Breaking Bread with the Dead by Alan Jacobs

According to Alan Jacobs, as our society becomes more and more immersed in digital realities, we are losing our personal density. He wrote this book to encourage his audience to learn to think more deeply by reading more widely.

He begins by explaining why our thinking has become so thin. Because of the deluge of information pouring into our minds via screens, we must, of necessity, practice a form of informational triage. We simply cannot read everything so we choose those subjects which are immediately interesting, and topics which are generally written from the point of view of those with whom we agree.

There is no time to think about anything else. This preoccupation with the present, with no regard for history or past ideas, leads to a “lightweight” existence that is easily toppled by life’s hard knocks. Jacobs believes that reading old books (and grappling with their ideas) can give us a stability that is not easily shaken by each current event or recent mode of thinking.

Jacobs encourages us to read older books with a generosity toward the author, which means that instead of writing them off for being racist, sexist, white or male, etc., we need to be gracious toward them and give them more of your attention than you may at certain moments feel that they deserve – because you hope that something good will come of it. At the very least you hope for an expansion of your own understanding.

He writes, I believe that any significant increase in personal density is largely achieved through encounters with un-likeness. When we read something that startles us (or with which we disagree) we are naturally tempted to close the book. But if we disregard all past authors for differences we have with them, our pool of candidates for our attention will get smaller and smaller.  Eventually we get a nicely manageable collection of ideas, all of which are more or less the same. But this limited understanding of the world leaves us impoverished.

G.K. Chesterton’s argued that when we ignore the history and ideas of the past, we do so at our own peril. If the modern man is indeed the heir of all the ages, he is often the kind of heir who tells the family solicitor to sell the whole damned estate, lock, stock, and barrel, and give him a little ready money to throw away at the races or the nightclubs. (from his essay: On Man – Heir of All Ages)

I learned a lot from this book, but while reading, I had to practice what Jacobs preached. Although I sometimes disliked his disdainful tone, I kept going because his main emphases are ideas that are very important to me. If only he had been as generous to those with whom he disagrees (who are still living) as he is with writers of the past. 

Blessings,

Reading as a Spiritual Discipline - Quote from Jessica Hooten Wilson

Reading is a spiritual discipline akin to fasting and prayer and one that trains you in virtues, encourages your sanctification, and elicits your love for those noble, admirable, and beautiful things of which St. Paul writes in his Letter to the Philippians. We read because without books our world shrinks, our empathy thins, and our liberty wanes. We read for the same reason that people have read - and shared poems and stories - for thousands of years: because our eyes are not enough by which to see. The time and place in which we live blinds us to other perspectives and ways of being that are not our own experience. We read because we have been given the gift of imagination and intellect, and we exhibit our gratitude by using it.

(from p. 62 of Reading for the Love of God by Jessica Hooten Wilson)

Blessings,

Reading for the Love of God by Jessica Hooten Wilson

Why and how we read matters as much as what we read. 

It is not enough to read the Bible; you must eat the book 

(quoting Eugene Peterson and Ezekiel 3:3).

The premise of Reading for the Love of God is that words must get inside you and change you. This is transformation vs. information. If you want to know how to "eat the book," learn how to read – not only the Bible but other great books as well – as a spiritual practice.

Wilson’s book often reminded me of the Literary Life Podcast because both she and they emphasize the folly of reader-centered education (where students are asked how the text makes them feel thereby missing most of what the text is actually saying). She suggests that one way to avoid that is to use the ART metric. In it, the Author, Reader and Text are given equal emphasis. Yes, the readers emotions are involved, but only after he begins to pay attention to what the text is actually saying - all the while being respectful of the author’s point of view.

To be a critic is to stand over the text making the reader judge and master over the text. This standing over prevents the understanding necessary to be transfigured by the reading. The reader should approach the book in the way a student draws near a teacher, with a willingness to learn, to receive, from the books. (p. 11)

Wilson places a strong emphasis on how medieval Christians saw deeper meanings in everything they read in the Bible, and criticizes Luther (and the Reformation) for making the literal meaning of the text paramount thereby excluding the other “senses” (allegorical, tropological, and anagogical). I find this to be problematic because it leaves too much room for heretical interpretations. One of her main examples of a saint whose reading style we should imitate is Juliana of Norwich. But Wilson doesn’t mention that Juliana’s zeal to see the love of God in every verse of Scripture caused her to negate the possibility of wrath, judgment or hell.

Apart from that caveat, I appreciated Wilson’s deep love for the written word and her encouragement to keep reading deeply.

A life of reading counteracts the malformation of screen and digital technology…. In contrast to many other pastimes, reading demands engagement. It asks something of the participant. It cultivates that person’s imagination and increases their vision of the world. (p. 15)

Blessings,

Stories as Truth Teachers - Quote by Andrew Peterson

If you want a child to know the truth, tell him the truth. If you want a child to love the truth, tell him a story. (Andrew Peterson quoted by Sarah Mackenzie in The Read-Aloud Family)

Blessings,

Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies by Marilyn McEntyre

Caring For Words in Culture of Lies has been on my radar for a couple of years and I was thrilled when a friend gave me her copy. It pushed all the right buttons for me since it's about the necessity of preserving beautiful language - not just flowery words, but words that say precisely what they mean.

I underlined page after page in this book, which reinforced all the reasons why I blog about literature. Reading and writing generate an interior, where an active and sometimes contemplative life goes on, carried out through those essential elements that constitute the modern human being: a memory, a conscience, and a self.(p. 80) Basically, we are what we read. And a steady diet of drivel weakens us.

In an age of information overload, McEntyre says her students have a constant barrage of sound bites thrown at them. They hear so many words so constantly, their capacities to savor words - to pause over them, ponder them, reflect upon them, hear the echoes of ancient cadences, and attune themselves to allusiveness and alliteration - are eroding. (p. 19)

Just as we should be good stewards of natural resources, McEntyre writes that we should also be guardians of another precious resource: words. Like any other life-sustaining resource, language can be depleted, polluted, contaminated, eroded, and filled with artificial stimulants. Like any other resource, it needs the protection of those who recognize its value and commit themselves to good stewardship. (p. 1)

Like food, language has been "industrialized." Words come to us processed like cheese, depleted of nutrients, flattened and packaged, artificially colored and mass marketed. And just as it takes a little extra effort and attention to find, buy, eat, and support the production of healthy foods, it is strenuous business to insist on usable, flexible, precise, enlivening language. (p. 16)

She goes on to say that as usable words are lost, experience becomes cruder and less communicable. And with the loss of the subtlety, clarity, and reliability of language, we become more vulnerable to crude exercises of power. (p. 6) This is one of the chilling themes of Orwell's 1984.

Among her many suggestions and strategies for preserving rich language are 1) deepening and sharpening reading skills, 2) cultivating habits of speaking and listening that foster precision and clarity, 3) sharing stories, 4) indulging in word play and 5) refusing clichés and sound bites that substitute for authentic analysis.

This book is not for everybody, but it's a definite must-read for stewards and lovers of fine language. 

E-Books vs. Physical Books - Part 4

I hope this is the last post I write on this subject since I'm starting to sound like a broken record. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

The bottom line is that our brains function differently when we read physical books than when we are reading on a screen. We concentrate better and remember more of what we read when using physical books.

The source of many of the articles I've read on this subject has been Canadian pastor Tim Challies. So you can imagine my surprise when he recently declared he was going "all in" with digital books.

I agree with many of his reasons for preferring digital books (convenience, less clutter, etc.), but can't believe he's ignoring the negatives that he himself has pointed out to his readers. I say, let's keep a balance.

I'm glad Edie at Life In Grace wrote this post about the importance of physical books. I had heard the argument about having books around so that your children will be able to see what influences you (see Our Bare Shelves, Our Selves). But Edie's argument about book time being the perfect antidote to screen overdose is excellent.

What do you think? Am I a lone voice crying in the wilderness?

The Gutenberg Elegies by Sven Birkerts

The subtitle of The Gutenberg Elegies is "The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age." Birkert's main premise is that ditching physical books for modern gadgets causes a reduced attention span and a general impatience with sustained inquiry. (p. 27) This loss of contemplative and cognitive power is a threat to all that makes us truly human.

My 1994 version was out-of-date in the sense that the internet was just beginning and Birkerts was still referring to cassette tapes and VHS recordings. But it was not out-of-date in its call to consider how much we are losing by giving ourselves completely over to digital media. In fact, in light of how much was not even on the scene when he wrote this book, his prophecies are surprisingly accurate.

The technologies of entertainment have arrived with great fanfare, diminishing audiences for the book, allowing watching and playing to supplant reading as a dominant home activity. . . . They not only take up time that might have once belonged to the book, but they make it harder, once we do turn from the screen. (p. 200) Amen to that!

While circuit and screen are ideal conduits for certain kinds of data - figures, images, cross-referenced information of all sorts - they are entirely inhospitable to the more subjective materials that have always been the stuff of art. That is to say, they are antithetical to inwardness. (193)

My favorite quote: I speak as an unregenerate reader, one who still believes that language and not technology is the true evolutionary miracle. (p. 6) Before texting was even born, Birkerts sensed that the need to provide information more speedily would erode our language.

This book reinforced my desire to read physical books as much as possible. But, alas, did not convince me to give up my e-reader. I am a slave to convenience after all. At times Birkerts is verbose and whiny, but I managed to slog through. More accessible titles on this subject are The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains and Postmans' Amusing Ourselves to Death.

The Benefits of Serious Reading

"Cultivating a serious reading schedule is the best gift you can give yourself."

 Edie over at Life in Grace has a lovely post today on how what we read forms us (her reading list for 2014). There are some good thoughts and great quotes. Worth a look.

Katherine Paterson on the Importance of Literature

From the book of essays The Invisible Child:

And when you close Homer, there are the books of Jane Austen and Joseph Conrad, and great fat volumes of Tolstoy.  There is the Bible, perhaps the most overprescribed and least taken of any. There is Flannery O’Connor and Anne Tyler.There is William Shakespeare and Jacob Bronowski. There is The Yearling and A Tale of Two Cities.  There is The Secret Garden and The Wind in the Willows.  There is Ramona the Brave and Where the Wild Things Are.  I have only begun to name what I especially love.  There are countless others - really good books.  Good or even great because they make the right connections. They pull together for us a world that is falling apart.  They are the words that integrate us, stretch us, comfort and heal us. They are the words that mirror the Word of creation, bringing order out of chaos. (238-9)

Are Schools Anti-Reading?

I have Barbara to thank for pointing out "School is no Place for Readers." It's a lengthy post on how schools push reading fairs and reading logs, but in reality discourge kids from digging deeply into books. Here's a sample quote:

School libraries are filled with computers and the shelves are filled with dreck based on video games, cartoons and movies. It is said that this is the only way to tempt children away from screen to page, but these book impostors are created to foster and capitalize on an appetite for a product. is it likely that "Barbie in a Mermaid Tale," printed out as sixteen pages of dull and disjointed summary, will increase the odds of the child reading Alice in Wonderland or Swallows and Amazons? Whatever the market may cast before consumers, school should not be its enthusiastic accomplice in corrupting the taste and abilities of the young. We must know these things for what they are. The Pokemon Character Guide is not a book, it is a toy. Children ought to have toys, but they should also have books.

The complete article offers lots to ponder.

Quote on "Book Food" by Amy Carmichael

"It matters a good deal that your book-food should be strong meat.  We are what we think about.  Think about trivial things or weak things and somehow one loses fiber and becomes flabby in spirit."

(Letter from Amy Carmichael in Candles in the Dark)

Quote of the Week: Reading as Freedom

In many ways [our] new visual culture is pleasurable, but it is a tyrant. Literature, on the other hand, is democratic. One can pause and put a book down and debate with the author. One can take it up later, after there has been time to think or do some research. The reader's imagination can select what it wishes to focus on, whereas in electronic visual media the mind is pummeled with powerful stimuli that bypass conscious and subconscious defenses.

(Quote from A Landscape With Dragons by Michael O'Brien)