7 quick takes: volume 090724

7 books I'm reading this summer when I'm not blogging

1. The Dresden Files (Jim Butcher): okay, a whole series of books. This summer's fluff. Jim Butcher has a deft hand at weaving a lot of stock Fantasy/Sci-Fi elements with snarky humor and likably flawed under-dog characters. Plop the whole thing in a familiar setting--like an alternate-reality Chicago--and it's easy to see why Butcher's managed to land himself on top of the best seller lists.

2. Watership Down (Richard Adams): Book club book for the summer. A pleasant re-read. I must have been about seven or eight when my dad read this to my brother and me for bed-time reading.

3. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy): The other book club read for the summer. I actually read this when I was fourteen and hated it. Re-reading it at 34 is proving to be a college course's worth of insight into how our life experience informs our reading. I'm not sure if I like it or not this time round. I'm not sure I can even really compare. I feel like I'm reading a completely different book.

4. Story (Robert McKee): A book about writing screenplays that has a lot of material which is directly applicable to novels. My writing classes in college focused on structure at the sentence and paragraph level. They never addressed such things as plot arc and scene selection--those macro-structuring issues with which I've struggled a great deal in my attempts to write. This book is a God-send.

5. Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl (N.D. Wilson): My next book review book for Thomas Nelson. A philosophical, apologetic hymn of awe to a Creator-God who is too great for us to even begin to comprehend. Beautiful.

6. God's Prayer Book (Ben Patterson): A how-to devotional guide for Protestants on the spiritual discipline of praying the book of Psalms. A birthday present from my best friend. A not-so-subtle hint from God.

7. Cicero (Anthony Everitt): A biography of the great Roman orator. An overview of Roman politics that makes our current, corrupt American politics look like a model of integrity.

What are you all reading this summer?

As always, 7 Quick Takes are sponsored by Jen at Conversion Diary

some musing on free speech

Neil Gaiman put up a piece last week on the First Amendent. It's had me thinking. He starts off with this: "If you accept -- and I do -- that freedom of speech is important, then you are going to have to defend the indefensible. That means you are going to be defending the right of people to read, or to write, or to say, what you don't say or like or want said." This makes me more than moderately uncomfortable. It sounds an awful lot like "the ends justify the means" to me. Still, Gaiman is an intelligent, articulate man and I read his piece all the way through. He's coming from a thoroughly secular viewpoint. From a country (England) where they don't have a first amendent, but do have things like the "Obscene Publications Act" where any customs officer can sieze things from you if he thinks you shouldn't have them. He points out that "The Law is a blunt instrument. It's not a scalpel. It's a club. If there is something you consider indefensible, and there is something you consider defensible, and the same laws can take them both out."

The case that sparked this latest manifesto on his part involves pornagraphic comic books. It's got the whole conversation going again with the usual suspects for viewpoints. What is pornography? (SCOTUS Judge Potter Stewart: "I can't define it--but I know it when I see it). What is erotica? (Is there a difference between the two?) What is art? What specifically is the role of the government in regulating these things?

I don't have any grand or spanking new opinions on this can of worms. I admit a bias toward less regulation--I don't generally think that it's the government's job to micromanage an individual's moral behavior. That said, I think that pornography is a blight on human society and far too easily available. Saying that we must defend the indefensible sounds an awful lot to me like "the end justifies the means," which is a dangerous place to go . . . Every election I'm tempted to vote libertarian . . .

yes, exactly

From The Anchoress:

What I am reminded, repeatedly, is that time is a construct - that everything is happening simultaneously. Right now, I am writing at my computer. Right now, I am voting at my local school. Right now, Christ is dying on a cross. Right now, He is making a covenant and receiving a kiss. Right now, Napoleon is heading to Waterloo. Right now, George Washington is facing defeat for the umpteenth time. Right now, I am being needlessly cruel to someone. Right now I am being born. Right now I am 78 years old and grousing that my kids never visit me. Right now, Obama has won the election. Right now John McCain has won the election.

This is why prayer has power. In the quantum world, where everything is occurring all at once, prayer changes things. Sacrifice changes things. Wisdom knows this - it is why every religious tradition, Eastern or Western, encourages prayer and sacrifice - because this is how you pierce illusions.

Last week Pope Benedict XVI said: ”He who builds only on visible and tangible things like success, career and money builds the house of his life on sand”…money vanishes,
it is nothing. All these things that appear to be real are in fact secondary. Only God’s words are a solid reality”. Yes. Everything is happening, all at once. What appears to be solid and three-dimensional would does not even exist between its busy atoms. That which the world regards as most ephemeral, and least grasp-able, is actually the solid platform upon which all illusions spin.

About a year ago, out of the blue - a friend of mine - a social studies teacher who is politically “interested” but not active, and who does not go to church - said to me: “I get the feeling that George W. Bush is going to be the last American president of “old” America, and Benedict is going to be the last pope of the “old” Catholic church.” She had a sense of things cresting, of a cusp being reached. Right now, a typesetter is laying down the words Dewey Wins! Right now, Hillary Clinton is the presumptive Democrat nominee. Right now, George Washington is refusing a crown. Right now, Barack Obama is training ACORN workers. Right now, Margaret Sanger is preaching eugenics. Right now, a Pole is made Pope. Right now, Nero is watching Rome burn. Right now, Peter, that city’s first Bishop, is being crucified and turned upside down.
Right now, in prayer and in fasting, one may penetrate the illusions of the world and,
touching eternity, impact them. Obama may win this election. Obama may lose
this election. McCain may win this election. McCain may lose this election. No
matter what happens, we are entering a new era, and I believe everyone knows it. With the prayer and fasting, I am “in training” making myself ready for whatever comes, because whatever comes is going to be very different; it will jar us from all of our complacencies.

I find this very interesting

I've generally stayed away writing about politics. For one thing, I figure that Rob has already more than burned through our household quota for political blogging. Also, being married to a political junkie, any passing want I have for a political conversation, I can have in person--I generally don't need to start a comment thread. :) For politics, I can talk to my husband or my father. And for all those other sanity-saving conversations of young motherhood--potty-training, recipe swaps, how-do-you-like-the-schools, and what are you reading for yourself these days anyway (all of which really fall under the category of "reassure me that I'm not the only one dealing with these things), for all of those conversations, I have the usual round of contacts of playdates, other church moms, old friends, etc.

And now the two are starting to overlap. Sarah Palin's speech last night was the play date conversation of this morning. ("I like her!" one friend declared while herding her kids in the door and getting shoes off). A friend of mine who is usually politically clueless by choice ("Tell me who's running in October") made a point of looking up and listening to Palin's speech online today. We're a voting demographic for whom the political process really doesn't intersect with our daily lives all that much. We may turn out to vote, but we're not usually that engaged with it . . . Now we've got a candidate who we can very well imagine having over for a play date. Who gets it that the conversation about which teacher your kid had for first grade and I'm not sure that I like what they're doing with this latest math curriculum matter--and joined the PTA to do something about it. A candidate who respects us. A true feminist who lives the fact that whether I want to have a career or want to stay home with my kids, or whether I want to combine those--it's all good. Not a faux feminist who's implying that my kids are a waste of my time. A woman who's inspired usually silent multitudes to say "I am Sarah Palin. Her story is my story." (Maybe I ought to get me one of those t-shirts. I like her.)