~Chris Seay's The Gospel According to LOST. My husband and I are passing this one back and forth; the chapters are short. Lighter than I expected, and not quite as thought-provoking as I'd hoped. Still, good insights into the power of stories, lots of good questions re: the intersection of faith and popular culture. If you like this sort of thing (and like LOST) definitely worth picking up.
~Michelangelo by Diane Stanley. The sweet girl and I continue our meandering tour of the Renaissance. I love Stanley's lengthy picture book biographies, rich in language and art, and this one is no exception. As a fun sidebar, we watched Mike Venezia's Michelangelo on DVD, from his "Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists" series. I think "you don't say no to the pope" is going to be one of my new favorite expressions.
~"Stealing Past Watchful Dragons: C.S. Lewis' Incarnational Aesthetics and Today's Emerging Imagination" an essay by Phil Harrold in volume 3 of the series C.S. Lewis: Life, Works and Legacy, edited by Bruce Edwards. Excellent essay, recapping and cogently expressing many things I've been reading & thinking about Lewis in the past year. Giving me new thoughts to chew on too.
~An essay by Jennifer Woodruff Tait on gender in Lewis' That Hideous Strength. It's in a recent Bulletin of the NY C.S. Lewis Society; unfortunately I had time to read the first half of the essay at the library but not time to photocopy the rest of it. Hope to get back to it soon.
~Ramona and Her Father by Beverly Cleary. Current read-aloud with the sweet girl, and as usual, Ramona is providing both joy and mirth. Not to mention plenty of good adverb spotting practice. (Stay tuned for a new post on teaching grammar with Beverly Cleary.)
~And speaking of Cleary, I recently re-read her book Sister of the Bride after discovering a used library-sale copy I forgot I'd picked up. I don't think it's worn as well for some folks as many Cleary books, but it was one of my favorite books in the world when I was around ten or eleven, and I can still quote chunks of it. And I still get a lump in my throat during the scene where younger sister Barbara, sitting in Rosemary's shabby, unfinished university apartment, gets a tiny glimpse of how real love and looming marriage have already changed and deepened her big sister. Maybe you've got to be a little sister to love this one as much I do.
~Still re-reading Katherine Paterson's Bridge to Terebithia out loud to D. Love Jess and Leslie. Love May Belle. We're almost to the key scene, the one I can't read without crying. I've never tried it aloud, so we'll see how it goes.
Bits and pieces of other things, but that's the main list for the past few days. What are you reading and enjoying this week?
2 comments:
Love Bridge to Terabithia and Ramona and Her Father. And I can't wait to hear about the adverb lesson!
I know what you mean about Gospel According to LOST; I think it's written mainly for people who haven't thought much about this kind of stuff before. It's certainly not going as deep as John Granger. Then again, that makes it a breezy kind of read, and it's sort of fun to be able to say, "You know, I bet there are some points I could have made that he missed." And I sure love those pictures!
I seriously love re-inforcing grammar lessons with Cleary. I don't think I had ever appreciated just how strong her writing is until I started using her stories this way. And of course I started using them this way because they're great stories and S. loves them pieces. So it's a win-win situation!
Re: your comments on Seay's book on LOST...exactly! I like every chapter, but every chapter feels just like an introduction. Just when I think it's time for him to settle into the "meat" of the discussion, he ends it. That's why it feels more like a discussion starter or a discussion guide than anything else -- I do think it would be a fun book for a small group. And I think you're right that we have been spoiled (in the old-fashioned sense of the word) :-) by in-depth commentary by people like John Granger and his ilk!
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