Friday, January 23, 2009

seven quick takes, vol. 090123

I'm having a good week.  Busy week.  No time for deep thought.

1.  My two year old is deep into a game in which lots of brightly colored beads are her "money."  This appears to involve swapping the beads around between an old spice jar and her pocket and lots of running around the house.  I wonder if the game would be half so interesting if she didn't know that those beads are supposed to belong to her older sister?

2.  I checked out Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz from the library.  I'm not impressed.  (It looks like I'm in the minority).  Miller's not nearly so insightful as he thinks he is . . . he's got a lot of the same breezy, self-revelatory sort of voice and style as Anne Lamott, but he doesn't have either Lamott's depth of experience or humility, so he doesn't pull it off nearly so well.  After reading/skimming 50-100 pages of a several hundred page book, I'm returning it to the library and thankful I didn't bother to buy it.

3.  On the other hand, I'm very much enjoying Cicero on Jen's recommendation.  I'll be surprised if I don't end up buying this one eventually, but for the moment, I'm thankful for our library.

4.  It seems to be maintenance month at our house.  Oil change time for the vehicles.  Dental cleanings.  Eye checks.  Furnace servicing.  Etc. . . . It's amazing how much havoc this can wreak on a week's schedule.

5.  We're looking to start our middle one on violin lessons next week.  This past fall, we instituted a campaign to get her to stop chewing on her fingernails (and fingers).  The bribe was that when her fingers were all healed she'd be ready for lessons.  I was, I'll admit, cynical as to how well this would work, since we'd already tried half a dozen different motivations to get her to keep her fingers out of her mouth, but this one really took.  She wants those music lessons.  She was doing so well, that by the evidence of her hands, she was ready shortly before Christmas.  But we said "after the holidays" and the time has come to make good our promise.  I take her to the Suzuki school that meets at our church next week.

6.  I love this song.  I got it stuck in my head when I was about ten years old and it's been making regular appearances on the soundtrack in my brain ever since.  I have little clue what it's supposed to be about and really don't want to know--the lyrics are obscure enough and the melody such that it's been generating images and stories in my head for more than 20 years and I'd rather just leave it that way.

7.  I was tempted this morning by this offer of free books.  Until I started reading their website more closely and realized that my own theological instincts are probably far too conservative for their tastes.  Oh, well.

7 Quick Takes Fridays are hosted by Jennifer at Conversion Diary.

3 comments:

Susan Barnes said...

I'm sorry you didn't enjoy Blue Like Jazz. I understand he is not as insightful as others but I enjoyed the autobiographical nature of the book. I like reading about how God works in other people's lives. I wrote about it here.

AnneK said...

Hi Sara, thanks for stopping by my blog. I agree with you, libraries are such a blessing. I don't know if ALL librraies do it, but here we have like a bunch of 6 or 7 and if a particular book is not available in the local one, I can always order it online and I get it at my doorstep free of charge, no shipping even!

Sara said...

Anne--thanks for stopping by! we just have one very well stocked library for our county, but I do believe that they're part of a wide ranging inter-library loan program. As yet, I'm still way behind on making my way through all the things I want to read that are actually on their shelves, so I haven't sent them hunting down anything obscure for me yet. :) (They're also very accomodating in regards to ordering new materials if you request them).

Susan--I certainly agree that I like hearing how God works in various peoples lives, and I think that telling each other our God stories is one of the most important things we can do. I haven't quite put my finger on what about Miller's writing it is that rubs me the wrong way ... I think we all have authors we identify with more and less. I think it's a combination of his striking me as being a little too impressed with himself with some distinctly un-orthodox aspects to his theology.