Tag Archives: theology

Coffee and Irony 2021 Reading Challenge: Karen Swallow Prior, Tamar Adler, Flannery O’Connor, and Rupi Kaur

books poetry lit December 21, 2020 Leave a comment

Tis the season in which the book world explodes with reading challenges, but since I’m…..passionate? Extra? I wasn’t satisfied with any of the ones I’ve seen, so I made my one. Nothing particularly unusual here, just categories that suit me perfectly – and may suit someone else, who knows? I’ll list the categories first, then a breakdown of which books I’ll be reading for each category.

1. A book about books or reading

2. A book set in Russia

3. A book about food or cooking

4. A book about productivity, organizing, or cleaning

5. Unread book by a favorite author or an author you’ve enjoyed in the past

6. Choose Your Category – I’m doing works by Flannery O’Connor and Wendell Berry, two authors I’ve needed to read for a long time

7. A book of theology

8. A book about a current issue from a Biblical perspective (adoption, human trafficking, poverty, homelessness)

9. A work of philosophy or political thought (this can be very short – there are actually quite a few short books especially in the “political thought” realm)

10. A collection of poems by a single poet

11. A memoir

12. Bonus Choose Your Category – I’m going with a book on creativity or art

*Note: my choices below are linked to Goodreads, partly because it’s by far the most useful way to organize books and to-read lists, and partly because I interned there in college so have a ton of loyalty.

  1. A book about books or reading. Of course this has to be On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books by Karen Swallow Prior, whom I love and follow on all channels (had a moment of such pure delight when the lady herself followed me on Instagram!!).
  2. A book set in Russia – I swear to all reading souls that I will finally finish A Gentleman in Moscow. I swear! It’s a brilliant little book I was just in a Mood when I tried it the first time.
  3. A book about food or cooking. Tamar Adler and Shauna Niequist are the queens of writing about food in a non cookbook form in my opinion, though I have very complicated views of Niequist’s apallingly tone-deaf privileged tone when talking about her life (privilege is a word I rarely use but when she casually mentions staying at hotels all over the world as a child and spending every summer at a lake house as an adult, yet seems to have zero understanding that that alone is a lifestyle unobtainable and foreign to most of us and constantly complains of how hard life is!? It’s hard to put up with. I was a missionary kid and pastor’s kid too: trust me when I say my life did not resemble hers :).

    Having said that, Tamar Adler’s An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace is one of my favorite books not just about food but of all time, so to say I’m excited to dive into her Something Old, Something New: Oysters Rockefeller, Walnut Souffle, and Other Classic Recipes Revisited is an understatement. I’m also preemptively obsessed with The Art of Eating by M.F. K. Fisher so that’s probably on the palette too: here’s a quote.
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Caffeinated

film & television, this & that July 27, 2013 Leave a comment

coffee3

SOCIAL scientists believe that the empathetic, nurturing behaviors of sisters rub off on their brothers. For example, studies led by the psychologist Alice Eagly at Northwestern University demonstrate that women tend to do more giving and helping in close relationships than men. It might also be that boys feel the impulse — by nature and nurture — to protect their sisters. Indeed, Professor Eagly finds that men are significantly more likely to help women than to help men.” –Why Men Need Women, RT The New York Times

The women plays sounding boards, while the men basically exist for the same reason that women exist in most of these other films: As sexual tools. That’s brazen, and interesting, and if The To Do List were funnier, it’d be easier to forgive the rest of the film’s weaknesses: It’s lack of emotion, the clumsy writing, the Farrelly-esque gags that occasionally veer into Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer territory. – The To Do List Review: Daring, Challenging, And Not Very Good, RT Pajiba

What happens when someone repents of their sins on their deathbed, and they don’t get to live out a life of repentance, take communion, be baptized, or attempt to walk out their days in holiness? What happens to that person? – Salvation in Your Final Hour, RT The Resurgence

Caffeine Frenzy: Advertising Against Child Abuse, Film Scripts, Daredevil, Whedon

film & television May 7, 2013 Leave a comment

Light-Bulb

Billboard Shows Different Messages for Kids and Adults – In this case, if the billboard is seen by children under 1.3 meters (about 4 feet 3 inches), then the message, “If somebody hurts you, phone us and we’ll help you” appears along with a phone number for the ANAR Foundation (Aid to Children and Adolescents at Risk). There’s also a message just for adults, a warning saying, “Sometimes child abuse is only visible to the child suffering it.” (RT Mashable)

The Low-Grade Fever in the Southern Baptist Convention – “It’s easier to debate small matters with people who see the world much like we do than it is to engage with a lost world that seems increasingly hostile to the Christian perspective.” (RT The Gospel Coalition)

Solving Equation of a Hit Film Script, With Data- “A chain-smoking former statistics professor named Vinny Bruzzese — “the reigning mad scientist of Hollywood,” in the words of one studio customer — has started to aggressively pitch a service he calls script evaluation. For as much as $20,000 per script, Mr. Bruzzese and a team of analysts compare the story structure and genre of a draft script with those of released movies, looking for clues to box-office success.” (RT The New York Times)

What Can Marvel Do To Make Daredevil Work? Copy “Arrow” (Or, “Angel”) –
“With stories that are usually less about the action and more about the intrigue, and Daredevil solving crimes and prosecuting criminals at least as much as he’s kicking ass, there’s much more narrative potential for an ongoing superhero legal dramedy than another attempt at a blockbuster franchise. What would that show look, sound, and feel like? If you weren’t paying attention earlier, go ahead and re-read the title of this piece. So, hey, let’s make “Daredevil” a TV show, Marvel.”  (RT Pajiba)

“Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.” – Joss Whedon

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