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Spring What?

We’ve already got quite a few excellent articles queued up for this coming week. Expect them to begin early tomorrow. In the meantime, Tony Kummer over at Said at Southern has tagged me for the Spring Reading Days Meme.

by Richard Clark

6 April 2008

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5 Comments

We’ve already got quite a few excellent articles queued up for this coming week. Expect them to begin early tomorrow. In the meantime, Tony Kummer over at Said at Southern has tagged me for the Spring Reading Days Meme.

Some of you may wonder what on earth “Spring Reading Days” even is. Allow me to explain.

If you go to a normal school, you will experience what is known as Spring Break. This is a week-long experience with quite a bit of cultural baggage. Most Americans think “Spring Break” and associate it with beach parties, hedonism, and at the very least lots and lots of sleeping in.

Needless to say, Southern Seminary is a very different place. The phrase “Spring Break” has been transformed to “Spring Reading Days” connoting less beach-tastic excitement and imprudent actions and more… well, reading. It’s an attempt to stare one of the more popular popular culture staples in the face and say “we’re not biting.”

Of course, most students and teachers coyly acknowledge that our days during this coming week will not likely be characterized primarily by “reading.” We’ll also be writing. Oh, and some of us will be on vacation, visiting family, or catching up on movies. My only real break was this weekend which was more relaxing than usual because I don’t have any immediate classes to catch up on. I was able to watch a lot of movies and do quite a bit of reading. This coming week I will be reading even more.

And that’s when the meme comes in:

What are you reading on Spring reading days? I’ve got two very small books to read for Intro to Old Testament: Making Sense of the Old Testament by Tremper Longmas III and Mission in the Old Testament by Walter C. Kaiser Jr. Also, for down-time I’m reading the new Paste Magazine, an excellent source for “signs of life in music, film and culture.” My wife and I are trudging through Augustine’s Confessions.
What do you wish you had time to read? Tons. Most immediately, I’m halfway through Auralia’s Colors by Jeffery Overstreet. I have really enjoyed it but once the semester picked up I was forced to abandon it for now. It’s pretty amazing so far and I hear it only gets better.
What have you decided NOT to read that you were assigned to read? Who, me? Seriously, I’m hoping to keep up with the assigned reading, though it’s possible that in light of the two book reviews being due next week, my Christian History reading may suffer.
What is one great quote from your reading? Our church has begun using the accordion during worship every now and then, so this quote in Paste magazine caught my attention: “The accordion can quickly color a piece of music into a much darker or even grotesque sort of tune. I think in pop music it tends to make things sound a little anachronistic, in a good way.”
Why are you blogging? (You’re supposed to be reading!) Because you tagged me for this thing! Also, I made a commitment to putting out a new podcast every Tuesday, so I’ll be blogging that then.

I’ll be tagging: Riley, Ben, Drew Dixon, Kiel, Josh Dove.

(No Love Yet)

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5 Comments »

David said:

When I first read this Rich, I couldn’t believe you were only listing Old Testament course books. I thought for sure you would have some pop-culture piece or something. But thanfully I kept reading and was not disappointed.

- 7 April 2008 at 8:29 am

Spring Reading Days Meme | Said at Southern Seminary said:

[...] Rich replied Spring What? [...]

- 7 April 2008 at 2:14 pm

The Dane said:

1) Currently Reading:
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami. Little over half-way finished. Awesome read so far.

• Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. One-third finished. Pretty interesting—but not as interesting as Murakami, who’s taking the bulk of my current reading time.

• Locas: A Love and Rockets Collection by Jaime Hernandez. Nearly half-finished. I’ve been having trouble getting into this one. When comparing the work of Los Bros Hernandez, I much prefer the work of Gilberto (e.g. Palomar), but I’m working my way through this because of its importance to the medium. Hopefully along the way I’ll catch its fire.

• The Book of Mormon by Joseph Sillypants. Seriously, this reads like a Dan Brown book. Funny, but dumber than a bag of hammers.

2) Wishful Reading:
I wish I had the time to read pretty much everything else on my to-read stack. The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (Umberto Eco – 1/4 read), Hells Angels (Hunter S. Thompson – 1/4 read), my newly gained commentary on Song of Songs/Ecclesiastes. The latesrt volume of Age of Bronze (Eric Shanower). Understanding Power (Noam Chomsky). Etc.

3) Eschewed Assignments:
• Pretty much anything that’s not a novel. My time’s too precious to waste on non-fiction.
• I will not be re-reading His Dark Materials as was assigned for the book club I’m part of. The series was awful enough the first time (who ever convinced that hack Pullman that he could put together a coherent story anyway?).
• And wishful thinking aside, I will not be finishing the Book of Mormon.

4) A Quote:

“If people lived forever—if they never got any older—if they could just go on living in this world, never dying, always healthy—do you think they’d bother to think hard about things, the way we’re doing now? I mean, we think about just about everything, more or less—philosophy, psychology, logic. Religion. Literature. I kinda think, if there were no such thing as death, that complicated thoughts and ideas like that would never com into the world. I mean—”

May Kashara cut herself short and remained silent for a while, during which her “I mean” hung in the darkness of the well like a hacked-off fragment of thought. Maybe she had lost the will to say any more. Or maybe she needed time to think of what came next. I just waited in silence for her to continue, my head lowered as from the beginning. The thought crossed my mind that if May Kashara wanted to kill me right away, it would be no trouble for her at all. She could just drop a big rock down the well. If she tried a few times, one was bound to hit me in the head.

5) Why I Am Posting:
Lunch break.

- 7 April 2008 at 2:56 pm

Richard Clark (author) said: