Library Evangelog #003
[ ]It’s an easy breezy Sunday, and I feel like singing the praises of my local library system.
Welcome to issue #3 of the Library Evangelog!
1. *Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals* - Oliver Burkeman
I really enjoyed this book.
I picked it up from a random recommendation online, and I found it really spoke to me.
I’m right at the intersection of its target audience I think:
- ✓ control freak
- ✓ chronically nervous
- ✓ concerned with the future in all of the least helpful ways possible
- ✓ soulbound to a todo-list
- ✓ easy to convince the right “system” will fix all my problems
This was a great book to read and reaffirm the value of stepping back, moving slowly, embracing patience, and accepting life’s thorny edges on its own terms rather than trying to find systems to help me ever avoid getting pricked.
I liked it so much I actually bookmarked things and kept notes!
=> notes
And fun fact: it's what I was reading when the power outage that I wrote about earlier this month happened.
It's the kind of anti-self-help, self-help book that really works for me.
4/5 - ★★★★☆
2. *Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children* by Mac Barnett
I like reading books about how and why people make things.
Getting to go one level deeper beyond a discussion of "what art means” to “what art meant to create and what it meant to the person creating it” is really cool to me.
This book is about the creation of children's literature, and I really enjoyed it. Barnett’s view that children's literature is art in its own right, and not as a moral guidepost for children or a stepping stone to “real, adult art” was refreshing.
It felt similar to a lot that I’ve read about the process of creating manga — admitedly a much less contended form of art, but still one which feels better appreciated with richer context of who creates them and how.
It was also a nice, short read that felt easy to chew on while I was brain-deep in some other reading that took more of my attention.
3/5 - ★★★☆☆
*Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now* by Walter Brueggemann
This book was cited as a reference in Burkeman's "Four Thousand Weeks" (mentioned above).
I haven’t finished it, but I’ve enjoyed the first 30 or so pages I’ve read.
It seems to be a Christian theological take on the value of rest in spite of a world whose power structures are built on discouraging that rest.
I picked this book up primarily because it was a cited source in Burkeman's book. I’ve wanted to exercise a little more curiosity when reading: take things less at face value and build a richer understanding by digging deeper into sources and inspirations.
And a secondary motivation was its Christian theological core. I’m not Christian, and a lot of my US cultural background makes me hesitant to engage too much with Christian theology, but being an annoying contrarian makes it alluring in kind of a taboo way. I’ve wanted to build a better understanding of Christian theology, both to give more context to the philosophies that act in opposition to it and to better understand it in a wider religious tradition. I wish learning about Christian theology would translate to understanding Christians better, but I’m not convinced that's a realistic goal.
Anyway, so far I think the book is cool, and I find Brueggeman's point of view interesting especially where it grounds the value of rest in the history of the Jews and their enslavement by the egyptian Pharaohs.
I’m looking forward to continuing this book.
?/5 - ?????