My 2009 Reading Plan

Now that I've reviewed my favorite books of 2008 (here and here), I guess the next thing to do is preview my plans for 2009.

In the coming year, I want to be intentional about balancing out the kinds of books I read. These are the "food groups" I want to include in my literary diet:

• Literature. Fiction by serious writers, such as Camus, Solzhenitsyn, Flannery O'Connor, and the like.
• New Non-Fiction. Defined more or less as something published in my lifetime by authors who are still alive. Can be either "Christian" or "secular."
• Old Non-Fiction. Also known as non-fiction that isn't new. This category is important to me, because of a thought C.S. Lewis brought out in one of his essays about why we should read "old" books: "Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them."
• C.S. Lewis and Friends. I want to keep working through the Lewis canon and get to some books by his brother Warnie, his wife Joy, and his friend Charles Williams.
• John Wesley. I bought his complete works in 14 volumes several years ago but am only about 10% of the way through it.
• Novels. Defined, I suppose, as modern fiction written for a mass audience. This category isn't necessarily a priority, but it does make long airplane flights pass more quickly.

My idea is to rotate through the first 5 categories until the year is over, sprinking in the novels when appropriate. Between each book I'll catch up on the periodicals I receive. I'll also read the Bible most days, but I won't read through the Bible this year (I do that in even-numbered years).

So there you have it. I'm now accountable.

After 2009, I want to start into Calvin and Luther, but there's plenty of time yet to figure that out.

Favorite Books of 2008

David posted his favorite books for 2008, so I guess I may as well do the same.

First, here are all the books I read last year, listed alphabetically by author. This doesn't include newspapers, magazines, or restroom graffiti:

1. Anonymous - The Way of a Pilgrim and the Pilgrim Continues His Way
2. Bauby, Jean-Dominique - The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
3. Brother Lawrence - The Practice of the Presence of God
4. Bruce, A.B. - The Training of the Twelve
5. Coleman, Robert - Des Meisters Plan der Evangelisation
6. Coleman, Robert - The Master Plan of Evangelism (3rd? 4th? reading)
7. Coupland, Douglas - All Families are Psychotic
8. Dorsett, Lyle - A Love Observed: Joy Davidman's Life & Marriage to C.S. Lewis
9. D'Souza, Tony - Whiteman
10. Gaines, James - Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment
11. Gresham, Douglas - Lenten Lands: My Childhood with Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis
12. Harris, Robert - Enigma
13. Harris, Robert - Fatherland
14. Henry, Marguerite - White Stallion of Lipizza
15. Hopko, Thomas - Christian Faith And Same Sex Attraction: Eastern Orthodox Reflections
16. Iweala, Uzodinma - Beasts of No Nation
17. Kolakowski, Leszek - Metaphysical Horror
18. Neighbour, Randall - A Pocket Guide to Coaching Small Groups
19. Lewis, C.S. - A Grief Observed (2nd reading)
20. Lewis, C.S. - The Problem of Pain
21. Long, Jimmy - Emerging Hope: A Strategy for Reaching Postmodern Generations
22. Machiavelli, Niccolo - The Prince
23. Nouwen, Henri - Beloved
24. Nouwen, Henri - Can You Drink the Cup?
25. Nouwen, Henri - In the Name of Jesus
26. Pollan, Michael - In Defense of Food
27. Reich, Christopher - Rules of Deception
28. Rice, Anne - Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt
29. Rice, Anne - Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana
30. Richards, Jay (ed.) - Environmental Stewardship in the Judeo-Christian Tradition
31. Robinson, Marilynne - Gilead
32. Salinger, J.D. - Franny and Zooey
33. Sayer, George - Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis
34. Scazzero, Peter - Emotionally Healthy Spirituality
35. Skinner, Betty Lee - With Integrity of Heart and Skillful Hand
36. Tarnas, Richard - The Passion of the Western Mind (2nd reading)
37. Thigpen, Paul (ed.) - My Daily Catholic Bible: Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition 20-Minute Daily Readings
    
    

9,441 pages. Seems like I ought to be a lot smarter, wiser, and more Godly than I am after all that. What's that verse about always learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth?

In any case, here are my five favorites. I won't call them "best," because a book might be "best" for a particular purpose, but still not my favorite. And I won't include the Bible, because it's the obvious best and favorite. Of the 36 that remain, my faves as of this particular moment are:

• #6 Coleman - A classic is a classic is a classic. Profound principles in a compact package.
• #21 Long - Super insights into pomo people and times, and how to minister in this culture.
• #28-29 Rice - Miraculously uncheesy imaginings about the days of Jesus before his ministry.
• #31 Robinson - Transcendently beautiful Pulitzer-prize winning novel of forgiveness and transformation.
• #36 Tarnas - A history of philosophy that reads like a novel and makes sense of the mess.

And the favorite among the favorites? That will have to wait for another post.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

That's the question asked in the July-August 2008 issue of The Atlantic. How is our incessant use of the Internet changing our brains? Are we thinking and learning differently as a result of our exposure to the Web? I see elements of myself in this article, and it gives me pause. Check out a couple excerpts:

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

...

As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

...

“I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print” . . . . Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”

You can read this thoroughly fascinating essay here, and I hope you will. I'd love to hear your feedback. Is there something to this? And if so, should we be doing something different in order to preserve or retrain our minds?

Noted and Quoted: High Crimes

"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them."

• Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996), Russian Poet and Nobel Prize Winner