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Dear Reader,
We’re more digitally connected than ever, but we’re more socially divided than is good for us. We long for the security of friendships and for the warmth of community. Unfortunately, many activities that should bring us into fellowship instead drive deeper the wedge of division. Even reading sometimes divides us.
Reading can be an antisocial act. The silent student staring at an open text exudes an aura of isolation. We read critically, sometimes hostilely, keeping ancient authors and their audiences at arm’s length, choosing not to break bread with the dead. We read as utilitarians to harvest knowledge, to conquer lists of bestsellers, and to feed flames of casual conversation.
Yet there’s another way to read, Jeffrey Bilbro explains in Words for Conviviality: “We can read slowly. We can wrestle with old books. We can memorize passages. We can discuss difficult texts with friends who interpret them differently. Further, we can contribute to communities of practice that honor and foster verbal virtues such as attention, magnanimity, care, and patience.”
As Benjamin Myers notes in his review of Bilbro’s book, “Such communities can exist in our age of fragmented attention and hyperindividualism.” These communities can exist, but only if we learn to read well.
Happy reading!
Andrew Spencer
Associate Editor
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New from TGC
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Book Review
Benjamin Myers
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“‘Words for Conviviality’ demonstrates that if we wish to create a more convivial world in which conversation predominates over dictation, we must learn to walk again. We must meet each other at eye level, not as all-seeing and autonomous ‘transparent eyeballs’ but, rather, as fellow pilgrims.” Read the review.
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Book Review
Gavin Ortlund
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“‘Priests of History’ has a critical message at just the right time. As followers of Jesus, we’re part of a grand, purposeful story. We’re therefore tasked with keep alive memory of the past, bringing it to bear on the challenges of the present.” Read the review.
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Book Review
Ken Keathley
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Book Review
Andrew Spencer
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Book Review
Stephen O. Presley
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Book Review
Nathan A. Finn
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Book Review
Darby Strickland
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Links for the Reading Life
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| 1. |
Brad Littlejohn, “iTHink Therefore iAm” (American Compass)
“‘Ideas have consequences,’ conservatives admonish one another, pouring more money into think tanks and great-books conferences. Sometimes, however, consequences also have ideas; our behaviors determine how we think. If Marshall McLuhan is right, and ‘the medium is the message,’ what is the message of the smartphone era? It is one that has rendered many basic conservative instincts simply nonsensical, especially concerns about family, morality, and sexuality. In the age of TikTok, the Judeo-Christian tradition is not just becoming discredited, but altogether inaccessible.
“The social acid of the smartphone era is dissolving six fundamental pillars of conservatism: Limits, Tradition, Patience, Dependence, Embeddedness, and Embodiment. In stressing these themes for centuries, conservatives have sought to tether human action to the limits of human nature, insisting that individuals and polities alike cultivate the virtues of self-restraint.”
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Betsy Childs Howard, “Classic Christian Picture Books Every Family Should Read” (The Gospel Coalition)
“When I take my children to the library, they gravitate toward the junk-food version of children’s literature (the sort of thing that British educator Charlotte Mason called “twaddle”). I don’t mind reading a few Paw Patrol board books, but I try to fill our take-home bag with books of greater substance. . . . For the past year, I’ve been on a quest to identify classic Christian children’s picture books.”
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Andrew Albanese, “Appeals Court Upholds Decision Against Internet Archive’s Book Scanning Program” (Publisher’s Weekly)
“In a swift decision, a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has unanimously affirmed a March 2023 lower court decision finding the Internet Archive’s program to scan and lend print library books is copyright infringement. In an emphatic 64-page decision, released on September 4, the court rejected the Internet Archive’s fair use defense, as well as the novel protocol known as ‘controlled digital lending’ on which the Archive’s scanning and lending is based.”
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| 4. |
Ivan Mesa and Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “On My Shelf: Life and Books with Kevin Vanhoozer” (The Gospel Coalition)
“Augustine’s Confessions and C. S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy get top billing on my list of autobiographies (Peter Brown’s Augustine of Hippo and Humphrey Carpenter’s The Inklings provide good supplementary biographical information).”
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The Gospel Coalition
8520 Allison Pointe Boulevard, Suite 220, Indianapolis, IN, 46250
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