One of my favorite podcasts is The Book Review Podcast, produced by The New York Times and hosted by editor Pamela Paul. On the show, I find myself discovering books I might never have otherwise. (I do receive their weekly newsletters—but rarely read them.)
One example of book serendipity provided by the podcast was a recent interview with author David Rooney, whose book About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks released this year. As I’m also working on a book about time, my interest was immediately piqued. The book arrived before dinner.
In his introduction, Rooney writes that his history—(which includes a Roman sundial from 263 BCE, the Hourglass of Temperance in Siena from 1338, and the observatory Time Ball in Cape Town from 1833)—is partial and “idiosyncratic.” He explains: “We will use the history of clocks to look at capitalism, the exchange of knowledge, the building of empires, and the radical changes to our lives brought by industrialization. We will consider morality—right and wrong—as well as identity—who we are—all mediated by clocks. And we will look unflinchingly at life, death, war and peace.”
All of that sounds ambitious, but as an idiosyncratic writer (and reader) myself, I have the feeling I’m going to love this book. And it reminds me why I love books—and read far more books than articles of Internet posts. The labor invested in a book, particularly this kind of researched project, is immense, and every time readers pick a book up, they benefit from another person’s diligent and deep work. (I might even call it service.)
Last weekend, I was helping my daughter with her senior thesis. It’s the first time she’s ever written a paper of this length, and when she asked for proofreading help, I started by telling her I’d also need her Works Cited page. “But I don’t need help with that,” she said. I countered: “I want to see your research, to see how you’re using it. This is a huge part of writing.” You know the first thing I did, right? I scanned the list for books.
The habit of reading books is a good one. Not because it makes you sound smart, I promise. No, because it’s a discipline that can—if you let it—move you out of the sudden, shifting, stormy winds of the Internet. Reading books can help you develop the discipline of sustaining interest. It can help you engage wider curiosities. It can help you develop sympathies and sharpen reasoning.
That sounds like a virtue project to me.
I’d even call it a spiritual discipline.
RECOMMENDED (Books I think will be of particular benefit to my readers)
The Courage to Stand. I have immense respect for Dr. Russell Moore, who served as the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission—the policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention—until earlier this year. In a 2020 letter leaked to Religion News Service, it became painfully clear Dr. Moore has suffered for the kind of moral and prophetic courage he argues for in this book. He has fought the SBC on racism, on sex abuse cover-up, on political pragmatism. I’ll never forget the day I heard Dr. Moore on NPR, responding to then presidential candidate Donald Trump, who called him a “nasty guy with no heart” on Twitter. Dr. Moore agreed with Trump: “I am a nasty guy with no heart, which is why I need salvation and forgiveness through Jesus Christ.” Dr. Moore is an irenic Christian voice in the public square, and I learn so much from him. Besides reading this book (and others he’s written), you can also subscribe to his newsletter and podcast and follow his public theology project at Christianity Today.
When cowardice, cultural conformity, or indifference might be paths of least resistance, courage—as Dr. Moore has displayed and written about here—is all the more startling, all the more beautiful.
READING (Books that represent my own, idiosyncratic tastes)
Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez
Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman
The Congregation in a Secular Age by Andrew Root
RECEIVED (Books that publishers and writing friends have sent to me)
Good Burdens: How to Live Joyfully in the Digital Age by Christina Crook. I hope to have more to say about this in future newsletters! I love Christina’s work. Good Burdens opens with a question posed by philosopher Albert Borgmann in his 1984 book, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: “What happens when technology moves beyond lifting genuine burdens and starts freeing us from burdens that we should not want to be rid of?”
Thanks for reading this week’s Post Script.
Yours,
Jen