Tag: reading
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Thoughts on the End of White Christian America
Does “the end of white Christian America” explain as much as some people think it does? …
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Help with Annotation
Originally published August 12, 2016. It seemed timely once again, alas. Context is everything. “I need your help with annotation.” “What do you have to annotate?” “English.” “What’s the assignment?” “Just to take notes. On Beowulf.”
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The State of the “Read Me” Project, 2022
T’shua li!! Victory is mine!! In 2021, I at last achieved the dynamic homeostasis I tossed out as a goal so cavalierly a few years ago with respect to my “Read Me” Shelf. More precisely, with respect to the amorphous multi-locational stack of unread books that is a more or less permanent part of the…
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The State of the “Read Me” Project, 2021
I’m committed to this now. In it for the long haul. I still haven’t read all the books in the tsundoku. I still haven’t achieved “dynamic homeostasis.” But, I have made Measurable Progress! Depending, that is, on how one measures the progress. Here are the data: In 2019, I read 24 books (that counted), and…
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Some Things Still Need Explaining
Thoughts on Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House, 2020). I have thought a lot about this book, and what I think about it, and why, mainly because I felt ambivalent about it, and because friends who also read it described feeling differently. Maybe I have thought about it so much, then, because I felt defensive,…
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The State of the “Read Me” Project, 2020
A couple of years ago I rashly vowed, not to God but to the internet, that I wouldn’t buy any more books until I’d read the ones I already owned. I say “rashly” because, as I’ve learned over the last two years, the acquisition of books and the reading of books are separate and distinct…
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How Superficial is That Oxford Comma?
Dreyer, Benjamin. Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style. Random House, 2019. [An Installment of the “Read Me” Project.] Did I even know copyediting was a thing? I did not. But I do now, thanks to this book by Benjamin Dreyer, “Copy Chief of Random House,” and also a talented author in…
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Think Much About Myanmar?
DeLisle, Guy. Burma Chronicles. Drawn and Quarterly. 2014. [An Installment of the “Read Me” Project.] It’s a comic book. That’s probably not ALL anyone needs to know, but it explains a lot. I picked it up out of curiosity at the bookstore [“Hey, what is this?”] and was so charmed by the account, if account…
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Isn’t Hermeneutics Too Abstract to Matter in Real Life?*
I misread the situation at the intersection by the grocery store. I paid attention to the oncoming car’s turn signal (“There’s nothing like a turn signal. And that was nothing like a turn signal.”) instead of the fact that they were in the left turn lane. So I waited for the “oncoming traffic” before I…
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Unfinished Reading
But it is the same book. And naturally these incidents bring up again questions of what people see when they read a book, and why one person sees one pattern and nothing at all of another pattern, and how odd it is to have, as author, such a clear picture of a book, that is…
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Love as a Second Language
Gary Chapman. The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts. Chicago: Northfield Publishing, 2015 (1992). [An installment of the Read Me Project.] To be completely honest, The 5 Love Languages never quite made it to the “Read Me” shelf. It was on display in the back of Barnes and Noble, on the way…
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The State of the “Read Me” Project
The New Year’s resolution that gave rise to the Read Me Project – “I am not buying any more books until I have read these” – finally went the way of many New Year’s resolutions.[*] First, there were the free books outside the library. It’s not buying a book when you get an armful of…
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Study Notes – 2 Thessalonians 3 1-5
For Sunday, January 6 we’re studying two somewhat similarly-themed texts: 2 Thessalonians 3:1-5 and 2 John 4-11. It seemed like a good idea to focus on one at a time. Notes on 2 John will appear in a separate post. Here are my notes on the verses from 2 Thessalonians: BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT: There’s no…
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Forth to Thy New Year We Go
… starting out a little slow. 0 to 60 takes a little longer these days. The regularly scheduled study notes over the text we’re studying for Sunday, January 6 – 2 Thessalonians 3:1-5 and 2 John 4-11 – are in the works and will be here by Friday, along with some questions. One or two…
Matters of Interpretation 