There’s a feature on Library Thing this week in Business 2.0 LibraryThing, a social network based not on who you know but on what you’ve read. It’s already producing a nice revenue stream for Spalding from the sale of thousands of premium memberships at $10 to $25 apiece. Spalding’s creation is quietly achieving cult status among bookworms around the world, Continue Reading
I joined Library Thing, and it is some cool stuff. Here is my Author Cloud. The “Random Books from my library” (sidebar at the right , down near the bottom) needs a bit of filtering, and I am still learning. Saw a few of my friends (Kaz, Eric, Charlie) via the common books listings on the profile page (the Hauerwas Continue Reading
Interesting. I may have to splurge. In the last few years, traditional collaboration—in a meeting room, a conference call, even a convention center—has been superceded by collaborations on an astronomical scale. Today, encyclopedias, jetliners, operating systems, mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. While some leaders fear the heaving Continue Reading
I was just wondering which author has the most books on my shelves. I found: 19 by CS Lewis (including 7 Chronicles of Narnia and 3 of the Space Trilogy) 17 by Frederick Buechner (bought mostly in the late 70’s and throughout the 80’s) 13 by Tony Campolo, and 2 more shared authorships (1 with son Bart, 1 with Brian McLaren) Continue Reading
Ok. Now I’m going to focus on my picks for the “most important works of theology” of the past 25 years (so 1982-1997) Certainly that category would have to have happened for me in just the past 2-2 and a half years or so , since I never read much of what would be considered “theological works” until then. The only one in this Continue Reading
I’m stacking madly these days (as in “Book Stacks”). I bought a copy of Bob Woodward’s State of Denial Friday night as we headed for Cincinnati. I am also a little over a third of the way through Michael Isikoff and David Corn’s Hubris, which is pretty much on the same theme. (I see also that Frank Rich has a Continue Reading
I just got a package in the mail from Amazon, consisting of 3 items. David Fitch’s book The Great Giveaway: Reclaiming the Mission of the Church from Big Business, Parachurch Organizations, Psychotherapy, Consumer Capitalism, and Other Modern Maladies, a book by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Hubris: The InsideStory of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, and Continue Reading
Oh, by the way, the book I mentioned toward the tail end of my last post on James Carroll’s House of War, entitled Overthrow, I also bought from Amazon when I bought the Carroll book. Kinzer is another writer on historical conflicts who has noticed the tragic patterns of America not learning its lesson, and reaping the consequences of “an Continue Reading
I’ve started reading James Carroll’s House of War after catching him on CSPAN while channel surfing at my in-Laws on Memoral Day weekend. The second chapter is on the building and justification for use on Japan of the A-bomb. Chilling is the word to descibe my feelings as Carroll gives account of the players and the debates, and how “peace Continue Reading
I saw James Carroll on CSPAN Sunday, and he was talking about the use of American power over the years since the building of the Pentagon (before then also , of course, but Carroll’s dad worked in the Pentagon, and late in life revealed to his son the sense of danger he felt was building in what he saw happening Continue Reading
I just began reading some more in this huge volume (900 + pages of bio, and several more notes pages at the end for over 1000 pages) It had gotten a little dense with all the descriptions of the various meetings and groups that Bonhoefer met with during the time after his return from America and before the world got Continue Reading
I added this: We ARE the alternative. It just doesn’t seem that way most of the time. Are we supposed to be satisfied with that? Is that the “norm†that God expects? Is what God expects a “realistic†thing? Probably not. But who’s “realistic†are we talking here? In what reality? (There’s only one that is REALITY, the others are Continue Reading
I’m into Hauerwas’ Christian Existence Today this weekend. it is a community whose memory of its Savior creates the miracle of being a people whose very differences contribute to their unity p.53 The church as witness to God’s work for us in Israel and Jesus of Nazareth means that here the teller and the tale are one. For this is Continue Reading
OK, one more highlight from JKA Smith’s book. This one is sort of related to something I said in my previous post about how the way the people of the church talk about the life of the church; how the Gordon Cosby interview “sound(ed) pretty conservative”….meaning that the language is recognized as unapologetically confessional. So far, I have been suggesting Continue Reading
The particulars of a robust ecclesiology seeking a radical reformation; a confrontation with what society says is “the way it is”; a truly “alternative” life, recognizing the unique structures and “culture” it takes to withstand the allure of what everybody is encouraging everybody to do and seek, is extremely hard, and it is what so many churches are unwilling to Continue Reading