Bookish reflections « Across the Page

BTT: Why you read

Suggested by Janet:

I’ve seen this quotation in several places lately. It’s from Sven Birkerts’ ‘The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age’:

“To read, when one does so of one’s own free will, is to make a volitional statement, to cast a vote; it is to posit an elsewhere and [...]

Playing Catch-up: My Neglected Nightstand

I’ve missed the last several Nightstand carnivals over at 5 Minutes for Books. The last time I participated was in November! I think I need the inspiration of others’ booklists.

I’ve only read two books in February, though I have a long string of tried-and-derailed titles. I’ll probably finish my current read, The Magician’s Book: A [...]

The Week in Words: That Old Spell

Monday brings The Week in Words at Breath of Life. We’re invited to share something from our reading during the week. Click on the button to find out the details.

Here’s what I choose for today, from The Magician’s Book by Laura Miller:

A lot of people remember the bliss of their earliest reading with a pang; [...]

I’m reading The Magician’s Book, in which Laura Miller examines why she has continued to love the Chronicles of Narnia even after her initial feeling of betrayal that they contained so many Christian themes. I’m really enjoying it, even though I come from a different direction spiritually, one in sympathy with Lewis’s Christian faith. Like [...]

Curved space, Lent, and Faith

“Looking at Stars,” by Jane Kenyon

The God of curved space, the dry
God, is not going to help us, but the son
whose blood spattered
the hem of his mother’s robe.

This poem prefaces Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter. Though I’m not planning to delve much into the book [...]

Eclectic Reading

I’ve been thinking about our eclectic reading, and remembering this paragraph from The Well-Trained Mind where Jessie Wise shares the library habits she worked to develop in her children:

…I was known at the local public library as ‘the lady with the laundry basket’ because I took my children in every week and filled a laundry [...]

The Week in Words: Regions Unknown

Monday brings The Week in Words at Breath of Life. Though I fear I’ve already over-quoted from George MacDonald’s Unspoken Sermons this week, I can’t resist offering these wise words from “Man’s Difficulty Concerning Prayer”:

Perhaps, indeed, the better the gift we pray for, the more time is necessary to its arrival. To give us [...]

Happy birthday, Half-Pint

I learned on the Writer’s Almanac that today is Laura Ingalls Wilder’s birthday. She was born 143 years ago, and received her 6 gentle birthday spankings from Pa 137 years ago today.

My mother read the series to us when we took our trip across the country in 1978. There were five of us in the [...]

...and then, a few more words from the week

I tried to choose just one quote for the Week in Words carnival, but here are a few more, all on different topics, that have struck me lately.

*****

These two are from what my daughters call “The Talking Heads and Shoulders” on the Newshour. They’re actually from last week, in a discussion about President [...]

Eyes to see

Yesterday morning, as I was thinking about Haiti, a passage from Tess of the D’Urbervilles came to mind. Tess and her companion are working in a field that Thomas Hardy describes this way:

The whole field was in color a desolate drab; it was a complexion without features, as if a face, from chin to brow, [...]