Sometimes, I have a hard time getting through non-fiction works. I'll get to something that I think is worth remembering, and I'll want to write it down. So, I set the book aside thinking I'll work on that later. Then, later never seems to come and the book eventually gets reshelved in one of my cleaning fits and sits languishing on the shelf wondering what it did wrong. While the book thinks it is sitting there forgotten, I often feel pangs of guilt that I have not finished it.

As a remedy to this problem, I've been going at my non-fiction reading from a new angle. I've solved my stalling problem with a pad of sticky notes, a pen and a moleskine journal. Now, when I'm reading along and see something I want to remember or check out later, I put a sticky note on the page. Sometimes I'll make a short notation on it, but often I just center it near the info I want to revisit - things ranging from good quotes, to web site addresses, to book recommendations, to words to look up - then I just keep on reading. When I have finished the book, I start at the beginning and work my way through, copying down the bits I want to remember in my little journal. I often carry the journal with me (the benefits of a big handback are legion) so that I can refer back to the notes I took and write down any new thoughts that occur to me.

So far this has been working very well for me.

Oh. And I did finish Simply Christian this morning. I'm working on taking my notes so that I can get it back to the library. It's only three days overdue.

In the News: J. K. Rowling

Rowling: Some characters won't survive last 'Potter' book

And, speaking of Harry Potter: I read an excellent article in the Stone-Campbell Journal recently that talked about some of the Christian elements of the Harry Potter series. A good portion of the articles in the Stone-Campbell Journal are a bit beyond me, but every once in a while there is one that I can wrap my fuzzy brain around. This article in the Fall 2005 issue, called Harry Potter and the Baptism of the Imagination, is one that I was able to understand and enjoy. The article is unfortunately not available online, or I'd point you towards it and ask what you thought. Anyone else happen to get the Stone-Campbell Journal?

Crunch Cons by Rod Dreher

Non-Fiction: Hardback from Crown Forum. Published in 2006. 247 pages. On loan from the Kent District Library.

I first saw this book referred to on the GetReligion blog back in February. Since there was a VW van on the cover, and the title refers to both Birkenstocks and homeschooling, I thought I'd give it a read. I put it on hold at the library and waited months for it to arrive. Then, in part because of my fuzzy brain problem, and in part because I just couldn't get myself interested, the book sat in the middle of a pile of books on the floor until yesterday. It's due back at the library on Monday, with no renewals remaining, so I picked it up and decided to just give read it without trying too hard to retain it. My mindset was, if I got to the end and couldn't remember anything, so be it. Either I'm coming out of the fog, or this isn't a difficult book to read. (I'm guessing it's choice two. We'll see when I get back to Simply Christian which is also due Monday.) But, once I started I wondered why I had been so hesitant to go ahead and read it. I have to say that while I don't think I'm a completely "crunchy con", he said much in this book that resonated with me. At the bottom of it seems to be a call to live a life based on timeless principles rather than just being swept along with the culture. I like that.

Publisher's summary:
When a National Review colleague teased writer Rod Dreher one day about his visit to the local food co-op to pick up a week’s supply of organic vegetables (“Ewww, that’s so lefty”), he started thinking about the ways he and his conservative family lived that put them outside the bounds of conventional Republican politics. Shortly thereafter Dreher wrote an essay about “crunchy cons,” people whose “Small Is Beautiful” style of conservative politics often put them at odds with GOP orthodoxy, and sometimes even in the same camp as lefties outside the Democratic mainstream. The response to the article was impassioned: Dreher was deluged by e-mails from conservatives across America—everyone from a pro-life vegetarian Buddhist Republican to an NRA staffer with a passion for organic gardening—who responded to say, “Hey, me too!”

In Crunchy Cons, Dreher reports on the amazing depth and scope of this phenomenon, which is redefining the taxonomy of America’s political and cultural landscape. At a time when the Republican party, and the conservative movement in general, is bitterly divided over what it means to be a conservative, Dreher introduces us to people who are pioneering a way back to the future by reclaiming what’s best in conservatism—people who believe that being a truly committed conservative today means protecting the environment, standing against the depredations of big business, returning to traditional religion, and living out conservative godfather Russell Kirk’s teaching that the family is the institution most necessary to preserve.

In these pages we meet crunchy cons from all over America: a Texas clan of evangelical Christian free-range livestock farmers, the policy director of Republicans for Environmental Protection, homeschooling moms in New York City, an Orthodox Jew who helped start a kosher organic farm in the Berkshires, and an ex-sixties hippie from Alabama who became a devout Catholic without losing his antiestablishment sensibilities.

Crunchy Cons is both a useful primer to living the crunchy con way and a passionate affirmation of those things that give our lives weight and measure. In chapters dedicated to food, religion, consumerism, education, and the environment, Dreher shows how to live in a way that preserves what Kirk called “the permanent things,” among them faith, family, community, and a legacy of ancient truths. This, says Dreher, is the kind of roots conservatism that more and more Americans want to practice. And in Crunchy Cons, he lets them know how far they are from being alone.

Online book shopping:
Powell's: Crunchy Cons
amazon.co.uk: Crunchy Cons
amazon.com: Crunchy Cons
Audible.com: not currently available as audio

Fuzzy in the Brain

My literary pursuits have slowed recently. I'm having to really concentrate to make any sense out of non-fiction books. You know what I mean, right? You get to the end of a page and realize that you have no idea what you just read, and even with some concentrated thinking you still can't come up with the main point on the page? It makes spending too much time reading seem a bit of a waste, since I can't even recall what I've read.

I haven't even wanted to listen to any new fiction. I've just been relistening to a couple of my favorites from Terry Pratchett. (Thud! and Monstrous Regiment so far.)

Once I begin hitting on all of my cylinders again I'll be back to posting some new reads. Until then, I can't seem to find Monstrous Regiment in my old posts, so I guess I neglected to blog it the first time I read it. I'll do that soon.

From the Bookshelf: Latin for the Illiterati by Jon R. Stone

Non-Fiction: Language. Paperback from Routledge. Published in 1996. 201 pages. Purchased at one of the many English Heritage sites we visited during our time in the UK. (Probably Housesteads Roman Fort on Hadrian's Wall but I'm not sure.)

I'll admit that most of the time when I come across a Latin phrase or word that I don't understand, I just "google it". Still, this is a great book and worth having even with Google there to answer my Latin queries. I've enjoyed just browsing through it and reading the different definitions for phrases and words, and can sometimes find phrases faster in this book than on Google. Babae! Very enjoyable book.

Publisher's summary:
Latin for the Illiterati is everyperson's reference to common Latin words and phrases. With over 6,000 entries--including 300 abbreviations--this volume will accompany every reader, student and scholar through their lifelong reading journey.

This solidly researched handbook was ten years in the making, evolving from a handwritten help list of frequently occurring phrases to this comprehensive reference tool. The volume contains common words, phrases and abbreviations selected from the worlds of art, music, law, philosophy, theology, medicine and the theatre as well as clever sayings and sage advice from ancient writers. In addition, there is a section on geographical place names, colors, calendar months and days and Roman numerals as well as an English index and a brief guide on Latin pronunciation.

Online book shopping:
Powell's: Latin for the Illiterati
amazon.co.uk: Latin for the Illiterati
amazon.com: Latin for the Illiterati
Audible.com: not available as audio

Christian Audio

I found ChristianAudio.com today. Looks like they have some titles that Audible.com does not have - the prices seem reasonable. Anyone tried them before?

BTW, It looks like they offer a free audiobook every month. They're giving away Martin Luther, In His Own Words this month.

Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Non-Fiction: Christianity. Hardback from Harper Collins. Published in 1954. 122 pages. On loan from the Kent District Library.

I really liked how Bonhoeffer started off reminding us that unity is something that we already have in Christ, not something that we have to create. He says:

"Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate." (p 30 of the 1954 edition)

He then goes on to talk about the different things that Christian family should be doing together, and apart. He reminds us that we aren't necessarily going to like our Christian family all the time, but we put up with each other anyway. He tells us that in addition to offering advice we should remember to listen. He reminds us to pray for each other, and to confess our sins to each other. He ends with a reminder that our life together as Christians reaches it's perfection in the taking of the Lord's Supper.

Great book.

Publisher's summary:

"When Dietrich Bonhoeffer was martyred by the Nazis late in the war, he left as a heritage the memory of a life of heroic resistance and saintly long-suffering and some extraordinarily provocative writings. "There may come a time when the name of Bonhoeffer will be linked with Woolman, Francis of Assisi, Wesley and John Huss."
--Pulpit Digest

This book grew directly out of his own experience of the deep meaning of Christian community found in life together in an "underground" seminary established by the Confessing Church. What this experience should mean in the corporate fellowship of today's Christian is here movingly documented by one whose peculiar strength lies in great religious ideas expressed in simple, incisive, almost Biblical language.

To Pastor Bonhoeffer, the Christian today is living in a world fully hostile and as pagan as that in which Paul and the early Christians moved. Sustaining the Christian fellowship is therefore all-important, and this is what gives Life Together its meaning and purpose.

It is a piece of exposition that, for our modern age, is as real and as relevant as the letters of St. Paul himself. Likewise, it makes the faith of the average church-goer seem a very pale shadow of what Christianity was meant to be.

The book is primarily a consideration of the meaning of Christian community, which some practical illustrations of how this life together in Christ works out in the family circle or in groups, containing some pointed directions for common worship. It also discusses the life of the Christian at his job, when he must leave the fellowship to do his work in the world, and the place of private devotions. Then fellows a gem of simple exposition of Christian service and our relationship to our "neighbor". Finally comes a stirring discussion of "confession and the Lord's Supper.

The translator, John W. Doberstein, is professor of practical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, and author of books of prayer and related subjects.

Online book shopping:
Powell's: Life Together
amazon.co.uk: Life Together
amazon.com: Life Together
Audible.com: not available as audio

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Fiction: Christianity. Unabridged Audiobook from Audio Renissance. Published in 2005. 8 hours and 59 minutes. Read by Tim Jerome. Purchased from Audible.com.

Recommended by Mike Cope, this is a fictional letter from an aged dying father to his young son. I was copying down some passages from this book after church a couple of days ago. A friend came up and asked me what I was doing. When I explained what the book was about she just wrinkled up her nose at me. She didn't like thinking about a child growing up without his father. It's a shame she could not get past that, because this book is a fantastic look at some things that are just essential to think about. Plus there is a good story with a great moral woven in under the important things that John Ames wants to pass on to his son.

Publisher's summary:
In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He "preached men into the Civil War", then, at age 50, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle. Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father, an ardent pacifist, and his grandfather, whose pistol and bloody shirts, concealed in an army blanket, may be relics from the fight between the abolitionists and those settlers who wanted to vote Kansas into the union as a slave state. And he tells a story of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, which are tested in his tender and strained relationship with his namesake, John Ames Boughton, his best friend's wayward son.

This is also the tale of another remarkable vision, not a corporeal vision of God but the vision of life as a wondrously strange creation. It tells how wisdom was forged in Ames's soul during his solitary life, and how history lives through generations, pervasively present even when betrayed and forgotten.

Gilead is the long-hoped-for second novel by one of our finest writers, a hymn of praise and lamentation to the God-haunted existence that Reverend Ames loves passionately, and from which he will soon part.

Online book shopping:
Powell's: Gilead
amazon.co.uk: Gilead
amazon.com: Gilead : A Novel
Audible.com: Gilead