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The Abolition of Man: Contemplating Skepticism
Stepping outside the Tao, they have stepped into the void. Nor are their subjects necessarily unhappy men. They are not men at all: they are artefacts. Man’s final conquest has proved to be…
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Great Possessions
I’ve had Great Possessions: An Amish Farmer’s Journal on my shelf for years. I kept passing it over for more “compelling” fare. Fortunately I didn’t pass it over this time. The book has…
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Lafcadio
Question: Is it a success or a failure when my five-year-old bursts into tears at the end of a book? I should add that they weren’t tears of disappointment that the story was…
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Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed a book this much. This novel is an unusual animal: a Victorian novel published in 2004. It has the scope, cast of characters, and wit of Dickens,…
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Amusing Ourselves to Death
In the eighties, a movie came out called The Gods Must Be Crazy. A pilot flying over the Kalahari desert in South Africa tosses his empty Coke bottle out the window, and it…
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Random thoughts on the Little House books
My mother read us the Little House books when my family drove across the country. We drove from New York to California, tent-camping all the way, the summer before I entered 7th grade,…
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Mudhouse Sabbath
Yesterday in Sunday school, my friend Polly extracted some excerpts from the chapter in this book about mourning. A young mother known to many people at church had died earlier in the week…
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Technopoly
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology has been on my shelf for 12 years. At the Asbury College faculty retreat in the fall of 1997, the Provost gave us all a copy…
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The Wizard of Oz
My daughters and I finished reading The Wizard of Oz. I read the book years ago, but I’d forgotten a lot of it. I remembered the movie better, which had made such an…
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Off to see the wizard
While reading The Wizard of Oz with my daughters, I’ve become curious about L. Frank Baum’s spiritual convictions. Like many fairy tales, this one is full of symbolically suggestive material. For instance, Dorothy…