Books
Book Group 2012
by Jeff Miller
The year has started and I realized I haven't posted the 2012 selections for the RPC Book Group here on Riverblog. I'm starting behind!
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Books
Consider the Lilies…and the Ants…and Snowflakes
by Tim Lien
I’ve just finished N.D. Wilson’s Notes from a Tilt-A-Whirl.
This is what I felt like when I finished it: (This isn’t my quote and I can’t quite track down its source)
Most people are bored. The rest walk around in constant amazement.
It has been …
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Books
Book Group Update
by Jeff Miller
Wow, I looked up and it’s Mid-May. In the RPC book group, we are in the middle of our 5th book of the year. So far this year, we have read The Name of the Rose (Eco), Four Quartets (Eliot), Second Coming (Percy) and Fear and Trembling (Kierkegaard). We …
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Books
What I Learned in Narnia
by Peggy Drinkard
That’s the title of a Douglas Wilson book I haven’t read yet, but I want to. It came to mind this morning when I was reading The Silver Chair, book four of the Chronicles of Narnia series, with my high school senior. At the beginning of curriculum planning …
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Books
2011 Book Group List
by Jeff Miller
Ok, As promised, here is the 2011 RPC Book Group list. They are in the order we will read them & usually will be one per month. The exception to that will be that we’ll try to do Kierkegaard & Nietzsche in a 5-6 week period & adjust afterwards. Hope you’ll …
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Books
About the book group……
by Jeff Miller
This was originally going to be the annual post about next year’s list, but the rabbits started running & I followed….. The other post will show up this weekend.
I usually get three questions about the RPC Book Group…. 1) Why do you do this? 2) How do you pick …
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Books
RPC Book Group 2010 Review
by Jeff Miller
It has been a very interesting journey in the life of the RPC Book Group this year.
Schaeffer- True Spirituality Fitzgerald- Beautiful and Damned Aquinas- Selected Writings O’Connor- Violent Bear It Away Sayers- Mind of the Maker Homer- Odyssey Shakespeare- Richard III Brown- Augustine of Hippo Wilde-Picture of Dorian …
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Books
Twilight
by Jimmy Hopper
Not that I know what he is talking about since the chances of me reading a Vampire romance are less than zero, but Douglas Wilson is reading Twilight and writes critiques on each chapter at the Credenda Agenda web site. They are hilarious. The latest is linked here.
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Books
Book Group 2010
by Jeff Miller
Like I said in the previous post, the RPC Book Group is looking forward to a new slate of books! As has been our custom, we have selected 11 works, both fiction and nonfiction and including one Shakespeare.
We hope you will join us in 2010. Please do NOT feel …
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Books
Book Group 2009 redux
by Jeff Miller
Well, it’s hard to believe 2009 is coming to a close.
The RPC Book group has been down several different roads this year. We have seen glimpses of God’s Glory and Grace an much of man’s depravity through 11 vehicles of literature.
We have wandered from 20th …
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Books
Worship by the Book
by Tim Lien
My wife alerted me to this great little excerpt from D.A. Carson’s book, Worship by the Book. (Which is actually a collection, I believe.)
In an age increasingly suspicious of (linear) thought, there is much more respect for the â??feelingsâ? of things - whether a film or a …
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Books
Modern Reformation
by Jimmy Hopper
On Saturday, I received the July/August issue of Modern Reformation magazine, an event I always anticipate. This issue has the theme of “A Feast in a Fast Food World,” and several of the articles speak to the connection of food and Christianity, including Communion, prodigality, asceticism, liberty, and the …
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Books
“Jesus” On Spring Break
by Tim Lien
Book: The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University
Kevin Roose went undercover at Liberty University for a semester. He even went on the university’s spring break mission trip— an attempt to convert spring-breakers for Jesus.
There is a great excerpt at Salon.com. It …
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Books
Outside My Genre
by Tim Lien
A couple years ago I read TIME magazine’s compilation of the best 100 English novels from 1923 to present. I remember seeing The Watchmen on the list, since it was the only graphic novel that made the list. A little surprising, since I normally associate graphic novels with Dick …
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Books
This Is For You
by Tim Lien
Last year our Session made the decision to participate in the Sacrament of Communion with greater frequency.
Due to the many, many misunderstandings of Communion, the Session charged me with a task: Come up with devotional literature that would be pastoral and educational in this regard, so that our entire …
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Books
Review of Elissa Elliott’s Novel: Eve
by Jeff Miller
The RPC book group has recently taken two weeks for a specific and unique task. We were asked to read and review a forthcoming book called Eve by Elissa Elliott. As a framework, the author had wanted to get an impression of the book from the perspective of religious readers …
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Books
There Seems to Be No Place Like Home
by Tim Lien
Jimmy Hopper sent this NY Times Book Review link to the Book Club, — it’s a great review of Marilynne Robinson’s new Book Home.
Gilead was my first exposure to Ms. Robinson. When I first heard that Gilead was about an old pastor about to die, I thought, “There …
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Books
Big Event Tomorrow…
by Jimmy Hopper
Tomorrow is the day Marilynne Robinson’s new novel, Home, goes on sale. It is a continuation of the Gilead story and I’m sure it will be an early selection of the Riverwood Book Group. Ms. Robinson is one of the few serious Christian writers in the world today …
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Books
On Death….
by Jimmy Hopper
The Riverwood Book Group has been reading (and discussing) John Milton’s fabulous Paradise Lost for the past few weeks. We have found much to agree (and disagree) with in Milton’s telling of the fall of Satan, of Creaion, of original sin, and of expulsion from paradise, but we …
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Books
Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)
by Jeff Miller
One of the most provocative and interesting writers of the 20th century has left us.
Solzhenitsyn’s exposure of the USSR and criticism of the West’s moral bankruptcy were singularly incredible.
George Grant has an excellent post on the man at his blog.
There is also an interesting article …
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Books
Cultural Consequences
by Jimmy Hopper
One of the Christian web blogs I enjoy is written by Greg Wilbur, Music and Arts director at King’s Meadow Presbyterian Church in Nashville. Greg was a Riverwood college student and while in graduate school at Alabama in the late ‘80’s and early 90’s, he directed the …
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Books
Novel Theology
by Jimmy Hopper
The Riverwood Book Group recently completed Graham Greene’s novel of love in wartime London, The End of the Affair. Greene was Catholic, and his “serious” novels deals with the moral ambiguities of life as seen from a Christian perspective but without glib answers. This aspect is very visible in …
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Books
A New Way To Be Gay
by Tim Lien
Two weeks ago, J.K. Rowling (author of the Harry Potter series) took a break from swimming in cash, to speak to rabid fans at Carnegie Hall. The audienceâ??s shock turned to outright happy bedlam when Ms. Rowling answered a fanâ??s question about a prominent characterâ??s love …
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Books
Book Group Update
by Jeff Miller
Well, 2007 is flying by. It’s almost time for the Reformation Celebration, Thanksgiving & Christmas come in rapid fire succession after that. For the RPC Book Group, that means it’s time to decide about next year’s books.
For those not attending lately, let me give you an update …
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Books
group speak
by Peggy Drinkard
I recently attended a fairly large gathering of predominately Armenian-oriented evangelical Christians. Musing as I mingled, I tried to come up with one word that would describe the group “personality” as I perceived it. Of course, the first word to pop to mind was “nice.” That one’s obvious. In …
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Books
Murder Gets A New Dress: Finicking Over Esthetics
by Tim Lien
At your next get-together donâ??t mention that youâ??ve just read Crime and Punishment. Itâ??s really not a good opener. I mean, what will people say? â??Thatâ??s greatâ?¦one of the classics, huh?â?
(awkward pause)
â??Hey, did I ever tell you the one about …
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Books
Censorship, or What Johnny Can’t Read Today
by Jeff Miller
I’ve heard a lot of talk recently about strange things such as censorship, banning books, etc. from people of our theological stripe.
Now I expect this from people who advertise themselves in certain ways. (Extreme hardline religious fanatics (of all religions), Fascists, extreme nationalists, Racist groups. etc.). The picture …
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Books
RPC Book Group
by Jeff Miller
Actually, this shoud probably be in the category of “Shameless plugs”….
The RPC Book Group finished looking at Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath last night. It was a very compelling story, as you may know, of impoverished Plains people who moved to California in the early 20th century. looking …
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Books
On “Thirteen Moons” and Selective History
by Jimmy Hopper
The Riverwood Book Group recently completed Charles Frazier’s second novel, Thirteen Moons; his first novel, Cold Mountain, having been an extraordinary effort. As always, we had some great conversations about the book and the ideas generated both by the book and by the conversations.
Thirteen Moons essentially concerns the …
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Books
The Book Group
by Jimmy Hopper
Two or three posts down, I posted about an article reviewing “Christian” diet books, and I compared that concept with one in a book we had been reading and discussing in the Riverwood Book Group. This is not to re-hash that post but simply to note how the book and …
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Books
The Monster of Me
by Tim Lien
There are many of you that know that I am currently preaching through the epistle of Philippians. A condensed summary of Saint Paulâ??s letter can be expressed with, â??joy in suffering.â? To accompany my sermons with illustrations, I started reading Elie Wieselâ??s trilogy about the Jewish …
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Books
BookTV Viewership Doubles
by Tim Lien
With seventy-plus channels available on cable television, BookTV doesnâ??t even seem like a viable economic venture. Most of their potential viewers are probably reading a book, anyway. But Sunday night, BookTVâ??s ratings enjoyed a rare spike when I joined Prof. Robert â??just-call-me-Bobâ? Koshansky* (from Kankakee, â??just-south-of-Chicagoâ …
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Books
Oak and the Calf
by Jeff Miller
I’m halfway through listening to The Oak & The Calf by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It is an enthralling tale of his difficulties and triumphs in writing and publishing in Soviet Russia. It is a memoir, not of the author so much as a literary memoir. The story of his writings and …