reading

Long-Form Thinking

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james_patterson

James Patterson, by Susan Solie-Patterson – http://www.libarything.com/pic/156833, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15593339

I draw my title from a recent essay by best selling author James Patterson, titled The Literacy of Long-Form Thinking. His essay raises the question of what kind of republic will we be when the average amount that first time voters read is less than ten minutes a day? He is concerned that a tweet-length attention span is inadequate to give careful attention to the complexities that face our nation.

This brought to mind my recent reading of The Wired Soul (reviewed here) and the finding that how we interact with the digital media in our lives literally re-wires our brains, and does so in ways that dispose us to lots of short bursts of disconnected information in tweets, Facebook posts, and scanned articles on screens. There is more and more evidence that these habits of reading make it more difficult for us to give extended attention to a text–whether it be the Bible, a long-form essay, or a book. We are losing our ability to give extended attention to anything.

I wonder if this applies not only to text but to our interactions with people. How many times have you heard the phrase, “cut to the chase?” How many times have you felt that you needed to say something faster, because the other person seemed impatient, distracted, eager to get to the “next” thing, whatever it is. How many times have I (or you) been that impatient person?

Yet how many times are the most important things we want to say to another person reducible to 140 characters? This is even more the case when two people (or parties) cannot see eye to eye about something. Real understanding requires far more communication than a tossed-off slogan. Patterson’s concerns seem pretty valid to me–if we cannot engage in long, attentive conversation where understanding a different point of view, wrestling with complexity and nuance are involved, we might be in real trouble. Consider, for example The Federalist Papers, which lay out in a series of extended arguments, the reasons for the particular form of government that was being proposed in our Constitution. I cannot imagine where we would be if we had to depend on a series of tweets!

So, what is to be done? Patterson, to his credit has put his money where his mouth is, providing grants and scholarships, and funding for reading programs and bookstores. His challenge in his essay is that those of us who recognize the value of the “long-form thinking” involved in being able to sit down with a book and follow an argument should get off our duffs and do something about our functional illiteracy as a culture. He suggests:

“Are you upset about this election? Are you upset about the direction of this society? Then fix it. You’re a reader. You know what reading does for your ability to think things through. Get out there and make this your No. 1 priority. Got a kid? Make her read 20 minutes a day. Got a neighbor who stares at his phone all day? Get him a good book. Volunteer at the library. Volunteer at a school. At the very least, subscribe to a newspaper or magazine that supports long-form journalism and stop reading stuff for free through your screen.”

The last one got me. I have been thinking about subscribing to The Atlantic.  I’ve clicked on so many good articles from this publication recently and continue to be impressed with the thoughtfulness of the writing I find there. So, before writing this paragraph I decided to subscribe. Apparently there are others who are thinking this way as well. According to a Fortune article, at least 132,000 people have subscribed to the New York Times since the election with other publications like The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post also seeing rises in subscriptions.

Given that I am writing during the holiday season, this sparks some other ideas of what we could do:

  1. If you are taking vacation, take a book along and take at least 20 minutes a day to read uninterrupted, preferably stashing your smartphone somewhere else.
  2. Buy at least one book for each child or grandchild. If appropriate, read it together, snuggled up on a comfy couch or chair. You will never regret it.
  3. Many libraries and bookstores have programs where you can donate a book to a child. Giving the gift of reading to someone else is a great way to celebrate the season.
  4. If you are retired and looking for ways to volunteer, go to your library, or local elementary school. In many cases they have opportunities to help children read.
  5. Buy a book you think your circle of friends would like to read and give it to them. Suggest reading it by a certain date (maybe by the end of January during the winter doldrums) and get together to discuss it. If you like the idea, you could form a book group. If not, you can say you read at least one book in 2017 (something that 28% of the population has not done).
  6. Give a gift subscription to a magazine you like to a friend. It helps them, and helps magazines subscribe as well. And for the digital natives, most magazines offer both print and digital versions with a print subscription.

I think Patterson is right. The trends in the decline of functional literacy are alarming, and the implications even more. It might mean we begin with ourselves. And if we already have cultivated the reading habit, it might mean being creative–and not insufferable–in inviting others to begin to re-wire their brains through the delights of long-form reading with physical texts. We may not have the millions Patterson is putting behind his conviction. But we all have social capital–other people whose lives we influence. We all can do something.

Books During Troubling Times

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?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????What part do books play in your life during tumultuous times? Right now, we are in the midst of political convention season with harsh words both inside and outside the convention halls that are symptomatic of our national fault lines. Our news seems an endless stream of violence and hate and the angry responses of others. How do you deal with all of that? And what part do books play?

Some of us may simply decide these are not times when one should bury one’s nose in a book. We get caught up on CNN, or Fox News, or NPR, or the endless bits and bytes of information on Facebook and Twitter. Truthfully, I think most who follow this route simply ratchet themselves up to high levels of anxiety, anger, or depression.

Books offer a great escape for some of us. For a time, we can imagine ourselves in imaginary worlds, on fantastic voyages, or in idyllic settings. Maybe there are wars, but they are far off and imaginary with clearly drawn lines of good and evil–orcs versus men, Romulans versus Earth. These are worlds with heroes and villains. Or we join a clever, iconic detective like Hercule Poirot as he (or she) ferrets out the murderer, as in the Agatha Christie mystery I am reading at present.

For others, we read to understand–whether it is books on Islam, on race relations, on political processes and past presidents. We read to be able to understand how we’ve gotten to this place, to reflect on our way forward and what may be learned from the past. We want to go deeper than the news story soundbites and the ponderings of pundits. Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns opened my eyes to the huge internal migration of Blacks from the south to the northern cities of our country between 1915 and 1970, and how it has shaped race relations to this day.

Sometimes we need books that help us step out of our own situation to get perspective from another time and place. While I am disturbed by the unrest in our own country, reading Rohinton Mistry’s account, in A Fine Balance, of India during Indira Gandhi’s time as Prime Minister and the country was under a state of emergency, I gain a renewed appreciation for living in a country where there is still a commitment to the rule of law, that serves as the basis or ground for protests of injustice, where law could not be bought, sold, and enforced by strongmen. It reminds me that if we become complacent about advocating for the living out of a nation’s highest ideals, either at home or abroad, we risk losing something precious and rare in the world.

Finally, it seems to me that we sometimes respond to troubling times by going back to sacred texts as well as the great works of literature. A recent book on lament pointed me back to the biblical language of lament that allows me to give expression to grief and sadness over the paroxysm of violence we see in the world and the bitter enmities that fuel that violence. Troubling times remind us that we can’t live on mass culture pablum, that we need to keep company with those who have wrestled with the deepest questions of the human condition.

I am not going to make particular recommendations for what you ought to read. What I might suggest is that all these different types of books have a place in our reading in troubled times. Books help us confront the deep questions our troubles raise, give us perspective and spiritual resources, and help us lay aside questions that cannot be resolved in a day when it is time to do so. Read well in these times, friends.

 

 

 

Review: Reading for the Common Good

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Reading for the Common Good

Reading for the Common Good, C. Christopher Smith. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2016.

Summary: Explores how the communal practice of reading in congregations fosters a learning community and shared social imagination the results in clearer congregational identity, sense of mission in one’s setting, and wider engagement with the environment, economics, and political order.

I came across the work of C. Christopher Smith a few years ago through an online version of The Englewood Review of Books. The online site has become one of my “go-to” places to learn about new releases and also great books available for discounts (usually in e-format). Smith is the editor of this enterprise which is tied in with the ministry of Englewood Christian Church in Indianapolis, an urban congregation on the east side of Indianapolis. In his previous book, Slow Church, which I reviewed a year ago, Smith offered a few more clues that books were not just a personal passion that his church indulges but that reading plays a role in its common life. In this book, Smith articulates a vision for reading that goes beyond personal or even common life to the common good of his congregation and wider community.

Fundamentally, he and his community have fostered the idea of becoming a learning organization, building on Peter Senge’s idea in The Fifth Discipline. Learning to read together, beginning with the scriptures both in preaching and the practice of lectio divina, and discussing other works together has helped his church understand its context as well as envision a different “social imaginary.” This is a key idea in the book, borrowed from the work of Charles Taylor. Social imaginaries are our mental images of how things are done in our social context, often not articulated nor evaluated. For example, it might be contended that we have accustomed ourselves to a very polarized political dialogue between two parties. And we may think we must choose one of the two alternatives, both individually, and communally as congregations or church bodies. A different social imaginary might envision a very different type of political engagement.

Smith contends that as we read, reflect, discuss and imagine together around the scriptures, and around books that may speak to our context, we can explore, and be confronted by different social imaginaries that change the way we think about who and why we are as a church, about when and where we are in our context, and how we think about our presence in our communities, in the physical environment we inhabit, in the economic order in which we participate, and the political order of our communities, states and nations.

I had two questions in mind as I was reading this book. One was, can you really hope for all this to happen from our reading of scripture and other good reading? The other was, how does he get his congregation to do this kind of reading together? The answer to the first question was simple. I found myself asking, “isn’t this in fact why I do Bob on Books in the first place?”  I believe that not only the “book of all books” but also other good writing can change the way we see the world and our place in it and shape our actions in ways that seek the greater flourish of the people and the places we share life with. What Smith did here is give me better language for what, instinctively, I’ve sought to do on the blog, both in my own writing and my reviews of the writing of others.

Chapter 9 in the book helped answer the second question for me. As noted already, Smith and his community begin with the slow reading of scripture, and he believes that learning to attend to God’s word in these ways is both foundational and helpful in learning, and loving to attend to other words. Congregational leaders promote reading within various teams related to the particular work they are doing. Their goals are modest. Even one book read and discussed together in a year is good. They create spaces for conversations about reading in classes, book clubs and seminars. They make resources available including books related to a current sermon series, they develop a process for including reviews of books on websites and a process to curate those reviews. And they keep fostering the love of reading among the children of the congregation. I read this and was struck with the conclusion that even in a busy congregation (whose isn’t?) of people who don’t read much, this is doable.

Smith concludes the book with a couple of reading lists: an annotated one of books related to the chapters of the book, and a list organized by subjects of books that have been helpful to his church community. My impression was “meaty, but accessible” for both lists–plainly richer fare that the inspirational fiction and non-fiction that is the typical “Christian reading diet.”

It is refreshing when a book comes along that connects the dots and clarifies one’s understanding of the things one cares about. This was such a book, and in doing so, the book accomplished for me, or rather in me, what the author contends reading does for us. I concluded the book with fresh ideas about fostering learning community around books in the professional and church communities with which I connect. Hopefully, that will indeed lead to some “common goods.”

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

200,000 Views Later

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One of my TBR piles

Sometime during the day yesterday Bob on Books was viewed for the two hundred thousandth time since I launched the blog in August 2013. For some blogs, this is not such a big deal. They may get that many views in a month or even a week or less. I’m still surprised that over 137,000 visitors were actually interested enough to visit a page.

The picture above was the one that appeared on the first blog. Since then there have been 930 more posts (an average of 215 views per post) and something of a rhythm that includes two to three review posts, and usually something related to reading, something related to larger life issues, and, since May 2014 posts each Saturday on Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown. I take Sundays off from writing new posts, but often re-post old Youngstown posts or others from the archives.

I have to say that this has truly been a delightful journey. Some of those delights have been:

  • Readers: I’ve interacted with so many either on the blog or via pages on Facebook and Google +. With very few exceptions, people have been thoughtful, often appreciative, and many times have added insights of their own that have enriched my insights.
  • Admins:  I post on a number of Facebook and Google+ pages appropriate to content of particular posts. Page admins have been so gracious in permitting this. I could mention so many but several stand out: Byron Borger at Hearts and Minds Books, John Mulholland at Charles Malik Society for Redeeming Reason, Rob Bradshaw at Theology on the Web, David Swartz at Geezer 1, and those two amazing Youngstown women, Bobbi Ennett Allen at I Used to Live in Youngstown, and Joan Alfona Watters at I Grew Up in Youngstown. Tom Grosh at the Emerging Scholars Network has given a number of my review posts a second life and a wider audience.
  • Authors: I am surprised by how many times I’ve heard from authors of books I’ve reviewed. Most gratifying is when they convey that I understood what they were trying to do.
  • Publishers: A number of the books I’ve reviewed, and often enjoyed, were graciously provided by publishers. Yes, I took time to read and review these books. But I don’t take these review copies for granted. I hope I helped make their books known and helped sell a few.
  • Booksellers: These folks, especially the Indies, have taken so many risks and work so hard to pursue what they love. Its been fun to tell some of their stories and share what awesome places are their stores.

And a few concluding insights about blogging:

  • Strive for quality, and keep showing up. In my case, I had 3300 view the first year, 45,000 views the next year. Last year, I topped 100,000 views. Most of what I did was to just keep writing.
  • Persist in finding new places and means to connect with people you don’t know, and some will follow, and many others view.
  • Take your readers seriously. Respond where possible to their comments. Be grateful for them. They turn electrical impulses into conversations, shared experiences, and traffic of yet others to your blog.

All of you who follow, read, comment, share, and let me into your lives, whether readers or authors or admins have been gifts and made writing a joy. Very simply, thank you.

 

 

Books and Beverages

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20160218_170703Book Riot has run a couple of posts (Part 1 and Part 2) on pairing brews and books. It was quite a creative idea pairing different beers with different titles (for example, Dogfish Head Higher Math with The Martian). That is, if you are a beer aficionado, which I am not. I really cannot explain the difference between an IPA and a pilsner. When someone comments that a particular beer is “hoppy” I nod knowingly while in truth am clueless what this means. I know imperial stouts have higher alcohol contents and are served in smaller glasses. These days, there are almost as many beers as there are books, and so the possibilities are endless–for those in the know.

It seems that one could do this with a variety of drinks–wines, mixed drinks, types of coffee and tea. I actually have the same problem in Starbucks as I do in the local beer emporium. The variety of coffee drinks can be bewildering. Occasional I’ll venture out and order some special drink, usually what they are featuring. But my default is the default, a Pikes Place black coffee. I know, b-o-r-i-n-g!

But this got me to thinking about the fact that one of the pleasures of reading is to do it with a beverage at hand–a sip of this, a page of that. It may seem pretty prosaic, but the simple pleasure of any good book with a good beverage is enough to reassure me of the basic goodness of life.

I do a good deal of my reading in the early morning hours with a fresh mug of coffee at my side. Savoring ideas and savoring the taste of the coffee go together. Later in the day I might switch over to a cup of decaf or some chai tea. Or in the summer, a glass of lemonade or iced tea would be the perfect accompaniment for me, sitting by our front stoop on a summer evening.

I guess for me, beer and wine are social drinks (what do they say about drinking alone?). Truthfully, if I had an alcoholic drink while sitting alone with a book, I’d be snoozing! But that’s just me.

So, do you like to read with a beverage at hand? What is your beverage of choice? And do you have any creative book-beverage pairings to propose?

 

 

Where Are The Reviews?

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Partially Read Books.jpgThat’s a question some of you who follow regularly may be wondering for a little while. I wonder if other reviewers have ever had this happen? You end up in the middle of a number of books at the same time! The picture right now represents my current reading stack minus a couple books I’m reading on Kindle. Notice all those bookmarks in the middle of my books! So I thought I would give you some “mid-book” updates, that hopefully I’ll remember not to rehash in the reviews. Consider it a taste of things to come.

I Beg to DifferI’ll begin with the top most book. Tim Muelhoff’s I Beg to Differ is a very practical book on one of the hardest relational challenges–having those difficult conversations around disagreements without creating relational discord. Muelhoff outlines a set of questions and approaches that I’m finding very helpful.

Paul and His Recent InterpretersThe “meatiest” book comes next. N.T. Wright’s Paul and His Recent Interpreters is described as a companion to his magisterial Paul and the Faithfulness of God, Wright’s definitive work on the Apostle Paul. In Paul and His Recent Interpreters, Wright engages the range of contemporary Pauline scholarship, including the criticism of his own work. Wish I had read Paul and the Faithfulness of God, but haven’t been able to wade through the two volumes that make up this work yet! Point is, we often read Paul in light of the Reformation rather than Paul’s Jewish context and may miss some crucial things as a result. Stay tuned to the review for more!

Destiny and PowerThe “fattest” book in the stack is Jon Meacham’s Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush. I’ve liked the things I’ve read of Meacham, and this is no exception. Bush, the 41st president was a complex mix of character and ambition, that both led to the presidency and was his undoing after one term. His single term, and the shadow of his son’s presidency may obscure the significant things this man quietly accomplished, both as president, and in the rest of his life.

A Commentary on 1 and 2 ChroniclesEugene Merrill’s A Commentary on 1 and 2 Chronicles is probably not something you’d pick up unless you were teaching or preaching on these books. I’m reading it because it was sent to me to review (and I am teaching a Bible overview that includes these books). Good introductory materials as well as enough depth to inform of textual issues without being overwhelming to all but the specialist.

Falling UpwardThe last two books are not in the photograph because they are on my Kindle. One is Falling Upward by Richard Rohr. Rohr sees our lives in halves, each with their crucial tasks, the first half, preparing for the second. I’ve just started this and find his basic premise intriguing. I’m clearly in the second half (unless there is a medical miracle) and interested to see what he says about this.

HolinessFinally, my last book is one our Dead Theologians group is reading at present, J. C. Ryle’s Holiness. The version we are using includes all twenty sermons on this theme. Unlike some 19th century writers, Ryle is plain-spoken without being simplistic. He argues that growth in holiness, or the idea of becoming more like Christ, involves faith that actively strives for this goal.

All of this is rich reading. One decision I’ve made though, particularly after a comment on yesterday’s post is that I’m going to move Nine Tailors to the top of my reading pile. This commenter thought it “just might be Sayer’s best mystery.” After all this meaty reading, I’m ready for a good mystery!

Reading Versus Reviewing

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twitter_reviewerOver the past several years I’ve transitioned from reviewing books simply being my way of remembering books to reviewing being a means of communication and dialogue about books through this blog. Along the way I’ve found that there are at least some aspects of reviewing that are in tension with just plain old reading for fun. A few of these are:

  1. The preference for new books. Reviewing tends to focus on recently published books. I was made aware of this the other day when I remarked that a book from 2009 (!) was an older book. When I was just reading, I paid no attention to these things.
  2. Reading to a deadline. This is particularly so if you request a review copy of a book. Most of the time, publishers hope you will write a review within 60 days. When you are just reading, you can get around to that book whenever you want.
  3. Thinking about the review while you are reading. Actually, I think this makes me a better reader as I am consciously thinking about the flow of the book, how I will summarize, what I want to highlight. I often don’t do these things if I am “just reading.”
  4. The temptation to read and review what people seem to be interested in. It’s fascinating that my most popular review of this past year was on Exposing Myths About Christianity. It wasn’t a bad book by any means but hardly the best I’ve read. Far less popular was my review of The Drama of Ephesians, which I thought a far better book. I just have to remember that I don’t get paid for this so viewer stats really don’t mean much. It’s what I’m interested in and even if just a few find out about a good book, it matters for them.

What all this does is help sharpen the focus of what I am doing. Above all, I am conscious that there are so few books out of the numbers being published that I can actually read in whatever life remains to me. I think about the exhortation of the Apostle Paul in Philippians 4:8:

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”

I don’t see this as confined to religious ideas which sometimes can be as untrue, ignoble, corrupted, unlovely, and despicable as any trashy novel. In whatever I read, I try to choose books that explore the good, the true, and the beautiful in life–whether in matters of faith, good science writing, a well-constructed mystery, or a biography of someone who has lived a worthy life. My tastes range across all these categories and more which is why you might encounter a review of a theology work one day and a baseball book the next. One day I’ll review a current book, another day one ten or fifty or a thousand years old.

And that leads to what I’m trying to do in this blog. David Brooks, in The Road to Character (reviewed here) speaks of wanting to initiate a conversation about our moral ecology and about what makes a virtuous life. While I have nothing of the reputation of a Brooks, it is something akin to this that I’ve been trying to do, whether writing about books or my experiences growing up in Youngstown. Along with classic thinkers, I believe that the well-lived life is one lived in pursuit of the good, the true and the beautiful. In what I read, think, and write about, I want to explore the sources of goodness, truth, and beauty, celebrate the various expressions of that, and consider how we might pursue such things together in a civil society.

So, if you are trying to make sense of why I review the stuff I do, both new and old, and what might be behind the other things I write about, this is the best clue I can give you to the methods in my madness!

Reading on your Phone

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IMG_2384Well, I finally drank the Koolaid recently and plunked down for a smartphone, retiring my five plus year old flip phone with a dying battery. I bought one of the new Samsung Galaxy S6’s and have to say I’m a convert, not entirely to the pleasure of my wife. There really are times I shouldn’t be playing with it! I’m slowly learning to have a time in the evening where I plug it into the charger and turn off the alarms.

One of the things about the new smartphones is the size and resolution of the screens (5.1 inches on the Samsung) that makes reading possible, particularly if the print size is fairly large. And so it was with interest that I read the Wall Street Journal article this past week on “The Rise of Phone Reading“.

I haven’t read any books on my phone yet, although I’ve downloaded the Kindle app, and also the Logos app (Android versions), so that all the content I have on these two applications on my computer, and in the former case, my Kindle reader, is now available on my phone. So far, the main reading on my phone has been email, and checking different social media, much connected with this blog. I also watched a missed episode of The McLaughlin Group, sitting in my driveway on a nice summer evening, streaming it over my wi-fi.

One sign to me that phone reading was gaining in usage was complaints about this blog before I went “responsive” back in April. The print was too small and it didn’t reformat well for the phone. Now it does, as I’ve discovered when I’ve checked out the blog on my phone.

Phones are also changing e-reading habits when it comes to books. The WSJ article indicates that using phones to read at least part of the time has grown from 24 percent in 2012 to 52 percent by the end of 2014. E-reader usage has dropped from 50 to 32 percent and tablet use from 44 to 41 percent in the same period.

The capabilities of the phone make it possible via GPS features to offer books at specific GPS coordinates like airports or train stations and some publishers are offering free access to some books at these locations. Publishers are also re-thinking covers and other formatting issues to make books phone-friendly.

I also discovered that the Goodreads app includes a bar code scanner that automatically enters a new book into your book lists on Goodreads–something you can’t do on the computer version, where you have to search titles or hand enter ISBNs to find your edition in their database.

And people are responding to these phone apps and adaptations. The number exclusively using their phones to read has grown from 9 to 14 percent in the last two years. And one can see the sense in this. I’ve already discovered that I almost always have the phone with me when I’m out, as opposed to print books and e-readers. Already, people have reported reading books like Moby Dick and War and Peace on their phones.

It seems to me, however, that the best type of book to read on this format are books that can be read in “snatches” without losing the continuity necessary for making sense of longer works. Short essays, meditations, “One minute…” kinds of things would seem to especially lend themselves to this format, where one is often reading while waiting for a bus, or a flight.

Interrupted reading is definitely more of an issue in the settings where many read using these devices. One thing that can help is turning off the alarms, which can be very distracting and enticing and put phones at a decided disadvantage to dedicated e-readers. As far as external distractions, they have always been there. If you listen to books on audio via headphones, you can tune some of that out as well.

I can’t speak to how the reading experience compares with e-readers or physical books yet. My hunch is that these, like e-readers are better for light reading than the kinds of things one would read closely. And I have to say that I won’t be using it in the places where I enjoy physical books. But I just might have occasion where I start a book on my phone, when I don’t have my e-reader or it isn’t handy. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Meanwhile, I’d love to know if you’ve seen a change in your reading habits if you’ve acquired a smartphone and what that has been like for you.

Magic Moments in Reading

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Manguel QuoteYou know those moments. You are reading and the magic happens. It could be an exquisite description, an evocative scene, an insight that makes sense of the perplexing, an unexpected but thrilling plot turn, or a satisfying resolution. They are the moments that make reading special. Here are some of mine:

  1. Aslan’s romp with the children when he comes back from the dead in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.
  2. The arrival of the hobbits at Rivendell in The Lord of the Rings. Not the end of the journey but a truly “homely home”.
  3. The banquet scene in Babette’s Feast when hearts thaw and the good, the beautiful and the true are glimpsed over a magnificent meal.
  4. The radio broadcasts on science in All The Light We Cannot See for the sense of wonder they evoke.
  5. William Manchester’s magnificent description of Winston Churchill’s moral and political courage in The Last Lion, and particularly how he resolutely spoke against the Nazi threat when everyone else wanted to appease Hitler.
  6. The wonderful reconciliation between Jarvis and Kumalo in Cry the Beloved Country.
  7. The scene in My Name is Asher Lev, in which Asher and the Jews are dancing with Torah at Simchat Torah and he asks his Catholic friend if they love scripture as his people love scripture.
  8. Hannah Coulter for its exploration of how one can look back on one’s life in a place, and begin to make sense of what in the moment was baffling.
  9. Susan Cain’s wonderfully clarifying insights in Quiet of how introversion is not a problem but a gift.
  10. The moment I realized in the opening pages of The Institutes that I was encountering in John Calvin a truly fine mind who could write with clarity and depth about the love and glory of God.

I suspect not all of you would agree with this last, but there you have it, there are no two of us readers alike! And thankfully, we do not have to agree. In fact, part of the delight in getting bibliophiles together is discovering delights we’ve never encountered. There is also the delight of “you, too?” when we discover shared magic moments.

While I can’t gather you all in my living room, it would be delightful to use this “social” media to share some of our “magic moments” in reading. I’d love to hear what were some of your magic moments in reading that have contributed to your love of books and appreciation of life.

Happy Birthday Bob on Books!

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One of my TBR piles

One of my TBR piles

Bob on Books is two years old! The picture above is the one that adorned my very first post. Since then, I’ve read most of those books but some never managed to work their way to the top of the TBR pile, for reasons known only to my subconcious, if that. Looking back on that first post, I had no idea where this blog was going to lead! The one thing that has been true is lots of conversation on books, reading, and life.

Bob on Books by the numbers. This is my 689th post. One or another page on the blog has been viewed just under 100,000 times (I expect to hit this milestone later this week). The growth of the readership has been slow and steady–I write for a bit of a quirky audience–booklovers, university geeks, people of faith, and surprisingly, a loyal audience of people from my home town of Youngstown. In 2013, I averaged 23 views a day on the blog. Last year, this went up to 124, and this year so far, I’ve been averaging 227. Currently 2,229 “follow” the blog in some form, but the viewership is far wider because of posting in a number of groups and re-posting on other blogs. WordPress tells me that people have visited from 150 countries, the top five outside the U.S. being Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil (!), and India. Altogether, I don’t think this is too bad for a “toddler”!

Bob on Books — the conversation. I wrote early on that my hope for this blog was that it would be “a meeting place for anyone who cares about good literature, who loves books and reading, and wants to talk about ideas that matter.” It has been that and so much more. We’ve talked about what we liked and disliked about books, about what makes for a good society and a good life, and even a good pizza! We’ve explored this activity so many of us love and take for granted, the act of reading and what makes for good reading. We’ve talked about what we do with all those books once we’ve read them, and what we do about the ones we haven’t read.

A big surprise has been the continuing conversation with the unique tribe of people who, like me, grew up in Youngstown, Ohio. What began as a few posts to answer the question of what it was like to grow up in working class Youngstown has become a rich conversation about what made this such a good place. I’ll never forget a post from last fall in which I posted a picture of a cigar box, which many of us used for pencil boxes, only to get a flood of comments from others who did the same, and who, in some cases still had them. I’ve come to understand something I’d only dimly intuited–that growing up working class was an incredibly rich experience that has shaped my life more than I knew.

Bob on Books — On reviewing. I don’t think I anticipated when I started this blog that I would become far more reflective on the art and ethics of reviewing. One of the things I’ve discovered is that authors are engaging us in a conversation, and reviewing and discussing books via social media can be a wonderful way of turning monologue into real conversation, mostly with other readers, but sometimes with the authors. We don’t always agree, but what I hope for is that they can say, “you understood what I wrote and were fair in representing the book.”

I’ve come to realize that reviewers, and not just the ones in the New York Times, play an important role in connecting authors to readers and promoting a literate society. Fundamentally, we help people answer the basic question of “why should (or shouldn’t) I read this book when there are so many others?”

Bob on Books — The Vision. Years ago, a leader I respected said, “you may be a reading Christian without growing, but you cannot be a growing Christian without reading.” In an age of busyness and visual media saturation, I hope to encourage the rediscovery of ways the reading of good works may nourish our souls, deepen our intellects, and elevate our aspirations. There is more to life than reading, but I am firmly convinced that the best books point us to that “something more” and that the richest conversations in life are about that “something more.” I look forward to more of those as long as God grants me to write!