Book groups

The Weekly Wrap: January 26-February 1

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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.

Books and Community

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Books and Community: elderly women spending time in book club
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“Gathering a community of booklovers.” That phrase has been rattling around in my head ever since I heard it from Justin Bessler at Birch Tree Bookery. It reminded me that what I love about books is not only losing myself in them but also finding myself among others who love talking about books. This week I wrote a report summarizing reports on twenty-two book groups for a grant funder. That reinforced the idea of how powerful it can be to gather people around a good book. Books and community are a powerful mix!

Book groups help people find like-minded people. It is wonderful to know we are not alone in love for an author or in seeing the world in the way we do.

Book groups also can foster good disagreements. We may need to define “rules of engagement” about respect and curiosity. Disagreement can force me to think more deeply. It may make me stronger in conviction. Or it may change my mind.

Book groups build community. The shared experience of working through a book can transform acquaintances into friends, people we want to be with and have as part of the fabric of our lives.

Discussing books with others etches a book into our lives. Till We Have Faces is, perhaps, C.S. Lewis’s most profound book. But I just didn’t get it until a group of us struggled through it together.

Books are often a mirror by which we look at our lives. Sometimes, the comments and questions of another help hold that mirror for us.

And sometimes, a book will galvanize a community into action. It will inspire and call us into action and convince us “we can do this!” or “we need to do this!” Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have said, on meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!” Hopefully, books won’t call us to war but to constructive action.

Summing up, books and community are a powerful combination. So that is why I love to host book groups, write about books and host social media devoted to discussing books online. And that is why I’d love to hear your stories of the power of books and community.

Books That Have Changed Your Life

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Last Thursday, I had the privilege of spending a wonderful luncheon with a group of believing faculty and staff at The Ohio State University. What made the luncheon wonderful was not simply the good food from our Faculty Club buffet line. Nor was it simply the charming personalities around the table. It was rather hearing from one another about books that had been formative in our spiritual journeys.  With the organizers permission, I am sharing the list* (to which I contributed a few titles). I’ve added Amazon links so you can learn more about any titles that sound interesting.

Title, Author(s)

Four Portraits, One Jesus, Mark Strauss

Names of God, Mary Foxwell Loeks

Women at Southern: A Walk Through Psalms, Jaye Martin, Alyssa Caudill, and Sharon Beougher (link is to a blog with ordering information, one of our staff contributed to this book)

Tales of the Kingdom, David and Karen Mains

Tales of Resistance, David and Karen Mains

Tales of Restoration, David and Karen Mains

Death by Suburb, David L. Goetz

The Parable of Joy, Michael Card

How to Know God Exists, Ray Comfort

Origins, Ariel Roth

The Radical Disciple, John Stott

Praying the Psalms, Thomas Merton

The Robe, Lloyd C. Douglas

The Insanity of God, Nik Ripken and Gregg Lewis

The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Cross of Christ, John Stott

Knowing God, J. I. Packer

Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoffer

Daring to Draw Near, John White

Life of the Beloved, Henri J. M. Nouwen

The 5 Love Languages, Gary Chapman

Christianity: The Faith that Makes Sense, Dennis McCallum

The Question of God, Dr. Armand M. Nicholi, Jr.

A Skeptic’s Search for God, Ralph O. Muncaster

One of the delights in such times is what you learn about people by the books they share. For one person, it is the chronicle of their seminary journey. For another, their journey to faith. For a third, it is their love for prayer. With another, it was the story of books read aloud to children and grandchildren that had drawn a family into the common narrative of the kingdom.

The other delight of course is having your attention called to books that you might want to read. The Robe is one of those classics I’ve never read. Death by Suburb sounds like it explores the realities we’ve lived with for the last 25 years in suburban Columbus. The Question of God is a book I own but haven’t read that is going to get moved onto the TBR pile.

This is one of the simplest things to organize. You just invite a group of friends to lunch (or brownies, as we did last January, described in my post “Books and Brownies“) and talk about the books that have meant the most to you or shaped your life. It might be that you could gather people around different themes (like “books I’d take on a vacation”, or books I hated as a kid and wouldn’t be without as an adult”).

(Books on this list are not endorsed by the Fellowship of Christian Faculty and Staff or The Ohio State University but simply by those recommending the books!)

What books have changed your life?

*Thanks go to Paul Post for typing up and posting the list!

A Problem I’ve Not Had

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Actually there are probably a number of them. But the one I have in mind here is reading slumps. It occurred to me to write about this because I came across an article recently in Bookriot titled “5 Tips For Getting Out of a Reading Slump.” It has some good suggestions including reading an old favorite, finding a new book by a favorite author, going to the library, which allows you to try out a book and set it aside if you don’t like it, planning out a reading day filled with all your favorite things, including, hopefully a book or two, and going digital if you have not. This is probably great advice–I can’t really say because I’ve never been there.

It’s probably something in the way I’m wired but I can’t imagine being in a reading slump. I don’t say that boastfully because I don’t think there is anything special about being a bibliophile–weird maybe, but not special! My hunch is that slumps might connect to those emotional undulations many of us go through, or they might simply relate to a season of life where it is hard to find the time and energy to sit down with a book. It would seem to me that there is no great guilt attached to this. I’d say, read as you can, not as you can’t. But take this with a grain of salt–I’ve never had to get out of a reading slump, so what do I really know?

The closest I’ve gotten are periods where I’m either mentally distracted or simply physically tired and the words don’t register. Then, it is probably better for me to pray, do some yard work, take a nap, or get a good night’s sleep. Most of the time, that does it for me, and if it doesn’t, the real issue is usually somewhere else in my life, and inattentiveness in reading is just a symptom. Sometimes, I’m just doing enough “brain work” in other areas that I don’t need to do this in my reading. Then its time for something more light-hearted–a good mystery, a Teddy Roosevelt biography, or even a children’s story.

A more interesting question for me is, what keeps me hungry for the next book? A few things come to mind:

  • The consciousness that there are “so many books and so little time.” There are so many things I’d like to read, whether it is in fiction, theology, history, or science that it always seems incredibly easy to find the next book.
  • I move in physical and virtual communities where people often are talking about books. Whether it is someone else’s Goodreads reviews, a book mentioned in a meeting by a colleague, or a New York Times review, I keep hearing about interesting books. I guess hanging out in bookish circles sustains a bookish habit.
  • In my work, I often encounter interesting issues or intellectual challenges that pique my interest. Often these have to do with real people asking sincere questions or facing life issues. Sometimes, just listening is enough but sometimes consulting with better minds than mine is helpful!
  • Prowling bookstores and libraries restocks my mental list of interesting books. I may not have time right now for that book, but the next time I see it, particularly if I find it at a bargain (which is often the case if I wait), I may be ready to read it.
  • Talking or writing about the books you read and interacting with others makes reading more fun and less solitary. For some, a reading group is a great way to get around to reading the books one wants to read, if others want to read them as well. Or you may discover books and authors you never knew you’d like.

I suspect some of these things may be helpful for the slumping reader, or simply the reader who wants to find more time to read. But as I said, I may not be the best to ask as this is a problem I’ve not had.

Have you ever struggled with reading slumps? What has been helpful to you?

 

What Would You Not Read Again?

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I posted recently on our “Books and Brownies” gathering where we all shared books we enjoyed reading that had profoundly shaped our lives. I read a post today in Book Riot that proposed the opposite sort of gathering where they talked about “What Not to Read“. The idea was to get together to talk about at least one book they hated that they would try to talk others out of reading. The basic rules were to be ruthless toward the book but civil toward each other (some others present might like what you hate!). Needless to say, animated but enjoyable discussion among booklovers followed.

I’d love to hear what my readers would nominate as their worst books. If I get a list, I will do a future post. Include your reasons.

Mine would be Gabriel Garcia Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude. Lots of people with the same name, the bizarre world of magical realism, and decadent sex, all of which seemed to go on interminably. But I gather it is supposed to be brilliant social commentary on Latin American history. Here is a link to my recent review.

My wife nominates George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss. In her words, “never read something where the person is getting paid by the word.”

So what are your nominees for “What Not to Read”?

Reasons to Read

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One of the reasons resolutions fail is that we make them simply because we should. Now there is nothing wrong with that, because some “shoulds” are really good for us–for example losing weight if our weight puts us at a health risk or or living by a budget if our spending habits are out of line. Notice in each of these cases that there is a compelling reason for making a change in how you live. My hunch is, if you simply think, I should read more but lack a good reason, other than that this seems like the thing to do in your circle of friends, you might or might not (sometimes peer influence is a good thing!). Here are some of the reasons that work for me:

1. I enjoy (most) of what I read! Sounds simple enough. But sometimes we read things we think we should read that really aren’t interesting to us and we give up 30 pages in. Start with what interests you and be open to expanding those interests over time. Sometimes what was once uninteresting becomes interesting over time and life experience.

2. I read to understand things I care about. That can be a lot of different things from art to cooking to physics to theology. In almost any area, there are online groups that can recommend good books in your area of interest.

3. Some of my reading is because of book groups I’m in. This is a great incentive to read. One group I’m in has read over 60 books in the time we’ve been together–many of those books on our shelves we’ve always wanted to read but somehow never got around to.

4. I read to grow spiritually. Books can be a way to interact with people who have been on the journey and gained insights that I need. Ever wish you could have talked with Mother Theresa or Nelson Mandela or Augustine? You can through their writings.

5. Finally, some of what I read is work-related. Not all the reading in this category is reading I enjoy but much of it makes me think about what I am doing in my work and how I might do it better or differently. Most of our workplaces are changing rapidly and keeping up on new developments may be a lot cheaper than all those ubiquitous seminars and workshops–though they are useful as well.

What am I forgetting? Why do you read? Happy reading in 2014!