The Pleasure of Reading from Within the Pregnant Pauses within Cultures

Having read Chris Smith’s review on The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs, I’m really looking forward to reading my copy. It sits alongside books like How Fiction Works by James Woods, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, and the more obscure and likely less accessible, as a result, In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh’s ‘Didascalicon’ by Ivan Illich. 

Here’s an excerpt from Chris’ review. It’s in the latest issue of the Englewood Review of Books, Volume 1, number 3. And below it (and I hope Chris doesn’t mind) a PDF of the entire review. 

“…Since very early on in this endeavor, I have been using the language of “missional reading” as a concise way of describing our raison d’être, but the task of slowly hammering out a detailed understanding of what this term might mean continues. The basic facets of this practice as it is taking form in my mind include: it is a shared practice of a church community (not merely an individual one); it involves an element of conversation, of reflecting on and discerning together the meaning of what is read; and finally it is driven by our desire to understand the places we inhabit and as a community, to be a faithful witness to the way of Christ’s reconciliation in our particular place.

This project of exploring the conceptual space of missional reading is an ongoing one, but Alan Jacobs, in his new book The Pleasures of Reading in a Distracted Age, has given the clearest depiction I’ve found to date of what missional reading might look like. Jacobs, of course, does not use missional terminology in the book, but in reflecting on the question of why books should be read, he covers many facets of reading that I believe take us a long way down the road toward a robust definition of what it might mean to read books missionally…”

Also worth a look is the review of what looks like an interesting read: Beauty Will Save The World: Recovering the Human in an Ideological Age by Gregory Wolfe.

Download Chris Smith Reviews Alan Jacobs Latest Book - July 2011