To Read or Not to Read (Shelf Life ed.Gary Paulsen and Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler)

I don't have to read every book I start. This was an important decision I made last week. See the stack of books below.

These are just a few of the books I intend to read! At the time I took this picture, I forgot there was one in my purse.

(Yes, the purse looks like it could be replaced, but that's a blog piece for another day: not filling our waste or dump sites.) My actual decision not to read a book came while reading these two books:

I finished Shelf Life; I returned Vinegar Girl to the library. Both of these books have something in common. In Shelf Life, editor Gary Paulsen asked prominent authors to write short stories  which included the mention of a book. This was done to promote and benefit ProLiteracy Worldwide. Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler is the third book of Random House's "Hogarth Shakespeare" project where a novelist updates a story from Shakespeare.

I picked up Shelf Life from work and I almost did not finish it as the stories at the beginning did not interest me. Sure, they mention a famous book (or two) in each story, but the stories came across like the results of a writing assignment rather than what would naturally come from the author. However, some of the students at the school where I work had this book as required reading so I pushed on and I liked the stories at the end. Also, the last section "About the Contributors" fascinated me.

Vinegar Girl written by well-known author Anne Tyler was supposed to be my "light-hearted" read after reading through a series of depressing books. It was okay, but I kept thinking the original Shakespearean play The Taming of the Shrew was a lot better. This isn't just me insisting on the original Shakespeare. I like his stories retold in modern language. I just kept thinking: "Wait, she's changing up the actual story." In the middle, I decided that I could stop reading. Just because I had started reading the book did not mean I had to finish it. Not only did I have all those other books I wanted to read (see first picture), but these books came in two days later (and The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley looks like it might be the light-hearted read I have been looking for.)

💕💕💕💕 About 70% of the people who look at my blog do so on a mobile device and I now realize the website post does not always come out well on a mobile so I'm working to fix that. I still have not figured out how to add the translation widget to the mobile format, but I'm playing with how to divide up the sections such as this one that connects the reading to family life and the one below connecting to spiritual transformation.

I don't actually have the answer to the question I'm raising in this section. How do we get our children and students to enjoy some of the best literature of the ages when testing on anything kills most of the joy?

-------------As for spiritual transformation and reading, I have not, I believe, mentioned reading scriptures which surely would be included in any spiritual transformation plan. Again, testing destroys a whole lot of joy. While reading Old Testament scriptures and New Testament scriptures will help any reader because of the vast number of biblical references and allusions made in books, reading of the bible can make a transformative difference. And, while some readers may gasp at the word "can", reading the bible knowing that God loves you, the reader, and delights in you, makes a difference between reading it  and being transformed and thinking that God is out to get you and not being transformed. Also, skillful readers know to picture in their minds what they are reading. See the second book review You Gotta Be the Book in this blog post "Five Books..." to read a discussion of how important it is to picture what we are reading, yet so often that information is not offered to those reading the bible.  

Why Sunday Sermons Might Not Work (aka "Bring Forth Fruit")...or Parent / Teacher Lectures or Employer Evaluations (Leadership and Self-Deception)

An extremely long title for a very thin book with a title guaranteed to repel some readers! Who willingly goes into exploring self-deception?

I read it because my daughter read it for work. If you want your company to be top notch, this book (or something similar) is a must read. I write "something similar" because some reviewers hate the narrative form of the book. If you hate reading example stories, and you can read to-the-point, tell me like it is informational statements  which you then apply to yourself, then go for it. My understanding is that some of the other books are tied to religious organizations and this book is appropriate for non-religious settings.

I read it before heading out to a conference with 200 people and found the concept of "being in the box" toward people useful. If I found myself starting to think ill of another person, I would ask myself if I was in the box toward him or her and why. Some reviewers did not like the "in the box" "out of the box" descriptions. They are difficult to explain. I think in other fields they might be described as treating people as "other" -- other than yourself, someone not of your kind. We don't realize that we are forgetting that we do have our humanity in common, that the other person feels just like you and I would feel if we were receiving that sermon, that lecture, that evaluation, but we don't stop to think about that. We deceive ourselves unconsciously into thinking we have good reasons for acting the way we do, but the other person is being ____________ (fill in the blank, but make it worse than you are or would be).

At our place of employment, we make mistakes and think we need to blame others so we won't feel so badly about our actions. Same for families and communities.  Yet it is better for a business, better for families, better for communities when people treat each other well. Lectures or Sermons are not the way to solve the problem. When lectures and sermons by employers, parents, teachers, pastors don't lead to change, we blame the listener, the student, the worker, the child, the congregant.

What the stories in the book can do that concrete factual statements can not is to give examples that lead the reader to realize "I do that. I pretend to be asleep and let my spouse get up with the child. I yell at my son for squealing the tires when he gets in on time as I asked. I make it look like someone is already sitting in the empty seat next to me so that no one will sit there even though people are looking for seats (because my needs are greater than that stranger's, even though I have no idea what that stranger is going through)."

The section on collusion is also powerful. We hate conflict, but we don't want to think we might be the one in the wrong. We don't want to give our son permission to be out for the evening because he has been irresponsible in his actions lately. We grudgingly give permission with a set time to be in, and if our child is late, it proves our point that he is irresponsible. We want him to be responsible, but at the same time, we want him to get the point that he has been irresponsible. Yet, our actions make him more irresponsible than ever. Oh, the games we play in our brains!

This is why I hesitantly suggest that there is a bit of this going on with Sunday sermons. If a congregation were perfect, there might be no need for a pastor to tell them to be better! I read this John Ortberg quote today: "We spend too much time arguing about Christianity and not enough time marveling at Jesus." This probably deserves a post of its own, but I combined the review of the book  (thoroughly secular) with an issue I see in Sunday sermons: with a bit of rephrasing (of perhaps a Dallas Willard quote), Sundays tend to be filled with too much "God is good. You're really not doing well at all. Try harder, and go tell someone about Jesus" rather than marveling at Jesus and learning to do what he did: love God and love others. Go to weddings and drink the wine. Eat with people who are different from you. See them as people with feelings like your feelings. Listen to them like you like to be listened to. Know that you're not going to be humiliated by God who loves you. As we learn to trust that Someone holds us, we also learn to love and not humiliate others.

Lest you think the book is all warm fuzzies, no one who does something wrong ever gets those issues addressed. That is not the case at all. It's about learning how to address those wrongs and still treating another person as a human being who is like yourself. There's a lot more in this short book such as being in a box a long time with another person, so much so that you can't even remember when you first started blaming them for everything that goes wrong. People on both sides of a conflict may be "in the box" with one another (how fun is that).

I bought the book; I give it a five.

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We now know that children think differently from adults but feel the same emotions.  I wish I had had access to a book like this when I was raising my children. When talking with children (or anyone for that matter), I know have to ask myself two questions: Would I like to be talked to the way I just talked to that person (or was going to talk to them)? When I have the feeling part of it sorted out, then I also need to think about the personality of the person to whom I'm talking. With adults who we have not known for a long time, this may take some time; however, with children, if we start from birth, we have some time to learn a child's personality and what he or she responds to.

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I found the "in the box" illustrations very helpful in this book. When bad characteristics came into my head about a person, it was a great trigger for me to think, "Am I in the box toward this person?" "Why?" "Is he or she really like that?" "Did I think those thoughts about this person before this incident?" "What prompted these thoughts in my head?" "Oh, maybe it's because I'm hoping this friend will fill a need that can not be filled at this particular time. That doesn't make them a bad person." Etc. The "in the box" concept has continued to be a transforming one.