Justin Taylor posts an argument to that effect here. Fiction should be an important part of any reader’s diet, and children’s fiction makes for great family time, as I argued here. For more recommendations, check out this post, which includes some lively discussion in the comments. And of course feel free to add your own recommended reading.
Here are some of the Children’s book recommendations from those previous posts.
In this post I extolled the importance of Fiction. Here is some recommended reading to get you started. The books range from Children’s literature to thrillers to some noteworthy classics to diamonds-in-the-rough.
John Piper reminds us fiction junkies that it’s OK to read stories, even children’s stories. Quoting C. S. Lewis:
I was therefore writing “for children” only in the sense that I excluded what I thought they would not like or understand; not in the sense of writing what I intended to be below adult attention. I may of course have been deceived, but the principle at least saves one from being patronizing. I never wrote down to anyone; and whether the opinion condemns or acquits my own work, it certainly is my opinion that a book worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then.
And here is one from Douglas Wilson:
In C. S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, we are given a good example of a boy who has been brought up poorly. Eustace Scrubb had stumbled into a dragon’s lair, but he did not know what kind of place it was. “Most of us know what we should expect to find in a dragon’s lair, but, as I said before, Eustace had read only the wrong books. They had a lot to say about exports and imports and governments and drains, but they were weak on dragons.”
It is a standing rebuke for us that there are many Christians who have an open sympathy for the ‘true’ books which Eustace read–full of true facts about governments and drains and exports–and who are suspicious of great works of imagination, like the Narnia stories, or The Lord of the Rings, or Treasure Island, because they are ‘fictional,’ and therefore suspected of lying. The Bible requires us to be truthful above all things, they tell us, and so we should not tell our sons about dragon-fighting. Our sons need to be strong on drains and weak on dragons. The irony here is that the Bible, the source of all truth, says a lot about dragons and giants, and very little about drains and exports….
The Bible cannot be read rightly without creating a deep impulse to tell stories which carry the scriptural truth about the kind of war we are in down through the ages.
Wilson, Douglas. Future Men, 2001, 101.
Of course we must have balanced diets (though note that fiction has been excluded in the list below):
This is really dangerous, and the way to counteract it is to prescribe balanced reading for yourself. What I mean is this. Read theology, as I say, but always balance it, not only with Church history but with biographies and the more devotional type of reading. Let me explain why this is so important. Your are preparing yourself, remember, and the danger for the intellectual type of man, if he is only reading theology or philosophy, is to become puffed up. He persuades himself that he has a perfect system; there is no problem, there is no difficulty.
Lloyd-Jones, D. Martyn. Preaching & Preachers. Zondervan, 1972. p. 178
And finally, on a more technical level, and with application to Biblical Hermeneutics, Paul Ricoeur:
It is in the age when our language has become more precise, more univocal, more technical, in a word, more suited to those integral formalizations which are called precisely symbolic logic, it is in this very age of discourse that we want to recharge our language, that we want to start again from the fullness of language. That also is a gift of our ‘modernity,’ for we moderns are the heirs of philology, of exegesis, of the phenomenology of religion, of the psychoanalysis of language. The same epoch holds in reserve both the possibility of emptying language by radically formalizing it and the possibility of filling it anew by reminding itself of the fullest meanings…. Beyond the desert of criticism, we wish to be called again.
Ricoeur, P. The Symbolism of Evil. 1st ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1967. p. 380
Where should you get started? There are a whole host of recommendations I would love to offer (perhaps people can post their recommendations in the comments), but Justin Taylor recently recommended Gilead, which I picked up today at our local library.
Here are some of the books mentioned in this post.
I ran into some copyright conundrums in the course of preparing for NTI, particularly regarding distribution of (out-of-print) materials. The problem is that copyright law is complex, and while individuals, libraries, and academic institutions are protected by “fair use,” it is not always clear what situations it covers (and the most efficient way to find out is to get yourself sued).
A group of researchers and educators have published this proposal on how institutions can properly use copyrighted material for educational purposes. It’s long, and often controversial, but may be worth it to those thinking through these issues.
Ars Technica has a nice summary:
In general, the document advises that faculty has broad abilities to use copyrighted material in educational materials, “including books, workbooks, podcasts, DVD compilations, videos, Web sites, and other materials designed for learning.” But it goes beyond what might be expected, as it argues that curriculum materials that incorporate copyrighted works can be sold, provided that accomplishes an educational purpose. Students are given broad leeway for the use of copyrighted works in assignments but, provided their work is sufficiently transformative, the guidelines argue that they should also be able to perform or distribute their assignments in any context, including online.
Here is the first in a series of 5 posts by Constantine Campbell, author of the new Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek. The posts will outline the impetus behind his book and should be interesting reading. This book will hopefully fill a much needed gap in current curriculum, since verbal aspect is an incredibly important topic but lacks beginner/intermediate resources.
As long as we’re on the topic of Greek, I should also mention this little number, which many of my students say is helpful and catchy.
Did you know that you can add user created versions to Bibleworks? I made this discovery recently while searching for some OT Pseudepigrapha.
Follow this guide to get things set up.
There is also a list of available versions. Included among them are the OT Pseudepigrapha, the Gospel of Thomas, several Targums, and a number of Classical Greek authors (Herodotus, for example).
For a limited time (this weekend), Logos Software is offering their Sermon File Addin for free. If you use Logos products, this might be a good addition for you.
The Sermon File Addin allows you to turn years of old sermon manuscripts into a powerful, organized, searchable Libronix book file. You can create a second book of all of your illustrations as well. Not only can you search and interact with your new books like the other books in your Libronix library, but you’ll even see your own sermons and illustrations show up in the Passage Guide.
Check out their blog for more information and a download link.
I upgraded to Zotero’s latest Sync Preview some time ago, and was blessed today with automatic update. To my delight, this update includes, among other things, a full text editor for note taking. It works a lot like a basic/primitive word processor or WYSIWYG HTML editor. I’m pleased as punch; now I feel better about using Zotero as full-time note taking software (for books at least).
You can download the Preview Release at the Zotero site. Be warned, this is beta software. In my experience it is stable and problem free, but there are no guarantees, so please backup your data (using Dropbox, for example), or stick with Zotero 1.0 until the final release.
Google Books currently allows you to search and browse a massive number of copyrighted material online. Google has been digitalizing books for some time, and the number of available books is growing quickly. Since Google generates ad revenue from this feature, it is no surprise that they were sued by book publishers in 2005. That lawsuit has come to a close, and the result seems to be good for users, for publishers, and for Google. As ReadWriteWeb reports:
Under the terms of the settlement, Google has agreed to pay the authors and publishers $125 million. It will also be responsible for selling access to copyrighted works in its repository. Most of the revenues from such access would go to the authors and publishers.
Currently, users of Google Book Search are able to view snippets of books online. The settlement agreement allows Google to make whole pages of copyright works available to online searchers. Users will be able to preview up to 20 percent of a book and purchase the book if they choose to, said David Drummond, senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer for Google.
All public libraries in the United States will be offered a free online portal to Google’s digitized collection, said Aiken, and patrons will be able to print an unlimited number of pages for a per page fee. Google will also be offering institutional subscriptions to colleges and universities. Google Book Search services available outside the United States will remain the same, Drummond said.
This is an interesting development in Google’s continue battle with copyright laws and privacy issues, and appears to be a good compromise. Dan Cohen has a more skeptical take. Your thoughts?
