.

I think the misguided attempts of churches to gather during the pandemic, ostensibly for reasons of “religious freedom” actually reflect these longings, and make Kim’s point. “Analog” church does something different than digital. It is incarnational, celebrating the Incarnate Lord. There has been a move away from such churches in recent years, and I’ve heard people say they can “do” church with the device in their pockets. What if one of the strange mercies of this pandemic is to make us so “Zoom-fatigued” that we re-examine our uses of digital technology, and realize the gift of hearing the real voices of the older woman who warbles and the fellow who can’t carry tune in a bucket, but who sing with such joy that we get caught up. What if we rediscover what a pleasant and good thing it is to break bread around a common table?

Kim himself suggests as much in an interview on Front Porch Republic. He acknowledges the ways this technology has made it possible to stay connected when physical gatherings carry danger. He touches on how we may struggle to find our way back to embodied presence with others, when a hug with someone from another household is no longer dangerous. His hope is that we will recognize the gifts of our life together as the church, unmediated by technology and screens, and reconsider our embrace of digital technologies. My hunch is that we will continue to use some of these technologies, having discovered uses that extend beyond the pandemic. But Kim’s book is one worth reading now as we consider what our transition to a post-pandemic new normal will look like. Hopefully it will be a new normal vibrant with warm, incarnate life, as warm as the vinyl some of us never stopped loving and others have newly discovered.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions I have expressed are my own.