Booking Through Thursday – Returns (May 16)
This week Booking Through Thursday asks the following questions:
What book(s) do you find yourself going back to? Beloved children’s classics? Favorites from college? Something that touched you and just makes you long to visit?
(Because, doesn’t everybody have at least one book they would like to curl up with, even if they don’t make a habit of rereading books? Even if they maybe don’t even have the time to visit and just think back longingly?)
This is a fairly easy question for me to answer. There are quite a few books that I like to return to from time to time, but the one that I go back to most frequently is The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. I read it at least once every couple of years or so. It is the book I credit the most with encouraging my love of reading. It is close to 40 years since I read it first and my first recollections of it are reading it at school along with the rest of my class and it being read by Bernard Cribbins on the BBC show Jackanory. I just loved the story from that first moment on. In recent years I encouraged my wife to read it, and I also bought copies for my two children, who have enjoyed reading it as well. I haven’t seen the recent movie adaptation and I’m not sure that I will bother with it at this point.
Other books I like to return to from time to time are Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books, C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia books, and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. As well as these, I also try to read through The Bible every few years.
Booking Through Thursday – 50 (May 9)
This week Booking Through Thursday shares the following task:
My brother-in-law turns 50 this weekend. So, in his honor, please pick up your nearest book or whatever book you’re currently reading, and turn to page 50 and then share the first 50 words with the rest of us. (Do feel free to round this off, to stop and start with complete sentences, though.)
My 50 is from In the First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, which was sitting near at hand, on the top of my TBR pile:
Why was he so fascinated by the riddle of the grim inflated giant who had only to flutter an eyelash and Nerzhin’s head would fly off?
Should he, then, surrender to the tentacles of the cryptographic octopus? For fourteen hours a day they would crush him, never relaxing even during rest periods.
I’m hoping to finally get around to reading this one soon, probably during the summer. I’m curious to know what exactly is going on here, so maybe the sooner I read it the better.
Booking Through Thursday – What Else?
This week Booking Through Thursday asks the following question:
What’s your favorite hobby OTHER THAN reading?
I would have to say that music is my next favourite hobby after reading. I play tuba in our local concert band, Toot Suite, and I enjoy most things associated with music. I have been playing brass instruments since I was about 7 years old. I would like to learn piano, but in order to do this I would have to change my practicing habits. I enjoy listening to most kinds of music as well, although there are some genres I have to draw the line at.
Booking Through Thursday – Sporting (April 25)
This week Booking Through Thursday asks the following questions:
1. Do you read books about sports?
I enjoy reading books about sports and read a lot of football (soccer) books. As well as reading biographies of some of my favourite players, there are a number of club history books and other books I have read. The most recent football book I read was More Than Just a Game: Soccer vs. Apartheid: The Most Important Soccer Story Ever Told by Chuck Korr and Marvin Close. It told the story of how football became a big part of life on Robben Island, the notorious South African prison where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned. Other good books I’ve read in recent years include Football Against the Enemy (Simon Kuper) and How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization (Franklin Foer).
One of my most prized sports books is an autographed copy of cricketer Ian Botham’s autobiography. I also enjoy reading books about hockey and any kind of sports almanac.
2. How about AT sporting events? (Kid’s soccer practice?)
Our daughter is involved in competitive swimming, so I always make sure I have a book with me if I’m at one of her swim competitions, because they are usually over the course of 2 or 3 days and there can be a long time between her swims. Of course I make sure I’m no reading at the moment she is swimming!
Booking Through Thursday – Language (April 18)
This week Booking Through Thursday asks the following:
I saw a Latin edition of “The Hobbit” last time I was at the bookstore… Do you read any foreign languages? Do you ENJOY reading in other languages?
I don’t read books in any language other than English. I studied German in high school and got to the point where I could usually work out what the text said and was able to hold very basic conversations in German. However, that is over 30 years ago now and, although I haven’t forgotten everything, I wouldn’t be able to understand much German without a dictionary or phrase book at hand. Even then I’d be too slow to keep up. It’s a shame, because it was a subject at school that I enjoyed.
Ironically, my school (Kirkwall Grammar School) gave you the choice of studying either French or German. I chose German, not knowing then that one day I’d move to Canada, where a knowledge of French would be a lot handier than knowing German. That’s hindsight for you! Of course, there’s nothing really stopping me from signing up for some basic French classes.
Booking Through Thursday – Spring Up (April 11)
This week Booking Through Thursday asks the following:
What’s the last book that made you spring to your feet, eager to spread the word and tell everyone how much you enjoyed it?
I get quite excited about many of the books I read (ask my family members how much), but I think that two books in recent years that I have wanted to share my love of with others are Love Wins (Rob Bell) and Pagan Christianity? (Frank Viola and George Barna).
Booking Through Thursday – April Fools (April 4)
This week Booking Through Thursday asks the following:
What’s the silliest (most foolish?) book you’ve ever read? Did you enjoy it?
I had to think about this question for a while, but I finally came up with one that stands way above some of the books I’ve read over the years as one of the silliest ever. That book is The Prayer of Jabez by Bruce Wilkinson.
At first glance this book seems to be one designed to be helpful for Christian believers, but the person it ended up being most helpful for must have been the author himself, because it spawned a whole ‘Jabez’ industry of other books, prayer mats, prayer shawls, candles, and so on. The whole premise of the book was based on two short obscure verses from the Old Testament, but the author just took them and ran with them. There is so much that is wrong with the theology in this book that it is hard to know where to start.
I read the book and didn’t enjoy it. In fact it makes me mad that I even wasted the time on it, but at least having read it I can criticize it based on this, rather than what others wrote about it. Unfortunately, too much criticism happens today by people who haven’t even taken the time to read whatever it is they are criticizing.
By all means read this book, but I know I won’t be reading it again any time soon. Funnily enough, someone I know told me they read it at the time it came out and told me it was one of the most powerful books they had ever read. I stopped myself from asking if it was the only book they had ever read! Each to their own, I suppose.
What people are saying