Jesus
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not "perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” (John 3:16-17)
Martin Buber
“In the relation to God, unconditional exclusiveness and unconditional inclusiveness are one. For those who enter into the absolute relationship, nothing particular retains any importance—neither things nor beings, neither earth nor heaven—but everything is included in the relationship. For entering into the pure relationship does not involve ignoring everything but seeing everything in the You, not renouncing the world but placing it upon its proper ground. Looking away from the world is no help toward God; staring at the world is no help either; but whoever beholds the world in him stands in his presences…” (from
I and Thou)
C.S. Lewis
“When I attempted a few minutes ago, to describe our spiritual longings, I was omitting one of their most curious characteristics. We usually notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends, or as the landscape loses the celestial light… For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. We may go when we please, we may stay if we can, no one cares. Now, a scientist may reply that since most of the things we call beautiful are inanimate it is not very surprising that they take no notice of us. That, of course, is true. It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable Something of which they become for a moment the messengers. And part of the bitterness which mixes with the sweetness of that message is due to the fact that it so seldom seems to be a message intended for us, but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment. We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in the universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, the bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret.” (from
The Weight of Glory)
Terrence Malick
Badlands (1972)
Days of Heaven (1978)
The Thin Red Line (1998)
The New World (2005)
Martin Heidegger
“Truth is the truth of Being. Beauty does not occur alongside and apart from this truth. When truth sets itself into the work, it appears. Appearance—as this being of truth in the work and as work—is beauty. Thus the beautiful belongs to the advent of truth, truth’s taking of its place. It does not exist merely relative to pleasure and purely as its object.” (from “The Origin of the Work of Art.”)
Saint Paul
“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (I Corinthians 13:12)
Marshall McLuhan
“All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered.” (from
The Medium is the Massage)
Sufjan Stevens
And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floorboards
For the secrets I have hid
(from “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”)
F. Scott Fitzgerald
“And as I sat there brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s long dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it, He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.” (from
The Great Gatsby)
Yasujiro Ozu
Tokyo Story (1953)
George Steiner
“All representations, even the most abstract, infer a rendezvous with intelligibility or, at the least, with a strangeness attenuated, qualified by observance and willed form. Apprehension (the meeting with the other) signifies both fear and perception. The continuum between both, the modulation from one to the other, lie at the source of poetry and the arts.” (from
Real Presences)
Paul Tillich
“What is the nature of a being that is able to produce art? Man is finite. He is, as one could say, mixed of being and nonbeing. Once he was not. Now he is and some time he will not be. He is not by himself, but thrown into existence and he will be thrown out of existence and cease to be for himself. He is delivered to the flux of time which runs from the past to the future through the ever-moving point which is called the present. He is aware of the infinite. He is aware that he belongs to it. But he is also aware that he is excluded from it… Out of the anxiety, and the double awareness that we are finite and that we belong to infinity from which we are excluded, the urge arises to express the essential unity of that which we are in symbols which are religious and artistic.” (from
On Art and Architecture)
Dorothy Sayers
“Poets have, indeed, often communicated in their own mode of expression truths identical with the theologians’ truths; but just because of the difference in the modes of expression, we often fail to see the identity of the statements.” (from
The Mind of the Maker)
Over the Rhine
What a beautiful piece of heartache this has all turned out to be.
Lord knows we've learned the hard way all about healthy apathy.
And I use these words pretty loosely.
There's so much more to life than words.
(from “Latter Days”)
Soren Kierkegaard
“He will grant thee a hiding place within Him, and once hidden in Him he will hide thy sins. For He is the friend of sinners... He does not merely stand still, open His arms and say, 'Come hither'; no, he stands there and waits, as the father of the lost son waited, rather He does not stand and wait, he goes forth to seek, as the shepherd sought the lost sheep, as the woman sought the lost coin. He goes--yet no, he has gone, but infinitely farther than any shepherd or any woman, He went, in sooth, the infinitely long way from being God to becoming man, and that way He went in search of sinners.” (from
Training in Christianity)
Richard Linklater
Before Sunrise (1995)
Waking Life (2001)
Before Sunset (2004)
George MacDonald
“In what belongs to the deeper meanings of nature and her mediation between us and God, the appearances of nature are the truths of nature, far deeper than any scientific discoveries in and concerning them. The show of things is that for which God cares most, for their show is the face of far deeper things than they; we see in them, in a distant way, as in a glass darkly, the face of the unseen. It is through their show, not through their analysis, that we enter into their deepest truths. What they say to the childlike soul is the truest thing to be gathered of them.” (from
The Voice of Job)
Emily Dickinson
The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted opon Earth –
The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity
John Steinbeck
“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.” (from
East of Eden)
Bob Dylan
He woke up, the room was bare
He didn't see her anywhere.
He told himself he didn't care,
pushed the window open wide,
Felt an emptiness inside
to which he just could not relate
Brought on by a simple twist of fate.
(from “Simple Twist of Fate”)
Walker Percy
“What is the malaise? You ask. The malaise is the pain of loss. The world is lost to you, the world and the people in it, and there remains only you and the world and you no more able to be in the world than Banquo’s ghost.” (from
The Moviegoer)
Sofia Coppola
Virgin Suicides (2000)
Lost in Translation (2003)
Marie Antoinette (2006)
Kathleen Norris
“Church is to be participated in and not consumed. The point is not what one gets out of it, but the worship of God; the service takes place both because of and despite the needs, strengths, and frailties of the people present. How else could it be?” (from
Dakota)
Marilynne Robinson
“Whenever I think of Edward, I think of playing catch in a hot street and that wonderful weariness of the arms. I think of leaping after a high throw and that wonderful collaboration of the whole body with itself and that wonderful certainty and amazement when you know the glove is just where it should be. Oh, I will miss the world!” (from
Gilead)
N.T. Wright
“Preaching the gospel means announcing Jesus as Lord of the world; and, unless we are prepared to contradict ourselves with every breath we take, we cannot make that announcement without seeking to bring that lordship to bear over every aspect of the world.” (from
What Saint Paul Really Said).
David Bazan
It's weird to think of all the things
That have not been keeping up with the times
It's ten o' clock the sun is down
Just begun to set the western hills on fire
I hear that you don't change
How do you expect to keep up with the trends
You won't survive the information age
Unless you plan to change the truth to accommodate the brilliance of man
The brilliance of man
(from “Letter From a Concerned Follower”)
G.K. Chesterton
“Gazing at some detail like a bird or a cloud, we can all ignore its awful blue background; we can neglect the sky; and precisely because it bears down upon us with an annihilating force it is felt as nothing. A thing of this kind can only be an impression and a rather subtle impression; but to me it is a very strong impression made by pagan literature and religion. I repeat that in our special sacramental sense there is, of course, the absence of the presence of God. But there is in a very real sense the presence of the absence of God. We feel it in the unfathomable sadness of pagan poetry; for I doubt if there was ever in all the marvelous manhood of antiquity a man who was happy as St. Francis was happy.” (from
The Everlasting Man)
Gus Van Sant
Elephant (2003)
Paranoid Park (2008)
Solomon
"I have seen the task which God has given the sons of men with which to occupy themselves. He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one's lifetime; moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor--it is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him. That which is has been already and that which will be has already been, for God seeks what has passed by." (Ecclesiastes 3:10-15).
Jack Kerouac
“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?—it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.” (from
On the Road)
St. Augustine
"Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee..."
Martin Luther
“Unless I am convinced by proofs from Scriptures or by plain and clear reasons and arguments, I can and will not retract, for it is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen."
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
The Son (2002)
The Child (2005)
;
The Search 
I don’t like that you can’t reference a page number. That can be annoying if you’re a student or in a book club. I also like the marginalia of used and borrowed books (see a good article on e-books on marginalia here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/magazine/06Riff-t.html?_r=1&emc=eta1)
I did find the e-book helpful while traveling, though. It sure helps when packing a carry-on bag when I don’t have to make room for three to four books!
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Con # 1 – The reason I bought a KINDLE. I can only read on it.
I am a used and rare book dealer. You will never see me with one of these devices. I think they have some applications – the textbook market perhaps – but for pleasure reading? If you love the culture of books, please – do not buy one of these.
I agree with you in every sense. I just think of all of those people that sacrificed so much to have their words printed, that I just can’t fully give myself to kindle fad. Physical books have more value to me.
I proposed to my wife at Adams park soon after I graduated from Wheaton on a beautiful Spring Day near the fountain….
and I’m sticking with paper books…I like bending the pages, underlining, and sharing the books with friends and family.
I think you’re forgetting another pro of “real” books: the smell and feel. It’s a little cheesy and nostalgic, but the touch of paper and musty smell of an old book is magical. I think it’s part of the reading experience, and the transition from holding something warm and papery to something cold and aluminum isn’t, I think, a step worth taking.
I completely agree with the previous commenter. There’s a richness that comes with holding a book in your hand. You form a bond with it–a different bond than you have with your electronic device. I may be out of touch with the masses, but I don’t think physical books will ever go the way of the dinosaur.
I have a Kindle and an iPad. My eyes get tired on the iPad, but not on the Kindle. It’s not a lit screen. I never thought I’d like the e-book, but I have grown to love it. One great thing for “work” books is that I can get my notes electronically, which makes them searchable.
While I won’t argue that there’s some beauty lost in reading a book on an electronic device versus a physical manuscript with a unique scent, feel, and cover design, the reality for me and many others is that, before purchasing a Kindle, I did not read, and now I do. I’m a natural skeptic so it took a lot of inner debate and finally a leap of faith for me to jump on the e-book bandwagon. So, I understand your misgivings, but I wanted to comment on a few of your cons and throw in a pro to boot.
Firstly, there is a massive difference between e-readers and modern tablet computers (e.g. iPads, Xooms, etc.). IPads are, as you said, designed for multitasking and their backlit screens are, as you said, hard on the eyes after a while. E-readers, such as the Kindle and the black and white Nook, do very little other than allow you to read books, and their e-ink technology is very easy on the eyes, as easy as a good, old-fashioned book even. When I use my Kindle, I put my phone away, and I can get lost in the words for hours.
And secondly, my favorite e-reader benefit (I’m assuming this is the same on the Nook as the Kindle) is the ability to instantly lookup definitions of unfamiliar words. With the Kindle, you can scroll the cursor to a word, and the definition is instantly displayed at the top of the page. It’s become such a habit that it hardly interrupts the flow of my reading, and naturally, my understanding of the material is greatly enhanced, not to mention I love learning a new word now and again.
I’m a guy with more books than shelf space. I was not a believer until I got the Kindle. I find it easier to read to than an actual book, and it doesn’t do anything else, so no problems with distractions. I absolutely love that I can decide to read a book, buy it, and start reading within a few seconds. My only problem is that I can’t share the book when I’m done.
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I wasn’t a believer until I downloaded the Kindle app on my iPad. I understand the nostalgia of real books… the feel of paper, the smell, closing the book with warm accomplishment when you’ve finished the last page… but when it comes right down to it we have to ask ourself WHY we’re reading the books in the first place. Is it because we like to be seen reading, or because we’re actually interested in what is being said on the page and whether or not it is true or applicable.
Also, I actually like how the iPad Kindle app (not sure how the actual Kindle functions) does not offer page numbers (for now at least). You can check your progress to see how far you are from the end, but if you don’t intentionality check, you won’t know… this I like. It keeps me focused on the page I’m reading and it’s content, not the question “how far am I until the end?” or “how much more of this chapter is left before i go to bed?” You either read what’s there, or you don’t. No rushing, no pressure. The end could be anywhere.
FWIW, I’ll always have a bookshelf with books on it, but only my favorites. I always check to see if a book is available on Amazon Kindle before I buy a physical copy; I’m much more likely to buy it and read it if it is available for immediate download.
The Kindle, with it’s nice cover, feels and looks like a book.
It would be interesting if Apple could find a way to put the book title in its little Apple logo on the back of the iPad. Something to bring that back. I agree, that is something that’s missing.
I don’t see how reading becoming a “downtime” activity is a bad thing. I take my Kindle to the park for a day and also appreciate having it on the bus to pass that time. I used to take books on the bus all the time on my 45 minutes commute to work.
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I’ve saw an interview with Sherman Alexei who said he refused to allow his books to be available for the kindle.
Here is a snippet from another interview:
Why do you consider the Kindle “elitist?”
I consider the Kindle elitist because it’s too expensive. I also consider it elitist because, right now, one company is making all the rules. I am also worried about Jeff Bezos’ comments about wanting to change the way we read books. That’s rather imperial. Having grown up poor, I’m also highly aware that there’s always a massive technology gap between rich and poor kids. I haven’t yet heard what Amazon plans to do about this potential technology gap. And that’s a vital question considering that Bezos wants to change the way we read books. How does he plan to change the way that poor kids read books? How does he plan to make sure that poor kids have access to the technology? Poor kids all over the country don’t have access to current textbooks, so will they have access to Kindle?
http://www.edrants.com/sherman-alexie-clarifies-elitist-charges/
I guess on the plus side, ebooks are better for the environment though I’m not sure if books is the biggest problem in terms of paper waste.
I love good, old-fashioned books, but recently bought a Kindle, mainly for public-domain stuff (classic literature, classic works of philosophy, economics, etc.). On those items, it will certainly save me money in the long run.
Also, as a proposal writer, I am often required to read 100s of pages in PDF (RFPs). An iPad may be hard on the eyes, but the Kindle beats a computer screen any day.
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