Some weekly picks from what I’ve read online recently…
Western Foundations
In his book The Case for Classic Christian Education (Crossway, 2003), Doug Wilson offers a list of “foundational” books for Western Civilization (some of which, but not all, would make their way onto his desert-island reading list.)
I’ve reproduced his list below, along with my own parenethetical recommendations on some translations, editions for kids, etc.
Foundational Literature of Western Civilization – Justin Taylor, The Gospel Coalition
A great list to read here, that will allow what C S Lewis called “the breeze of the centuries” to blow through your mind. It’s great to read outside your own immediate cultural context, both by reading historically within your own tradition (like this list) and also internationally/cross-culturally. I’ve not read nearly as many of these as I’d have liked to, but I am currently reading Homer’s The Iliad in a recent prose translation.
TV Drama vs Women
I wondered about starting this off with me entering with a face covered in made-up bruises. I wondered what your reaction might be. Would this be a more entertaining way of opening my talk. Would it grab your attention right from the beginning? Would you be intrigued? Or repulsed? Or would you be indifferent?
When you grow up in any given context, you don’t begin to ask questions until late teenage/early adult years; the current generation thinks of now. We have a biblical responsibility to think of who comes after us. My wife is pregnant with our first child, so I’m forced into thinking about the kind of world I want them to grow up in. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want that world to be one that perpetuates TV shows and movies that are full of rape, mutilation, torture, incest and extreme sexual violence. I don’t want that to be normal.
Should Christians Watch Game of Thrones? – Thomas McConaghie, threads
Recent articles at a host of publications have pointed this out, providing a long list of contemporary shows that have made rape a significant plot point: Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey, Scandal, House of Cards, Mad Men, The Americans, Sons of Anarchy, American Horror Story, Bates Motel—and many more besides (including a new show called Tyrant that has several rape scenes in the opening episode alone). Sometimes this rape is shown explicitly or psuedo-explicitly, while other times it is recounted as a past event. But either way, this much is clear: Television has never been crueler to women than it is right now.
Television’s Rape Epidemic – Tim Challies
This issue has come up in several places recently. I think there’s a place for stories to explore tough issues like sexual violence, but it doesn’t create a healthy cultural environment if it becomes a commonplace of entertainment.
Some of the questions we should be asking are, what’s the context and purpose of depicting sexual violence? Do the writer and director have something meaningful and worthwhile to say? What attitudes are the story encouraging?
Books vs The Internet
Anyone who writes professionally online knows that long, ambiguously titled bits of text disappear without a trace in the viral marketing shit-storm that is the internet. Sadly, a “long, ambiguously titled bit of text” is basically the definition of most books. The book, as a marketable artefact, is about as profoundly unsuited to the internet as a tribe of hill dwelling indigenous peoples are unsuited to the radioactive vacuums of deep-space.
The Problem With Books – Damien G. Walter
Authors Take Sides in Hachette vs Amazon Dispute
I don’t know exactly why Mega-Company Amazon needs a… petition of support? I like Amazon well enough, and as my publisher they’ve been aces. I don’t boycott them — but I also try to diversify my buying habits in the same way I try to diversify my reading and writing and publishing habits. But I also recognize that Amazon has received a lot of criticism for the way it does business (as have many big publishers, to be clear), and further, puts out an e-book environment where you do not really own your e-books. I’ve also read some contracts from Amazon that are bad or worse than some of the contracts you get from big publishers. This isn’t meant to suggest that Amazon is an Evil Monster (I note the laziness of that too-easy thinking here, in an earlier post one month ago today). It’s just meant to suggest –
Well, we don’t need a f***ing petition to support them.
They’re not an underdog.
They’re not your savior.
The Petition to Paint Amazon As Underdog – Terrible Minds
The continued negotiations between Amazon and Hachette seem to be driving everyone slowly crazy. Chuck Wendig has an entertaining and relatively sane take.
World Cup Philosophy: Germany vs France
“The rules of the game are inherently oppressive, if anything we should be given two points for Sartre’s stunning critique of the referee-rules power structure,” said Foucault to the referee.
World Cup Philosophy: Germany vs France – Existential Comics
My disinterest in football knows no bounds, but this rip-off homage to Monty Python’s sketch is a lot of fun.